Carl White wrote:So, I guess that's sort of it, now?
No more October deadline for delivery of the 1 MW plant to Defkalion.
No report on tests by Greek authorities.. did Defkalion ever have units to test?
I suppose we'll hear a few more squawks but things in general seem set to just fade away, for another couple of years at least.
Its still unclear as to what Dekfalion had (and have) and what they know in terms of trade secrets. They are putting out some very carefully worded statements. They claim the government tests are in process now and are proceeding as if the project is going ahead on schedule. It would appear that they expect to "make up" with Rossi, but some speculate that they know enough that they no longer need him.
Rossi says that the 1MW plant will happen on the October schedule, but now in the U.S. and with his major American "mystery" firm that he has signed up. He has also been saying that the rumors of a reconciliation with Dekfalion are false.
So I suspect this is not going to fade away just yet. If no plant is forthcoming in the fall, I think interest will drop off quickly, untill then the characters in this soap opera seem intent on providing contued drama.
Last edited by Kahuna on Mon Aug 15, 2011 1:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.
ScottL wrote:We were projected toward surplus at one point....then we reduced revenue and engaged in costly military campaigns. At a time of war, one should never lower revenue....
The entire cost of both only explain about ~1/10th of the deficit or ~20% of the addition to debt since 2001. The other 90/80% is attributable to increased nonmilitary spending (btw part of the "tax cuts" are actually negative taxes for the lowest two quintiles, meaning they are actually welfare-work programs) which is now at historic highs (~40% of GDP with all levels) due to about 12 years of politicians in both parties buying illusory short-term growth with Keynesian spending.
It was thought by many that we could grow our way out of the problem. Unfortunately, it's looking increasingly likely that Tyler Cowen is right and productivity growth (the source of all real economic growth) is going to be harder and harder to find, and because of all the gov't spending we are now as badly placed on the Rahn curve as we've ever been, so we're even missing a lot of the minimal growth we could have had.
Consider that most projections, which are already dire, assume 3% growth that probably isn't going to happen and be very, very afraid.
That's why these fusion experiments are so important. We very badly need new economic efficiencies that can boost per-capita productivity.
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...
TallDave wrote:
That's why these fusion experiments are so important. We very badly need new economic efficiencies that can boost per-capita productivity.
It is better for the long term to let the current inefficient, overly-complex system to collapse completely before the introduction of the new technologies, so that the productivity benefits are not squandered propping-up the old, failed system.
Why delay the inevitable when you can start fresh, with new technologies?
Alex and others
US Debt
Here is a nice little scaling exercise: ( lifted from the net)
US income - $ 2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget - 3,820,000,000,000
New debt - 1,650,000,000,000 (1.65 trillion)
National debt - 14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut - 38,500,000,000 (38.5 billion)
Let’s take off 8 zeros and make this the Jones family:
Household income - $ 21,700
Jones’ spent last year - 38,200
Jones’ added to their credit card debt - 16,500
Total credit card debt of the Jones family - $ 142,710
After sitting around the kitchen table,
grinding for weeks on what to cut from their spending $385 ( -1.008%)
So next year the Jones Family will only spend $ 38,115
not counting the additional interest on the higher debt.
Would your bank offer the Jones the highest possible credit rating?
Actually the actual situation is far worse than what is shown here because it does not include future contractual obligations such as social security ( the "lock box" is empty, money withheld from our salary for SS has been - for years- spent as current income), medicare, medicaid, Obamacare and other long term obligations.
Nor do these numbers include state and local government debt and contractual obligations. Pensions are a huge problem at all levels of government.
And Europe is in the same bind, expect no help from that quarter.
As been pointed out the US government now consumes a history high of 40% of GNP. Lets double this to 80% increasing the Jones income to 42k $ per Year while keeping expenditures constant. Now they have a meager 6k% per year of income that could be put to paying down their debt and/or saving for future contractual obligations.
We have been pretty hard on Rossi in this thread but he might well have more of a chance of coming out on his feet than the US government has.
With respect to raising taxes, we have done that before. Congress just spends that money and more, much much more.
I agree with Alex about there "not being enough tax payers" but not quite the way he sees it. I am remained about the old joke, I'm not overweight, I am just undertall. All we need is a factor of ten or twenty or more additional tax payers of course without any additional government expenditure.
It worries me the lower 50% of income earners pay nothing. I favor progressive taxes but it scares me when half the income earners have no skin in the game.
We could tax incomes over 100 k/year at a rate of 100% but that would not solve our problem.
We need massive economic growth but we have a long term problem with massive government regulation that makes new business activity very risky and which has the effect of putting existing industries out of business. The regulators and other high government officials have spoken publicly and in earnest about putting certain industries out of business. Other industry leaders wonder if they might be next. And then of course there is the problem that solid economic growth might not be all that likely because of technology development cycles and timing as another person has pointed out.
Perhaps we should all fall on out knees every night and pray Rossi- Blacklight and others-really do have something up their sleeve.
The people who are active on this form are intelligent, educated and numerically competent. The first thing that needs to be done is to have at least some small portion of the general population aware just how bad the financial situation is and understand the panaceas being offered- tax the rich, increase tax rates, cut the military etc are one or more orders of magnitude less than what is needed to stabilize the problem.
Reduced to a bumper sticker:
Demand Sustainable Government
Final comment: This comment is largely off topic having nothing to do - directly- with LENR but it does give economic context to the importance to all of us that one or more of these energy dark horses crosses the finish line and in the process accidentally kicks the current economic black swan to death.
bruce
Optimist: Glass is half full
Pessimist: Glass is half empty
Engineer: Someone made that glass twice
as large as it needs to be.
The Jones family is suffering from a bad case of unemployment. Without taxpayers, the USA cannot pay all its bills. The answer to the expanding debt is growth...and growth means jobs...jobs...jobs.
The US government needs to come up with a plan to motivate big money(US banks and hedge funds and the like) to keep their capital employed within the borders of CONUS and not send it all to China.
One way to do this is to grant cooperating institutions preferential treatment by the Federal Reserve.
In course language, if a bank invests in China the FED will eventually put them out of business and support their cooperating competitor who does invest its capital in the US; forget too big to fail.
This nationalistic investment strategy won't happen because members of Congress are heavily funded by super-packs that get their heavily laundered money from Chinese state owned companies and other international corporations.
Globalization flourished during the Bush years, and the outflow of jobs during those moribund times was unprecedented. That ill fated administration and its minion Congress was highly responsive to the poisonous influence of the foreign lobby. Here are some numbers.
scary!
so, who's sitting on all the pie?
and what do they expect to do with it when there's nothing left to invest in?
me? i'm buying 'hard chickens'. (and possibly a goat).
Coolbrucelong wrote:Perhaps we should all fall on out knees every night and pray Rossi- Blacklight and others-really do have something up their sleeve.
That will be equivalent to the people on a sinking boat falling on their knees and praying that someone will come to save them walking on water.
If the world intends to get out of the pit where we have fallen we need people with a vision at the top of the government. Unfortunately I am unable to identify such a figure in any of the so called "advanced countries".
China, India and Brasil have such governments and this explains why they are growing like that.
Coolbrucelong wrote:Reduced to a bumper sticker:
Demand Sustainable Government
It should be the first article of the constitution of any country.
Unfortunately you can't hope that the people in the government will willingly reduce their power.
What is known about Piantelli's group? Where does he get funding, etc.
It seems like there is an element of competition within LENR research circles. Maybe Rossi is aware that other researchers around the world can see a light at the end of the research tunnel but no one has quite run that far yet - and his own sense of competition has led him to behave oddly.
What do people here think of Brillioun Energy? Why does everyone focus only on Rossi while these other efforts are making peeps about commercialization too? How many LENR scams ARE there in the world?
RaneesUm wrote:What is known about Piantelli's group? Where does he get funding, etc.
It seems like there is an element of competition within LENR research circles. Maybe Rossi is aware that other researchers around the world can see a light at the end of the research tunnel but no one has quite run that far yet - and his own sense of competition has led him to behave oddly.
What do people here think of Brillioun Energy? Why does everyone focus only on Rossi while these other efforts are making peeps about commercialization too? How many LENR scams ARE there in the world?
RaneesUm wrote:What is known about Piantelli's group? Where does he get funding, etc.
I don't really know right now. His early research was performed at the University of Siena. For a while in the late '90s his research was supported by several Italian corporations, including Fiat. From what I have read it's my understanding that the Piantelli group performs its research in a private laboratory. I'm not certain who all comprise the group, but my best guess is that the principals are the names that appear on the recent patents: Francesco Piantelli, Fabio Chellini, Leonardo Ciampoli, Alessandro Meiarini (in whose name the nichenergy.com domain is registered), and Silvia Piantelli.
RaneesUm wrote:It seems like there is an element of competition within LENR research circles. Maybe Rossi is aware that other researchers around the world can see a light at the end of the research tunnel but no one has quite run that far yet - and his own sense of competition has led him to behave oddly.
I think the simplest explanation of (at least some of) Rossi's behavior is that he is paranoid about Piantelli.
RaneesUm wrote:What do people here think of Brillioun Energy? Why does everyone focus only on Rossi while these other efforts are making peeps about commercialization too? How many LENR scams ARE there in the world?
Most people here are focused on EMC2 and the Polywell confinement concept, other plasma fusion concepts, physics in general, science, politics, economics.... I believe the interest in Andrea Rossi can be summed up by the title of this thread: "10KW LENR demonstrator". That's a very bold claim to make, and there is still considerable controversy over whether Rossi can back it up.
There's a thread here devoted to Brillouin Energy. I'm not well acquainted with the company, and I don't suppose anyone else here is. I'd say they haven't been able to generate as much interest simply because their claims are more modest than Rossi's, so for now they're either minor competitors or minor scammers by comparison. If LANL announces that they've been able to replicate Brillouin's work, that will make waves. Otherwise, it's business as usual.
Temperature, density, confinement time: pick any two.
Poor Levi - caught in the middle, damned if he does and damned if he doesn't (make available his 'rough' results, for example).
It is heartening to hear that Uni Bologna are indeed to be undertaking peer reviewed, controlled experiments (if I understand correctly). Proper publication in a 'recognised' journal is one of the few things that will make the rest of the scientific community really sit up and take notice.
However, that will only be possible if Rossi releases the remainder of his secret sauce - opens the black box. So far he has been totally unwilling to concede this. (vis a vis his patent issues for example). So how does proper publication and review ever happen, how is that circle squared? No one seems to have addressed that particular question yet.
