Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

> "Cling to my belief"? What belief?


> I've been pointing out that Rossi has very sound reasons to avoid
convincing many at this point.


You're suggesting Rossi makes his demos deliberately unconvincing. Yet he
does demos.


That's contorting the situation to cling to your belief (or hope) that
Rossi's ecat is real in spite of demos that don't prove it.



> What isn't clear is why he allowed the demonstrations at all. The story is
that it was to please, was it Focardi?



This was claimed for the first one. The later ones looked voluntary. Surely,
if he doesn't want to do demos, he would not do 4 of them. Has he no will of
his own?

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 02:28 PM 6/2/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:
>> And I know that if the claims were real, it would not be hard to 
show clear evidence that it is real.



> That's correct. But Joshua draws a conclusion from that which is 
simply a leap of faith. If it were not hard to show, therefore, it 
would be shown. And we know quite well why it might not be shown.



OK. If there is some devious plan of Rossi's to get people to 
believe it's not real by using really bad demos, then my argument 
that the absence of a demo is evidence of the absence of an effect 
fails. But talk about contortions to cling to your belief. Incredible.


This is simple business analysis. This isn't science, normally. This 
is what someone who has a secret to protect will do, create 
diversions. "Cling to my belief"? What belief?


I've been pointing out that Rossi has very sound reasons to avoid 
convincing many at this point. What isn't clear is why he allowed the 
demonstrations at all. The story is that it was to please, was it 
Focardi? I'm not sure, and I don't care enough to look it up. 
Personal reasons, having nothing to do either with science or with 
business. Frankly, I hope that Rossi has taken steps to make sure 
that if he disappears, the secret ingredient is not lost. Because 
there are quite possibly people who wouldn't like the economic 
disruption that his device will introduce, and sometimes these people 
have no scruples at all.


But still, without evidence (yes, I mean evidence that convinces 
me), I still won't be convinced. Devious possible schemes notwithstanding.


Nobody, least of all me, expects Joshua to be convinced. I'm not 
convinced by Rossi, but am moved toward support of the reality of 
this by the reputations of those who say that they can't discount it.




> There is, by the way, evidence that this is a nuclear effect. 
Joshua, here, weasels his way to make his statement true: "clear 
evidence." Actually, it's relatively clear, but it's also rather 
easily impeachable.



Relatively clear *and* easily impeachable?


Yes. That is, on the face it's clear, but other explanations can be 
raised that would require further investigation. And I just don't get 
that Rossi is going to allow this. It damages his goals.


See, if the secret gets out before he's secured patent protection, he 
could lose a boatload of money, comparatively. More than a boatload.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Rich Murray]

reactive gas micro and nano bubbles complicate Widom-Larsen theory re
electrolytic cells -- metal isotope anomalies in 'water tree'
corrosion of polyethylene insulation power cable, T Kumazawa et al
2005 -- 2008 Japan: Rich Murray 2011.06.02

Last year I sent some long posts to Abd Lomax and Ed Storms about
recent mainstream research on micro and nano bubbles in electrolytes,
which are common on all size scales, and can be H2, O2, N2, Cl2...

I and Ludvik Kowalsky also posted that in the SPAWAR DPd codeposition
runs, when an external DC 6 KV electric field was across the 2 cm wide
square cross-section cell with 1 mm thick clear plastic walls,
ordinary electrostatics will cause the entire charge to be across the
two thin walls, and zero within the electrolyte -- however microamps
of leakage current will result in complex low voltage currents within
the electrolyte, its components, and all surfaces.

Widom and Larsen have cited deterioration of plastic insulation on
underground power cables, fractal "water trees", eventually shorting
out the cable with conducting tree-like filaments, so it is reasonable
to suspect similar processes in the 1 mm clear plastic at 6 KV.

Resulting complex leakage currents will variably produce micro and
nano bubbles of O2 and H2, which can react by collision within the
electrolyte, or by being drawn together on various surfaces, or into
cracks, voids, or tiny filaments, or by O2 bubbles, attached to the
surface, reacting with H that has been loaded as much as 1 to 1 ratio
within the Pd lattice surface.

It is easy to calculate that the H2 with O2 bubble reactions will
release enough energy to melt and vaporize about the same volume of Pd
as the reacting bubbles -- so this is a reasonable probability that
has to be included in any theory that explains the puzzling, complex
micropits that are observed in many different experiments.

The chemical reaction of H2 and O2 is very high, so it is reasonable
to see that, atom for atom, the weaker covalent bonding that keeps Pd
solid would be overcome for more atoms of Pd than the reacting atoms
of H and O.

In the range of bubble sizes from micro to nano, the mean free path of
the resulting hot, energetic, possibly ionized H2O molecules will be
larger than the bubbles, indicating that the reaction will be very
fast, ie, explosive.

Impurities on and within surfaces will catalyze the gas reactions, and
local high electric fields on sharp nano features and from external EM
radiation and surface plasmons will also affect the reactions.

All possible gases have to be considered, including N2, Cl2, CO, C02,
O3, hydrocarbons, plastic components, and vaporized metals.

So, this adds major, complex unknown possibilities to Widom-Larsen
theory and any attempts to test its predictions and interpretations.

All this will increase with time for a cell -- fractal deterioration
of the plastic cell walls, increased leakage currents, increasing
chemical and micro and nano particle complexity of the electrolyte,
evolving fractal erosion and deposition to all surfaces within the
cell, more dust and gases possibly coming into the cell from air leaks
-- so the phenomena within the cell will always be changing, and
sometimes discontinuously.

Varying the prior exposure of the clear plastic walls to UV or various
penetrating radiations, and to reactive chemicals, or making the
plastic surface rougher, changing the DC voltage, pulsing the DC
voltage, or using AC at many frequencies would necessitate extensive
experimental grunt work.

I imagine turning 16 Mpx video chips into myriad low-cost cells by
plating them with, say, Pd or Ni, adding an insulating grid of SiO2 to
make a huge array of very thin nanocells, adding an electrolyte,
capping the array with a transparent conducting thin film, which would
be the anode -- then the time, location, and energy of any nano
reactions can be read out real time from the video array, while a
camera can record and store images of the whole array, zeroing in on
hotspots to record UV to IR, while any emitted radiations can be
detected.  Many variables could be studied simultaneously, by varying
them systematically for each nano cell in the array.  This would
enable the kind of specific precision measurements that allow theories
to be tested with well defined setups that catch specific events in
time and space.  Successful setups can be shared for replication by
different labs.


"...After extensive analysis, it was determined that a significant
number of such cable failures were caused by structural 'defects' that
'grew' over time in XPLE sheathing after in-ground installation.
Such defects came to be known in the electric utility business as
"water trees."
These so-called water (or electrochemical) trees are complex,
branching 3-D dendritic structures that grow outward from
conductor-XLPE interfaces in hydrophobic polymers in the presence of
electric fields and water...
...Further investigation over the past 5 years now sug

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 12:59 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:

Cude >> I just know I haven't seen any evidence the thing is real.


Lomax> This is typical pseudoskepticism. Instead of "I haven't seen evidence
that convinces me," it's a denial that evidence exists.


I agree that's what I meant. I haven't seen evidence that convinces me. I
assumed that would be understood. But also, it hasn't convinced scientists
in general.


> It's very obvious that there is "evidence the thing is real," or Joshua
would not even be commenting.


It is very obvious that the evidence convinces some people, yes. And that
keeps me entertained. Quite right.



>> And I know that if the claims were real, it would not be hard to show
clear evidence that it is real.


> That's correct. But Joshua draws a conclusion from that which is simply a
leap of faith. If it were not hard to show, therefore, it would be shown.
And we know quite well why it might not be shown.


OK. If there is some devious plan of Rossi's to get people to believe it's
not real by using really bad demos, then my argument that the absence of a
demo is evidence of the absence of an effect fails. But talk about
contortions to cling to your belief. Incredible.


But still, without evidence (yes, I mean evidence that convinces me), I
still won't be convinced. Devious possible schemes notwithstanding.


> There is, by the way, evidence that this is a nuclear effect. Joshua,
here, weasels his way to make his statement true: "clear evidence."
Actually, it's relatively clear, but it's also rather easily impeachable.


Relatively clear *and* easily impeachable?


> Say it this way, the finding of copper as a possible ash has not been
confirmed, and adequately investigated, as far as what we know publicly.


And even the copper that was claimed had the natural isotopic ratio. I'd say
that evidence was thoroughly impeached.


[quibbling extraordinaire deleted]

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 12:15 AM 6/2/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:


I just know I haven't seen any evidence the thing is real.


This is typical pseudoskepticism. Instead of "I haven't seen evidence 
that convinces me," it's a denial that evidence exists. It's very 
obvious that there is "evidence the thing is real," or Joshua would 
not even be commenting. Rather, Joshua, perhaps that is his real 
name, sees evidence and discounts it, for rather obvious reasons. 
Some of his criticisms of the evidence are cogent, at least to a 
degree, but that is quite different from denying the existence of evidence.


An attorney who makes a claim like his is going for summary judgment, 
for dismissal of a case (or the granting of a decision) based on the 
*complete lack of evidence to the contrary.* No court in their right 
mind would grant summary judgment in a civil case on evidence like 
we've seen, until after far more process and far more evidence and 
argument were gathered.


Cude is lying. He's seen evidence, and he's responded to it with 
argument after argument. If it were not evidence, he'd not have 
responded that way.


And I know that if the claims were real, it would not be hard to 
show clear evidence that it is real.


That's correct. But Joshua draws a conclusion from that which is 
simply a leap of faith. If it were not hard to show, therefore, it 
would be shown. And we know quite well why it might not be shown.


So the absence of clear evidence of nuclear effects is strong 
evidence of the absence of nuclear effects.


That's a bogus argument, logically, it's a mere assertion. And 
"nuclear effect" is a red herring. What if the origin of the heat is 
not nuclear, but is something else unknown?


There is, by the way, evidence that this is a nuclear effect. Joshua, 
here, weasels his way to make his statement true: "clear evidence." 
Actually, it's relatively clear, but it's also rather easily 
impeachable. Say it this way, the finding of copper as a possible ash 
has not been confirmed, and adequately investigated, as far as what 
we know publicly.


Saying that there is no clear evidence could be supported. But that's 
not where he started. He started with "I haven't seen any evidence." 
Not "any clear evidence."


Suppose there is only "weak evidence" of nuclear effect. That would 
satisfy Joshua's condition: the "absence of clear evidence." But it 
would not represent "strong evidence of the absence of nuclear effects."


No, at most, it would represent, by the weakness, and *at most*, weak 
evidence of the absence of nuclear effects.


What's special about nuclear effects? Some possible nuclear effects 
are very clear, easily detected, and this does, indeed, represent 
most of them. But not all. Some nuclear effects might be quite 
difficult to observe, it depends on the levels and the products. If 
we don't know what the effect is, we can't predict the visibility!

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson]

>From Joshua:

...

> I have no idea about any of that. Whether Rossi believes it, whether he is
> deliberately cheating, who else could be in on it. I have no idea.
>
> I just know I haven't seen any evidence the thing is real. And I know that
> if the claims were real, it would not be hard to show clear evidence that it
> is real. So the absence of clear evidence of nuclear effects is strong
> evidence of the absence of nuclear effects.

Keep in mind the dissemination of disinformation is a delicate art.

For example, many analysts of Saddam Hussein's WMD statements came to
a conclusion that the dictator was attempting to convince nations like
the United States that his country possessed no WMDs while
simultaneously trying to suggest to neighbors, particularly
adversaries like Iran, that he did possess them. Needless to say,
generating these kinds of contradictions can cause a lot of confusion
and miscalculation.

Likewise, many have speculated that Rossi, in a sense, may be playing
a similar kind of disinformation game with the public, and
particularly with potential competitors. Sowing a few seeds of
disinformation which could be perceived by skeptics (and potential
competitors) as fraudulent claims while Rossi is still in the process
of getting his enterprise off the ground could turn out to be
economically advantageous. It helps get Rossi's enterprise out of the
starting gate with a good head start because potential competitors
initially won't take his audacious claims seriously.

The ultimate question may turn out to be who was playing who here.
Hopefully, we will know the answer to such questions within a year or
so.

Regards
Steven Vincent Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com
www.zazzle.com/orionworks

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:28 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:

Cude>> But as long as Rossi uses his own designates to report measurements,
he will not be taken seriously. As soon as it would be visual and obvious so
anyone can see it, he would be rich and famous.


Lomax> It is obvious that the public demonstrations are not all that have
been done. Rossi apparently showed demonstrations to possible investors or
purchasers of the device, and I think it's been claimed that hundreds of
these devices have been distributed to possible purchasers, investors, or
other trusted persons, presumably under non-disclosure agreements.


That's true. I can't say anything about what they do behind closed doors. I
kind of thought that was obvious. I should have said that as long as Rossi
uses his own designates to report measurements publicly, he will not be
taken seriously by the scientific community.


> "Not be taken seriously" has a lost performative. not *by whom*?


Right. My bad. It's clear enough that many people do take him seriously. I
meant by the scientific community, and the public at large.


> Who does Rossi need to take him "seriously." Not the public, at this
point!


I don't know about "need". But he would clearly benefit from being taken
seriously by scientists and the public if the device is real. That would
obviously give him credibility, which helps him to get investors.


And if he doesn't want to be taken seriously by the public, why is still
doing demos, and participating in the comments on his blog?


> Not the hordes of skeptics and pseudoskeptics.


If the effect is absent, he would obviously prefer to be ignored by
skeptics. His preferred audience is clearly the believers.


But if it were real, attention, and more importantly, conversion of skeptics
would be very beneficial to him. So, an incontrovertible demo as I've
described, that convinced Park, Noonin, and Lewis, would be pretty useful.


> Just possible customers or investors.


Aren't all members of the public possible customers or investors?


> If there are investors who have put money into this without seeing
satisfactory demonstrations, without adequate protection -- and a
performance guarantee by an inventor who could quicly become bankrupt is
worthless, unless, say, the money is in escrow -- is a fool or is simply
playing a long shot. Some can afford to do that, perhaps.


I think a lot can. And the potential payoff is so huge that they are
prepared to take risks. Look at all the energy promises that have made
money. Both Mills and Dardik have been getting private funding based on
unverified promises. It works.


You yourself said you were willing to bet a significant chunk of your net
worth on Rossi being real.


> A promise to pay under stated conditions, as appears to be the situation
with Defkalion, would not be foolish if those conditions are carefully and
properly established.


I have no idea if the situation is as it appears or not. The Defkalion
people for all I know are getting private investor's money to pay for this.
They could all come out ahead.


It doesn't really matter to me.


>From what Rossi's permitted me to see, there is no evidence for excess heat.


> Ampenergo seems to have put in some real cash. They know Rossi, he was an
original founder of the company behind Ampenergo, LTI. They've seen
demonstrations, also, that's been explicitly stated, so they have more
information that the current set, which almost everyone knowledgeable seems
to agree are not *perfect.*


Well, that may be what they want people to think to get them to become
willing to bet a significant chunk of their net worth on them. And then
Rossi and Ampenergo win, and a bunch of small-time investors lose. It
wouldn't be the first time.


> That is, more "convincing" demonstrations could be set up. However,
considering the body of evidence available, these would only rule out fraud,
simple artifact isn't so likely. We'd have to toss the Levi 18 hour
demonstration, for example. Levi is suspected by some people because of the
close association with Rossi. That suspicion would be, basically, that Levi
allowed himself to be fooled, or was complicit in fraud. Otherwise Levi is
just like any other report.


I have no idea what your point is here. Clearly the Levi 18-hour experiment
is worthless. Whether he's complicit, honest, or incompetent, we don't know.
But one does not just accept revolutionary results based on hearsay. It's
insane.


> With all the existing public demonstrations, there are unanswered
questions.


> So?


So. There don't need to be. If Rossi has 1 GJ/g energy density, he should be
able to demonstrate it clearly without Levi's assistance. The unanswered
questions suggest an unverified effect.


> If Ampenergo was defrauded, if, for example, their observation of the
alleged factory E-cat was accompanied with lies, was a set-up, a salted
mine, they'd have grounds to sue the pants off of Rossi, and there would
likely be criminal pro

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:31 AM 5/31/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:
But as long as Rossi uses his own designates to report measurements, 
he will not be taken seriously. As soon as it would be visual and 
obvious so anyone can see it, he would be rich and famous.


It is obvious that the public demonstrations are not all that have 
been done. Rossi apparently showed demonstrations to possible 
investors or purchasers of the device, and I think it's been claimed 
that hundreds of these devices have been distributed to possible 
purchasers, investors, or other trusted persons, presumably under 
non-disclosure agreements.


"Not be taken seriously" has a lost performative. not *by whom*? Who 
does Rossi need to take him "seriously." Not the public, at this 
point! Not the hordes of skeptics and pseudoskeptics. Just possible 
customers or investors.


If there are investors who have put money into this without seeing 
satisfactory demonstrations, without adequate protection -- and a 
performance guarantee by an inventor who could quicly become bankrupt 
is worthless, unless, say, the money is in escrow -- is a fool or is 
simply playing a long shot. Some can afford to do that, perhaps.


A promise to pay under stated conditions, as appears to be the 
situation with Defkalion, would not be foolish if those conditions 
are carefully and properly established. The people behind Defkalion 
don't look like a crowd of fools, they are making a quite rational 
bet. If Rossi fails to deliver, they will simply say, tsk, tsk. What 
they have invested, forming the company, is nothing, not even pocket 
change for these people.


Ampenergo seems to have put in some real cash. They know Rossi, he 
was an original founder of the company behind Ampenergo, LTI. They've 
seen demonstrations, also, that's been explicitly stated, so they 
have more information that the current set, which almost everyone 
knowledgeable seems to agree are not *perfect.*


That is, more "convincing" demonstrations could be set up. However, 
considering the body of evidence available, these would only rule out 
fraud, simple artifact isn't so likely. We'd have to toss the Levi 18 
hour demonstration, for example. Levi is suspected by some people 
because of the close association with Rossi. That suspicion would be, 
basically, that Levi allowed himself to be fooled, or was complicit 
in fraud. Otherwise Levi is just like any other report.


With all the existing public demonstrations, there are unanswered questions.

So?

If Ampenergo was defrauded, if, for example, their observation of the 
alleged factory E-cat was accompanied with lies, was a set-up, a 
salted mine, they'd have grounds to sue the pants off of Rossi, and 
there would likely be criminal prosecution.


However, there remains a possibility, that the money paid to Rossi's 
company by Ampenergo was de minimus, and/or explicitly not based on 
any representations at all, it might be, for example, a simple option 
payment that allows for Rossi to fall on his face as far as 
delivering practical product. Again, we come back to this:


We don't know.

But Cude knows. Where does he derive this omniscience? What 
university educated him in this way? I'd like to know, so that I can 
make sure my kids don't go there. 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Peter Gluck]

OK, i hope tomorrow we will be able to sketch the
*"Cude-Gluck Protocol for an absolutely convincing Perfect E-cat experimen*nt."
There are great chances we will make tyhe tests next year with our own
personal E-cats in the kitchen, but I think we have to write this protocol
Festina lente we have to think it well over, Let's close this thread
Peter

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 6:35 PM, Joshua Cude  wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 7:27 AM, Peter Gluck wrote:
>
>> Just to add that atomic bomb is a sadistic example of convincing common
>> sense experiment.
>>
>
> I was just making the point that a demonstration does not need quantitative
> measurement.
>
>
> Heavier than air flight is probably a better example.
>
>
>


-- 
Dr. Peter Gluck
Cluj, Romania
http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 7:27 AM, Peter Gluck  wrote:

> Just to add that atomic bomb is a sadistic example of convincing common
> sense experiment.
>

I was just making the point that a demonstration does not need quantitative
measurement.


Heavier than air flight is probably a better example.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 6:40 AM, Peter Gluck  wrote:

> 1- I for one disagree with any experiment without measurements- perhaps
later if/when the E-cats will

be around in great number. Non negociable issue, i am

a professional engineer nad I respect my profession and myself. Noblesse
oblige- not experiment for popularization of some device.


I said in my last post that making it visual does not exclude measurements.
But as long as Rossi uses his own designates to report measurements, he will
not be taken seriously. As soon as it would be visual and obvious so anyone
can see it, he would be rich and famous.


It should be a badge of honor to make things simple for anyone to see, not
an embarrassment to your profession. Feynman said if you really understand
something, you should be able to explain it to a 10-year old. The
demonstration of heavier-than-air flight was a major triumph of science and
engineering, and yet it could be understood by anyone with eyes.


Not all phenomena can be demonstrated this way, but this one, I think, can
be. It is power and energy. It can be made obvious.


> 3. Very good your idea to use the E-cat in a way analogous to a pressure
cooker- you can adjust the pressure and the temperature of the steam Later
this has to be done!


I wasn't talking about higher pressure. At a sufficiently low flow rate,
when all the water is converted to steam, then an even lower flow rate will
cause the steam to go above the boiling point at atmospheric pressure.


> 4.- Excuse me I don't get what you say with:


>>"Or, you could measure the flow rate of the output fluid. That would be a
very direct measure of the steam dryness"


> Which fluid- the volume of the steam by a flowmeter?


Right. The output fluid is probably a mixture of steam and mist. Its volume
will be determined by the percentage of water that has been converted to
vapor. And the volume will determine the speed of the fluid, which can be
measured.


> 5.- what do you consider the energy equivalent of 1 kg weight gasoline?


About 50 MJ, give or take.


> In principle if the E-cat is burning it also disappears?


Not necessarily. It might be something like thermite.


> What is the logic of this idea? Isn't it exaggerated?


Yes. Of course it is overkill. And much less than this will already attract
attention because it is obvious that the entire mass cannot consist of fuel
which is combusted.


But the nuclear energy density is not just a little higher than chemical, it
is millions of times higher. So, they can afford a lot of overkill. The only
problem is the power density (as claimed) is not significantly higher, and
so to demonstrate the energy density takes time. But even if it were some
reasonable fraction of its weight in gasoline, it would attract attention.
And then, the longer it runs, under public supervision, the more attention
it gets.


> OK, the weight is 32 kg the E-cat has to produce  how many Kwh?


32 times 50 MJ is 1600 MJ.


1600 MJ is 1600 MJ kW hour / (3600s *1000 J/s) = 444 kWh


At 10 kW, this would take about 2 days.


Now, it only takes about 400 MJ to heat a 1000 L tub from freezing to
boiling, so that is only 1/4 of the mass in kerosene, but I'm pretty sure
people would take notice if he could do that much. And this would only take
about 11 hours.


Then, with world leaders watching, he could let it run and boil most of the
water off through a stack of some kind, to demonstrate that the energy
exceeds its weight in chemical fuel.


That would usher in the age of Rossi. And if his claims are valid, this
would be a piece of cake to set up.


> 6. a lot of water ius not something unusual or to be scared of it has tio
be measured not to visioned or scared.


Of course. I'm not afraid of a lot of water. But I'm fixated on making it
visual because it's possible. And more than 1000L or so means it's difficult
to verify the amounts of water in a simple visual way.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Peter Gluck]

second part:
sorry, Joshua I clicked  on send

Just to add that atomic bomb is a sadistic example of convincing common
sense experiment. More realistic- the cottage in the middle of the old
forest where the 7 dwarves and Snow Wkhte live is heated an entire winter
with an Ecat and even the Queen is enchanted ho w warm the house is
despite the fact that the dwrves have solf]d alll the wood for the stoves
.on the black market
I hope to discuss more documented next year this time.
But a paefect experiment is very useful for progress.

Peter



On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 2:06 PM, Joshua Cude  wrote:

> On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
>  wrote:
>
> Cude>> 1. First and foremost, the device must be completely and obviously
> standalone. So, disconnect the hydrogen bottle, and the mains power input.
>
>
> >> - The hydrogen bottle should be easy
>
>
> Lomax> Yes. This one is easy. Not so the electricity. As Joshua notes, it
> could be done. But this is the problem, and it's an engineering and economic
> problem. To design and build and test the demonstration device would take
> months, perhaps many months.
>
>
> Many months is nothing in the scheme of things. CF has been pursued for 22
> years.
>
>
> > Engineering isn't free.
>
>
> But it's chicken feed compared to the payoff if it's real.
>
>
> > So what's the value in this? If Rossi doesn't need it to accomplish
> selling the 1 MW plant to Defkalion, it's a fish bicycle.
>
>
> The sale to Defkalion is pocket change compared to the offers he would get
> if he could demonstrate a device like I described. There is great value in
> this. Of course, if he failed, he'd lose the Defkalion deal, which is why he
> doesn't do it.
>
>
> > You want to build this, you pay for it.
>
>
> I don't believe it's possible, so why would I pay for it. People who
> believe the effect is real should pay to prove it.
>
>
> Anyway, I was asked what would convince me, and I answered.
>
>
> > There is *nothing* in this for him.
>
>
> Nothing but fame, glory, and limitless wealth.
>
>
> > There could be something in it, if for some reason Defkalion falls
> through. If he needs to raise more capital, then he might need such a
> bulletproof demonstration. However, assuming that he's not a fraud, he has
> no reason to do this at this time, and it would actually harm his plans.
>
>
> Only failure would harm his plans. That's what he is afraid of.
>
>
> > One more point:
>
>
>
> >> Rossi claims the thing has run without power, but that it's dangerous,
> although he doesn't explain why. The speculation is that an input control is
> needed to prevent some sort of runaway condition, but it seems
> counter-intuitive to use additional heat input to prevent runaway.
>
>
> > That depends on how the device is operating. Let's assume that the only
> control variable is the temperature of the reaction chamber. There are two
> controls on that chamber, heating by resistor(s) and cooling by water and
> boiling water.
>
>
> Right. So, use the cooling water.
>
>
> >> In particular, it is implausible that cutting the power by 10% or less
> would stop a runaway condition, when the variation in claimed output levels
> is far greater than 10%.
>
>
> > This is merely an idea of what Rossi might be doing. The device, if water
> is present in the cooling jacket, and with no power, will cool below the
> temperature at which the heat effect appears. Thus turning off the power
> will turn off the reaction. The power raises the temperature to the point
> where the heat effect starts up and becomes reasonably strong, but only to
> that point. Water will still quench it.
>
>
> > What has been done in designing the E-Cat is to engineer the reaction
> chamber so that it heats and cools in this way. If the operating temperature
> is 450 C, then the thermal resistance must be such as to allow this heat,
> only if there is supplemental heat from electrical heating.
>
>
> Sure but if cutting the input power drops the power by 10% and kills the
> reaction, then reducing the cooling by 10% would allow the reaction to
> sustain itself.
>
>
> > Still, the heat might vary, and how this thing is engineered could get
> quite tricky, but, yes, it's possible that heat could be controlled by heat,
> as long as you understand that this is extra heat added to keep the
> temperature to a value above what the reaction itself would sustain, if
> there is no extra heat.
>
>
> I understand that heat can be used to sustain the reaction, and be designed
> to just keep it going. My problem was with the use of extra heat to prevent
> runaway. If the supplemental heat is 10% of the total, and the reactor
> begins to produce 10% more heat, then shutting off the input will not stop
> the reaction. Then if a runaway condition starts, how does the input heat
> stop it? And from the 18 hour experiment, evidently much more than a 10%
> increase is possible.
>
>
> > There is a bottom line here: wait for Rossi's E-Cats to appear on sale,
> 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Terry Blanton]

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 6:35 AM, Joshua Cude  wrote:

> You often crow about the renaissance of the field since 2004 based on
> increased publication rate, so let's look at it. You're counting entries in
> Britz's bibliography without any discrimination, but let's start there.
> Here's the complete year-by-year  list
>
> 1989 - 249
>
> 1990 - 320
>
> 1991 - 188
>
> 1992 - 100
>
> 1993 - 94


Could you two take your romance elsewhere?

T

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Peter Gluck]

Joshua,

1- I for one disagree with any experiment without measurements- perhaps
later if/when the E-cats will
be around in great number. Non negociable issue, i am
a professional engineer nad I respect my profession and myself. Noblesse
oblige- not experiment for popularization of some device.
Plus please consider that common sense experiments are vulnerable; common
sense is noot easily definiable please take a look to
http://thinkexist.com/quotations/common_sense/

2- about enthalpy measurement- in industry mixing valves are used- a small
three way metalic valve or a short say 7 cm pipe with some baffles, Raschig
rings, sieves will be perfect to mix say 4 cu.cc/s water converted to steam
with 40 cu.cc/s cooling water constantly. (I made a fixation for the 1:10
ratio but this can be adjusted.

3. Very good your idea to use the E-cat in a way analogous to a pressure
cooker- you can adjust the pressure and the temperature of the steam Later
this has to be done!


4.- Excuse me I don't get what you say with:

"Or, you could measure the flow rate of the output fluid. That would be a
very direct measure of the steam dryness"

Which fluid- the volume of the steam by a flowmeter?

5.- what do you consider the energy equivalent of 1 kg weight
gasoline? In principle if the E-cat is burning it also disappears? What is
the logic of this idea? Isn't it exaggerated? OK, the weight is 32 kg the
E-cat has to produce  how many Kwh? Please tell exactly and finally. It has
no logic but  any possible doubts have to be eliminated.

6. a lot of water ius not something unusual or to be scared of it has tio be
measured not to visioned or scared.





On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 12:59 PM, Joshua Cude  wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Peter Gluck wrote:
>
> > Joshua- this will need some discussions but I think eventually we can
> establish a Perfect Experience Protocol for Indiviual E-Cats- that is
> satisfactory both from the points of view of engineering and of the sane
> bureaucracy of standardization. i am opting for fully quantitative and not
> for "common sense" experiments.
>
>
> They are not exclusive. Quantitative measurements can always be made, but
> making it common sense would be the most effective, because it wouldn't
> involve trusting experts. So if it is only quantitative, then the people who
> make the measurements must be verifiably arms-length. The problem with this
> might be finding respectable people who would stoop to this sort of a
> carnival show.
>
>
> > For your information ( I don't know if you read my Ego Out blog- anyway
> here the following points were proposed:
>
>
> > 1- in case of steam experiments NOT to measure the temperature or
> dryness/wetness but the enthalpy- i.e total heat of the steam,
>
>
> Sure, using a large tub of water I suppose. But it would also be a big
> improvement to adjust the flow rate to get the steam to exceed the boiling
> point by 10 or 20C. Then the dryness would be quite clear.
>
>
> Or, you could measure the flow rate of the output fluid. That would be a
> very direct measure of the steam dryness.
>
>
> > 2- the minimum duration of the experiment 72 hours,
>
>
> I'd prefer a minimum total energy that exceeds the weight of the device in
> gasoline. Even better to exceed by a factor of 10 or more, but that would
> take too long probably.
>
>
> > 3- water heating experiments prefered
>
>
> 2 problems: To get a lot of heat, this requires a lot of water. Using a
> high flow rate like in the 18 hour experiment removes any visual
> confirmation from the experiment. I think boiling water can still be useful
> if it is boiled away from a reservoir through a stack say, so only dry steam
> can escape.
>
>
> > 4- as far it is possible, after startup to work with zero input
>
>
> Yes. This is critical, in my view.
>
>
> **
>
> *> Now your ideas*:-
>
>
>
> > - Stirling Engine- I think not a practical idea- which commercial type
> would yoiu buy/recommend?-
>
>
> If the device can sustain itself on its own heat, and safety can be ensured
> with cooling water, then a Stirling engine would not be needed.
>
>
> But if Rossi insists he needs input electricity for reasons he cannot
> divulge, then he needs to generate the electricity with the device for an
> ideal demonstration.
>
>
> If it is not practical to do so, then I would argue, as I have elsewhere,
> the device will never be significantly more useful than a heat pump. It
> might be difficult to design, and I haven't looked in to existing commercial
> engines. But this is old and well understood technology. An efficiency of
> 10% should not be difficult to achieve. Compared to the potential of
> replacing fossil fuels, this is a trivial thing.
>
>
> > -Your Point 3. is  common sense experiment, rather qualitative and using
> ice water is an useless complication, the ice-water ratio cannot be
> established and maintained- please do not insist!.
>
>
> Not a complication at all. You only need a little ice to make the wat

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
 wrote:

Cude>> 1. First and foremost, the device must be completely and obviously
standalone. So, disconnect the hydrogen bottle, and the mains power input.


>> - The hydrogen bottle should be easy


Lomax> Yes. This one is easy. Not so the electricity. As Joshua notes, it
could be done. But this is the problem, and it's an engineering and economic
problem. To design and build and test the demonstration device would take
months, perhaps many months.


Many months is nothing in the scheme of things. CF has been pursued for 22
years.


> Engineering isn't free.


But it's chicken feed compared to the payoff if it's real.


> So what's the value in this? If Rossi doesn't need it to accomplish
selling the 1 MW plant to Defkalion, it's a fish bicycle.


The sale to Defkalion is pocket change compared to the offers he would get
if he could demonstrate a device like I described. There is great value in
this. Of course, if he failed, he'd lose the Defkalion deal, which is why he
doesn't do it.


> You want to build this, you pay for it.


I don't believe it's possible, so why would I pay for it. People who believe
the effect is real should pay to prove it.


Anyway, I was asked what would convince me, and I answered.


> There is *nothing* in this for him.


Nothing but fame, glory, and limitless wealth.


> There could be something in it, if for some reason Defkalion falls
through. If he needs to raise more capital, then he might need such a
bulletproof demonstration. However, assuming that he's not a fraud, he has
no reason to do this at this time, and it would actually harm his plans.


Only failure would harm his plans. That's what he is afraid of.


> One more point:



>> Rossi claims the thing has run without power, but that it's dangerous,
although he doesn't explain why. The speculation is that an input control is
needed to prevent some sort of runaway condition, but it seems
counter-intuitive to use additional heat input to prevent runaway.


> That depends on how the device is operating. Let's assume that the only
control variable is the temperature of the reaction chamber. There are two
controls on that chamber, heating by resistor(s) and cooling by water and
boiling water.


Right. So, use the cooling water.


>> In particular, it is implausible that cutting the power by 10% or less
would stop a runaway condition, when the variation in claimed output levels
is far greater than 10%.


> This is merely an idea of what Rossi might be doing. The device, if water
is present in the cooling jacket, and with no power, will cool below the
temperature at which the heat effect appears. Thus turning off the power
will turn off the reaction. The power raises the temperature to the point
where the heat effect starts up and becomes reasonably strong, but only to
that point. Water will still quench it.


> What has been done in designing the E-Cat is to engineer the reaction
chamber so that it heats and cools in this way. If the operating temperature
is 450 C, then the thermal resistance must be such as to allow this heat,
only if there is supplemental heat from electrical heating.


Sure but if cutting the input power drops the power by 10% and kills the
reaction, then reducing the cooling by 10% would allow the reaction to
sustain itself.


> Still, the heat might vary, and how this thing is engineered could get
quite tricky, but, yes, it's possible that heat could be controlled by heat,
as long as you understand that this is extra heat added to keep the
temperature to a value above what the reaction itself would sustain, if
there is no extra heat.


I understand that heat can be used to sustain the reaction, and be designed
to just keep it going. My problem was with the use of extra heat to prevent
runaway. If the supplemental heat is 10% of the total, and the reactor
begins to produce 10% more heat, then shutting off the input will not stop
the reaction. Then if a runaway condition starts, how does the input heat
stop it? And from the 18 hour experiment, evidently much more than a 10%
increase is possible.


> There is a bottom line here: wait for Rossi's E-Cats to appear on sale,
look at the performance specifications and costs, and *then* make a decision
about this.


Sure. If that ever happens. But I predict it won't. There will be delays,
maybe some explosions, and he'll need more investment. There may be some
claimed sales or contracts, a MW reactor sold to a trusted customer, and
great claims, but no devices will be generally available, and no true
independent testing. Rossi will milk this as long as investors are
available. Mills has shown it can be done for decades without ever actually
generating power.


> Or, if he gets his full patent protection, try independent replication. If
the E-Cats work, even most of the time, this is real, I assume, unless the
specifications have evaporated to practically nothing. I think he's only
guaranteeing 6 to 1. Gi

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:

>> It occurred to me that the Fukushima disaster occurred partly *because*
it depended on external power for cooling in the event of an unintentional
shut-down. Modern reactors have passive emergency cooling systems that do
not depend on power of any kind.


> Sure. But why didn't they do that in the beginning?


> Answer that question and you will know why Rossi, if it's a real effect,
doesn't have passive control.


> It's a first-generation, demonstration device.



In the beginning, the first fission reactor did not use external power. They
just withdrew the control rods, and counted neutrons. No one ever doubted
the reality of fission energy from then on. One experiment, one
demonstration, and complete unanimous consensus. So very different from cold
fusion.


And it's precisely because the Rossi device is a demonstration device, not a
commercial device that is already proven, that it should try to make the
demonstration convincing, and produce heat in an obvious way.


In any case, even Fukushima only used external power as a contingency, and
then only to cool the device. Rossi used mains power continuously to do
exactly the same thing the reactor was supposed to do: produce heat.


It would be less than ideal, but if Rossi only needed power to run a pump to
provide cooling, it would be a major improvement.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 2:43 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
 wrote:

> The original question, though, has never been answered with any rigor at
all: if the FPHE effect is not fusion, what is it?


> The chemists say, largely, it's not chemistry, that's impossible, it must
a nuclear reaction.


Largely? Nathan Lewis is a chemist. Glenn Seaborg won the Nobel prize in
chemistry. Both of them, and most other chemists do not believe P&F observed
a nuclear reaction.


> The nuclear physicists say, largely, it can't be a nuclear reaction,
that's impossible, it must be chemistry.


The claimed effect is a few orders of magnitude beyond what can be explained
by chemistry, but 30 orders above what can be explained by nuclear physics.


> "Cold fusion" is, at this point, a set of results in chemistry and
thermodynamics. Practically none of the work involves the methods of nuclear
physics. Nuclear physicists are, essentially, only competent to comment on
*conclusions,* i.e., the conclusion of the chemists that it must be a
nuclear reaction, and for the physicists to discount and discredit the
competence of the chemists as to work well within their expertise was a
major failure of scientific courtesy and process.


One of the chief architects of the CF debunking slam-dunk was Nathan Lewis,
a chemist. And physicists do lots of chemistry-type experiments on
materials. Physicists invented transistors and lasers. The development of
nuclear fission involved lots of chemistry. It's not that complicated.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
 wrote:

Cude>> The evidence for CF and for this heat-helium correlation is pitifully
weak. And the evidence for the quantitative correlation has not been
reproduced under peer-review. That's why a panel of experts in 2004 said
evidence for nuclear reactions was not conclusive.


Lomax> No, the reports have been summarized and the conclusions accepted by
peer-review.


The summary was accepted by peer review, not the conclusions.  And certainly
not the conference proceedings they were originally published in. Citation
lends some credibility, sure, but no, it is not the same as peer-review. I'm
sure granting committees would not allow you to list cited conference
proceedings in the peer-reviewed publications section. The referees of a
review do not referee the source material. If they did, it would be like
refereeing dozens of papers; no one would accept the work. In fact, reviews
are treated with less rigor than original papers, not more, so none of the
cited work could possibly be subject to significant critique. In particular,
the referee of a review cannot ask for revision, or additional measurements
in the source material.


> There is no skeptical review with this authority.


There is no confirming experiment in peer-review yet. And Miles' results
have been challenged. Only people with a preconceived idea will waste time
analyzing a single, 15-year old, controversial experiment, before it has
been reproduced under peer-review.

> "Pitifully weak" is Cude's personal and very subjective opinion, not
confirmed by any review.


It is confirmed by the DOE panel, since all the evidence was available to
them and 17 of 18 said it was not conclusive.


>>> The work I'm referring to is that of Miles. Huizenga, author of "Cold
fusion, scientific fiasco of the century," notice Miles' work in the second
edition of his book, and said that, if confirmed, this would solve a major
mystery of cold fusion: the ash.


>> And it has not been confirmed.


> That's so poor a judgment that I'll call it a lie. It's been confirmed.
Cude sets up artificial standards for confirmation. Huizenga himself was
responding to a conference report! I think the peer-reviewed paper came
later.


But he was waiting for the results in a conference report to be confirmed.
No confirmations have been reported in peer-reviewed literature (except in
second order), and no confirmations convinced the DOE panel. Huizenga
remains a skeptic, as do most other nuclear experts. It's a critical
experiment. How could all those confirmations that Storms used for his
calculations, evidently the most important confirming results for CF in your
opinion, not have been published under peer review?


> There is no way around it. The balance of publication in mainstream
scientific journals favors the reality of the effect, favors that helium is
the ash,


If you mean more papers support the idea than reject it, that's true.
Skeptics essentially stopped publishing a long time age. The issue is no
longer relevant.


If you mean the published evidence has convinced the mainstream, that's
wrong, as demonstrated e.g. by the 2004 DOE panel.


> and the only thing missing is what Cude seems to desire: convincing theory
as to mechanism.


No. Convincing evidence is what is missing. Not published papers by people
who think they have evidence, but evidence that would convince, e.g. the DOE
panel that the effect is real.


>>> and shows what is currently passing peer review,


>> Exactly: obituaries instead of new experimental results.


> Please show an "obituary" "currently passing peer review."


Storms'  review, and about 16 others.



>>> The pseudo-skeptical position is dead, it is unable to pass peer review,
and that is not for lack of submissions or effort.


>> You keep saying this, but you never identify who you are referring to.


> Okay, Shanahan. You guess it. Lucky guess. But I'm sure that's not all,
it's just that there isn't general evidence,


So, based on one submission of a response to a response being rejected you
conclude that the skeptical position is unable to pass peer review? That's
the kind of fuzzy reasoning that's got you to fall for the field in the
first place.


>> That rejection is meaningless.


> Individually, yes. However, the silence is deafening.


The silence indicates CF is being ignored. Nothing more.


> There are ongoing publications in the field, and two per month or so is
certainly not dead.


I've already considered this in detail in another post. According to Britz,
in 2010, 8 papers were published in refereed journals, 2 were negative, 2
theory, 1 review, 1 comment, 1 peripheral speculation (CF in the earth), and
get this: 1 new experimental paper by the CR-39 group, still the only group
to publish these claims. That's pretty close to dead.


> You can make the point that if this were widely recognized as real, there
would be people crawling all over it.


Yes.


> But I've 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 1:19 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
 wrote:

> They asked him to, instead, write a review of the entire field. Storms
(2010) was a solicited review from a major, highly reputable, mainstream
journal, published by the second-largest scientific publisher in the world.


1. If it was solicited, it is pretty certain it was treated with kid gloves,
meaning friendly, uncritical reviewers.


2. NW has an factor is 2.something, and it certainly is non-physics. At
least, I couldn't find any physics luminaries who have published there in
the last 30 or 40 years. (It was different in the 20s and 30s.) It's not an
insignificant journal, it's just that publishing there is not an indication
of general acceptance, but rather an indication that the paper couldn't get
published in a more appropriate journal. Can you identify ground-breaking
research published there in the last 30 years. And considering the
importance of a real cold fusion effect, that means it's being largely
dismissed by the mainstream.



3. I know you're hung up on the size of the publisher, but that's
meaningless. The publishers do not endorse what they publish, they just get
paid to do it. It's the editorial boards that answer as to quality of the
content.


> In real *scientific* circles, where "peer review" is important, cold
fusion apparently won this battle about five or so years ago.


Afraid not. See above.


> In fringe science, negative publication does decrease and stop, but only
because positive publication also stops. Given two dozen papers a year that
seem to *assume* the reality of some LENR effect, given that these are not
just, as claimed, minor journals of no importance (and I'm not at all
including conference papers or the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear
Science), where is the critique from outside the field.


You are including the sourcebook and the J Sci Explor, both of which are
less than minor journals of no importance.


Publication of new results remains at a pitiful paper or two, mostly in NW.
No one outside the field considers it worthy of their time. (Except me,
evidently.)



>> The claim is a factor of a million more energy density than chemical. How
can that be so hard to make obvious. Why can't they make an isolated device
that remains indefinitely warmer than its surroundings? Why can't they make
an isolated device that makes a cup of tea? That's what's needed.


>Just remember muon-catalyzed fusion. It's real, that's not disputed. It
can't do the things demanded.


Please. It's not the existence of fusion in deuterated Pd (which certainly
happens at a low rate) that promises clean energy. It is the claimed
measurement of *energy* attributed to fusion in deuterated Pd that suggests
it as a potential source of *energy*. If you observe the thing you want to
produce, then the only problem is scaling. And regardless of whether it's
understood or controllable, if it's the D/Pd producing energy, then more
D/Pd ought to produce more energy.


Muon-catalyzed fusion is observed by the accompanying radiation, and
understood in great theoretical detail, but it requires muons. So far, no
one has figured out how to get more energy from the fusions a muon can
catalyze than it takes to make the muon. That's a problem CF advocates claim
they do not have.


They're not the same, and continually invoking muons just makes you look
desperate.


> It can, indeed, be "hard" to turn a discovered effect into practical
application.


That's not the problem. It appears to be impossible to demonstrate the
effect convincingly.


> My sense of Rossi is that the "isolated device" that will brew tea is
quite possible with his approach, but that it would be unstable and
dangerous,


I don't believe it, but there are ways of protecting the observers.


> and, further, he doesn't appear to give a fig about what people like Cude
care.


So he says, but I don't believe that either. His more recent demos for the
Swedes, and his trip to Sweden seemed pretty voluntary.


> There is only one practical reason to make a isolated device as Cude
demands, to make a more convincing demonstration that has fewer fraud
possibilities.


What more reason does he need. A convincing demonstration wold make him
famous, rich, and loved all over the world. Unless of course it doesn't
work, and that's why he's not doing it.


> Scientifically, this is not necessary at all,


Of course it is. Right now, very few scientists believe in Rossi. More
scientists would mean more progress -- scientific progress.


> it would be a political device, and it would be expensive.


We're talking about a billion dollar industry here. And millions of
investment already made apparently. And it would be cheaper and more
effective than his 1 MW plant. The difference is that if the effect is
absent, the isolated device would kill Rossi's plans.


> That is, to run the control electronics, Rossi would have to generate
electricity.


Not necessarily. If he could control the he

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 1:19 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
 wrote:


> The work is being published in mainstream journals, about two papers per
month.


Oh boy. Talk about exaggeration! You really shouldn't write things that
induce people to look into your claims, because invariably the field comes
out looking worse.


Britz lists 21 entries for 2010, so that's almost 2 *entries* per month. But
what are the entries?


Well 13 are from the LENR sourcebook, a volume about CF by and for CF
advocates. Sorry, that's not a mainstream journal, no matter how you slice
it.


So that leaves 8, one every 1.5 months in real journals. What about these 8?


Two are comments, one negative, in the relatively minor J Environ Monit.
Another is a negative paper in Phys Lett A. Two are on theory, and
Haglestein's in NW on very old and tired theory. One is on speculation that
CF happens in the earth (NW), and one is a review (NW).


Reviews and theory and comments and peripheral speculations aren't
necessarily a bad thing, but when that's all there is, it is pretty sad for
the field. If you're keeping count, we're up to 20 of 21. So in all of 2010
there was exactly ONE (1) positive experimental paper in a mainstream
journal, and that was yet another dubious paper on CR-39 in NW from the same
group. Still no other group has replicated.


So a closer look indicates that in fact the work is not being published in
mainstream journals.


> The decline in publication, which certainly took place, reached a nadir
around 2004 or 2005, with only about a paper every two months.


You often crow about the renaissance of the field since 2004 based on
increased publication rate, so let's look at it. You're counting entries in
Britz's bibliography without any discrimination, but let's start there.
Here's the complete year-by-year  list


1989 - 249

1990 - 320

1991 - 188

1992 - 100

1993 - 94

1994 - 66

1995 - 52

1996 - 67

1997 - 43

1998 - 51

1999 - 32

2000 - 34

2001 - 21

2002 - 20

2003 - 11

2004 - 9

2005 - 7

2006 - 9

2007 - 10

2008 - 27

2009 - 25

2010 - 21


Your four-fold increase presumably comes from 27 in 2008 and 7 in 2005, but
of course these are small numbers which fluctuate. Still, a factor of more
than two is evident even from smoothed data. But two things make the data
much less favorable to your case.


1. The gradient you are touting doesn't seem to be holding up. The rate
seems to be dropping again in the last 2 years. And the rate, even taken at
face value, is still considerably below than that of the late 90s, and even
then CF was a fringe subject.


2. The last 3 years coincide with special issues devoted to CF. I already
mentioned that 13 of the 21 in 2010 were in the LENR Sourcebook. That was
volume 2. Volume 1 was in 2008, when fully 16 of the 27 entries are from the
Sourcebook. In 2009, the J Sci Explor published a special issue on CF,
accounting for 19 of the 25 entries. The J Sci Explor is, to put it kindly,
a pseudo-science journal with publications on things like UFOs, alternative
medicine, and the like. Most scientists would regard being published there
as negative credit; worse than not being published at all. If these entries
are removed from the list, evidence for a renaissance vanishes:


2002 - 20

2003 - 11

2004 - 9

2005 - 7

2006 - 9

2007 - 10

2008 - 11

2009 - 6 (or minus 13)

2010 - 8


The appearance of special issues on a subject means something, I suppose.
But the appearance in the J Sci Explor is negative, and regardless, neither
indicate an increased rate of publication in peer-reviewed mainstream
journals.


> The presenters to the 2004 U.S. DoE review were not politically
sophisticated,


No more or less than presenters to any other scientific funding agency.


> they were scientists, and they expected, more or less, to be treated as
scientists, and for those who read the review report to read beyond the
conservative language used.


What? They wrote in code, and expected the panel to decode it?


> Instead, it's obvious from the final report, many of the reviewers clearly
did not understand the evidence presented, they got it flat-out wrong in
their reports, and there were blatant errors in the final review summary.


This was an important opportunity for the CF crowd, and they had plenty of
time to put the best case forward. The fact that they were unable explain it
adequately to the panel suggests incompetence on their part. The
experimental claims in CF are pretty simple. Far more complicated fields are
evaluated less thoroughly than CF was, and understood and funded all the
time.


> Yet that review showed a drastic difference from 1989, when the panel was
almost unanimous with a very negative conclusion, only modified and
mollified by the intervention of a Nobel laureate. Cold fusion was clearly
treated as emerging science, still controversial, but *unanimously*
considered as being worth of modest funding under existing programs.


The 2004 report was framed in kinder language,

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
 wrote:

> As often stated, the principle is obviously false, people state that
fusion cannot take place at these low temperatures. Okay, muon-catalyzed
fusion takes place close to absolute zero. "Oh, that's an exception." If
it's impossible, folks, no exceptions.


You are hung up on this. It's not as persuasive as you think. At least not
for me.


Look, absolute statements are rarely absolute. To be accurate, they usually
requires some qualification. But often these qualifications are not stated
explicitly because the context makes it obvious.


For example, I might say I can't walk on water, and people will understand
the implied qualifications that I mean I can't walk on liquid water with
ordinary footwear at ordinary speed. Of course I and my audience will be
fully aware that I can walk on ice, and that some people can skim on water
on skis (or even barefoot) behind a fast boat, and others will believe that
Jesus can walk on water, and so on,  but this doesn't make my statement
operationally false, except in a pedantic, irrelevant way. No one will say,
that since I can walk on ice, *maybe* I can also walk on liquid water in
ordinary footwear, at normal speed, without divine power.


In the case of fusion, everyone who says fusion at room temperature violates
known theory, is fully aware that muon catalyzed fusion at room temperature
is possible, and that fusion with an accelerator at room temperature is
possible, and that deuterium fusion at room temperature occurs, but at a
vanishingly small rate. What they mean, and what most people will
understand, since they also know these things, is that fusion in ordinary
matter at room temperature, without accelerating the particles, (i.e. in the
context of a CF experiment) is predicted to be far too rare to produce
useful heat.


The point these people are trying to make is that CF as claimed violates
theory, so bringing up muon catalyzed fusion which is consistent with
theory, hardly negates the claim.


Just because the statement as spoken, is in some literal sense, false,
doesn't mean the intended message as understood by the audience becomes
false.


It's a complete red herring.


> What "unknown nuclear reaction" might mean is some other form of
catalysis. How could we say that there is no other form?


We can't of course. But we can estimate likelihoods. CF people are always
saying the energy is too high to be chemical. How can they know this? It's
from their understanding of chemical theory. But why do they put more
confidence in their chemistry theory than in physicists nuclear theory,
which says it can't be nuclear.


Nothing is ever certain, but some theories are pretty close. If I release a
rock, it falls to the ground. I can't be absolutely certain that it will
next time, though. All I know is that it always has, and that we have
theories that predict it, so I am pretty certain it will next time too.


I don't know that nuclear physicists have that kind of familiar certainty
with fusion of ordinary matter at room temperature, but I'm pretty sure they
have a better intuitive notion of it than chemists do.


> And, folks, that's what I learned from Feynman, and he's happy, I'm sure,
that we are waking up to this, he struggled with the Cargo Cult approach to
science all his life.


He struggled with it? He warned against it. He warned against scientists
fooling themselves. He warned against the sort of self-delusion most
scientists think CF scientists are afflicted with. He was a relentless
antagonist of free energy claims. It's a pity he didn't survive to see the
CF fiasco. We can't know where he would have come down on it, but I'd be
surprised if he wouldn't have been right there with Nathan Lewis and Steve
Koonin calling F&P incompetent. You may have known the man, but you're not
in the least bit like him.


> There was a conjecture, routinely accepted, that nuclear behavior in
solids would not deviate significantly from reality. Fleischmann has written
about what they were looking for. Contrary to the confident claims of
pseudoskeptics, that they were deluded by a desperate desire for "free
energy," they were trying to confirm the conjecture, by seeing if they could
see some difference between prediction and reality.


Do you have any evidence for this from his writings before they started the
CF experiments? Because I remain skeptical. In interviews immediately after
the announcement he says:


Conditions of D in Pd are like 10^27 atm pressure. This "made us think that
it might be feasible to create conditions for fusion in such a simple
reaction."


That's not the same as saying we were testing for an effect. "Might be
feasible" sounds pretty confident when theory predicted it to be 30 orders
of magnitude too low to be observable.


And there are many nuclear effects to test for, including some that are
affected by the chemical environment. You're saying the one they chose just
coincidentall

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
 wrote:

Cude> The core of my position has been stated many times. It's that cold
fusion researchers have failed to demonstrate that cold fusion is real.


Lost performative: "demonstrating to *whom*"?


To the DOE panel. To mainstream science. To any scientist except a small
fringe group of believers. That's to whom.


> Cold fusion researchers have not demonstrated to the satisfaction of an
imaginary, non-existent person called "Joshua Cude," that "cold fusion" is
"real," whatever that means.


No one interprets "have not demonstrated" this way. I don't believe you
interpret it that way either. You just haven't got an answer to the
interpretation everyone else understands by it.


> >The evidence is simply lacking.


> "The evidence" must mean "the evidence that would convince Joshua Cude."
Because there are enormous piles of evidence, all of which means nothing
without analysis, and analysis that begins with false assumptions is almost
guaranteed to produce false conclusions. As soon as the analyst begins to
approach a conclusion that contradicts the assumptions, the analyst will
assume analytical error and back up and not go any further down that road.
It's how humans think.


A good description of how human cold fusion advocates think. But this is
silly of course. Some evidence doesn't need analysis, only eyeballs.
Heavier-than-air flight is an example. The claims of cold fusion advocates,
if true, is another.


> Let's concede this immediately: there are many knowledgeable scientists
who remain skeptical.


See. You do know what I mean when I say cold fusion researchers have failed
to demonstrate that cold fusion is real. Now change "many" to "nearly all",
and your concession will be complete.



> There is this teeny little problem, but I'm sure he can find a way to
dismiss it. The Nobel laurates who took the evidence seriously, and who
didn't dismiss it out-of-hand as "impossible."


I already have dismissed this problem, which you would know if you read my
replies. It's one thing not to read my posts, but it's simply dishonest to
reply to someone you are not listening to. You can find my examination of
your Nobel laureates in another post. Here are the concluding paragraphs:


So there are no laureates who have actually performed CF experiments, only
one who has published on the topic, although the papers were rejected by APS
journals, one who is rumored to have said positive things about it, but is
actively researching competitive technologies, and one who is an advocate of
cold fusion and other paranormal phenomena.


That's supposed to get respect for the field, but it doesn't mean anything
that virtually all other laureates dismiss the field out of hand, with
explicit statements from many of the prominent ones with nuclear expertise,
while still contributing to physics: Leon Lederman, Sheldon Glashow, Glenn
Seaborg, Steven Weinberg, Murray Gell-Mann …



> It was only a narrow student understanding of quantum mechanics and how it
can be applied that led some to think that the experimental results reported
by so many were "impossible."


The nobel laureates listed above all rejected CF, and still reject CF, and
they have more than a narrow student understanding of QM.


> And that's what we are dealing with, here, experimental results. Not
theories.


No. The experimental results are all unimpressive. Some anomalous
temperature readings and so on. The theory that the anomalies are caused by
nuclear effects are the only thing that attract attention. That's what we're
dealing with. Theory.


>"Cold fusion" is, technically, a theory.


Ah. You see. So you're contradicting yourself again.



>> When P&F claimed they had evidence in 1989, the world leapt at the
potential; journalists and scientists alike, all over the world, paid
attention, and many got involved in experiments.  When two scientists with
respectable reputations claimed evidence for something revolutionary, no one
wanted to be left behind. The world was giddy with excitement and
anticipation.


> Which was, of course, radically premature.


So what? The point is, the world does not reject revolutionary results for
fear of upsetting the apple cart. In fact, there are more examples in
science, especially during the modern physics revolution, where new and
unexpected results were widely embraced than where they were resisted
because of inertia.


>> But then, in the next weeks, months, and years, nothing came of the great
excitement.


> […] However, the 1989 ERAB report was partly based on negative results
from Miles, at China Lake Naval Laboratory, who had been attempting
replication and who had found no excess heat. Before the panel issued its
report, Miles started to get results. He phoned the ERAB panel. They did not
return his phone call. Miles, of course, went on to discover and
demonstrate, conclusively, that the reaction was producing helium, that the
FPHE is correlated with 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Peter Gluck  wrote:

> Joshua- this will need some discussions but I think eventually we can
establish a Perfect Experience Protocol for Indiviual E-Cats- that is
satisfactory both from the points of view of engineering and of the sane
bureaucracy of standardization. i am opting for fully quantitative and not
for "common sense" experiments.


They are not exclusive. Quantitative measurements can always be made, but
making it common sense would be the most effective, because it wouldn't
involve trusting experts. So if it is only quantitative, then the people who
make the measurements must be verifiably arms-length. The problem with this
might be finding respectable people who would stoop to this sort of a
carnival show.


> For your information ( I don't know if you read my Ego Out blog- anyway
here the following points were proposed:


> 1- in case of steam experiments NOT to measure the temperature or
dryness/wetness but the enthalpy- i.e total heat of the steam,


Sure, using a large tub of water I suppose. But it would also be a big
improvement to adjust the flow rate to get the steam to exceed the boiling
point by 10 or 20C. Then the dryness would be quite clear.


Or, you could measure the flow rate of the output fluid. That would be a
very direct measure of the steam dryness.


> 2- the minimum duration of the experiment 72 hours,


I'd prefer a minimum total energy that exceeds the weight of the device in
gasoline. Even better to exceed by a factor of 10 or more, but that would
take too long probably.


> 3- water heating experiments prefered


2 problems: To get a lot of heat, this requires a lot of water. Using a high
flow rate like in the 18 hour experiment removes any visual confirmation
from the experiment. I think boiling water can still be useful if it is
boiled away from a reservoir through a stack say, so only dry steam can
escape.


> 4- as far it is possible, after startup to work with zero input


Yes. This is critical, in my view.


**

*> Now your ideas*:-



> - Stirling Engine- I think not a practical idea- which commercial type
would yoiu buy/recommend?-


If the device can sustain itself on its own heat, and safety can be ensured
with cooling water, then a Stirling engine would not be needed.


But if Rossi insists he needs input electricity for reasons he cannot
divulge, then he needs to generate the electricity with the device for an
ideal demonstration.


If it is not practical to do so, then I would argue, as I have elsewhere,
the device will never be significantly more useful than a heat pump. It
might be difficult to design, and I haven't looked in to existing commercial
engines. But this is old and well understood technology. An efficiency of
10% should not be difficult to achieve. Compared to the potential of
replacing fossil fuels, this is a trivial thing.


> -Your Point 3. is  common sense experiment, rather qualitative and using
ice water is an useless complication, the ice-water ratio cannot be
established and maintained- please do not insist!.


Not a complication at all. You only need a little ice to make the water
temperature clearly near the freezing point. In the power demonstration, the
ice would not be melted by the ecat, but only float in the input reservoir.
The additional 20C also increases the temperature difference and therefore
the power needed.


> Experiment made by engineeers NOT by Hausfrauen


But observed by journalists and people on the internet via youtube. Icewater
is harder to fake (not impossible of course) and easier to read than
thermometers.


> I protest angrily- a fg experimrent done without thermo-, flow-,
volume- meters is not serious, sorry!


A demonstration of an atomic bomb would be serious and effective without any
quantitive measurements. Of course quantitative measurements are more
useful, and I have no objection to using them as well. But this is a
demonstration of a factor of a million above chemical energy density. Like
the bomb, it should be possible to make it obvious without meters.


> -Chemical vs nuclear vs some ZPE- unanswerable without a complete chemicl
isotopic analysis of the spent Ni fuel or exhausted  Catalyst. We can
speculate a lot but without data it si just am intellectual exercise (Rossi
has used a more precise expression)


> I don't understand the use of the E-cat in a mode analoguous with a heater
immersed in a hot tube/reservoir.


Look up hot tub on wikipedia, and check out the second picture. The water
circulates through a wood-fired heater, and it is gravity driven. No
external power is needed even to pump the water. Likewise, the water from
the hot tub would circulate through the ecat. This is in the first place a
water-heating experiment with no steam complication. But could be taken to
the next level to boil the water to get a 6-fold increase in demonstrated
energy.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 05:18 AM 5/29/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:
1. First and foremost, the device must be completely and obviously 
standalone. So, disconnect the hydrogen bottle, and the mains power input.


- The hydrogen bottle should be easy because they claim so little 
hydrogen is consumed, and in some experiments they claim the valve 
was closed, and in at least one, it is disconnected. Given that, it 
is completely baffling that in the only somewhat public display they 
have had, the bottle was left connected, with the valve open.


Yes. This one is easy. Not so the electricity. As Joshua notes, it 
could be done. But this is the problem, and it's an engineering and 
economic problem. To design and build and test the demonstration 
device would take months, perhaps many months. Engineering isn't free.


So what's the value in this? If Rossi doesn't need it to accomplish 
selling the 1 MW plant to Defkalion, it's a fish bicycle. You want to 
build this, you pay for it. There is *nothing* in this for him.


There could be something in it, if for some reason Defkalion falls 
through. If he needs to raise more capital, then he might need such a 
bulletproof demonstration. However, assuming that he's not a fraud, 
he has no reason to do this at this time, and it would actually harm his plans.


One more point:

 Rossi claims the thing has run without power, but that 
it's dangerous, although he doesn't explain why. The speculation is 
that an input control is needed to prevent some sort of runaway 
condition, but it seems counter-intuitive to use additional heat 
input to prevent runaway.


That depends on how the device is operating. Let's assume that the 
only control variable is the temperature of the reaction chamber. 
There are two controls on that chamber, heating by resistor(s) and 
cooling by water and boiling water.


 In particular, it is implausible that cutting the power by 10% or 
less would stop a runaway condition, when the variation in claimed 
output levels is far greater than 10%.


I don't want to get far into details, and I am -- as I often am -- 
disappointed by how little is reported, and I even find this in 
experiments reported in peer-reviewed journals. If you really want to 
replicate, or just to independently analyze the data, what is needed 
is often missing.


This is merely an idea of what Rossi might be doing. The device, if 
water is present in the cooling jacket, and with no power, will cool 
below the temperature at which the heat effect appears. Thus turning 
off the power will turn off the reaction. The power raises the 
temperature to the point where the heat effect starts up and becomes 
reasonably strong, but only to that point. Water will still quench it.


What has been done in designing the E-Cat is to engineer the reaction 
chamber so that it heats and cools in this way. If the operating 
temperature is 450 C, then the thermal resistance must be such as to 
allow this heat, only if there is supplemental heat from electrical heating.


There may be other effects operating, and some of them are worrisome, 
as to commercial application. What if the heat is variable, or if it 
fairly rapidly declines with time? We don't have experimental data, 
and a rapid decline effect could blow this out of the water 
commercially, even if it's real.


But Rossi is claiming six months of operation before refueling is 
necessary. (Refueling, here, means more nickel, it's not clear if 
hydrogen refueling is needed, will that be supplied during operation 
from an included reservior? What?)


Still, the heat might vary, and how this thing is engineered could 
get quite tricky, but, yes, it's possible that heat could be 
controlled by heat, as long as you understand that this is extra heat 
added to keep the temperature to a value above what the reaction 
itself would sustain, if there is no extra heat.


There is a bottom line here: wait for Rossi's E-Cats to appear on 
sale, look at the performance specifications and costs, and *then* 
make a decision about this. Or, if he gets his full patent 
protection, try independent replication. If the E-Cats work, even 
most of the time, this is real, I assume, unless the specifications 
have evaporated to practically nothing. I think he's only 
guaranteeing 6 to 1. Given the high initial numbers, what's going on?


This is all fluff, I don't trust any of it. Rossi can legally lie 
about what he's doing, as long as he does not lie to investors and 
customers. He can lie to everyone else to throw them off the track. 
It's completely legal. 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 04:52 AM 5/29/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:
It occurred to me that the Fukushima disaster occurred partly 
*because* it depended on external power for cooling in the event of 
an unintentional shut-down. Modern reactors have passive emergency 
cooling systems that do not depend on power of any kind.


Sure. But why didn't they do that in the beginning?

Answer that question and you will know why Rossi, if it's a real 
effect, doesn't have passive control.


It's a first-generation, demonstration device. 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 04:29 AM 5/29/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:

Lomax> As Rothwell said. Cude is simply repeating a common myth.


That mainstream science regards CF as a mistake is a fact you have 
admitted. Not a myth.


Cude's understanding of what I say is shallow and biased.

There is no "mainstream science," so I'd never say that. "Mainstream 
science" is an abstraction, not a reality, it's a judgment, not a 
sentient being that can "regard" anything.


Mainstream science is undefined here. If Cude defines it, we might 
make some progress and find some agreement.


This is what I suspect is the bottom line. Cude imagines that his 
views and opinions are "mainstream." And therefore, what differs from 
them, what he regards as a "mistake," is what "mainstream science 
regards as a mistake."


He is, I suspect, a graduate student, and his work is to understand 
what his peers will accept. Were he to open his mind to cold fusion, 
he might find, in his field, immediate rejection. Remember, "in his 
field." Not "mainstream science," which must include, for example, chemists.


"cold fusion" was a misnomer at the beginning, because, in fact, it 
was not known to be fusion. That fusion is involved is now a very 
substantial conclusion, based on the finding of helium correlated with heat.


The original question, though, has never been answered with any rigor 
at all: if the FPHE effect is not fusion, what is it?


The chemists say, largely, it's not chemistry, that's impossible, it 
must a nuclear reaction. The nuclear physicists say, largely, it 
can't be a nuclear reaction, that's impossible, it must be chemistry.


Which one of these factions is "mainstream science"?

My answer is, both are. "Cold fusion" is, at this point, a set of 
results in chemistry and thermodynamics. Practically none of the work 
involves the methods of nuclear physics. Nuclear physicists are, 
essentially, only competent to comment on *conclusions,* i.e., the 
conclusion of the chemists that it must be a nuclear reaction, and 
for the physicists to discount and discredit the competence of the 
chemists as to work well within their expertise was a major failure 
of scientific courtesy and process.


In the other direction, for the chemists to insist that this was a 
"nuclear reaction" without showing direct nuclear evidence was 
certainly premature. It's possible to assert it, now, because of the 
helium, because that is, indeed, a nuclear product, but it wasn't at 
the beginning. Helium was considered a very long shot. 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 04:00 AM 5/29/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:


On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 9:35 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
<a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote:


Lomax> That work was done before the turn of the century. The source 
is the conversion of deuterium to helium. The mechanism for this is 
unknown, but the conversion would have a characteristic energy of 
23.8 MeV/He-4, regardless of mechanism (i.e., as long as significant 
energy does not escape, as with neutrino generation). The work done 
does not rule out other possible reactions, as to fuel and product, 
and there is evidence for them, but the evidence is strong enough 
that believing in the contrary is believing in something highly 
unlikely, believing in something not only in the absence of 
evidence, but in the presence of contrary evidence.



The evidence for CF and for this heat-helium correlation is 
pitifully weak. And the evidence for the quantitative correlation 
has not been reproduced under peer-review. That's why a panel of 
experts in 2004 said evidence for nuclear reactions was not conclusive.


No, the reports have been summarized and the conclusions accepted by 
peer-review. There is no skeptical review with this authority.


"Pitifully weak" is Cude's personal and very subjective opinion, not 
confirmed by any review. It's only a loudmouth, spouting off.


> The work I'm referring to is that of Miles. Huizenga, author of 
"Cold fusion, scientific fiasco of the century," notice Miles' work 
in the second edition of his book, and said that, if confirmed, 
this would solve a major mystery of cold fusion: the ash.



And it has not been confirmed.


That's so poor a judgment that I'll call it a lie. It's been 
confirmed. Cude sets up artificial standards for confirmation. 
Huizenga himself was responding to a conference report! I think the 
peer-reviewed paper came later. Storms, again, reports in "Status of 
cold fusion (2010)" that Miles successfully defended his results. 
That was approved by the peer reviewers.


There is no way around it. The balance of publication in mainstream 
scientific journals favors the reality of the effect, favors that 
helium is the ash, and the only thing missing is what Cude seems to 
desire: convincing theory as to mechanism. And that doesn't exist, as 
far as I know.



> That paper (Storms again) represents the state of the field today


Agreed. Unconvincing and published mostly in conference proceedings.


No, convincing and published in a mainstream, peer-reviewed journal, 
a multidisciplinary journal of high reputation (where cold fusion 
belongs, this is not a pure physics field, it's a cross between 
physics and chemistry, studying phenomena not clearly established in 
either field.)


"Convincing" to the peer reviewers and editors of the journal. Not to 
Cude, who apparently believes himself superior to those. That's his 
privilege, but forgive me if I don't fall down and worship his 
superior intellect. That, in fact, is what truly does not exist.



> and shows what is currently passing peer review,


Exactly: obituaries instead of new experimental results.


Please show an "obituary" "currently passing peer review." As to new 
experimental results, "current" should include the last few years, 
and there are quite a few of those. But this field learned, for 
years, to stay away from many of the "mainstream journals," because 
these journals, particularly Nature and Science, established explicit 
editorial policies, it seems, to reject anything on cold fusion 
without review. So why should they waste their time? There is new 
work being done, though Rossi tosses a monkey wrench into the whole shebang.


Rossi is a damned nuiscance to me, because if he's for real, most 
focus will go toward Ni-H, and I'm set up for Pd-D. I won't lose 
money, I don't think, I should still be able to sell the materials 
(which are wicked expensive) but ... the interest and demand for the 
demonstration kits I've designed (and I've sold one) will decline, 
Ni-H will be the rage.


Pd-D is nice, relatively well-behaved, in terms of doing something 
desktop and manageable for a high school student.


I'll still do my own research. I'm in this for the science, not "free energy."

> it is the latest in about seventeen positive reviews of cold 
fusion to appear in mainstream journals, with no negative reviews.



Seventeen reviews and less than a dozen positive experimental papers 
since 2004. That's pathetic. And who writes negative reviews of 
moribund fields? No one. Why would they?


They do if positive reviews are appearing in mainstream journals and 
real print encyclopedias are printing articles that are as stupid as 
Cude thinks. They do if the largest scientific publishers in the 
world are favoring a "moribund field."


And whether the field is "moribund" or not has nothing to do with the 
basic science. How active is research into muon-catalyzed fusion?


This is pure pseudoskepticism, nonscientific a

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:54 AM 5/29/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 9:35 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
<a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote:


Cude>> You find it so hard to believe that a few hundred cold fusion 
researchers can all be wrong, but if cold fusion is real, then far 
far more researchers would have to be wrong.


Lomax> This is the core of Cude's religious position: he believes 
that researchers have demonstrated that cold fusion is not real. 
It's a fantasy.


Taking a little break from your actual research, I see.



Your premise is wrong. You set up this straw man because you think 
you can knock it down. Basically everything that follows is 
therefore irrelevant (and more than a little boring), but what would 
be the fun in ignoring it?


Cude is heavy on claims and light on evidence.

The core of my position has been stated many times. It's that cold 
fusion researchers have failed to demonstrate that cold fusion is real.


Lost performative: "demonstrating to *whom*"? It's rather obviously 
true, properly framed, but for the same reason, it's banal and boring.


Cold fusion researchers have not demonstrated to the satisfaction of 
an imaginary, non-existent person called "Joshua Cude," that "cold 
fusion" is "real," whatever that means.


It's really banal because cold fusion researchers have not "failed" 
to do this, they haven't even attempted to do it.



The evidence is simply lacking.


"The evidence" must mean "the evidence that would convince Joshua 
Cude." Because there are enormous piles of evidence, all of which 
means nothing without analysis, and analysis that begins with false 
assumptions is almost guaranteed to produce false conclusions. As 
soon as the analyst begins to approach a conclusion that contradicts 
the assumptions, the analyst will assume analytical error and back up 
and not go any further down that road. It's how humans think.


 Since the effect is contrary to what we understand about natural 
science, without evidence for an effect, I remain skeptical. In 
this point of view, I am in good company.


What is "the effect"? Lack of precision allows Cude to write tomes of 
"criticism" that has no foundation in fact. As to "good company," 
Cude is relying on the past, on an imagined agreement with certain 
past analysis. Let's concede this immediately: there are many 
knowledgeable scientists who remain skeptical. In fact there are many 
cold fusion researchers who remain skeptical. But skeptical about 
what? By losing precision, Cude can claim all the great scientists 
are on his side.


There is this teeny little problem, but I'm sure he can find a way to 
dismiss it. The Nobel laurates who took the evidence seriously, and 
who didn't dismiss it out-of-hand as "impossible." It was only a 
narrow student understanding of quantum mechanics and how it can be 
applied that led some to think that the experimental results reported 
by so many were "impossible."


And that's what we are dealing with, here, experimental results. Not 
theories. "Cold fusion" is, technically, a theory. What theory? The 
terms must be defined. "Cold fusion" was a term applied by media, 
mostly, but which also became popular, to refer to whatever is behind 
the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect, or FPHE. The very first question, 
scientifically, is not whether or not the FPHE is real or not, 
because scientific protocols assume that reported data is real. Is 
there an FPHE?


*Of course there is.* The issue is what causes it.

When P&F claimed they had evidence in 1989, the world leapt at the 
potential; journalists and scientists alike, all over the world, 
paid attention, and many got involved in experiments.  When two 
scientists with respectable reputations claimed evidence for 
something revolutionary, no one wanted to be left behind. The world 
was giddy with excitement and anticipation.


Which was, of course, radically premature. However, it was also a 
simple human response. Pons and Fleischmann made mistakes, more than 
one. But they also discovered an effect. It turned out to be much 
more difficult to replicate than first impressions. That would be a 
core mistake, but I can easily forgive them for making it, I don't 
think they anticipated what would ensue.


But then, in the next weeks, months, and years, nothing came of the 
great excitement.


And this is where Cude begins to lie, and I use the term "lie" 
advisedly. If he stuck to "months," he'd be right, more or less. 
However, the 1989 ERAB report was partly based on negative results 
from Miles, at China Lake Naval Laboratory, who had been attempting 
replication and who had found no excess heat. Before the panel issued 
its report, Miles started to get results. He phoned the ERAB panel. 
They did not return his phone call. Miles, of course, went on to 
discover and demonstrate, conclusively, that the reaction was 
producing helium, that the FPHE is correlated with helium production.


Wanting only replicati

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Peter Gluck]

Joshua- this will need some discussions but I think eventually we can
establish a Perfect Experience Protocol for Indiviual E-Cats- that is
satisfactory both from the points of view of engineering and of the sane
bureaucracy of standardization. i am opting for fully quantitative and not
for "common sense" experiments.

For your information ( I don't know if you read my Ego Out blog- anyway here
the following points were proposed:

1- in case of steam experiments NOT to measure the temperature or
dryness/wetness but the enthalpy- i.e total
heat of the steam,

2- the minimum duration of the experiment 72 hours,

3- water heating experiments prefered

4- as far it is possible, after startup to work with zero input

*Now your ideas*:-

- disconnecting hydrogen bottle
I agree however the Bologna people have measured the hydrogen consumed. Plus
I have a great experience with hydrogen as fuel - it is a lousy one- much
heat on weight basis but it comes in volumes *i had to solve the problem*
*of finding an use *for the millions of cu.ft excess hydrogen from the NaCl
electrolysis plant OLTCHIM. Natural gas is 3 times better than hydrogen and
how colud you burn hydrogen without forced air/oxygen in the E-cat? Lets' be
reasonable. However the H2 bottle has to be disconnected
and acrried away, OK!

- input electricity disconnected after start-up- I agree. FYI- Prof.
Francesco Piantelli  the scientist of the NI-H field
had a cell working without any input for months at the level
of 70 W- in the year 2000. So this restriction should be possible for  Rossi
too -at much greater energy levels.

- Stirling Engine- I think not a practical idea- which commercial type would
yoiu buy/recommend?-

- to make visible water coming out- or steam betore mixing it with say ten
fold more cold water- a good idea but it cannot help- is not quantitative
but it say water is not hidden somewhere Some Pyrex needed

-Your Point 3. is  common sense experiment, rather qualitative and using ice
water is an useless complication, the ice-water ratio cannot be
established and maintained- please do not insist!. Experiment made by
engineeers NOT by Hausfrauen

I protest angrily- a fg experimrent done without thermo-, flow-, volume-
meters is not serious, sorry!

-Chemical vs nuclear vs some ZPE- unanswerable without a complete chemicl
isotopic analysis of the spent Ni fuel or exhausted  Catalyst. We can
speculate a lot but without data
it si just am intellectual exercise (Rossi has used a more precise
expression)

I don't understand the use of the E-cat in a mode analoguous with a heater
immersed in a hot tube/reservoir.

OK let's continue defining the Protocol. I am ready to explain you the
details- but please let's organize better the materil of discussion- we need
a good taxonomy.

Peter


On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 12:18 PM, Joshua Cude  wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Peter Gluck wrote:
>
>> Dear Joshua,
>>
>> in case your approach to the New Energy is constructive
>> and not destructive would you contribute seriously to:
>> http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com/2011/05/call-for-perfect-e-cat-experiment.html
>>  ?
>>
>> what experiment, what results will convince you that the device is
>> producing useful energy?
>>
>
>
>  I'm glad you asked.
>
>
> *A. Demonstrating power:*
>
>
> To demonstrate thermal power, the simplest method is to heat water, and
> that is of course what Rossi does. But he doesn't do it in a transparent way
> that allows anyone to conclude, just by watching it, that yup, his device is
> producing power without an external supply of fuel. Here is an example of an
> experiment that would be visual and not require experts to tell you what's
> happening:
>
> As emphasized in my blog papers re the E-cat, Control still seems to be a
> problem for the E-cat and we have no data (or discussion partners) to know
> what we dob't know, and what Rossi doesn't know (more important) the
> commercial product must be completely automatized as my home  methane gas
> burner for heating and warm water. (By the way, it cannot work without
> electricity)
>

-

> 1. First and foremost, the device must be completely and obviously
> standalone. So, disconnect the hydrogen bottle, and the mains power input.
>
> - The hydrogen bottle should be easy because they claim so little hydrogen
> is consumed, and in some experiments they claim the valve was closed, and in
> at least one, it is disconnected. Given that, it is completely baffling that
> in the only somewhat public display they have had, the bottle was left
> connected, with the valve open.
>
> - The input electricity is probably more complicated. As it is explained,
> heat is needed to initiate the reaction, and that is provided by resistive
> heating. Fine. Use the mains for that, but then unplug it when the reaction
> starts. And make it obvious: wheel the whole contraption away to show no
> umbilical cords are attached.
>
>  Rossi claims the thing has run without power, but

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Peter Gluck  wrote:

> Dear Joshua,
>
> in case your approach to the New Energy is constructive
> and not destructive would you contribute seriously to:
> http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com/2011/05/call-for-perfect-e-cat-experiment.html
>  ?
>
> what experiment, what results will convince you that the device is
> producing useful energy?
>


I'm glad you asked.


*A. Demonstrating power:*


To demonstrate thermal power, the simplest method is to heat water, and that
is of course what Rossi does. But he doesn't do it in a transparent way that
allows anyone to conclude, just by watching it, that yup, his device is
producing power without an external supply of fuel. Here is an example of an
experiment that would be visual and not require experts to tell you what's
happening:


1. First and foremost, the device must be completely and obviously
standalone. So, disconnect the hydrogen bottle, and the mains power input.

- The hydrogen bottle should be easy because they claim so little hydrogen
is consumed, and in some experiments they claim the valve was closed, and in
at least one, it is disconnected. Given that, it is completely baffling that
in the only somewhat public display they have had, the bottle was left
connected, with the valve open.

- The input electricity is probably more complicated. As it is explained,
heat is needed to initiate the reaction, and that is provided by resistive
heating. Fine. Use the mains for that, but then unplug it when the reaction
starts. And make it obvious: wheel the whole contraption away to show no
umbilical cords are attached.

 Rossi claims the thing has run without power, but that it's
dangerous, although he doesn't explain why. The speculation is that an input
control is needed to prevent some sort of runaway condition, but it seems
counter-intuitive to use additional heat input to prevent runaway. In
particular, it is implausible that cutting the power by 10% or less would
stop a runaway condition, when the variation in claimed output levels is far
greater than 10%. In one experiment the claimed input was 80 W, less than 1
% of the output when it peaked briefly at 120 kW. Does he expect us to
believe that that subtracting 80 W from 120 kW will shut down the reaction,
even while they claim it operates perfectly well at 15 kW? It makes much
more sense to vary the flow rate of the coolant with a solenoid valve to
control the reaction. Then you can actually remove heat to try to stop the
reaction, rather than just stop adding heat. Of course a solenoid valve
needs power too, but only a few watts, and could be controlled for several
days with a suitable lithium battery. Rossi claimed to shut down the reactor
in the Dec demo (reported by Levi) using tap water at a high flow rate, so
one could set up an emergency passive cooling tank above the ecat to cool it
in a runaway condition.



Alternatively, they could power a stirling engine between the inflowing and
outflowing water and use it to run a generator to produce the electricity
needed. Rossi's supposed to be an engineer, so this should be easy for him.
The efficiency would be low of course, but he's claiming 30x gain, and keep
in mind that the heat that's expelled by the engine could still be used to
heat the coolant in the first stage, so the ability to generate steam would
only be compromised by the energy that's actually converted to electricity.


The importance of being standalone goes beyond obviating the measurement of
input power. It has practical importance too. If you can't generate the
electricity for the input because the efficiency is too low given the small
temperature difference, then ideally, that means a heat pump can supply the
same heat. And we know heat pumps will not solve our energy problems.  Now
practically, a heat pump will perform between 1/2 and 3/4 as well because of
losses, but still, this is nothing at all exceptional. In my opinion, any
energy device has to power itself to make a significant contribution above
what heat pumps can already do, let alone convince the world that it's real.


2. With no inputs, if cold water goes in, and hot water comes out, then it
is clear that the device itself is transferring energy to the water. But
even that simple phenomena was not made obvious in Rossi's January
demonstration. It was pretty clear that water was going in, but what came
out? It was in a different room, and we had to take someone's word for it
that the temperature was at the boiling point. Even if it was necessary to
exhaust the output in another room, a very simple and visible method could
have been designed to show that it was at or near the boiling point. Simply
run the output fluid through a copper coil inside a clear container of
water. If the fluid in the conduit is at the boiling point, it should
maintain a gentle boil in the water in the container.


3. To establish that the amount of power is in the ballpark of the claimed
10 kW requires som

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:

> But, Joshua, what about Fukashima? Do you think that the reactor there
needed to be "plugged in" -- for safety -- meant that the energy produced
was doubtful?


It occurred to me that the Fukushima disaster occurred partly *because* it
depended on external power for cooling in the event of an unintentional
shut-down. Modern reactors have passive emergency cooling systems that do
not depend on power of any kind.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Peter Gluck]

Dear Joshua,

in case your approach to the New Energy is constructive
and not destructive would you contribute seriously to:
http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com/2011/05/call-for-perfect-e-cat-experiment.html
 ?

what experiment, what results will convince you that the device is producing
useful energy?  Please do not bypass the question saying that you want the
experiment made in your garage.

Dissecting the past to separate cells does not lead anywhere. My poisoning
hypothesis explain why CF is a rather weak effect with capricious
reproductibility
Peter

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 11:18 AM, Joshua Cude  wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 9:58 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
>
> Cude>> To the extent they believe cold fusion is real based on existing
> measurements, then in the opinion of mainstream science, they are mistaken.
> Every last one of them.
>
>
> Rothwell> That is incorrect. Mainstream scientists have not published
> papers showing errors in these experiments.
>
>
> You mean, "that is correct". Scientists don't waste time publishing papers
> to point out errors or express doubt in a phenomenon only a fringe group
> takes seriously. Once they are satisfied there is nothing to see, they move
> on. They would have no time for anything else if they had to find errors in
> every latest fringe experiment, that looks pretty much like all the other
> fringe experiments.
>
>
> > Opinions unsupported by rigorous, quantitative analysis do not count.
>
>
> Opinions that reject cold fusion are supported every bit as much as
> opinions that reject perpetual motion, and those count.
>
>
> >> Would you say the same thing about polywater? "If even one of the
> scientists had been correct about viscosity or the boiling point or the
> freezing point, then the effect was real after all." Surely, most of their
> measurements were right; they were just caused by artifacts, and the effect
> turned out not the real, in spite of many correct measurements.
>
>
> > Only one group of researchers in one lab thought they saw evidence of
> polywater,
>
>
> That account differs from every other account of polywater I've seen.
> According to Ackermann in 2006, 450 papers were published on polywater in 12
> years, with more than 250 over 2 years. That would be difficult for one
> group. Here's what he writes indicating prominent Soviet and American groups
> were involved:
>
>
> "The Polywater seminal papers include an initial group of four papers by
> Soviet scientists N.N. Fedyakin and B.V. Deryagin that experienced delayed
> recognition due to being published in non-English language (Russian)
> journals during the Cold War era of American–Soviet political rivalries.
> Only when the fourth paper was published by a group of American scientists
> (LIPPENCOTT et al., 1969) confirming the discovery of Polywater did the
> original Russian papers began to receive increased notice and the period of
> epidemic growth began (FRANKS, 1981)."
>
>
> Here's what Henry Bauer wrote in 2002 (with reference to Franks),
> indicating a great many people claimed evidence for polywater:
>
>
> "Unlike with N-rays, scientists all over the world reported the preparation
> and investigation of polywater; indeed the very name is owing to a prominent
> American spectroscopist, Ellis Lippincott. The renowned British physicist
> J.D. Bernal called anomalous water "the most important physical-chemical
> discovery of this century" (Franks 1981, p. 49). Polywater was discussed at
> several of the prestigious annual Gordon Research Conferences (Franks 1981,
> p. 124)."
>
>
> So it's not so different from cold fusion, except in degree, as I've
> already admitted. But then polywater was bigger than N-rays, and they used
> that as evidence that it was not like N-rays. But it was. And CF is like
> them too.
>
>
> > and they later retracted.
>
>
> Well, yes, polywater was finally debunked. But it might not have been, and
> then people would still be making claims. Look at homeopathy (not completely
> unrelated). Claims will continue forever, but mainstream medicine long ago
> rejected it. Whether CF will ever be decisively debunked remains to be seen.
> Given its potential, and the history of belief in free energy claims, it's
> likely to maintain a religious following similar to homeopathy, regardless
> of continued failure to make progress.
>
>
> > Their evidence appeared to be on margins of detectability.
>
>
> Just like cold fusion.
>
>
> > In cold fusion, hundreds of researchers have observed the phenomenon,
>
>
> The potential implications of CF are far greater than polywater, so it is
> not surprising that it has attracted more deluded researchers. But there
> were dozens involved in polywater, maybe close to 100; the number of
> publications is close to half that of CF.
>
>
> > none have retracted,
>
>
> Actually Paneth and Peters "originally reported the transformation of
> hydrogen into helium by spontaneous nuclear catalysis when hydrogen was
> absorbed by finely d

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 1:57 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:

Cude>>To the extent they believe cold fusion is real based on existing
measurements, then in the opinion of mainstream science, they are mistaken.
Every last one of them.


Lomax> As Rothwell said. Cude is simply repeating a common myth.


That mainstream science regards CF as a mistake is a fact you have admitted.
Not a myth.


>Polywater and N-rays were not debunked by negative replications. Negative
replication is quite unreliable when one is dealing with a
previously-unobserved phenomenon. What works is positive replication with,
then, additional controls to show the origin of the observations.


By that standard, according to Rothwell, Focardi was debunked. (See
accompanying post.) Where does that leave Rossi?


> With polywater, the clear refutation appeared, not from failures to create
polywater effects, because there could be a million reasons for that, but
from actual replication, showing the reported phenomena, then with further
analysis showing the prosaic origin.


True. This turned out to be somewhat easier with polywater, but if I get the
drift of a parallel discussion I have only glanced at, there are still those
who cling to the reality of polywater. In any case, there are a great many
pseudo-sciences which, like CF, are much more difficult to debunk, and which
are likely to persist indefinitely: homeopathy, straight chiropractic,
perpetual motion, telepathy, and so on.


> The FP Heat Effect is quite clear, frequently, standing well above noise.


Artifacts frequently stand well above the noise. The effect is not
sufficiently clear to convince a panel of experts that it is real.


> It does not go away with more precise measurement, that is another myth.


Well, some people did not see it. And it is clear that the results have
gotten smaller in time; just look at the tables in Storms' book. Surely,
experiments get better in time, not worse. Rossi's claims are bigger, but
his experiment is much worse. You can see the flaws from the internet, even
though he hasn't published them, and has kept critical parts secret.


> In the case of heat/helium ratio, that is, the correlation between excess
heat and helium measured, Storms analysis is based on the work of twelve
research groups, and there are no negative reports.


Twelve groups? His correlation ratio does not use data from 12 groups. And
none of the data he uses after Miles has been subject to peer-review.
Rothwell says 7 groups have replicated Miles. Which is right?


Anyway, how did 12 groups do this experiment that, as you say elsewhere,
only graduate students do, if there are no graduate students working in CF?
You're not making sense. And 12 groups did the experiment, and yet no
peer-reviewed results are good enough for Storms?


Also, one group admitted the helium results were not definitive.


> Tritium is not (well) correlated with the heat, so it doesn't explain the
heat. However, tritium being produced would be a clear sign that, sometimes,
something nuclear is taking place in the cells. That's a stunning result,
from the point of view that such reactions are impossible!


Except that the results vary by 10 or more orders of magnitude, completely
destroying the credibility of the measurements.


> It's the same with SPAWAR neutrons. Because the rates are so incredibly
low, they tell us nothing about the reaction, and I have no idea if they are
correlated with heat, those neutron measurements did not look for heat.


SPAWAR has not been reproduced, and the results are too weak to be
convincing.


Anyway, you've got tritium that doesn't account for the heat, and now
neutrons that don't account for the heat, so there must be another reaction
that does. Multiplying small probabilities does not make this scenario seem
any more likely.


> Of course steam can be heated to higher temperatures. Steam being evolved
from water boiling will always be at about 100 degrees, that's a consequence
of the phase change. The water being boiled will be at 100 degrees at
atmospheric pressure. To raise those two temperatures, yes, it takes
pressure. But that doesn't mean that you cannot coninue to heat steam beyond
100 degrees!


Right, but in Rossi's device the steam is always 100C. If it were dry, and
the power were a little above what is required to produce dry steam, then
the temperature would exceed the boiling point.


> I'll confess that I don't read most of his writing any more, so malignant
has it come to be in my eyes.


The truth hurts.


> Yes. That was partly a replication failure. An experiment like this raises
some doubt, but what is obvious is this: the experiment did not exactly
reproduce the conditions in the Focardi work.


Sure. Now you say that. Now that you think Rossi is CF's latest saviour.
What happens when Rossi fades away like Patterson?


> So, while this experiment raises some level of doubt, it certainly does
not "prove Focardi wrong," as Cude cavalierly claims

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 9:58 AM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

Cude>> To the extent they believe cold fusion is real based on existing
measurements, then in the opinion of mainstream science, they are mistaken.
Every last one of them.


Rothwell> That is incorrect. Mainstream scientists have not published papers
showing errors in these experiments.


You mean, "that is correct". Scientists don't waste time publishing papers
to point out errors or express doubt in a phenomenon only a fringe group
takes seriously. Once they are satisfied there is nothing to see, they move
on. They would have no time for anything else if they had to find errors in
every latest fringe experiment, that looks pretty much like all the other
fringe experiments.


> Opinions unsupported by rigorous, quantitative analysis do not count.


Opinions that reject cold fusion are supported every bit as much as opinions
that reject perpetual motion, and those count.


>> Would you say the same thing about polywater? "If even one of the
scientists had been correct about viscosity or the boiling point or the
freezing point, then the effect was real after all." Surely, most of their
measurements were right; they were just caused by artifacts, and the effect
turned out not the real, in spite of many correct measurements.


> Only one group of researchers in one lab thought they saw evidence of
polywater,


That account differs from every other account of polywater I've seen.
According to Ackermann in 2006, 450 papers were published on polywater in 12
years, with more than 250 over 2 years. That would be difficult for one
group. Here's what he writes indicating prominent Soviet and American groups
were involved:


"The Polywater seminal papers include an initial group of four papers by
Soviet scientists N.N. Fedyakin and B.V. Deryagin that experienced delayed
recognition due to being published in non-English language (Russian)
journals during the Cold War era of American–Soviet political rivalries.
Only when the fourth paper was published by a group of American scientists
(LIPPENCOTT et al., 1969) confirming the discovery of Polywater did the
original Russian papers began to receive increased notice and the period of
epidemic growth began (FRANKS, 1981)."


Here's what Henry Bauer wrote in 2002 (with reference to Franks), indicating
a great many people claimed evidence for polywater:


"Unlike with N-rays, scientists all over the world reported the preparation
and investigation of polywater; indeed the very name is owing to a prominent
American spectroscopist, Ellis Lippincott. The renowned British physicist
J.D. Bernal called anomalous water "the most important physical-chemical
discovery of this century" (Franks 1981, p. 49). Polywater was discussed at
several of the prestigious annual Gordon Research Conferences (Franks 1981,
p. 124)."


So it's not so different from cold fusion, except in degree, as I've already
admitted. But then polywater was bigger than N-rays, and they used that as
evidence that it was not like N-rays. But it was. And CF is like them too.


> and they later retracted.


Well, yes, polywater was finally debunked. But it might not have been, and
then people would still be making claims. Look at homeopathy (not completely
unrelated). Claims will continue forever, but mainstream medicine long ago
rejected it. Whether CF will ever be decisively debunked remains to be seen.
Given its potential, and the history of belief in free energy claims, it's
likely to maintain a religious following similar to homeopathy, regardless
of continued failure to make progress.


> Their evidence appeared to be on margins of detectability.


Just like cold fusion.


> In cold fusion, hundreds of researchers have observed the phenomenon,


The potential implications of CF are far greater than polywater, so it is
not surprising that it has attracted more deluded researchers. But there
were dozens involved in polywater, maybe close to 100; the number of
publications is close to half that of CF.


> none have retracted,


Actually Paneth and Peters "originally reported the transformation of
hydrogen into helium by spontaneous nuclear catalysis when hydrogen was
absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature. However, the
authors later retracted that report, acknowledging that the helium they
measured was due to background from the air."


P&F retracted their neutron and helium claims. Texas A&M retracted their
tritium claims, Georgia tech retracted excess heat claims, Beuhler &
Friedman retracted their water cluster fusion claims.


> and in many cases the effect is quite easy to detect, for example with 100
W of heat output an no input,


That's the problem. You call it quite easy, it should blindingly obvious,
and yet it doesn't convince anyone except believers.


>> World class experts do make mistakes. There were world-class experts
involved with polywater and N-rays.


> There was only one experts involved with each of those claims. Hundreds

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 9:35 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:

> The mainstream started shifting sometime around 2005,


What is your evidence for this? The fact that NW published a few papers on
CF? In 2000 the J of Electroanal. Chem. stopped publishing (positive) papers
on CF. It has not restarted. It has more or less the same impact factor as
NW, so that looks like a wash. No mainstream nuclear physics journals
publish CF papers, and that is the field that would be most affected.


There has been no shift in the mainstream regarding cold fusion at all. The
number of papers published is still only a few per year. And most of the
experimental papers have been on doubtful, low level neutron detection, or
very low power gas-loading experiments.

There has been a shift at one relatively minor multidisciplinary journal.
Even Josephson calls the journal obscure.



> it had never been monolithic, with at least three Nobel laureates in
physics supporting the possibility of cold fusion.



This is a favorite claim, so let's examine it.


Julian Schwinger is the most impressive case. He was a major figure in
theoretical physics, and won the Nobel prize in 1965. He was in his 70s when
cold fusion hit the scene, by which time he was no longer contributing
significantly. He wrote several papers on cold fusion, but they were
rejected by Physical Review, and few physicists took him seriously after
that.


Brian Josephson won the Nobel prize in 1972, at the early age of 33, for
work done prior to receiving a PhD. He has advocated cold fusion in various
internet forums, and on his web site, but he has not really made any
significant contribution to the field himself. The only things listed on
Rothwell's database related to CF are some talks dealing apparently with the
sociology of the field rather than the science. This is odd, since he was at
a productive age in 1989, and had valuable expertise to contribute. If he
believed in CF, he must have understood the revolutionary possibilities. How
could he have resisted becoming directly involved to save the world, and
become one of the select few to win 2 Nobel prizes?


Maybe he peaked too early, because there is not much evidence of
contributions to physics after he won the Nobel prize. Most of his
publications since, and practically the only things he lists on his web site
are related to topics like parapsychology and mind-matter unification. To
most scientists, it does not add to the credibility of cold fusion to have
an endorsement from someone who also endorses telepathy and homeopathy,
Nobel prize or not.


The third case is presumably Carlo Rubbia. He does not appear in Rothwell's
database at all, so I assume it is safe to say he has not published on CF,
although he is acknowledged by some CF authors. A google search turns up a
few people attributing support for CF to him, but I didn't find any direct
quotes. Do you have some? In any case, I don't know how seriously one can
take his alleged support for cold fusion, considering he has been actively
involved in sustainable energy, but has directed his focus toward
concentrated solar energy and nuclear energy using thorium and depleted
uranium.



So there are no laureates who have actually performed CF experiments, only
one who has published on the topic, although the papers were rejected by APS
journals, one who is rumored to have said positive things about it, but is
actively researching competitive technologies, and one who is an advocate of
cold fusion and other paranormal phenomena.


That's supposed to get respect for the field, but it doesn't mean anything
that virtually all other laureates dismiss the field out of hand, with
explicit statements from many of the prominent ones with nuclear expertise,
while still contributing to physics: Leon Lederman, Sheldon Glashow, Glenn
Seaborg, Steven Weinberg, Murray Gell-Mann …



> Cude has asserted that "far more researchers would have to be wrong." That
is so defective a claim that we might as well call it a lie. […] It's
possible that "more researchers" have negative opinions about cold fusion
than have positive opinions,


Possible? The vast majority of researchers have negative opinions about cold
fusion.



> but "researchers" in what?


In nuclear physics. It doesn't matter how you spin it, nuclear reactions
involve nuclear forces and nuclear physics, and the people who know the most
about that are nuclear physicists. And they are pretty much unanimous that
cold fusion has not been demonstrated. They'd all have to be wrong if CF
were real. And so, my statement stands. Call it a lie if it helps you sleep
at night, but it's the truth.


> Rothwell pointing out that hundreds of researchers would have to be wrong,
and by that, he meant that their *experimental results* would have to be
wrong, artifact, error, or worse. There is no large body of contrary
research in opposition to this,


All of nuclear physics experiments are quantitatively consistent with the
standard 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 9:35 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:

Lomax> That work was done before the turn of the century. The source is the
conversion of deuterium to helium. The mechanism for this is unknown, but
the conversion would have a characteristic energy of 23.8 MeV/He-4,
regardless of mechanism (i.e., as long as significant energy does not
escape, as with neutrino generation). The work done does not rule out other
possible reactions, as to fuel and product, and there is evidence for
them, but the evidence is strong enough that believing in the contrary is
believing in something highly unlikely, believing in something not only in
the absence of evidence, but in the presence of contrary evidence.


The evidence for CF and for this heat-helium correlation is pitifully weak.
And the evidence for the quantitative correlation has not been reproduced
under peer-review. That's why a panel of experts in 2004 said evidence for
nuclear reactions was not conclusive.


> The work I'm referring to is that of Miles. Huizenga, author of "Cold
fusion, scientific fiasco of the century," notice Miles' work in the second
edition of his book, and said that, if confirmed, this would solve a major
mystery of cold fusion: the ash.


And it has not been confirmed.


> That paper (Storms again) represents the state of the field today


Agreed. Unconvincing and published mostly in conference proceedings.


> and shows what is currently passing peer review,


Exactly: obituaries instead of new experimental results.


> it is the latest in about seventeen positive reviews of cold fusion to
appear in mainstream journals, with no negative reviews.


Seventeen reviews and less than a dozen positive experimental papers since
2004. That's pathetic. And who writes negative reviews of moribund fields?
No one. Why would they?


> The pseudo-skeptical position is dead, it is unable to pass peer review,
and that is not for lack of submissions or effort.


You keep saying this, but you never identify who you are referring to. We
all know about the rejection of Shanahan's rebuttal to a rebuttal to a
rebuttal, but you know journals don't want to turn into on-line forums. That
rejection is meaningless. Do you have any other rejections. Because you know
an entire proceedings was rejected by the APS recently. Really, with very
rare exceptions, people who submit material on cold fusion are going to be
cold fusion advocates. Why would skeptics bother?



> This is the reproducible experiment that was, for so long, claimed to be
missing: set up the F-P effect (hundreds of research groups have done this;
it's difficult, but certainly not impossible), using careful calorimetry,
the state of the art as to the calorimetry and as to the electrochemistry,
and measure helium. Work has been done with more helium measurement accuracy
and completeness than what was available to Miles, and the results are
closer to the 23.8 MeV value. Storms estimates, reviewing all the work,
correcting for retained helium, a ratio of 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4, in good
agreement with the theoretical value for deuterium fusion.



1. The much better work was not peer-reviewed, and was subject to biting
criticism from a journalist.


2. The results were available at the time of the 2004 DOE review, and they
were not convinced by them.


3. Given that the quality of the results has not convinced the DOE or the
mainstream, why is there no subsequent work? Scientists are obsessive about
nailing down errors. And yet, the most recent results Storms used for this
pivotal experiment are from 2000, and the most recent peer-reviewed results
from the early 90s.


4. If the later results (unrefereed) are so much better, why did Storms
still use some of Miles' results in calculating the ratio, if not to make
the ratio better; i.e to cherry pick? Normally, when experiments get better,
data from old and crude experiments is replaced.


5. Isn't it a remarkable coincidence that of all the possible products of
nuclear reactions -- neutrons, tritium, gamma rays, helium, transmutations
e.g. -- the only one that shows up commensurate with the observed heat is
the one that exists in the background at similar or higher levels? Nature is
such a tease.


> It is certainly possible to assert that his analysis was biased, but Cude
has ridiculed this as having a +/- 20% error bar, whereas, in fact, that
ratio existing within an order of magnitude of the expected value was
considered a stunning result by Huizenga, and Huizenga was correct about
this.


Well, then Huizenga must be a believer in CF, right? Wrong! Because the
improved results have not been subject to peer-review, and because there has
been no peer-reviewed replication at all, and because Storms' 20% is the
result of cherry-picking and cognitive bias.


> (NiH is clearly a different effect, though there may be some common type
of mechanism.)


Right. Cognitive bias.


> This kind of work [repeating Miles heat-helium results] is normally done
by g

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 9:35 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:

Cude>> You find it so hard to believe that a few hundred cold fusion
researchers can all be wrong, but if cold fusion is real, then far far more
researchers would have to be wrong.


Lomax> This is the core of Cude's religious position: he believes that
researchers have demonstrated that cold fusion is not real. It's a fantasy.


Taking a little break from your actual research, I see.


Your premise is wrong. You set up this straw man because you think you can
knock it down. Basically everything that follows is therefore irrelevant
(and more than a little boring), but what would be the fun in ignoring it?


The core of my position has been stated many times. It's that cold fusion
researchers have failed to demonstrate that cold fusion is real. The
evidence is simply lacking. Since the effect is contrary to what we
understand about natural science, without evidence for an effect, I remain
skeptical. In this point of view, I am in good company.


When P&F claimed they had evidence in 1989, the world leapt at the
potential; journalists and scientists alike, all over the world, paid
attention, and many got involved in experiments.  When two scientists with
respectable reputations claimed evidence for something revolutionary, no one
wanted to be left behind. The world was giddy with excitement and
anticipation.



But then, in the next weeks, months, and years, nothing came of the great
excitement. Many excellent scientists did experiments and concluded P&F were
incompetent or deluded or both; that there was nothing there. CF was a bust.
It didn't help that P&F were caught in a really obvious error with respect
to the associated radiation.


Now, I've heard your response to that. Those who failed to reproduce all did
something wrong. The conditions weren't right. The D-Pd ratio was too low.
The surface wasn't treated right. They actually did see heat, they were just
too stupid to realize it. They were afraid their paradigm would collapse.
And on and on.


Well maybe so. But given the failures, the CF cabal would have to come up
with something better to get taken seriously again. After all, new
discoveries in science typically auger in progress at breakneck speed.
That's the best time for a new field. Lots of low-hanging fruit to pick.


Instead, CF people kept doing the same experiment with the same results over
and over. Electrolysis experiments with input power, chemical reactions,
differential equations, and finally after much data reduction, a claim of
excess heat. Nothing obvious, and it never got more obvious. In fact as the
experiments improved, the effect got smaller. (And as they got worse (as
with Rossi) the effect got bigger.)


Some people did try variations on the experiment, using gas loading, glow
discharge, sonic, superwave, and so on, but in every case the results were
and are unconvincing. As Rothwell complained, they never stand out. There is
always some form of input (or at least it is not obviously excluded), and
the heat is demonstrated with calorimetry, which is known for being prone to
artifact.


I think mainstream science's attitude toward the field has become like it is
to other fringe areas that never seem to get anywhere. Instead of pulling
their hair out trying to figure out where other people have gone wrong from
their poorly documented, unrefereed accounts, they are waiting for evidence
that stands out. The claim is a factor of a million more energy density than
chemical. How can that be so hard to make obvious. Why can't they make an
isolated device that remains indefinitely warmer than its surroundings? Why
can't they make an isolated device that makes a cup of tea? That's what's
needed.


It's a bit like Uri Geller claiming he can bend spoons with his mind, as
long as he provides the spoons and can control the conditions under which he
demonstrates it. I can't explain how he does it, no matter how long I think
about it, and tear my hear out. And, although it makes me a little curious,
I'm not all that interested in understanding how he does it. I'm satisfied
that it's a trick, an artifact, because if he could really bend metal with
his mind, a far more direct demonstration could be done. Strip him down, to
underwear, shackle his hands and feet, and bring in a metal bar he has never
seen before and hold it a foot in front of his mind, and ask him to bend it.


Same with CF. The experiments always have to have a certain context. Dardik
required Duncan to come to Israel to see the experiment. Rossi invites only
select people to his laboratory, with protocol under his control. They need
input for safety they say, and the evidence for GJ/g heat comes in the form
of instrument readings. It is purely a mug's game trying to understand and
analyze these contrived experiments. If D-Pd or H-Ni generates GJ/g of heat,
then take some D-Pd or H-Ni and put it in an isolated beaker and watch it
boil. If an electrode is producing he

RE: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Mark Iverson]

I too was not aware of Ashmore's paper... But it doesn't surprise me at all.
Especially when Woods was 'recruited' by several scientists who obviously 
thought it was bogus
science... They got the answer they were expecting. 

Further, regarding the polywater debunking...
For those who think that there was nothing to it, you need to view the 
following presentation by
Gerald Pollack, professor of Bioengineering at Univ of Washington.
mms://media-wm.cac.washington.edu/ifs/uw_fac_welife_wm9.asf

It is now firmly established, via peer-reviewed research, that next to an 
interface, water organizes
itself into a regular crystal structure, and this organized structure extends 
much much further out
from the interface that current theory suggests; millions of molecular 
distances unstead of 2 or 3.
Although Dr. Pollack doesn't specifically refer to this region as a polymer, he 
does refer to it as
being a liquid crystal...  

The problem is that very few 'scientists' do their own investigation of these 
'debunking' episodes
in order to truly know what ALL the facts are.  They simply rely on the 
'opinion' of some article in
the Journals they read; or worse yet, the mainstream media.  Once presented 
with all of the source
material, which tells the entire picture, if they choose not to take the time 
to review that
material so they have all the facts as close to the source as possible, then 
they don't deserve the
title of scientist.  This is exactly the reason for Dr. Robert Duncan's 
statement on the 60-Minutes
segment on Cold Fusion, 
 "Don't let others do your thinking for you... 
  Read the literature, visit the labs and talk to the researchers."

-Mark


-Original Message-
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax [mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.com] 
Sent: Friday, May 27, 2011 3:18 PM
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

At 03:27 PM 5/27/2011, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
>>http://tinyurl.com/4256qxb (Give it a minute to load.) Harry
>
>Thanks. Fascinating. First of all, it's long been obvious to me that 
>Wood did not conclusively debunk N-rays. What he did was to set up a 
>plausible alternate explanation of the experimental reports.

Wow! Let me really recommend that paper:

Malcolm Ashmore, "The Theatre of the Blind, Starring a Promethean Prankster, a 
Phoney Phenomenon, a
Prism, a Pocket, and a Piece of Wood," Social Studies of Science, 23:1, 
February, 1993, pp. 67-106.

The author discloses his bias, in a remarkable passage: "I hope to cast 
sufficient doubt on Wood's
credibility as a reporter (not to mention as an ethical actor), to provoke some 
reassessment of
this, and similar episodes."

And he goes on to make it clear what he's talking about:

[snip]

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 10:58 AM 5/27/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:

Joshua Cude wrote:

To the extent they believe cold fusion is real based on existing 
measurements, then in the opinion of mainstream science, they are 
mistaken. Every last one of them.


That is incorrect. Mainstream scientists have not published papers 
showing errors in these experiments. Opinions unsupported by 
rigorous, quantitative analysis do not count.


As Rothwell said. Cude is simply repeating a common myth.

Would you say the same thing about polywater? "If even one of the 
scientists had been correct about viscosity or the boiling point or 
the freezing point, then the effect was real after all." Surely, 
most of their measurements were right; they were just caused by 
artifacts, and the effect turned out not the real, in spite of many 
correct measurements.


Only one group of researchers in one lab thought they saw evidence 
of polywater, and they later retracted. Their evidence appeared to 
be on margins of detectability. In cold fusion, hundreds of 
researchers have observed the phenomenon, none have retracted, and 
in many cases the effect is quite easy to detect, for example with 
100 W of heat output an no input, in heat after death. So I am quite 
comfortable comparing the two.


Polywater and N-rays were not debunked by negative replications. 
Negative replication is quite unreliable when one is dealing with a 
previously-unobserved phenomenon. What works is positive replication 
with, then, additional controls to show the origin of the observations.


With N-rays, an observer surreptitiously removed the aluminum prism 
that was supposedly necessary to make N-rays visible. Because the 
witnesses continued to report that they could see the -- very weak -- 
phosphorescent flashes that were supposedly caused by N-rays, this 
demonstrated that the flashes were normal optical noise or error in 
interpretation of what is visible.


With polywater, the clear refutation appeared, not from failures to 
create polywater effects, because there could be a million reasons 
for that, but from actual replication, showing the reported 
phenomena, then with further analysis showing the prosaic origin.


This was never done with the heat measurements of Pons and 
Fleischmann, nor with the helium measurements of Mills and others. 
All there has been is armchair criticism, speculation, and assumption 
of error. And that's what gets really thin after so many reports, and 
no demonstrations of artifact.


The FP Heat Effect is quite clear, frequently, standing well above 
noise. It does not go away with more precise measurement, that is 
another myth. In the case of heat/helium ratio, that is, the 
correlation between excess heat and helium measured, Storms analysis 
is based on the work of twelve research groups, and there are no 
negative reports. The claim that the helium results from leakage is 
contrary to the evidence, reported by many. When there is no excess 
heat, there is no helium. Leakage would take place anyway.


World class experts do make mistakes. There were world-class 
experts involved with polywater and N-rays.


There was only one experts involved with each of those claims. 
Hundreds of other experts attempted to detect polywater, but they 
all failed. See the Franks book.


I don't know that I'd agree with Rothwell on this, but it's moot. 
They were dismissed once there was unrefuted *positive replication* 
that showed the prosaic origin of the reported effects.


It was difficult to get the FPHE to show up, so the nuclear 
physicists took a lazy approach, they simply assume that it must have 
been error, and they continued to hold on to that assumption even 
when it became completely untenable. This was a messy and difficult 
experiment, not the kind of work they were used to doing, involving 
some very complex chemistry, far less simple than was originally thought.


But electrochemists learned how to do it, and Miles, for example, was 
seeing excess heat in 21 out of 33 cells. What knocked the ball out 
of the Park was that he also measured helium, and it correlated with 
the excess heat. Sorry, but there is no cogent explanation for this 
other than deuterium fusion, given the numbers that eventually fell 
out of this approach. Huizenga got it, in 1993, he knew the 
importance of Miles, but simply believed that it would not be 
confirmed, "since there were no gamma rays," as would have been 
suspected from d-d fusion -> He-4.


But there was another explanation, that the reaction isn't d+d, that 
simply. It's something else, unknown, that starts with deuterium and 
ends with helium. Say that happens in a black box. What can we call the box?


A fusion box.

I don't care if the box somehow dismantles the deuterium into quarks 
and reassembles them as helium plus energy. It doesn't matter. That's 
fusion, and only Krivit thinks that the semantic difference matters, 
i.e., if somehow neutrons are formed and accomplish that 
rearrangement

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Jed Rothwell]

Joshua Cude wrote:

To the extent they believe cold fusion is real based on existing 
measurements, then in the opinion of mainstream science, they are 
mistaken. Every last one of them.




That is incorrect. Mainstream scientists have not published papers 
showing errors in these experiments. Opinions unsupported by rigorous, 
quantitative analysis do not count.



Would you say the same thing about polywater? "If even one of the 
scientists had been correct about viscosity or the boiling point or 
the freezing point, then the effect was real after all." Surely, most 
of their measurements were right; they were just caused by artifacts, 
and the effect turned out not the real, in spite of many correct 
measurements.




Only one group of researchers in one lab thought they saw evidence of 
polywater, and they later retracted. Their evidence appeared to be on 
margins of detectability. In cold fusion, hundreds of researchers have 
observed the phenomenon, none have retracted, and in many cases the 
effect is quite easy to detect, for example with 100 W of heat output an 
no input, in heat after death. So I am quite comfortable comparing the two.



World class experts do make mistakes. There were world-class experts 
involved with polywater and N-rays.




There was only one experts involved with each of those claims. Hundreds 
of other experts attempted to detect polywater, but they all failed. See 
the Franks book.


This is a tautology, but people who make such mistakes are not experts. 
At least, not with regard to that particular type of claim. They think 
they are, but they are mistaken. In the case of cold fusion no errors 
have been found in the calorimetry, helium detection, tritium and so on, 
so these people are -- as claimed -- experts.



Jalbert? According to the web of science, he has published less than a 
dozen papers.




I am tempted to ask how many papers about tritium you have published, 
and what makes you think you know more than Jalbert . . . but I shall 
refrain.



And in any case, whether or not his particular tritium measurements 
are right or wrong, they do not explain the observed heat in CF 
experiments.




They do, however, prove there is a nuclear effect. That's the point.



> I am certain you are wrong, and these people are right.


Of course you are, but your certainty is not really persuasive. A few 
weeks ago you were certain steam could not be heated above 100C unless 
it was under pressure. You ignored perfectly good arguments that air 
itself (nitrogen) is heated far above its boiling point at atmosphere, 
and stuck stubbornly to your belief, until some CF scientist (Storms 
probably) set you straight.




Yes, I make mistakes. But I admit frankly that I have done so, and I 
make amends. You have made dozens of mistakes for 20 years and learned 
nothing.



In 2009, you were pretty certain that  Focardi had been proved wrong, 
and you argued at length with Krivit about it, and you had support 
from Storms.




That I did not do! I have pointed out that there have not been many 
replications, and one attempt to replicate failed:


http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CerronZebainvestigat.pdf

I never, ever hide what I know to be weaknesses in cold fusion research.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 06:03 AM 5/26/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:
You find it so hard to believe that a few hundred cold fusion 
researchers can all be wrong, but if cold fusion is real, then far 
far more researchers would have to be wrong.


This is the core of Cude's religious position: he believes that 
researchers have demonstrated that cold fusion is not real. It's a fantasy.


The calorimetry of Fleischmann and Pons was never shown to be 
inaccurate, reviews confirmed it. There is a F-P Heat Effect. The 
scientific issue should have been, from the beginning, to identify 
the source of it.


That work was done before the turn of the century. The source is the 
conversion of deuterium to helium. The mechanism for this is unknown, 
but the conversion would have a characteristic energy of 23.8 
MeV/He-4, regardless of mechanism (i.e., as long as significant 
energy does not escape, as with neutrino generation). The work done 
does not rule out other possible reactions, as to fuel and product, 
and there is evidence for them, but the evidence is strong enough 
that believing in the contrary is believing in something highly 
unlikely, believing in something not only in the absence of evidence, 
but in the presence of contrary evidence.


Cude just waves his hand. The work I'm referring to is that of Miles. 
Huizenga, author of "Cold fusion, scientific fiasco of the century," 
notice Miles' work in the second edition of his book, and said that, 
if confirmed, this would solve a major mystery of cold fusion: the 
ash. Huizenga did not seem to notice that Miles was, himself, 
confirming Fleischmann and Bush & Lagowski, with, for the first time, 
approaching the crucial heat/helium ratio.


Miles' technique did not attempt to capture and measure all the 
helium. Rather, he simply compared the excess heat from a series of 
cells, and the helium found in samples of the evolved gases. The 
samples were provided to an independent lab, which did not know the 
history, so the measurements were blind.


This is not the place to review Miles' work in detail; Storms has 
done so at length, in his book (2007) and in his review paper, 
"Status of cold fusion (2010)." That paper represents the state of 
the field today -- pre-Rossi! -- and shows what is currently passing 
peer review, it is the latest in about seventeen positive reviews of 
cold fusion to appear in mainstream journals, with no negative 
reviews. The pseudo-skeptical position is dead, it is unable to pass 
peer review, and that is not for lack of submissions or effort.


This is the reproducible experiment that was, for so long, claimed to 
be missing: set up the F-P effect (hundreds of research groups have 
done this; it's difficult, but certainly not impossible), using 
careful calorimetry, the state of the art as to the calorimetry and 
as to the electrochemistry, and measure helium. Work has been done 
with more helium measurement accuracy and completeness than what was 
available to Miles, and the results are closer to the 23.8 MeV value. 
Storms estimates, reviewing all the work, correcting for retained 
helium, a ratio of 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4, in good agreement with the 
theoretical value for deuterium fusion. It is certainly possible to 
assert that his analysis was biased, but Cude has ridiculed this as 
having a +/- 20% error bar, whereas, in fact, that ratio existing 
within an order of magnitude of the expected value was considered a 
stunning result by Huizenga, and Huizenga was correct about this.


Miles' work remains unique in that a large series of cells were 
studied. My own view is that the field went entirely toward 
attempting to amplify and solidify heat results, which makes sense in 
a search for a practical method of generating power, but not for 
confirming and solidifying the science of the matter. Actually 
repeating Miles, exact replication, hasn't been done, but once we 
understand this as a general result from the F-P effect, it is not 
necessary that the replication be exact, various techniques may be 
used, as long as it is understood that seriously differing 
conditions, like changing the reactant(s) or catalyst(s), may result 
in a different effect and a different value. As this field opens up, 
there will be experiments designed specifically to measure the 
heat/helium ratio for PdD work.


(NiH is clearly a different effect, though there may be some common 
type of mechanism.)


This kind of work is normally done by graduate students, not by 
senior researchers, because you will never get a Nobel prize, or 
economic rewards, by confirming the established work of others. It's 
done for academic credit, and is a valuable service that graduate 
students perform. That supply of labor was cut off because of the 
efforts of people who believed as does Cude, by a belief that a few 
"negative replications," which were simply that, replication 
failures, were conclusive, the whole field was discredited, and a PhD 
thesis was rejected solely because it wa

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Peter Gluck]

Excuse me for writing this here- Joshua Cude's hostility against CF and
especially the E-cat could be used in a positive way. Joshua, please tell
what would be a *PERFECT EXPERIMENT-* absolutely convincing for you- setup,
instruments, measurements everything- telling it works or NOT? Thank you in
advance.
Peter

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 1:25 AM,  wrote:

> In reply to  Joshua Cude's message of Thu, 26 May 2011 05:03:48 -0500:
> Hi,
> [snip]
> >> If even one of them is correct about the calorimetry, tritium, helium
> and
> >other evidence, then the effect is real after all.
> >
> >
> >Now, that's just ridiculous. Of course, many -- even most, possibly even
> all
> >-- of the individual measurements could be right, but if some are wrong,
> or
> >if the interpretations are wrong, or if some are caused by artifacts, then
> >the effect is not the real.
>
> If some of the measurements are correct, but the reason is not CF, then can
> you
> provide an alternate explanation?
>
> Regards,
>
> Robin van Spaandonk
>
> http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
>
>


-- 
Dr. Peter Gluck
Cluj, Romania
http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[mixent]

In reply to  Joshua Cude's message of Thu, 26 May 2011 05:03:48 -0500:
Hi,
[snip]
>> If even one of them is correct about the calorimetry, tritium, helium and
>other evidence, then the effect is real after all.
>
>
>Now, that's just ridiculous. Of course, many -- even most, possibly even all
>-- of the individual measurements could be right, but if some are wrong, or
>if the interpretations are wrong, or if some are caused by artifacts, then
>the effect is not the real.

If some of the measurements are correct, but the reason is not CF, then can you
provide an alternate explanation?

Regards,

Robin van Spaandonk

http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Roarty, Francis X]

On Thu, 26 May 2011 03:05:02 Joshua wrote
[snip] To the extent they believe cold fusion is real based on existing
measurements, then in the opinion of mainstream science, they are mistaken.
Every last one of them.[/snip]

Josh,
are you implying that that all the claims of heat anomalies are also 
mistakes or just the interpretations?
Fran

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 7:06 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

Cude>> I will assert that tools do not make a carpenter, and that my views
boil down to an assertion that cold fusion researchers are bad carpenters.



Rothwell> For this to be the case, they would all have to be incompetent.
Every last of them.


To the extent they believe cold fusion is real based on existing
measurements, then in the opinion of mainstream science, they are mistaken.
Every last one of them.


> If even one of them is correct about the calorimetry, tritium, helium and
other evidence, then the effect is real after all.


Now, that's just ridiculous. Of course, many -- even most, possibly even all
-- of the individual measurements could be right, but if some are wrong, or
if the interpretations are wrong, or if some are caused by artifacts, then
the effect is not the real.


Would you say the same thing about polywater? "If even one of the scientists
had been correct about viscosity or the boiling point or the freezing point,
then the effect was real after all." Surely, most of their measurements were
right; they were just caused by artifacts, and the effect turned out not the
real, in spite of many correct measurements.


You find it so hard to believe that a few hundred cold fusion researchers
can all be wrong, but if cold fusion is real, then far far more researchers
would have to be wrong.



> But there are also many hundreds of world-class experts […] I realize that
you think these people have made mistakes, and they are inept, but you are
wrong.


World class experts do make mistakes. There were world-class experts
involved with polywater and N-rays. The planet vulcan was predicted by a
world-class expert to explain the precession of mercury's orbit. He went to
his grave believing the many amateurs, and several eminent astronomers, who
claimed to have observed it consistent with his predictions. Einstein proved
that they were all wrong. Every one of them.



> Let's look at just one example of the kind people we are talking about.
See:


> http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/EPRInsfepriwor.pdf


> Look at p. 13.3, the CV of Roland A. Jalbert:

> *25 years working with tritium and tritium detection […]


Jalbert? According to the web of science, he has published less than a dozen
papers. And except for the proceedings you cite, I didn't see any papers on
cold fusion. His name doesn't appear at all in the bibliography on your
site.


Have you looked at the CV of someone like Steve Koonin. Why would I trust
Jalbert over Koonin, and countless other experts in nuclear science who
don't believe that Jalbert's measurements provide evidence for cold fusion?


And in any case, whether or not his particular tritium measurements are
right or wrong, they do not explain the observed heat in CF experiments.


Moreover, the fact that he didn't jump headlong into the field suggests to
me that he did not have a lot of confidence in cold fusion either.



> You apparently believe that you know more about tritium than Jalbert
does.


What I know doesn't matter, but it is very clear that most people who know
as much about tritium as your Jalbert, don't believe the measurements, or at
least don't believe they come from cold fusion. And judging from the scatter
in the tritium data by orders of magnitude (more than 10^10 if I remember),
from the fact that the highest values came from BARC within weeks of the
press conference (for what is supposed to be a very difficult experiment),
that they have gotten smaller over the years, and don't come close to
accounting for the measured heat, it is reasonable to conclude that they do
not provide enough evidence to suggest nuclear reactions at room temperature
in benchtop experiments create measurable heat.



>If you sincerely, actually think that you know how to measure tritium
better than these people, and every single one of them has made a stupid
mistake, even when they measured it at 10E18 times background, then I
suggest you are suffering from an extreme case of egomania.


But I don't believe that, and it's not necessary to believe that to be
skeptical. I know less about climate physics than Richard Lindzen does, and
I'm pretty sure you do too. And yet, both of us reject his skepticism of
AGW, in favor of the much larger consensus.


I could say that your certainty of cold fusion means you are claiming to
know more about nuclear physics than all the skeptics, and suggest that you
are suffering from egomania. But that's a pointless argument.


For me, if the claims were real, claims like 100 W out with zero in, or
energy density a million times that of gasoline,  would be very easy to
demonstrate, and yet no one seems to be able to demonstrate it.



> I am certain you are wrong, and these people are right.


Of course you are, but your certainty is not really persuasive. A few weeks
ago you were certain steam could not be heated above 100C unless it was
under pressure. You ignored perfectly good arguments that

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[Rich Murray]

yer welcome, sonny...

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 5:54 PM, Charles Hope
 wrote:
> What a profound statement. Thank you!
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone.
>
> On May 25, 2011, at 15:44, Rich Murray  wrote:
>
>> Let's encourage non ad hominem, civil, polite, gracious, patient,
>> evidence and detail oriented, genteel, lightly humorous, collaborative
>> communication -- one of the finest cultural innovations in human
>> history -- the destiny of any intrepid explorer is a path littered
>> with mistakes.
>>
>> Rich Murray
>>
>>
>
>

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[Charles Hope]

What a profound statement. Thank you!


Sent from my iPhone. 

On May 25, 2011, at 15:44, Rich Murray  wrote:

> Let's encourage non ad hominem, civil, polite, gracious, patient,
> evidence and detail oriented, genteel, lightly humorous, collaborative
> communication -- one of the finest cultural innovations in human
> history -- the destiny of any intrepid explorer is a path littered
> with mistakes.
> 
> Rich Murray
> 
> 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Jed Rothwell]

Joshua Cude  wrote:


> > I will say, however, that his views seem to boil down to an assertion
> that conventional instruments and techniques do not work.
>
>
> Wrong. I have never asserted that, and I do not believe it. I will assert
> that tools do not make a carpenter, and that my views boil down to an
> assertion that cold fusion researchers are bad carpenters.
>


For this to be the case, they would all have to be incompetent. Every last
of them. If even one of them is correct about the calorimetry, tritium,
helium and other evidence, then the effect is real after all.

There are some inept cold fusion researchers. Many mistakes have been made.
That is true of any field of science. But there are also many hundreds of
world-class experts such as Flieschmann, Bockris, Miles, Storms, Iyengar
and Lonchampt. Lonchampt was a commissioner on the French AEC and the chief
designer of their fission reactors. Those reactors, unlike ours, have not
blown up or melted down. I realize that you think these people have made
mistakes, and they are inept, but you are wrong. Let's look at just one
example of the kind people we are talking about. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/EPRInsfepriwor.pdf

Look at p. 13.3, the CV of Roland A. Jalbert:

*25 years working with tritium and tritium detection
*involved in the development, design, and implementation of
tritium instrumentation for 15 years
*for 12 years he has had prime responsibility for the design,
implementation, and maintainance of all tritium instrumentation at a major
fusion technology development facility (Tritium Systems Test Assembly ).
*Consultant on tritium instrumentation to other fusion energy facilities for
10 years ( Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at Princton )

You apparently believe that you know more about tritium than Jalbert does.
You believe he is incompetent and incapable of detecting tritium. You also
believe that of Storms, the Safety Division at BARC (whose lives depend on
detecting tritium correctly) and several hundred other distinguished experts
in that field are wrong. If you sincerely, actually think that you know how
to measure tritium better than these people, and every single one of them
has made a stupid mistake, even when they measured it at 10E18 times
background, then I suggest you are suffering from an extreme case of
egomania. I am certain you are wrong, and these people are right.

I do not know much about tritium, so I cannot judge whatever technical
claims you might make to show these people are wrong. I do understand x-ray
film, helium detection and calorimetry, and without going into details I am
sure that your arguments have no merit.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 4:24 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

> I will say, however, that his views seem to boil down to an assertion that
conventional instruments and techniques do not work.


Wrong. I have never asserted that, and I do not believe it. I will assert
that tools do not make a carpenter, and that my views boil down to an
assertion that cold fusion researchers are bad carpenters.



> Calorimetry and x-ray film do not work.


Wrong. They work just fine if you know how to use them.



> Replications by hundreds of researchers mean nothing.


Wrong. Replications mean a lot. But what passes for replication in cold
fusion is considered failure to replicate in other fields.


> The experimental method itself does not work.


Wrong. This is so profoundly wrong, I can't believe you keep saying it. Cold
fusion is one field among many. And progress in science has kept pace by
scientists who reject cold fusion, and no progress to speak of has been made
by scientists who embrace cold fusion. So, I'm gonna say that the scientists
who reject it are using a better method.


You know of course that N-rays and polywater represent precedents for
experts widely applying what they considered to be the scientific method,
using the tools of science, but in the end, being completely wrong. I know
you see these as very different, but in fact, the parallel is pretty good.
There were 200 publications on N-rays, and 450 or so on polywater (over
about 12 years). Cold fusion is bigger than either, with a little more than
twice the publications than there were on polywater, but then it's a more
subtle measurement -- more difficult to disprove, and the implications of
the phenomenon are far greater, therefore attracting more attention. The
polywater people could have said it's not like N-rays because there are
twice as many papers, and twice as many scientists, but in fact it was like
N-rays. And if you can get 450 papers, with more than 100 in one year, with
the authors all wrong, every single one of them, it's not a stretch to
imagine twice (or even 10 times) that if an unequivocal debunking doesn't
come along. This sort of delusional science happens a lot, and the bigger
the potential rewards, and the longer you spend chasing them, the harder it
is to give up.


>His attitude reminds me of the global warming deniers'.


Well, then we're even, because the attitude of cold fusion advocates reminds
me of global warming deniers. And I think the comparison favors me, because
in both fields, a small fringe group of self-interested people is making
claims completely contrary to the nearly unanimous viewpoint of the
scientific establishment. And I'm on the same side on both issues.



> Those deniers are more on solid ground that Cude is, because climate
simulation on computers is inherently more nebulous and open to question
than, say, measuring 100 W of heat output with no input, in a heat after
death boil-off.


As a matter of fact, I agree that climate simulation is more difficult than
demonstrating 100W out with zero in. That's why I remain skeptical of the CF
claims. 100W out with zero in should be as obvious as a burning match, but
where is the demonstration of it? If you've got 100W coming from an
electrode, put it in an isolated beaker and show that it stays hotter than
its surroundings. Get it to boil water in an isolated beaker, and bring that
sucker to the DOE, and if they don't fund you to the hilt, then I'll agree
science is fucked up. But that's not happening is it? You know it's not
happening. That's why you wrote, in this forum:



"With a small (half liter) insulated cell, the surface area should be small
enough that the heat from the outer wall will be palpable (that is,
sensible). ... It is utterly impossible to fake palpable heat I do not
think any scientist will dispute this. ...An object that remains palpably
warmer than the surroundings is as convincing as anything can be..."


That's why you wrote on April 26:


"Gene Mallove and I used to say that if we only had a demonstration kit we
could persuade the world that cold fusion is real."


If 100W out with zero in does not represent a demonstration kit, then you're
doing something wrong. Very wrong.


> […] But those climate researchers cannot do a simple, 19th century
test-tube experiments to prove they are right, whereas cold fusion
researchers can.


But they haven't.


> A climate researcher cannot take put an entire planet into a test tube and
subject it to several centuries of increased CO2 concentration to see what
happens. So their results will never be as compelling as Fleischmann's were
in 1992.


And yet compelling enough to produce almost complete unanimity among climate
scientists, whereas P&F's results have convinced virtually no nuclear
scientists at all.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Jed Rothwell]

Unlike Abd, I did not propose to taken on Cude, and I still do not.

I will say, however, that his views seem to boil down to an assertion 
that conventional instruments and techniques do not work. Calorimetry 
and x-ray film do not work. Replications by hundreds of researchers mean 
nothing. The experimental method itself does not work.


This seems unlikely. As I have often said, if that were true, we would 
still be living in caves.


His attitude reminds me of the global warming deniers'. Those deniers 
are more on solid ground that Cude is, because climate simulation on 
computers is inherently more nebulous and open to question than, say, 
measuring 100 W of heat output with no input, in a heat after death 
boil-off.


I do not doubt global warming is real. I assume the experts are correct 
and it is caused by CO2. I cannot judge the issue myself, but in my 
experience, expert scientists are usually right. But those climate 
researchers cannot do a simple, 19th century test-tube experiments to 
prove they are right, whereas cold fusion researchers can. A climate 
researcher cannot take put an entire planet into a test tube and subject 
it to several centuries of increased CO2 concentration to see what 
happens. So their results will never be as compelling as Fleischmann's 
were in 1992.


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[Rich Murray]

Thanks for: "... Nevertheless, In my view you may not have adequately
rebuttaled the bulk of Joshua's rebuttals in an honorable fashion"

Let's encourage non ad hominem, civil, polite, gracious, patient,
evidence and detail oriented, genteel, lightly humorous, collaborative
communication -- one of the finest cultural innovations in human
history -- the destiny of any intrepid explorer is a path littered
with mistakes.

Rich Murray

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 11:32 AM, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson
 wrote:
> Ok, Joshua Cude IS aware of Abd's posts. Good.
>
> ...
>
> From Abd
>
>> I have not read the rest of his [Cude's] trash.
>> I have actual research to do.
>
> In my view such pithy responses tend to reveal petulant behavior and a
> little bit of immaturity too.
>
> Keep in mind, Abd, several days ago you essentially threw the gauntlet
> down in front of Joshua's feet by posting several tediously long reams
> of critique of Cude-Speak. Surely you expected a thorough rebuttal
> from the defendant.
>
> Granted, you admit the possibility that you might owe Cude an apology,
> because you relied on media reports for the admitted inadequate
> January demo. Nevertheless, In my view you may not have adequately
> rebuttaled the bulk of Joshua's rebuttals in an honorable fashion. You
> have instead concluded with what appears to me to be a lot of sweeping
> statements of primarily subjective interpretation concerning Joshua's
> modus operandi.
>
> Concluding with "I have actual research to do." comes across to me
> more like defensive bluster as compared to a stated fact. I know you
> have actual research to do. But IMHO you aren't doing yourself any
> favors using the above line as an excuse not to rebut Cude's
> perceptions.
>
> Regards
> Steven Vincent Johnson
> www.OrionWorks.com
> www.zazzle.com/orionworks
>
>

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson]

Ok, Joshua Cude IS aware of Abd's posts. Good.

...

>From Abd

> I have not read the rest of his [Cude's] trash.
> I have actual research to do.

In my view such pithy responses tend to reveal petulant behavior and a
little bit of immaturity too.

Keep in mind, Abd, several days ago you essentially threw the gauntlet
down in front of Joshua's feet by posting several tediously long reams
of critique of Cude-Speak. Surely you expected a thorough rebuttal
from the defendant.

Granted, you admit the possibility that you might owe Cude an apology,
because you relied on media reports for the admitted inadequate
January demo. Nevertheless, In my view you may not have adequately
rebuttaled the bulk of Joshua's rebuttals in an honorable fashion. You
have instead concluded with what appears to me to be a lot of sweeping
statements of primarily subjective interpretation concerning Joshua's
modus operandi.

Concluding with "I have actual research to do." comes across to me
more like defensive bluster as compared to a stated fact. I know you
have actual research to do. But IMHO you aren't doing yourself any
favors using the above line as an excuse not to rebut Cude's
perceptions.

Regards
Steven Vincent Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com
www.zazzle.com/orionworks

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[Rich Murray]

Joshua Cude to vortex-l
show details 2:21 PM (7 hours ago)

Part 2B

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:01 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
 wrote:

. > There are now about 17 reviews of cold fusion (not primary
papers, there are many more of them) that have been published in
mainstream peer-reviewed journals since 2005. .

In part, Joshua Cude replied:

. By my count last December, from Britz's CF bibliography, since
2004, there have been maybe 20 - 25 peer-reviewed papers reasonably
closely related to the subject (excluding reviews, comments, and
papers on hydrinos).
Of those, 5 can be considered negative, and maybe 9 are theory papers.
I identified 9 experimental claims of positive results in 6 years, or
less than 2 per year.
And of those, 5 are from the Mosier-Boss group on dubious claim of
tracks in CR-39, and  two or three are on sub-watt level gas-loading.

So I'd say there are fewer positive, experimental, primary papers than reviews.
That's a sign of a dying field.
Those reviews?
Obituaries!


> There are no negative reviews.

People don't write reviews of dying fields. What would be the point?

> At this point, there is a massive imbalance, and one would think that, say, 
> Nature, or Science, would realize that the other journals are eating their 
> lunch.

Which journals? NW, with an impact factor of 2 and change? I'm sure
they're sweating.


> Surely if a negative review can be written, of all this research and review 
> that is appearing under peer review, it would be!

Why? The believers have demonstrated stubborn resistance to reason.
And the vast majority of mainstream science already ignores it.
Pouring salt on the wounds of CF advocates would be seen as not only a
waste of time, but unnecessarily impolite. .

Rich Murray:  Again, Joshua Cude describes with simple facts the
actual present rate of positive peer-reviewed cold fusions claims in
recent years --
"... less than 2 per year."

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 05:21 PM 5/24/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:

Part 2B

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:01 PM, Abd ul-Rahman 
Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote:


> The thrust of the Gozzi paper is opposite to 
what Cude wants us to conclude from his 
citation of it. In the body of the paper, Gozzi concluded this:


> [yada, yada, yada, … On the other hand, the 
low levels of 4He do not give the necessary 
confidence to state definitely that we are 
dealing with the fusion of deuterons to give 4He… yada, yada yada ]


> This is far, far stronger than Cude implies. 
Cude cannot be trusted, at all.


So, Cude has *again* extracted a statement from 
it's context (replacing crucial text with 
"yada"), a context which makes it clear that Cude's interpretation is a lie.


'Nuff said.

I have not read the rest of his trash. I have actual research to do. 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 05:10 PM 5/24/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:
--extensive reasoning from conclusions.

I think I'm over engaging in religious debate. Believe your religion 
if you like, Cude, I hope it provides you with comfort. I do wonder, 
though, why you hide behind a pseudonym.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 04:20 PM 5/24/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:

(His usual tendentious missing the forest for the trees blather.)

I may own Cude an apology, because I relied on media reports for the 
January demonstration information. It is conceivable that his 
criticism of the length of time that the device was producing power 
is cogent. If I cared, I might even check it out. I don't.


Basically, it doesn't matter. The January demonstration was way 
unconvincing to a lot of people. My own conclusion has been that 
Rossi did not want it to be fully convincing, his motivations are 
complex. He doesn't need public demonstrations at all, for his 
business purpose, it seems to me. He's got strong business reasons 
for confusing the evidence trail, if the E-Cat is not fraud. And, of 
course, if it's fraud, he has the same motivation.


The case bristles with reasons to be suspicious. But there are also 
other factors.


I'm far more familiar with the evidence for cold fusion, and it's 
conclusive, and Cude's assumption -- which is also found in quite a 
bit of criticism of Rossi (or even praise of Rossi) -- that cold 
fusion evidence isn't solid is the same old same old we've been 
hearing for years.


It can't make it past peer review, whereas CF papers are, routinely. 
CF is the new mainstream, even if a huge number of mainstream 
scientists, unaware of the evidence, imagine otherwise.


Cude is anonymous, with zero credibility. He may mix fact into his 
pie, but most of it is mud.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Rich Murray]

In Part IB, Joshua Cude says:

Let's look at the input power and the temperature in some detail, shall we?

Levi actually plots a graph of the input power in his report, and if
you watch the video, you can get a pretty good picture of the
temperature vs time graph -- better than what's in Levi's report.
Fortunately, the people at
www.esowatch.com/en/index.php?title=Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyzer
have done so and reconstructed the temperature graph.
Here's what happens:

The power is turned on at 1250 W at time zero.
Then at 29 minutes (more than a few), the temperature reaches boiling
point (101C).
At 30 minutes, one minute after boiling begins, the power is reduced to 400 W.
But oops, they jumped the gun.
The reactor probably produces a little heat, and the system has some
thermal mass, which keeps the outlet water at boiling even after the
power has been reduced, but not long enough, because at 39 minutes (9
minutes after the power reduction), the temperature dips below the
boiling point for 2 minutes.
Someone must have noticed this, because at 40 minutes, the input power
is cranked hard to 1550 W, and the temperature returns to the boiling
point. At 49 minutes, the power is reduced to 700 W.
The reactor was probably not producing much heat by that time, because
almost immediately the temperature begins to drop gradually.
At 56 minutes, the power is turned off, and the temperature continues
dropping to ambient.

Rich Murray:

Clearly, the simple evidence so far made available shows that the
input electric heater power is enough to raise the water flow to
boiling.

The Rossi reactor is a scam.

I congratulate Joshua Cude on his outstanding clarity and attention to
significant details.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 4:00 PM, Jouni Valkonen wrote:


valkonen> in my knowledge Rossi has never had an urge to demonstrate
anything

and convince anybody.


In your knowledge? That's not really very persuasive. He says that, sure, so
that he has an excuse when the demo sucks, as they all have so far, with the
possible exception of the secret one.



> January demo was just Focardi's idea and it was

in relation to the fact that Levi is right now running research

program at University of Bologna. And University of Upsala will join

soon if not already joined.


Rossi claimed the January demo was done under protest (his). I have not seen
similar claims for the other demos. Those seem more voluntary. But then, I
stopped reading the comments on his blog. Too inane.


> Of course there is one billion way to fake short demonstrations, but I

will tell you that accusing faulty thermometers for measuring dryness

of steam, is not the easiest way!


I have not accused faulty thermometers. I have suggested the bp is elevated
inside the conduit so the temperature reading, as reported, do not indicate
dry steam. On the contrary, they indicate the presence of liquid.


> Rossi does not even want too much publicity, because this way he has

more time to work.


Sure. If you believe him. But why would you? He's been caught in so many
lies, I find it amazing people pay attention to what he says. Now, what he
does is another matter, but unfortunately, so far, there is nothing of note
there either.


> And as he is the head of Leonardo Corporation who

will manufacture E-Cats for American market I am sure that he has

other ambitions than to convince those who suffer from pathological

skepticism.


Obviously. His marks are the pathological believers. I think the reason he
would prefer to keep a rather low profile is to avoid any serious scrutiny
from real skeptics. At the current level, he is only attracting the true
believers like flies to honey. The ones who don't seem to think it's
necessary to monitor *flow* in a *flow* calorimeter.  (Oh, and the likes of
me who enjoy the sport, and have too much time on their hands.)

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[Joshua Cude]

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
wrote:

>
>> No one said the helium is orders of magnitude about the detection limit.
>> That's absurd. If it was, we would probably be able to zero in on the exact
>> process that created it. It is significantly above the detection limit. It
>> is also far below the level it would be if it leaked in from the air. It is
>> not possible to have a controlled leak that would correlate so neatly with
>> the energy release during the time the helium is collected.
>>
>
> Right. Across many cells.
>
> Helium is found orders of magnitude above the detection limit, as I recall,
> but not in Miles' work.
>


When you said it in February, you were replying to my message in reference
to Miles' work. And yes Miles does claim orders of magnitude above the
detection limit; at least 2 orders. Don't you guys read the literature?

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

>
> Heat, it is claimed, can be measured to mW, the helium, it is claimed, is
>>> orders of magnitude above the detection limit, and yet the errors are huge.
>>>
>>
>> Notice that Cude doesn't mention how accurately the helium can be
>> measured.
>
>
> No one said the helium is orders of magnitude about the detection limit.
> That's absurd. If it was, we would probably be able to zero in on the exact
> process that created it.
>


No one? Well lomax did. You know, the guy who did such a good analysis. He
said it in this forum, on Feb 22:

> That is simply not true, again. They are not working close to detection
limits, what made you think that? They are, if I'm correct, three orders of
magnitude above detection limit. They are working around or sometimes below
ambient, a very different issue.

3 is plural right, so it's accurate to say "orders of magnitude".

Anyway, Miles claims orders of magnitude too. Remember, they eyeballed 3
peak sizes and assigned them at the detection limit (poorly known), and one
and two orders above the detection limit. I know, pretty sloppy. But there
you are.

So, why can't they zero in on the exact process?

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:22 PM, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson <
orionwo...@charter.net> wrote:

>
> And then you cite how Cude gets the temperature measurements backwards.
>
> Abd, it is my hope that Cude becomes acutely aware of you and your
> obsessive
> analysis of Cude Speak.
>
>
>
Shame it was him that had the temperatures backwards.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 3

[Joshua Cude]

Part 3

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 8:45 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:


lomax>>>The original report of neutrons was artifact. The recent reports are
at levels vastly lower, but well above background.


cude>>Presumably you are referring to the CR-39 results, but these have been
observed by one group only, and the results have been challenged as to
whether they are in fact above background, and/or caused by artifacts.


lomax> "Have been challenged" covers a multitude of comments. Yes, there is
only one group reporting this result, […]

> There are some very cogent and serious objections to the early SPAWAR
CR-39 work, […]


So far, we're in pretty good agreement.


>> A project led by Krivit with a number of groups involved, and
pretentiously named the Galileo project, failed to confirm the CR-39
results.


> That, again, isn't true. Where is that conclusion found?


Krivit desperately tried to salvage something positive in his final report
of the project. It turns out that interpretation of the results is not so
unambiguous, that the brand of material affects results, that chemical
attacks on the material produce artifacts. Some of the participants
concluded evidence for nuclear reactions was absent, and Krivit was left
with the following pathetic consolation:


"Everyone who has reported results has found something anomalous, something
that they have had difficulty explaining by conventional science, and all of
their experiments are giving results, however mystifying they may be."


In the best tradition of pathological science, definitive results were just
out of reach.


> However, to me, the Earthtech results, which were not included in Krivit's
report on Galileo, were the best documented, and Scott Little comes up with
chemical damage as explaining what he found. It's a complex issue. There is,
in the earlier SPAWAR work, CR-39 results that look like radiation tracks,
and results that look like chemical damage, and no good analysis was done to
discriminate these, in my opinion. Not yet, anyway.


Like I said… the results have not been confirmed.


> What Cude glosses over is that the Galileo results have nothing to do with
the topic, neutrons.

Whatever. They were looking for nuclear events, and did not find conclusive
evidence. Neutrons are nuclear events.


>> So even these results, which in any case cannot explain the claimed heat,
are far from convincing.


> Heat isn't even measured in these experiments.


So what. Heat has been claimed in similar systems, but the claimed neutrons
are orders of magnitude below the level that could explain heat. So,
whatever's going on, it doesn't explain the heat. So now you have at least
two nuclear reactions that are only remotely likely going on. I'll take your
remote chance of Rossi being a fraud and square it.


>> Cude has "proof" on the brain, he's got an argument going on, all the
time. No claim was made that the neutron results were "convincing," and the
point was only that, if neutrons are produced, there are very few.


You said at the start of this:

> The recent reports are at levels vastly lower, but well above background.


Well above background should be convincing.


Anyway, not too long ago you wrote:

> Positive publication has exploded since 2004, […] including some stunning
reports, such as conclusive evidence of very low level neutron emissions
from certain CF cells,


So, *you* have claimed the results are convincing. You should make up your
mind.


> Lots of people consider the SPAWAR work convincing, as to neutrons, but
there is, indeed, an obvious problem, the lack of independent replication.


Right. Just like in all CF experiments.


>> Cold fusion experiments simply never get past marginal, controversial,
and dubious.


> Notice the absolute insanity of this. Cude has dismissed conclusive
correlation, and reviewing the literature, there is plenty of exhaustive,
careful work, demonstrating the effect beyond a reasonable doubt.


False. You may have no doubt. But most people doubt, including the DOE panel
who took the time to examine the evidence.


> But it's work to read that literature and to understand it, and someone
like Cude isn't likely to put in the work, and he will filter everything
through the lens of his expectations.


This is CF's problem, isn't it? And this actually confirms my "insane"
statement that CF experiments are all marginal, controversial, and dubious.
It takes work to read and understand that CF can produce GJ of energy per
gram of material on a desktop at accessible temperatures, even while proving
a million times less energy from a match head is child's play. If the claims
were valid, it would not be so difficult, so marginal, so controversial, so
dubious. It would be obvious.


> He's searching for error, for something he can pounce upon, and he will
always be able to find it,


Like Rothwell has said in this forum: a small isolated device indefinitely
warmer than the surroundings would be difficult to dispu

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[vorl bek]

Joshua Cude says:
> 
> The power is turned on at 1250 W at time zero. Then at 29
> minutes (more than a few), the temperature reaches boiling point
> (101C). At 30 minutes, one minute after boiling begins, the
> power is reduced to 400 W. But oops, they jumped the gun. The
> reactor probably produces a little heat, and the system has some
> thermal mass, which keeps the outlet water at boiling even after
> the power has been reduced, but not long enough, because at 39
> minutes (9 minutes after the power reduction), the temperature
> dips below the boiling point for 2 minutes.Someone must have
> noticed this, because at 40 minutes, the input power is cranked
> hard to 1550 W, and the temperature returns to the boiling
> point. At 49 minutes, the power is reduced to 700 W. The reactor
> was probably not producing much heat by that time, because
> almost immediately the temperature begins to drop gradually. At
> 56 minutes, the power is turned off, and the temperature
> continues dropping to ambient.

Wow, that makes the demo sound like rubbish. Can anyone refute
this?

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[Joshua Cude]

Part 2B

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:01 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:


> But, this is the point: Storm's analysis was recently accepted under peer
review.


Storms' analysis is a review of conference proceedings. Big deal.


> There is no contrary analysis in the literature.


There is no confirming experiment in peer-review yet. And Miles' results
have been challenged. Only people with a preconceived idea will waste time
analyzing a single, 15-year old, controversial experiment, before it has
been reproduced under peer-review.


> There are no contrary experiments.


None published, anyway. Also no confirming experiment published under
peer-review.


> Cude will imply that Gozzi is contrary.


Gozzi failed to confirm.


>> A very careful set of experiments looking for helium by Gozzi, which was
published in peer-reviewed literature in 1998, concludes that the evidence
for helium is not definitive.


> Gozzi concluded that his evidence, alone, was not "definitive." This is
selective quotation, out of context, […]

> From the abstract:

> The energy balance between heat excess and 4He in the gas phase has been
found to be reasonably satisfied even if the low levels of 4He do not give
the necessary confidence to state definitely that we are dealing with the
fusion of deuterons to give 4He.


> This makes it clear that Gozzi is using "definitive" in a very strong way.
Gozzi's results are consistent with what came before, Gozzi is "definitely"
a confirmation of the heat/helium correlation, but none of this work is
completely "definitive" as a proof that the reaction is entirely deuterium
-> helium.


No. He says the results are consistent with it, but don't prove it. That's
not a confirmation, any more than a falling rock, also consistent with
Miles, is a confirmation.


> The thrust of the Gozzi paper is opposite to what Cude wants us to
conclude from his citation of it. In the body of the paper, Gozzi concluded
this:

> [yada, yada, yada, … On the other hand, the low levels of 4He do not give
the necessary confidence to state definitely that we are dealing with the
fusion of deuterons to give 4He… yada, yada yada ]

> This is far, far stronger than Cude implies. Cude cannot be trusted, at
all.


Gozzi, in the all the yadas tries hard to paint a favorable picture of his
results, probably to cover his ass, to justify all the time he has wasted on
it. But his admission is unmistakeable, even in context. The evidence is not
definitive.


Normally, if a scientist fails to confirm something he is convinced of, and
that he believes has already been demonstrated, then he would improve the
experiment, and get *definite* confirmation. This is especially true if the
something is revolutionary, Nobel prize worthy, and has potential to save
the planet. In fact, it would be unforgivable not to keep trying under these
circumstances. So, what did Gozzi do in cold fusion after that paper?
Nothing, as far as I can see. He seems to have abandoned the field, except
for maybe a review paper in a collection of CF papers. That doesn't lend a
lot of confidence to all the context he provided.


>> The only results since Miles that Storms has deemed worthwhile to
calculate energy correlation come from conference proceedings, and the most
recent of those from year 2000.


> […] It's true: conference papers are not peer-reviewed, but what Cude
misses, doesn't want to bring up, is that *Storms* is peer-reviewed, and his
usage of those conference papers is, in fact, a kind of review. Storms paper
is a "review," and such reviews are not limited to what has been published
under peer review, and for good reason. The reviewer makes those judgments,
and the peer-reviewers of the review sign off on it.


Second-order review? Citation lends some credibility, sure, but no, it is
not the same as peer-review. I'm sure granting committees would not allow
you to list cited conference proceedings in the peer-reviewed publications
sectionof your application. The referees of a review do not referee the
source material. If they did, it would be like refereeing dozens of papers;
no one would accept the work. In fact, reviews are treated with less rigor
than original papers, not more, so none of the cited work could possibly be
subject to significant critique. In particular, the referee of a review
cannot ask for revision, or additional measurements in the source material.


But this discussion is silly anyway. Everyone knows that a peer-reviewed
publication is better than a conference proceeding. And heat/helium is a
pivotal experiment in cold fusion. So why would people not submit their work
to a credible journal? Or if they did, why was it not published. In this
experiment especially, the absence of peer-reviewed publication robs the
results of any credibility.


>> Nothing that Storms considers adequate quality in this critically
important experiment has met the standard of peer review.


>Yes, it has. It met that standard when Storms was reviewed.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[Joshua Cude]

Part 2A

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:01 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:


> Huizenga was impressed that the helium was within an order of magnitude of
the helium expected if the reaction was deuterium -> helium. Cude is now
completely blase about it. Ho-hum. Just another nutty cold fusion claim


How does Huizenga feel about it now after more than 15 years, and no
replications that pass peer-review? I'm pretty sure blase would describe it
pretty well.


> Miles did an extensive series of cells, I think it was 33 in all. Nobody
else, to my knowledge, has done that,


That's the problem. There are no peer-reviewed replications. But there were
peer-reviewed  challenges, and there was a peer-reviewed null result (too
weak to be definitive). When that happens in science, people normally do
better experiments to get replications, to obviate challenges, to get
definitive results. In cold fusion, there is nothing that passes
peer-review.


>> These were very crude experiments in which peaks were eyeballed as small,
medium, and large, the small taken as equal to the detection limit (which
seemed to change by orders of magnitude over the years).


> Measuring helium in an experiment with mass spectrometry which involves
deuterium is extremely difficult,


and therefore prone to error. Presumably experiments get better over time,
but Gozzi's experiment is less definitive than Miles', and nothing has
passed peer review since.


> The real meat of this is the correlation, not the correlation value, as
long as that value is within range.


For a preliminary experiment, like Miles', that's ok, but the value gives
the measurement credibility, especially if it's consistent, and there are no
material inconsistencies to interfere with this. If Miles' preliminary
results were believable, there would be a race among scientists to get
associated with the definitive experiment, to publish in Nature, to get the
Nobel prize. Instead, crickets.


> Cude wants to deprecate "eyeballing," but naturally, since his purpose is
only to indict evidence and not to examine it neutrally, he doesn't mention
that Miles used a lab which didn't know what the cell behavior was that the
samples came from. So these were blind measurements.  If the correlation
between heat and helium did not exist, the results would have been nowhere
near so clear.


We really have to trust the experimenters that this was blind, because no
one has been able to reproduce his results under peer-review. And because,
in spite of these blind measurements, Jones found plenty of reasons to
believe the results would have been "so clear" without nuclear reactions.
And because, in spite of Miles' results, scientists in the main, including
Huizenga, do not believe evidence for nuclear reactions is conclusive. And
that includes 17 of 18 members of the DOE panel that examined cold fusion,
and to whom Miles' results were available.


>> Even in the best of Miles results, the energy per helium varies by more
than a factor of 3.


> Remember, Huizenga thought an order of magnitude, a factor of 10, was
amazing.


For a preliminary experiment in 1994. He was holding out for replication,
which under peer-review has not yet come.


> Further, Miles' results are overall statistics, and loss of helium can
easily occur in various ways. (As well as leakage into the cell from
ambient,


All these problems, yet you have so much confidence...


> Sometimes skeptics, looking at this, have theorized that, since the cells
in which helium was found were "hotter," they think, perhaps this enhanced
leakage. However, they were not necessarily any hotter, the amount of heat
measured by calorimetry wasn't high, and this objection is also addressed by
later work, by McKubre, where helium levels, measured over time, approached
and exceeded ambient with no reduction in rate, as would be expected from
leakage. With McKubre's flow calorimetry, as I recall, the cell temperature
is held constant (at an elevated temperature above ambient), and the power
necessary to maintain that temperature is recorded. Constant temperature. So
much for that alleged artifact.


Such great results, but he didn't see fit to publish them in a credible
journal? Odd. It is also odd how these results have been severely criticized
for consistency and credibility by a journalist and LENR advocate. That's
why peer-review exists. So scientific results are not vulnerable to a lay
person's criticism.


>>Miles' results were severely criticized by Jones in peer-reviewed
literature. And although there was considerable back and forth on the
results, and in Storms view (of course) Miles successfully defended his
claims, that kind of disagreement and large variation simply cries out for
new and better experiments. So what have we got since?


> Sure, in an ideal world, there would be more work. Still will be, but this
is not where the money is.


That's ridiculous. That's exactly where the money is. The heat-helium
correlation, if reproduci

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Jouni Valkonen]

Dear Joshua,

in my knowledge Rossi has never had an urge to demonstrate anything
and convince anybody. January demo was just Focardi's idea and it was
in relation to the fact that Levi is right now running research
program at University of Bologna. And University of Upsala will join
soon if not already joined.

Of course there is one billion way to fake short demonstrations, but I
will tell you that accusing faulty thermometers for measuring dryness
of steam, is not the easiest way!

Right now we do not have any other evidence for Rossi's device but the
word from Levi, Bianchini and Passerini who were present at 18 hours
demo and are independent sources as we know. And some dozen people
from Defkalion and LTI/Ampenergo who has run their own private
demonstrations.

Rossi does not even want too much publicity, because this way he has
more time to work. And as he is the head of Leonardo Corporation who
will manufacture E-Cats for American market I am sure that he has
other ambitions than to convince those who suffer from pathological
skepticism.

Regards,

Jouni


2011/5/24 Joshua Cude :
>
> The fact that it still isn't obvious, months after the first "public" demo,
> means it almost certainly doesn't work. 10 kW and a million times the energy
> density of gasoline! Allegedly reproducible and stable. How can that be so
> hard to demonstrate?
>

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

Part 1D

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:


cude>> But the best evidence that the thing doesn’t produce excess power is
the fact that it can’t power itself.


lomax> But, apparently, it can.


You mean "allegedly".


> The problem is that controlling it, fully self-powered, is very difficult,
they have not engineered it for that yet.


Excuses. Excuses. Rossi is an engineer. So engineer it for that.


> There is only one access, at this point, to reaction control, which is
controlling the temperature of the reactor. If you allow the thing to
self-power, what controls the reactor temperature?


The power obviously. If you really need power to control it, then use that
30x energy gain to generate some power.


But really, this is excuse is extremely lame, for many reasons.


1. Using heat to prevent runaway seems completely crazy. It is implausible
that cutting the power by 10% or less would stop a runaway condition, when
the variation in claimed output levels is far greater than 10%. In the
February experiment the claimed input was 80 W, less than 1 % of the output
when it peaked briefly at 120 kW. Does he expect us to believe that that
subtracting 80 W from 120 kW will shut down the reaction, even while they
claim it operates perfectly well at 15 kW?


2. It makes much more sense to vary the flow rate of the coolant with a
solenoid valve to control the reaction. Then you can actually remove heat to
try to stop the reaction, rather than just stop adding heat. Of course a
solenoid valve needs power too, but only a few watts, and could be
controlled for several days with a suitable lithium battery.


3. But as I mentioned before, they could power a stirling engine between the
inflowing and outflowing water and use it to run a generator to produce the
electricity needed. The efficiency would be low of course, but he's claiming
30x gain, and keep in mind that the heat that's expelled by the engine could
still be used to heat the coolant in the first stage, so the ability to
generate steam would only be compromised by the energy that's actually
converted to electricity.


> (And if he's a fraud, this will all be over, I predict, by the end of the
year. It won't be possible to maintain.)


You have no faith. Have you not seen how long Mills has dragged it out. Even
Dardik continues to get money with absolutely nothing to show for it since
2004.


Like the others, Rossi will have technical problems -- explosions maybe --
and delays, and new promises will replace the old. It will always be real
soon now. There may be some semi-commercial devices claimed, but it will
never be possible for just anyone to buy a device for completely independent
testing. And if it is, and the thing passes, I'll rejoice along with
everyone else. But it won't happen. Too bad.


>> When a salesman comes to your door selling a new source of energy, and
the first thing he asks is where to plug it in, be very suspicious.


> If a salesman comes to my door selling about anything, I'll be suspicious.
But, Joshua, what about Fukashima? Do you think that the reactor there
needed to be "plugged in" -- for safety -- meant that the energy produced
was doubtful?


First. Fission is past the stage of proof of principle.

Second. Cold fusion is supposed to *not* be like big reactors. It's a
desktop device after all.

Third. Fukushima normally runs without external power. It needs power when
the reactor fails. So sure, have a big knife switch ready to close in the
event of a runaway condition. But again, how is *adding heat* going to shut
down the reaction?


Fourth. Fukushima uses external power to cool the system. Rossi uses it to
heat the system. If he used his power to regulate the flow of the coolant,
this argument might be more convincing.


> If the salesman can demonstrate a volume of hot water heated, showing 12
kW of power being generated (repeated buckets of a certain volume at a
certain temperature, fed with tap water at a certain temperature), and this
thing doesn't blow fuses, I don't care if it's plugged in.


Then you're a fool. Because if you can heat something with better efficiency
than a heat pump, then you can run that heat pump backwards to produce the
needed input power, and you require no input at all. (Practically, of
course, you's have to exceed the COP of a heat pump by a factor of 2 or so
for irreversible losses, but the Rossi ecat is allegedly well beyond that
requirement.


In short, if such a device as you describe exists, and it is better than a
heat pump, then an infinitely better device can be made using
well-established principles. That it doesn't exist should indicate to
intelligent customers that they are victims of sleight of hand.


> An analogy to Cude's objection. Someone comes to my door to sell me a
portable gas stove, I can use it, he claims, to cook and heat water while
I'm camping. To demonstrate it to me, he asks me for a match, he left his at
home. I toss him out, since, if it 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

Part 1C

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:


lomax> What Cude is betraying is his own severe bias: [incoherent
psychobabble]


That's your own fervent wish. But really, I'm just pointing out that there
is no evidence for a new energy source. I'd like nothing better than a car
that doesn't need refuelling, or electricity to cheap to meter, or
elimination of CO2 emissions. Who wouldn't?


It's all about evidence. So far, Rossi hasn't given us any.


cude>> Rossi is remarkably successful at choosing observers who do not ask
any difficult questions, or request any embarrassing measurements.


lomax> Rossi has been asked difficult questions by the observers, how could
Cude know that he hasn't?


Well, his demonstrations do not resolve any of the questions. Flow rates are
not monitored, and there is no evidence presented that the steam is dry.


> The physicist-observers have said that Rossi's theory doesn't make sense.
They are't buying it at all. But they are also not denying the evidence,


Maybe they don't bother to look at the details. What with Rossi's shady
past, his unorthodox, non-scientific process, it's enough to save the
bother.


>and, yes, Rossi probably is not selecting people who might pull a Feynman.

> (I sat with Feynman at Cal Tech, and love the late physicist, but he made
a horrible mistake one day. He was witnessing a demonstration of a claimed
energy device, and he surreptitiously pulled the plug, attempting to show
that the claimed energy was coming from the mains.


He's not afraid of someone pulling a Feynman, he's afraid of someone pulling
a Wood, who, as you know, debunked N-rays with sabotage.


Incidentally, Feynman's account is a little different. The inventor, Papp,
pulled the plug and handed it to Feynman. Feynman just stalled before he
gave it back. Feynman was suspicious that the explosion was deliberate
(albeit unintentionally powerful) to avoid an imminent evaluation at SRI, to
stall his scam for a little longer. In any case, Feynman was right about the
energy scam: although the formulas were disclosed in patents, the machine
has never worked, and has now disappeared -- just like Rossi's ecat will.


> Recent news can give us a clue as to the hazards of removing power from
the control mechanisms in an energy device. It's called Fukashima.)


Except that the power at Fukushima provides cooling (when the power from the
plant itself fails). Rossi's power provides heating.


Cude>> Such questions have been repeatedly pointed out in online forums from
the first January experiment: check and *monitor* input flow rate; monitor
the output flow rate; check dependence of steam temperature on input flow
rate (in particular, why is it always pinned at the boiling point, when if
it were dry, it would likely climb well above the bp). It seems impossible
that the 3 Swedes could not have been familiar with these objections, and
yet they made no attempt to resolve them.


Lomax> Cude thinks he's cute. Lots of variations have been proposed, but a
central problem here is that Rossi really doesn't care whether he proves
this thing or not.


That's only what he says. And yet he's doing demos for various scientists,
writing papers and reports on his blog, answering questions, albeit as
obliquely as possible. He clearly wants credibility without scrutiny.


> The best test approach, to my mind, was where the flow rate was increased
so that the water didn't boil, thus avoiding the whole wet steam/dry steam
issue. […] That was the February test, which was witnessed only by Levi. It
was a stunning result, in fact, but, of course, we are depending on Levi not
colluding with Rossi.


Of course. That's a better test approach to everyone's mind. And that
emphasizes the point that he is not responding to critics. The only time he
has done this is in secret, with his trusted grantee by his side. He hasn't
written it up, even informally on his blog. It's all hearsay.


Why, if heating the water is so much better, does he always use the boiling
water demo when slightly more arms-length people are present?


And even if you accept the unverified numbers in the 18-hr test, things look
suspicious: If, as you claim elsewhere, ignition happens at about 450C,
corresponding presumably to the 15 kW output, how do you explain the 130 kW
excursion? That would require a temperature of more than 3000C in the
reactor:


 (450 - 30)*130/15 + 30 = 3670


In any case, a private experiment cannot be used as evidence that a public
demo is legit.


> >Oddly, they measure the temperature every few seconds during the boiling
phase, even though temperature isn’t expected to change during a 6-fold
increase in power, but they don’t measure the flow rate of the output gas,
which would actually change in proportion to the output power, thereby
providing some evidence of the power increase. Instead they make one or two
“visual” inspections of this far more critical metric.


> He's talking about one demonstra

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

Part 1B

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:

lomax> We know from Aleklett's previous blog post on this that he personally
knows Kullander, the "person" whom Cude so cavalierly dismisses as if he
were some shill. From his blog:


I said Kullander was on record as being sympathetic, and that is true.


And in spite of Aleklett's personal knowledge of and respect for Kullander,
he nevertheless does not share his conviction that there must be nuclear
processes going on. I am sure that, as his colleague, Aleklett feels a
little constrained in his expression of skepticism. I have no such
restrictions.


> And Cude's comment on Mats Lewan, the Ny Teknik reporter (highly qualified
and professional), is simply an evidence-free cheap shot.


Not evidence free. The main objections to the E&K demo were about the
dryness of the steam. But, when Lewan flies out to Italy to see it for
himself, what is his check on the steam? He holds the hose up or lets it
bubble in a bucket of water. And it proves that the steam is far from dry
because the flow rate is obviously far below the nearly 2 L/s that would
correspond to dry steam.


There is no measurement of steam flow rate.


He checks the power at the beginning of the experiment, but then ignores it,
and when he pans his camera back from the hose bucket into the room with the
ecat, there is Rossi with his hands on the power device, and a look like
he's swallowed a canary.


Lewan suggests that the temperature of the steam a degree above the off-line
boiling point is evidence of dryness, blissfully ignorant that the increased
pressure inside the conduit will elevate the boiling point. When challenged
on this in the comments, he said he blew through the ecat with hardly any
resistance. Please! A flow rate requires a pressure difference, and simple
calculations can verify a degree increase is completely consistent the
observed flow rate.


These things are not characteristic of someone highly qualified and
professional. This is a reporter who dropped the ball, because he already
believed in Rossi. And Rossi's probably good at spotting people he's already
won over. It's a prerequisite for the job.


> In examining a body of evidence and comparing it with reports, it's always
possible to find apparent contradictions.


It's not always possible to find real contradictions that completely neuter
the conclusions. Those are the ones I'm talkin about.


> but I'll note that many have been over this evidence with a fine-tooth
comb,


No one has given good evidence that the steam is dry. And it would be easy
to do. That comb is missing a few teeth.


> and Cude's interpretations certainly are not as accepted and obvious as
he'd like us to believe. "Brief reduction to 400 W"? This is what the
physorg.com report has:


> The reactor uses less than 1 gram of hydrogen and starts with about 1,000
W of electricity, which is reduced to 400 W after a few minutes.


Oh. I'm disappointed in you. You picked the 400W claim to challenge me? You
haven't read Levi's report, I guess. Or you didn't look at the pictures.


Let's look at the input power and the temperature in some detail, shall we?


Levi actually plots a graph of the input power in his report, and if you
watch the video, you can get a pretty good picture of the temperature vs
time graph -- better than what's in Levi's report. Fortunately, the people
at www.esowatch.com/en/index.php?title=Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyzer have
done so and reconstructed the temperature graph. Here's what happens:


The power is turned on at 1250 W at time zero. Then at 29 minutes (more than
a few), the temperature reaches boiling point (101C). At 30 minutes, one
minute after boiling begins, the power is reduced to 400 W. But oops, they
jumped the gun. The reactor probably produces a little heat, and the system
has some thermal mass, which keeps the outlet water at boiling even after
the power has been reduced, but not long enough, because at 39 minutes (9
minutes after the power reduction), the temperature dips below the boiling
point for 2 minutes.Someone must have noticed this, because at 40 minutes,
the input power is cranked hard to 1550 W, and the temperature returns to
the boiling point. At 49 minutes, the power is reduced to 700 W. The reactor
was probably not producing much heat by that time, because almost
immediately the temperature begins to drop gradually. At 56 minutes, the
power is turned off, and the temperature continues dropping to ambient.


> The input power, which is initially used to raise the temperature of the
reactor to operating temperature, is scaled back to 400 watts for the
remainder of the demonstration, not "for a few minutes." See also
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MacyMspecificso.pdf and other reports on the
January demonstration.


You are wrong.  But you can be forgiven, because the report you cite, and
the text of Levi's report make errors too.


The power was reduced to 400W for 11 minutes. That's 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Joshua Cude]

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:

Part 1A

Cude >>So far, claimed evidence for excess heat in a Rossi apparatus has
been observed directly only by people vetted by Rossi. First Levi, who was
on Rossi’s editorial board, and the recipient of research funding from
Rossi. Then Essen & Kallander who were on record as being sympathetic to the
Rossi device. And lastly journalist/blogger Lewan, who was on record as
being an uncritical Rossi groupie.


Lomax > Cude is correct as to observers. […]  This isn't like ordinary cold
fusion, where the experiment was very difficult to set up. If this thing
works or doesn't work, it will be obvious.


Exactly. And yet it still isn't. If it were obvious, the media and
scientists would be all over it.  The royal wedding would look like a small
media event by comparison. Rossi would have Bob Park, Steve Koonin, Oprah,
and Tom Brokaw all breathing down his neck.


But no, it's not obvious at all. And if real, it would be dead easy to make
it obvious. If you really need input electricity, run a Stirling engine to
power a generator. With a 30x energy gain, and an 80C temperature
difference, the efficiency would be plenty high enough. Then without any
input power at all, use the device (including the waste heat from powering
the Stirling engine) to heat a 1000L tub of water to boiling. This would be
completely visual, requiring no expert observers. Some vigilance would be
required because it might take some time, especially if you want to run it
long enough to rule out chemical fuel by an order of magnitude or more.


The need for this sort of standalone cold fusion device has been admitted by
Rothwell, and it is very clear that Rossi's device does not meet the
standard.


The fact that it still isn't obvious, months after the first "public" demo,
means it almost certainly doesn't work. 10 kW and a million times the energy
density of gasoline! Allegedly reproducible and stable. How can that be so
hard to demonstrate?


> It is to the point, already, where "fraud" is, first of all, the only
possibility besides "it's real," and "fraud" has become so remote that
*believing* it is a fraud is insane, hanging one's hat on something quite
unlikely.


Whether it's fraud or incompetence or something else is irrelevant to me.
Until good evidence for a new energy source is freely available, I will
remain skeptical.


But surely cold fusion advocates should not be dissuaded by something
because it's likelihood is remote. After all, physicists have been
dismissing nuclear reactions with more or less the same language: the chance
of nuclear reactions is so remote that believing it is insane, hanging one's
hat on something quite unlikely. Of the two, fraud or nuclear reactions in a
Rossi ecat, most physicists, and evidently most media, regard fraud as a far
less remote possibility.


> This is an invention, not yet clearly well protected by patent, and Rossi,
if we assume this is real, has many sound reasons to keep it very private.


Whatever. He could make an obvious demonstration while keeping his black box
private.


> As far as we can tell, so far, he hasn't solicited funding, except from
Ampenergo, a reputable company in the U.S., formed by people who have long
worked with Rossi, they know him well.


Well, the problem is we can't tell very far, can we? Until a week or so ago,
we didn't know about Ampenergo, and Rossi's lack of funding was held up as
evidence against fraud. Then Ampenergo money shows up, and that is held up
as evidence against fraud, because the investors musta checked it carefully.
So, no matter if he's gotten money or he hasn't, the believers use it as
proof that it's real. Kinda sad.


Mills has been milking H-Ni exotherms for millions of dollars for years,
with only a series of failed promises to show for it. Now, maybe Rossi
figures he wants a piece of the action.

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Rich Murray]

Worse than not believing in calorimetry or even the laws of
thermodynamics,"I" am unable to treat any perception, sensation,
emotion, memory, word, concept, history, or identity as actual and
real.

What's here is single entire unified creative fractal hyperinfinity.

The tiniest spot of a fractal expresses the same order of infinite
complexity as the whole fractal -- the Mandelbrot Set is a simple
example within the framework of the real line continuum.

When in Rome, act like a Roman...  so I pretend to go along with the
conventional 'linear personality in a body in a world' simulation.

For helpful clarifications, search "nonduality".

Dream-like magic and miracles saturate our apparently staid standard
consensus reality.

People and groups do indeed materialize phenomena in apparati
according to their fervent faith.

A Course in Miracles: "It is not until beliefs are fixed that
perceptions stabilize."

But what is actually going on is untouched by beliefs and perceptions.

What is experienced is not a central core self, but absolute dynamic
wide openness, like infinite sourceless light.

So, the finger that points at the Moon is not the Moon.

"Rich"


On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:00 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:
> Rich Murray  wrote:
>
>>
>> I agree also with Cude's evaluation that there is no replicable
>> evidence for any form of cold fusion since 1989:
>
> That can only mean you do not believe that calorimetry works. I presume you
> also believe the laws of thermodynamics are unproven, since they are also
> based on calorimetry.
> Or do you only doubt that calorimetry works when it used to measure the cold
> fusion effect?
> - Jed
>

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Jed Rothwell]

Rich Murray  wrote:


> I agree also with Cude's evaluation that there is no replicable
> evidence for any form of cold fusion since 1989:
>

That can only mean you do not believe that calorimetry works. I presume you
also believe the laws of thermodynamics are unproven, since they are also
based on calorimetry.

Or do you only doubt that calorimetry works when it used to measure the cold
fusion effect?

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[Rich Murray]

Rich Murray:  Lomax: " I pointed out that.we won't know *absolutely
for sure* until there are multiple fully independent replications or
verifications.My view is that "fraud" can't be completely ruled
out. It has been pointed out that a fraud could use different
mechanisms in different demonstrations, and, in my view, there is no
end of this possibility, until and unless fully independent
verification is possible.And it is not necessary to reveal the
contents of Rossi’s black box. Just allow critics ­ any critics ­ to
measure in arbitrary detail the incoming and outgoing fluids and
electrical power."

Lomax is actually agreeing that after over 4 busy months since January
15, the reality of massive excess heat from Rossi reactors is still
not beyond reasonable dispute.  This is prudent, thoughtful, informed
skepticism.

I agree, and add that apparent deliberate fraud can also result from
individual illness, coupled with group think.

I agree also with Cude's evaluation that there is no replicable
evidence for any form of cold fusion since 1989:

Joshua Cude says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:21 am
> “because the measured helium correlates very well, at the expected value for 
> deuterium -> helium; this was known by the mid-1990s. It’s a reproducible and 
> reproduced experiment, see Storms, Status of cold fusion (2010), 
> Naturwissenschaften.”

This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. A correlation between
heat and helium is clearly an important and definitive experiment for
cold fusion. And yet, in the referenced paper, the most recent
peer-reviewed results used to demonstrate such a correlation come from
a set of experiments by Miles in the early 90s. These were very crude
experiments in which peaks were eyeballed as small, medium, and large,
the small taken as equal to the detection limit (which seemed to
change by orders of magnitude over the years). Even in the best of
Miles results, the energy per helium varies by more than a factor of
3. Miles’ results were severely criticized by Jones in peer-reviewed
literature. And although there was considerable back and forth on the
results, and in Storms view (of course) Miles successfully defended
his claims, that kind of disagreement and large variation simply cries
out for new and better experiments. So what have we got since?

A very careful set of experiments looking for helium by Gozzi, which
was published in peer-reviewed literature in 1998, concludes that the
evidence for helium is not definitive.

The only results since Miles that Storms has deemed worthwhile to
calculate energy correlation come from conference proceedings, and the
most recent of those from year 2000. Nothing that Storms considers
adequate quality in this critically important experiment has met the
standard of peer review. And they’re not good enough to allow Miles
results to be replaced; Storms still uses some of Miles results, one
assumes because it improves the average. The error in the result, even
if you accept Storms’ cherry-picked, dubious analysis is still 20%. On
an experiment that removes the dependence on material quality. Heat,
it is claimed, can be measured to mW, the helium, it is claimed, is
orders of magnitude above the detection limit, and yet the errors are
huge.

This is what passes for conclusive in the field of cold fusion. This
is good enough that no measurements of helium-heat in the last decade
entered Storms’ calculations.

An objective look at the heat/helium results does not provide even
weak evidence for cold fusion.

Reply
Joshua Cude says:
May 22, 2011 at 8:36 am
>The original report of neutrons was artifact. The recent reports are at levels 
>vastly lower, but well above background.

Presumably you are referring to the CR-39 results, but these have been
observed by one group only, and the results have been challenged as to
whether they are in fact above background, and/or caused by artifacts.
A project led by Krivit with a number of groups involved, and
pretentiously named the Galileo project, failed to confirm the CR-39
results.

So even these results, which in any case cannot explain the claimed
heat, are far from convincing.

Cold fusion experiments simply never get past marginal, controversial,
and dubious. There is not a single convincing experiment in cold
fusion, period. And Rossi has not changed that picture at all.
[ End of Cude quotes ]

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 08:45 PM 5/22/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:

This is a good analysis.


Thanks. I've been working on this one for a while



Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote:

But there is another problem with measuring helium quantitatively, 
which is capturing it. Variable amounts of helium will be held in 
the cell materials. Miles simply captured samples of the effluent gases. . . .



That he did. It seems like an odd way to do the experiment because 
you are limited to the time it takes to fill the flask used to 
capture the gas. That is about an hour and 20 minutes I think. (19 
flask volumes per day.) Using some other technique you can let the 
gas build up for a longer duration, to a higher concentration. 
However, it turns out there are many disadvantages to these other 
techniques. Miles thought carefully before arriving at this 
technique. I have a long conversation with him about this, and I 
asked him many questions about it. I described his technique in some 
detail here:


http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJintroducti.pdf


Great.

From Mile's results and the more careful work that followed 
(particularly certain work by McKubre) . . .



He was very careful.


I did not mean to imply that he was not. Rather, McKubre's approach 
attempted to measure all the helium. It was "more careful" only in that sense.


Heat, it is claimed, can be measured to mW, the helium, it is 
claimed, is orders of magnitude above the detection limit, and yet 
the errors are huge.



Notice that Cude doesn't mention how accurately the helium can be measured.


No one said the helium is orders of magnitude about the detection 
limit. That's absurd. If it was, we would probably be able to zero 
in on the exact process that created it. It is significantly above 
the detection limit. It is also far below the level it would be if 
it leaked in from the air. It is not possible to have a controlled 
leak that would correlate so neatly with the energy release during 
the time the helium is collected.


Right. Across many cells.

Helium is found orders of magnitude above the detection limit, as I 
recall, but not in Miles' work.


Miles work is, by itself, conclusive, excepting only for the generic 
requirement for independent replication. If we define his experiment 
in a generic way, it's reproducible, i.e., set up a series of cells 
that show, some of the time, excess heat. It is actually best if the 
effect is "difficult to reproduce"! Measure the heat and the helium. 
Report this for all cells. The "dead cells" are crucial, for those 
are the controls!


Even if we don't know what the difference was between the dead cells 
and the "live" ones. (microstructure of the palladium? chaotic oxide 
layers? phase of the moon? or, more seriously, perhaps, neutrino flux 
or some other unidentified environmental or experimental variation?), 
the correlation between heat and helium is what is of interest. This 
is what Cude totally fails to realize -- or deliberately avoids addressing.


What really knocked the ball out of the Park was his citing of Gozzi 
as if this were some kind of negative result. 

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 3

[OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson]

>From Abd:

...

> "aleklett" is a true skeptic, and is to be
> congratulated. He's very clearly stated the
> matter. If this isn't a fraud, something is
> going on that existing theory does not explain.
> Isn't that fascinating?

Not only is it fascinating, in my view, it's the whole ball of wax.

> *Even if it is a fraud,* it's fascinating, the
> sheer chutzpah of it! How the hell did he do
> this, if it's a fraud? Somebody is going to
> write a book, one way or another!

It may even become required reading for courses on how to conduct
scientific investigations.

Regards
Steven Vincent Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com
www.zazzle.com/orionworks

Re: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it, part 2

[Jed Rothwell]

This is a good analysis.

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax  wrote:

>
> But there is another problem with measuring helium quantitatively, which is
> capturing it. Variable amounts of helium will be held in the cell materials.
> Miles simply captured samples of the effluent gases. . . .


That he did. It seems like an odd way to do the experiment because you are
limited to the time it takes to fill the flask used to capture the gas. That
is about an hour and 20 minutes I think. (19 flask volumes per day.) Using
some other technique you can let the gas build up for a longer duration, to
a higher concentration. However, it turns out there are many disadvantages
to these other techniques. Miles thought carefully before arriving at this
technique. I have a long conversation with him about this, and I asked him
many questions about it. I described his technique in some detail here:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJintroducti.pdf



> From Mile's results and the more careful work that followed (particularly
> certain work by McKubre) . . .


He was very careful.



> Heat, it is claimed, can be measured to mW, the helium, it is claimed, is
>> orders of magnitude above the detection limit, and yet the errors are huge.
>>
>
> Notice that Cude doesn't mention how accurately the helium can be measured.


No one said the helium is orders of magnitude about the detection limit.
That's absurd. If it was, we would probably be able to zero in on the exact
process that created it. It is significantly above the detection limit. It
is also far below the level it would be if it leaked in from the air. It is
not possible to have a controlled leak that would correlate so neatly with
the energy release during the time the helium is collected.

- Jed

RE: [Vo]:Joshua Cude at it

[OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson]

>From Abd,

I have only read part of your post, but what I have read, I felt compelled
to comment on the following...

...

> >First I would like to mention that Professor
> >Sven Kullander - who is chairman of The Royal
> >Swedish Academy of Sciences' Energy committee,
> >since the beginning of the year - is also a
> >professor emeritus in my research group at
> >Uppsala University. He sits in the room next to
> >mine so Rossi's experiment has come up every
> >time we have met in recent weeks. I always try
> >to be as critical as possible, but at the same
> >time it is exciting to be pretty close to the
> >center of something that is either a hoax or
> >something new and exciting. There are scientists
> >who criticize Sven for associating himself with
> >the experiment, but also many that think he is
> >doing the right thing. As scientists we have a
> >responsibility to investigate whether a reported
> >phenomenon is real or a hoax. Sven's involvement
> >is quite natural since he is chairman of the
> >KVA's energy committee, but if anyone thinks
> >that he has simply accepted the results then
> >they are completely wrong. By attending and
> >examining the experiment, he also has the
> >opportunity to confirm or reject. As a
> >researcher, you want an explanation for what is
> >happening and right now there appears to be no
> >suitable explanation with the knowledge we
> >currently have in chemistry and physics. This
> >means that it may be entirely new physics that
> >must be explained or it may be a scam that
> > must be explained and exposed.
> 
> And Cude's comment on Mats Lewan, the Ny Teknik
> reporter (highly qualified and professional), is
> simply an evidence-free cheap shot. I've seen
> nothing but professional work from Lewan, but
> Cude, anonymous, can say whatever he likes, and
> it won't fall back on him. If Lewan screws up,
> it's his livelihood. Cude is a coward, hiding
> behind his anonymity. I have a suspicion who he
> is, but  I don't know that for sure, not yet.
> 
> Cude continues:

...

And then you cite how Cude gets the temperature measurements backwards.

Abd, it is my hope that Cude becomes acutely aware of you and your obsessive
analysis of Cude Speak.

If anyone can instill the FOG (Fear-Of-God) within the psyches of those who
believe they alone are championing the true ideals of "Science" - with a
goal of causing others to take notice of their analytical prowess, I suspect
someone possessed with your unique arsenal of obsessive analytical skills
will do just fine. (With appropriate apologies to the resident atheists on
this list.)

I know of those who after encountering you have taken to fear you so
profoundly they refuse to speak your name.

It's very silly. But hey! It's their trip.

Regards,
Steven Vincent Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com
www.zazzle.com/orionworks