----- Original Message -----
From: "Jed Rothwell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <vortex-L@eskimo.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2005 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: 10 years have past since PowerGen 95
John Coviello wrote:
My greatest fear vis a vis cold fusion is that it will die when the
researchers all die.
That's not going to happen Jed. If cold fusion is indeed a real and
viable scientific discovery, the death of researchers will not end its
development. Perhaps their deaths will slow cold fusion research down, but
if something is real in nature it will eventually be developed by someone.
The only way cold fusion will totally die is if it has been an artifact
all along, gross experimental error, noise.
How do you know that? People often say things like: "Science always works
in the end; valuable data is never truly lost." In other fields, valuable
data and important techniques are lost all the time. - Jed
You make a valid point Jed. What you say is indeed true in some other
fields. But cold fusion, if it is indeed real beyond any doubts, will
prevail. Especially now in 2005/2006, there are just too many people
following cold fusion these days for it to die an unnatural death. The U.S.
DOE just reviewed cold fusion a few years ago. The governments of Japan and
Italy are investigating cold fusion to remediate nuclear waste.
Technologies that are near death don't receive that kind of official
attention. Also, because oil is nearing peak production and the price of
oil appears to have started a sustain rise higher, there will be a real need
for alternative energy technologies in coming decades, so the pressure will
be on to find alternatives, one of which is cold fusion.
Actually, I would propose that cold fusion might die from another cause of
death, irrelevency. For one thing cold fusion might be provable beyond a
doubt in coming years, but it might not be scalable to be useful in energy
production and might just remain a useless laboratory curiosity for decades
that may or may not one day be applied to some useful purpose. For two,
back when cold fusion was originally discovered in 1989, the options for
alternative energy were rather limited (mainly by price, but also by a lack
of workable technologies). All that has changed in 2005/2006. Mainstream
alternative energy technologies such as wind and solar have dropped
significantly in price and have grown more efficient. Other alternatives
are making gains such as fuel cells, waste-to-energy, wave/tidal power, etc.
When the world needs to shift to new energy sources as fossil fuels dwindel
in coming decades, they might not be looking for cold fusion or some exotic
form of energy when proven mainstream alternative energy technologies are
suitable to fill the gap.
Cold fusion will eventually prevail if it can be proven to be reliable and
cost effective. As we all know, cost considerations are what mainly drives
technological implementation in this world. If someone starts selling cold
fusion powered cars that can be operated for $1.00 a week on heavy water,
obviously the public will flock to such a technology that would save tham
$100s of dollars on their transportation costs. But as we know, the auto
companies are dragging their feet on implementing such cost saving
technologies as plug-in hybrid cars, so what hope does a truly revolutionary
technology like cold fusion have in this world? Let's face it our
government and corporate leaders make their decisions based on the bottom
line. Other considerations such as the public good, environment, cost
savings, safety all take a back seat to profits.
