I would like to apologise if I have hinted at Thomas Clarke’s having an agenda with his impressive number of comments. I want to assume that Clarke is perfectly honest in the significant work he has laid down on analysing the Lugano report and on commenting what, according to him, is probable or not. But I would also like to note that producing for some periods up to 34 posts per day hints at a position which I’m not sure if it should be called balanced. This, combined with obvious spin from a few people, apparently having an agenda in criticising some individuals, adds to my decision to keep the comments closed.
Joe,
I had some time on my hands when the dramatic IH/Rossi statements came out and with others in Mats site we reviewed all the old test data (some of which I had not considered before). It was interesting, and damning to Rossi. I have now stopped commenting on this stuff because Mats and Sifferkoll are posting unpleasant things about me (that above quote, from my POV, is unpleasant). The Pro-Rossi crowd quite often ask why somone who did not believe in his stuff would spent so much time arguing against it unless they had some ulterior motive! Talk about logical fallacy!
There is something about the worst of the LENR optimists that annoys the hell out of me, and Rossi in particular has this very strong scientific evidence that his stuff does not work. (as well as all the non-science obviousness).
I don't mind people dismissing the non-science evidence. I get riled when the science evidence is misread, or downplayed, or just ignored. Mats seems very reasonable but give him cast-iron evidence that a Rossi device does not work and he will do one of:
(a) ignore it
(b) talk to rossi, get some sound-bites, say that he is not sure
(c) say he does not believe the calculations because the author (me) is maybe biassed.
In spite of large numbers of other people validating these calculations and Levi's recent reply making a mistake that shows he has no understanding of the issue.
There was then the destruction of mats "best evidence" test. All the observations have a mundane solution. Mats puts an assumptive and wrong additional analysis on his blog now and has closed comments so this cannot be challenged.
Even without the very clear science evidence the "Rossi has nothing and he is a fraud or at least deluded" evidence (as marshalled by ladajo) gets stronger with every year that passes. We then have IH who were credulous enough to give Rossi money and 100% believers in LENR saying he is a fraud (they don't quite say that yet, but pretty near and I expect it will come to that at the correct legal time). The Rossi-believers say IH must be doing this because Rossi's stuff works too well. It is a totally absurd argument only possible from people whose brains are in this area seriously dysfunctional.
The non-science arguments here are compelling, but because they involve meta-evidence the contrary arguments cannot precisely be disproved.
Well, it will be fascinating to hear what IH say in response to Rossi.
During summer 2015, IH offered Rossi to back out from the test and cancel it, with a significant sum of money as compensation. Rossi’s counter offer was to give back the already paid 11.5M and cancel the license agreement, but IH didn’t accept.
I'd expect the first part. IH at that time would be pretty sure that Rossi's stuff did not work. At least they would need one of his reactors to work just a little bit in their labs, to have any confidence. Rossi refused to help them saying he was too busy with the 1 year test. If the test continued we would have what has happened, incredibly embarrassing PR for IH whose future comes from good relations with the LENR people and convincing others that LENR works. The second part is Rossi spin denied (informally) by IH.
IH never had access to the customer’s area. At the end of the test, an expert hired by IH, insisted that it was important to know where the water came from and where it was used. The ERV explained that this had no importance.
There are many such things coming from IH. It is pretty clear:
The customer is illusory or nearly so - and under Rossi's complete control
IH were prevented from any proper technical evaluation during the test
But there is too much uncertainty - so many different ways it could be spoofed - too little info.
Just one point.
The license agreement specifies water flow calorimetry. But the (from Rossi) plant info (36m^3/day flow) works delivering 1MW only if the water output is almost dry steam. Now, output of dry steam which releases heat on condensation is entirely sensible in such a plant. But it makes safe calorimetry very difficult. And of course this is specifically not water flow calorimetry, since we have to measure precisely how dry is the steam.
Rossi says he asked for the energy heating the water up from return temperature to 100C to be discounted. That sounds good, but it is actually bad:
(1) Rossi is relying on the vaporisation enthalpy, which then depend son steam dryness. We have no info about how that is measured.
(2) The one part of this that is secure (heating up the water) need not be measured. Rossi claims the return temperature is "typically" 60C. But we have no information now what it is in Rossi's spoofed setup. His generosity here removed important test information.
(3) In any case the license agreement, specifying water flow calorimetry, would I think be broken by some less safe form that depended on pressure and temperature, and the assumption that the output has no lower temperature liquid phase water travelling with the steam.