2-month Activity Log

OK, it’s been almost two months since Cold Fusion Now started and what have we  done so far to raise awareness about the importance of this research?

Here’s a survey of our activities so far listed according to their appropriate environment in the Five-body model of media ecology.

Chemical Body Activities

Our first act was to get Cold Fusion Now stickers printed up from Sticker Guy.  They took quite a while to be delivered, but they look great, and since the end of June, we have started sending them out as promotional tools.

Stickers were first sent, along with a letter supporting cold fusion research, to our “local”  California Senators Boxer and Feinstein in California and Representative Mike Thompson.

Since then, they have been mailed around the country to friends, artists, and scientists in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho, New Mexico, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, and Florida.  We are hoping to get some good photos of Active CFN Sticker locations, so if you got yours, be sure to document that location – and email us your photo!

Cold Fusion Now stickers traveled with the Humboldt County Green Party delegation to Detroit, MI for their Green Party National Meeting aligned with the US Social Forum. We continue to lobby for cold fusion energy to be included in their party platform.

Sporting our stickers around town is a real conversation starter and the CFN crew spoke with a bunch of citizens during Arts Alive! art night and the 4th of July Independence Day celebration.   We had a sign that sparked some interest and several individuals stopped to ask “What is cold fusion?” and chat.  A surprising number of people already knew what it was, and it was interesting to see their faces change as memories of  “Oh yeah…… that cold fusion…” replayed in their minds.

The Tea Party Patriots had a booth at the 4th of July street fair, and I spoke with one of their members.  Left or right, it doesn’t matter, energy is on the minds of everybody, and I was happy with “Hmmm, I’ll look into it…”

We have just started the whole sticker mailing and I can tell you we have plans to contact members of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources  and Environment and Public Works committees as well as key legislators in the House of Representatives.  Hollywood has been targeted for its talent, and money,  and we continue to promote cold fusion to artists, musicians, and students, as well as political entities.

TV Body Activities

CFN has called the Whitehouse hotline at 1-212-456-1111 a couple of times respectfully urging more support more cold fusion research.  Put that number on speed-dial and check in with your request.  It appears that Grandma answers the phone, so be nice!

We’ve telephoned the two senators from California, as well as our local representatives’ office, respectfully urging the same. Find your representatives in DC here, and make a phone call to keep the meme alive.

I’ve called Jim Puplava’s Financial Sense Newshour, a great weekly broadcast on all matters financial, and requested that hosts Jim and John have guests with cold fusion knowledge to give a survey on where research is today and what prospects are for the future.  You can listen to my query and their response to cold fusion here:
Financial Sense call-in clip requesting cold fusion scientists.

I filled out the request form for Oprah to interview a cold fusion scientist.  Go here to do the same: Who do you want to see Oprah interview? If we get enough requests, this is SURE to pique the interest of Oprah’s crew.  Calling all cold fusion scientists – don’t ya wanna sit on the couch next to Oprah?

Chip Body Activities

The CFN team has put together a website and a blog with an easy name to remember.   In your conversations with people, it’s easy to tell them “Check out coldfusionnow.org  and watch the CBS 60 minutes segment.”.  They can then follow the links to the other super-fabulous sites that have extensive documentation to learn more.

CFN has partnered with Internet radio host James Martinez who is bringing cold fusion scientists to speak directly to the public through lengthy one-on-one interviews on his show Cash-flow.  Listening live, you can flash message in your comments and questions, or, download the interviews from his archive.  Go to Cash-flow on Achieve Radio to see the schedule.

Astral Body Activities

I daydream constantly about a cold fusion economy and what that might look like.

Mystery Body Activity?

That one is still a mystery to me.

For two months, that’s not half-bad.  And we’re going to continue to push.  We’ve got alot more activities lined up.  More mailings, more call-ins, more conversations, more requests, more demands, more art, more education…. until we can live with a clean, safe, and plentiful energy source, there will be no end to the activities of Cold Fusion Now.

Join us!  Document your activities and we’ll post them on the site.

Why is cold fusion rejected?

by Edmund Storms

An ordinary person might wonder why cold fusion is not being explored more vigorously as the ideal energy source it promises to be. Why do public figures avoid discussing the idea and why do uninformed writers occasionally use cold fusion as an example of bad science?

Twenty-one years ago when Profs. Fleischmann and Pons (Univ. of Utah) announced the discovery, skeptical attitudes were justified and widespread. The claims were and still are completely at odds with what is known about nuclear reactions. The idea that energy could be produced by fusing two deuterons in what looked like a Mason jar was crazy at the time and still is hard to understand.

The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions But now the situation has greatly changed. Hundreds of people in over 12 countries have been investigating the process with growing success. Thousands of papers have been published and are easily available for study at www.LENR.org and evaluated in the book “The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” available from Amazon.com.

Clearly, a new phenomenon has been discovered even though it has not been fully explained nor is easy to produce.

Yet, the attitude toward the subject in the popular press and conventional science has hardly changed. Why has a change not occurred especially in view of the growing need for a non-carbon and a non-uranium based energy source? Indeed, the long running reluctance to accept cold fusion in the face of mounting evidence is unique to modern science, which has delayed accepting many new ideas, but never with as much determination.

The claim started with several strikes against it. First and most important, the claim was not easy to replicate. Most efforts, but not all, failed mainly because many people had a very poor understanding of what was required. They also expected the effect would be large and easy to detect once it was produced. Instead, the effect is difficult to produce even today and the results can be ignored as being caused by imagined prosaic processes.

Frequently, these imagined processes require as much suspension of rational understanding as skeptics claim is being used to support cold fusion its self. In other words, each side in the debate has to make equally improbable claims, but with the claims made for the effect being supported by a growing collection of experimental evidence.

Second, the claim was and is in conflict with what is known about nuclear interaction, causing many high profile scientists to conclude the effect is impossible.

Third, if the effect turned out to be real, it would put the hot fusion program out of business. Billions of dollars have been spent on this effort over 60 years in an attempt to cause a similar kind of reaction to that produced by cold fusion, but with disappointing results. The physics professors at major universities funded by this program did not appreciate the possibility their careers might end because of an idea suggested by a couple of chemists.

Gradually, a myth was formed around cold fusion by the skeptics until it became the popular metaphor for bad science done by deluded scientists. Whenever a writer wanted to show how scientists can be deceived, cold fusion was combined with poly-water and n-rays as an example of how someone can be mislead if they are not careful and not skeptical enough, or not as skeptical as the writer. Once such a myth forms in popular journalism, it is very difficult to change, especially when the myth has a benefit to influential groups.

Modern society is filled with such myths, some of which are harmless but some will have devastating consequences if they are not changed. One such myth is that the earth is not getting warmer and that sea level will not rise as ice continues to melt. Efforts to cut back on the generation of CO2, the main cause of warming, are met with the same emotional rejection as is applied to cold fusion. In this respect, the myth of cold fusion and the myth of non-global warming have a lot in common. Rejection of global warming leads to the destruction of civilization while rejection of cold fusion eliminates a possible solution to this disaster.

Sooner or later scientists in some country will discover how to make cold fusion work on a commercial scale. When this happens, the countries that develop this technology will rapidly become richer and more powerful. The cost of energy for manufacturing will go down and processes that are not yet practical under most conditions, such as obtaining fresh water from the sea, will become widely used.

These benefits will cause a rapid expansion in the power and influence of the countries using this inexpensive energy source. What about the countries that do not know how to make the effect work?

Their scientists will attempt to reverse engineer the power generator, but in this field, such efforts will be difficult without an understanding of how the process works, an understanding that will not be shared by the discovers.

Also, highly developed countries will have difficulty removing their present energy infrastructure and substituting this much simpler source. So, the race is on and the potential winners are not obvious.

Nevertheless, it is obvious the winner will not be a country that ignores and rejects the reality of cold fusion.

Oprah interviews cold fusion scientist!

That could be the headline, if you can describe, in 2000 characters or less, why Oprah should interview a cold fusion scientist!

For a limited time, we can fill a form from Oprah.com at
https://www.oprah.com/ownshow/plug_form.html?plug_id=3337311 and request Oprah interview a cold fusion scientist!

From Oprah’s site:

The Oprah Winfrey Show will come to an end in 2011, but before ‘it’s a wrap’, who do you want to see sitting next to Oprah?

We always love hearing from our viewers so now it?s your turn to tell us who YOU want Oprah to interview before the show ends. Maybe it’s someone she’s never talked to? Or maybe it’s your favorite guest you want us to invite back? A famous actor? A musician or a politician? An athlete? International icon? The cast from your favorite movie or TV show? You tell us ? they can be unexpected, notorious, head-turning, tear-jerking, headline-making…we want to know who you’ve always wanted on Oprah. Email us your ideas now!

Oprah is the real President of the planet and the power of the TV landscape is great. Let’s send her the message of cold fusion to propogate. She is Wise, and will not fail to recognize this powerful solution to the energy problems the world faces.

There is huge public support for green energy, but cold fusion has been left out of the discussion. Cold fusion is real, and the public-at-large should recognize this. Getting the words spoken and written by a critical mass will enable public support to accelerate the process of development. We need to get fusion power back into th discussion and Oprah can do it.

Here’s what I sent; character count with spaces 1679. Copy, paste this into Oprah’s box, and edit to your liking:

BEGIN*********************
Hey Oprah!
“Cold fusion” refers to a safe, green energy source with no harmful byproducts and could supply 100% of our energy needs, replacing dirty sources such as oil, gas, and coal forever.
Cold fusion was the name given to the energy effect announced in 1989 by Professors’ Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann. Energies produced were unable to be explained by the conventional electro-chemical processes, but by fusion reactions.
Conventional theories have fusion reactions occur under conditions of extreme heat and pressure, like inside stars. The Pons/Fleischmann effect was produced inside a glass, on a table top, at room temperature.
Controversy erupted when not all scientists could immediately reproduce the power-generating effect, and it was shunned. But some scientists did reproduce it, and have been working on this ever since.
These scientists include, Dr. Edmund Storms, a long-time researcher in nuclear physics and author of The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions; Dr. Michael McKubre of SRI International, and Dr. Robert Duncan, Vice-Chancellor of Research University of Missouri.
Despite their technical background, they’re very communicative and absolutely eloquent when speaking to the public.
There are others who write and publish in the New Energy Times and Infinite Energy. Librarian and translator Jed Rothwell could also survey this promising energy source.
“We’ve reached the end of the beginning”, says Michael McKubre. Now, greater funding is needed to develop technologies useful to people.
This kind of energy could liberate humanity from the need for dirty oil and coal and usher in new world where we don’t have to fight over scarce resources.

END*****************************

This form is easy to fill out.
Activiate all your bodies for a clean energy future.

And to give Oprah the interview of her life, go to https://www.oprah.com/ownshow/plug_form.html?plug_id=3337311

Hot fusion scientist describing characteristics of laser fusion actually describes future of cold fusion

A friend of mine recently sent me a link to a talk by Ed Moses from the National Ignition Facility (NIF https://lasers.llnl.gov/) about laser fusion technology entitled “Clean Fusion Power This Decade”. You can download and listen to an mp3 posted on the Long Now site here:
http://www.longnow.org/seminars/02010/jun/16/clean-fusion-power-decade/

In the talk, he describes ignition occurring in the 02010-02012 range, with a prototype reactor ready by the 02020 range and I want to thank Dr. Moses for his work and effort to communicate that research.

I had been a fan of hot fusion technology for years before I knew that cold fusion was real. In 02002 I went to the San Diego fusion facility (https://fusion.gat.com/global/Home) for a teacher training and professional development workshop. I toured the tokamak and met lots of smart and extremely generous people, enthusiastic about a fusion energy future. I wish them, and the NIF, the best of luck in reproducing star-power. It would be a major achievement.

But listening to Ed Moses, and now knowing (since 2003) that cold fusion has the promise to bring a decentralized carbon-free energy source with a simpler technology than large hot fusion reactors, I had to respond more critically. He envisions 9+ billion people populating this planet, concentrated in mega-cities, those cities above a population of 10 million, “because that’s where the jobs are, that’s where culture is, that’s where centers of power are, and by the way, they are more energy efficient.” There are many points to make in response to that scenario, let me make just a few.

Feeding and finding the resources for an additional 4 billion people, the majority of which are concentrated in cities, is quite a challenge even in a future with fusion technology. The carrying capacity of this planet is debatable. But where are we now with planetary resources for six and one-half billion people?

The oceans have been over fished with many species on the brink of collapse. Water resources have been privatized planet-wide and are being rationed. In the last several decades, food production has expanded only because of fossil fuels and the cheap oil available to produce and transport these foods worldwide. The heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers derived from petroleum has reduced topsoil around the globe to “merely a sponge”, a dead layer that has the capacity only to soak up more chemicals.

When Dr. Moses claims that cities are “more efficient”, what does he mean? More efficient than what? It’s not clear how he measures this efficiency. As I understand it, large centralized populations need huge influxes of food shipped in from very long distances. The majority of these shipments come on trucks using petroleum diesel as most mega-cities, that I know of, have no local food production. Many who live in mega-cities have a poor standard of living, with little access to nature.

Many of these large mega-cities of the world have their water transported hundreds of miles, from places that are becoming resentful about sending their water out of their local area. Some mega-cities situated in desert climates have expanded their population by mining water, i.e. tapping into underground water pools left by the recent ice age. These communities will experience a drastic and sudden need for more water when these one-time resources disappear.

I also wonder what kind of jobs are available in the mega-cities of the future? Will there be a second renaissance in advertising and marketing? Are the centers of technological revolution going to be located in these mega-cities? Is that a trend we can identify now? Are technology companies with huge job openings choosing to locate in cities now?

To say “we are in a non-local society” is to miss the dynamic changes occurring right now. We are fast flipping to a local society, where food, water, and energy resources are all farmed, pumped, and created locally. Geo-political forces are emerging that challenge the hegemony of superpowers’ reach abroad.

I just don’t see large cities as apart of our positive future, mostly because of a world population argument. The population explosion is directly related to the oil age. Controlling populations who need food, water, and jobs seems like it would require a police state, a total loss of personal freedom, and plenty of chemical inundation.

Dr. Moses contends that “2030-2050 is where things start happening”. I submit that things are starting to happen now. Perhaps the NIF would be willing to consider the plethora of displaced auto workers, the newly released mid-level office managers from marketing departments, or the shrimpers and fishermen, as new hires for their multi-billion dollar facility. If not, then Houston, we have a problem. The lights are going out all around the world right now as electrical grids are beyond capacity, and we need food, water, and jobs, for an increasing number of people.

Fusion technology will create its own environment, a vastly different one, not merely extend this present system. The Long Now seeks to find paradigms that last on the order of thousands of years, and perhaps large metropolis’ will emerge in that time frame, but the next hundred years are going to be a major transition, and I can only see a positive future if Earth’s population is reduced, not increased.

Every new technology creates an environment of services and disservices. Cold fusion technology, with its simple structure, small, compact and portable would surely allow the freedom to live in a decentralized world, closer to nature, if one so chooses.

Hot fusion technology is great. I hope that the NIF finds the answer to ignition soon. I am excited about basic research in science and have always been particularly interested in the science of stars, energy, rocket propulsion and space exploration. But hot fusion has had its share of the funding pie, with good results. Isn’t it time to take a look at cold fusion, low-energy nuclear reactions, which has had just as astounding results without the “infusion” of funding? One could argue the results that low-energy nuclear reaction scientists have obtained is even more remarkable given the paltry funding on the order of millions of dollars, as opposed to the tens of billions that hot fusion has received.

When Dr. Moses describes a “sustainable, carbon-free, not geo-political, safe, modular, compact, relatively rapid development path”, that “uses our existing infrastructure” and “accepts evolutionary improvements”, he is describing the technology of cold fusion. Yes, “it is too good to be true”.

ACTION Let’s contact the Long Now and ask them to present a cold fusion scientist to discuss the future of energy in a de-centralized and local world. You can find their contact information here: http://www.longnow.org/contact/

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