It seems like the mainstream media in the United States is finally picking up on the importance of Andrea Rossi’s e-cat device. In a column on the website of one of America’s most prestigious business publications Forbes, Mark Gibbs accurately describes what e-cat is and more importantly grasps its potential for changing the world.
Mark Gibbs
This is the first time that a mainstream publication in the US has seriously covered the e-cat or at least made an effort to understand it. At least one journalist in the US is trying. Anyway the article and a similar one that Gibbs wrote for the trade publication Network World that has also been published on a batch of websites makes some interesting points. His understanding of the science like mine is quite fuzzy but Mr. Gibbs does seem to understand how revolutionary low energy nuclear reaction will be.
The below is in his worlds but it does a very good job of describing how e-cat could affect the economy:
• Where today you use petroleum products for motive energy (for example, to propel cars, trucks, and planes) you will be using steam engines or Stirling engines. In theory you’ll be able to drive across the country for cents. What will that do to the trucking industry? The shipping industry? Aviation?
• With the demand for gasoline falling overnight and petroleum becoming needed primarily as feedstock for plastics, the US would immediately become self-sufficient in crude oil. What will happen in the Middle East without the huge flow of cash from the Western hemisphere? How will world politics be changed?
• The cost of manufacturing would fall very quickly with energy removed from the equation. If you are in manufacturing of any kind, this will affect you enormously. How fast could and how would you rework your corporate strategy to become competitive in a market where prices suddenly plummeted (note that the suddenly reduced cash flows would play havoc with the finance structures of many corporations).
Note I do disagree with Mr. Gibbs on one point here, cold fusion will not make fossil fuels like oil or natural gas obsolete overnight. Conversion to the new technology will take several years at the minimum. Still it is a disruptive technology that could change everything.
This could soon be obsolete thanks to Mr. Rossi and others
I might also add that the big demand for oil from the Middle East is in Europe not the USA. The countries most effected if the US wasn’t buying oil would be Canada, Mexico and Venezuela (Hugo Chavez had better start house shopping in Miami if the oil money stops and make sure he has a couple of extra rooms for his friends the Castro brothers to stay in).
This could soon go the way of the livery stable and dial telephones
He also fails to note all the extra profits lots of business will make without high energy costs. Many of those would be passed onto the consumers which would be good. Gibbs also does not seem to be aware of some of the other work being done in cold fusion such as that at Defkalion and at Brillouin.
The 28 Oct test by Rossi and “the customer” is not the penultimate. Investors reading Forbes will research that Rossi has on multiple occasions demonstrated the e-cat, and many respectable people testify that it works. The Forbes article is a major breakthrough, because it is preparing the financial market for a Black Swan even. I am especially impressed by Gibb’s economic analysis in the article.
By the way, in my opinion, the most significant effect of LENR will be decentralized demographics, because now most people live in or near a city for the necessity of getting power off the grid. With LENR, we will see people living in civilization everywhere.
I compare the emergence of LENR to another paradigm changing technology: the Haber-Bosch process (which is little know but accounts for about half the protein that makes up human bodies).
“Robert Noceti another AmpEnergo Partner has an undefined connection to the National Energy Technology Laboratory. A research facility run by the US Department of Energy. He also works with something called LTI Associates, I do not know what that. ” [August 25, 2011 - A little More Background on AmpEnergo is Available]
LTI Associates is listed as 1 of 11 major support contractors to NETL, and has a $95,000,000 contract with DOE from 11/16/2009 through 11/15/2014 – reading the contractor role [below] leads one to believe DOE/NETL is following Rossi very very closely.
“The objective of this contract is to obtain services to support and complement the efforts of federal staff to administer, execute, implement, monitor, manage, and evaluate RD&D programs and provide general assistance for other program-related activities. Task assignments for this service contract focus on program initiatives under the direction of the NETL office that supports the sponsoring organization. Sponsoring organizations include but are not limited to the DOE Offices of FE, EERE, and OE. Program initiatives are national in scope and emphasize partnerships with private industry, academia, state governments, and other governmental stakeholders to create commercially-viable technological solutions to national energy and environmental problems.” [http://www.netl.doe.gov/about/organization.html]
Great analysis. You’re right the E-cat is a Black Swan. Notice nobody can be prepared for a true Black Swan. I agree the decentralized demographics will be the biggest change. Thanks for the intelligent insight and please tell Mr. Gibbs. Also note Forbes is an establishment publication. Of course publications like Forbes and the Wall Street Journal often contain real reporting because their readers expect it. Most media does not and never did. Has anybody told Nasim Talib about e-cat I’d like to see his take.
Well if this is legit, and it doesn’t get squashed by TPTB (Which seems almost a lock to happen if real), then I could see several different evolving scenarios. First, this catalyst (which should be viewed as inextinguishing fuel since the E-cat needs it to work) would become the most expensive material on earth overnight. So if in fact it works, and if in fact it doesnt get suppressed, then there should be a tell tale sign of explosive growth in value of this necessary mystery material. Anyone paying attention to the cost of gold lately. If this is the material needed, it would actually be a good buy right now despite the cost.
Anyway, Watch for Big energy to try and corner the market on whatever the material is, and thus maintain control of the economic Energy market. Also, once the prototype is available for purchase by the masses, there will be significant lag time between the first people to get it and the last. Perhaps an opportunity for the Energy consortium to goguge the life blood out of the masses one last time??? etc, etc, dont get me started thinking. It wont be a painless, bloodless, financial windfall that everyone thinks it is.
Sorry Brett I don’t believe in the powers that be, nobody has that kind of power. Including big energy. As far as know the materials needed are nickel and palladium which is considered a precious metal. My guess is that our political and business leaders aren’t smart enough to see these. They’ll get taken by surprise like everybody else. I’ll let you in on a secret nobody’s in charge. Pass it on.
Another industrial revolution will certainly get things going again here in the U.S. . When people can eat and stay warm things roll on, when it becomes difficult to do either of those then problems arise and things slow down.
I am looking forward to the time when the Rossi fuel becomes available to the public. He could easily get a patent for the fuel and I see that as the revolutionary possibility.
Interesting thought we could certainly use another industrial revolution we don’t have any industry or jobs left. Of course this will look nothing like the first industrial revolution, I just hope we can skip the labor unrest, robber barons and troops bayoneting strikers this time around.
Dr. Bill Wattenberg says cold fusion is a farce. He is a radio talk show host, nuclear scientist,Berkeley professor and atomic engineer for the Lawrence nuclear laboratory.
Please comment.
J J
Since I haven’t heard what Dr. Wattenberg has to say I can’t comment on what he’s saying. I would like to see what evidence he has. Has he traveled Italy and examined Mr. Rossi’s device or the device at Brillouin. Until he has he cannot say it is a farce. Only that he thinks that is a farce. That does not sound very scientific to me.
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Thanks.
There is more than one black swan, this is only the beginning.
Absolutely right. There is far more to come.