Similarities Between ESP, Cold Fusion & Global Warming

Similarities Between ESP, Cold Fusion & Global Warming

Stream: Similarities Between ESP, Cold Fusion & Global Warming

At the climate website No Tricks Zone, there is a picture of various estimates of CO2 climate sensitivity estimates. These are the guesses of how much the temperature would increase if atmospheric carbon dioxide would double from its pre-industrial levels.

This sensitivity is measured as a “transient climate response” (TCS), noting the near-terms effects, or by “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS), which are the long-term effects, assuming that CO2 stops increasing. The higher either of these numbers is, the more we have to worry about.

Each estimate is taken from a peer-reviewed scientific paper. The first comes in 2001 from the authors Andronova and Schlesinger, with the estimate of 3oC. The highest estimate (in this graph) is 6oC in 2002 from Gregory.

Not All Jokes are Funny

Then something funny happens.

Frame puts the estimate at about 2.8oC by 2005. Skeje guessed 2.8oC in 2014. Not pictured is a paper I co-wrote in 2015, which put the estimate of ECS at 1.0oC. (This paper led to a witch hunt and hysterical accusations of “climate denial”.)

Finally, Reinhart brings it down to about 0.2oC in 2017.

From this picture we can infer at least three things. First, the debate about global warming was not over in 2000, nor in 2001, nor is it over now. The sensitivity estimates would not have changed if the debate were over. Second, the good news is that we clearly have less to worry about than we thought. This is something to celebrate, right? Right?

The third inference is that we have seen this same graph before. Not once, but many times!

You Can’t Read My Mind

It looks exactly like the graph of extrasensory perception ESP effect size through time. (I wrote a book on the subject, available free at the bottom of this page.)

J.B. Rhine in the 1930s showed the backsides of playing cards to some folks and asked them to use their ESP to “read” the frontsides. Rhine claimed great success, as did Charles Honorton and Sharon Harper in the mid-1970s using the so-called ganzfeld. The 1970s were a time of high excitement in ESP research, with extraordinary claims coming from every direction.

But then came the 1980s and 1990s, a time when []

Unless you possess the ability to remotely view objects, click here to read the rest.

Addenda US cold snap was a freak of nature, quick analysis finds. If global warming can’t explain it, it’s a “freak”, yet global warming was supposed to be a theory of how the atmosphere worked.

Also, ignore those lines and shaded gray envelopes on the plot. These are examples of the Deadly Sin of Reificaiton. They substitute what did not happen (a model) for what did (the dots).

21 Comments

  1. Ray

    Remember, Pons and Fleischmann threatened to sue some researchers’ who reported they couldn’t find any evidence of cold fusion. It’s like Michael Mann suing people who ridiculed him and his hockey stick.

  2. Isn’t it great that TRUE scientific proposals require empirical verification?

  3. Robert

    Cold Fusion perhaps should not be so readily dismissed. A recent talk by an MIT “cold fusion researcher” suggests that there is at least some chemical/physical/nuclear phenomenon going on in the Fleischmann/Pons experiment (maybe not cold fusion, but something is going on). See the talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiNDqaFPO4A.

  4. Oldavid

    @ Bob
    I will contend that most “scientific” proposals these days are not “scientific” in any way, shape or form. For the most part they are not born of observation and cannot be validated by observation (experiment) or logic.

    “Empirical” in the Materialist “Evolutionary” sense is self-refuting because you cannot have a “measurement” or knowledge and understanding of something inconsistent or ephemeral. Either there is a consistent, coherent (therefore intelligible) reality or it’s all a figment of egomaniacal imaginations.

  5. DAV

    Yeah, once they get those pesky energy sapping N-rays under control.

  6. Yonason

    “N-rays” = straw man

    It may never be practical, but there’s something going on there that’s real and reproducible often enough to attract very respectable researchers to pursue it (some nuts, too, but their presence alone isn’t sufficient to dismiss it).
    https://youtu.be/AMpLX8478Y8

  7. DAV

    “N-rays” = straw man
    It may never be practical, but there’s something going on there that’s real and reproducible often enough to attract very respectable researchers

    Uh, yeah.
    Some quotes from Scientific American 1999 in re cold fusion. Little progress since then.

    Also pertinent: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/laws.htm
    Pay close attention to Langmuir’s Laws.
    Sounds a lot like N-rays.

    The first two reactions (see the SciAm article) are equally probable, and if one watt of nuclear power were produced, the neutron and tritium production would be easy to measure. But they could not be detected; if they were present at all, it was only at an extremely low level.
    — Langmuuir #2

    The ‘cold fusion’ phenomenon, in which the law of conservation of energy is apparently violated when electricity and heat are applied to special systems involving hydrogen isotopes (in water or gaseous form) and particular metals (notably palladium and nickel), defies conventional scientific explanation. All new theories explaining ‘cold fusion’ effects require large revisions in existing physical theories (one might call them ‘miracles’). Scientific skepticism requires that unless the experimental evidence justifies belief in these miracles, we must conclude that experimental errors are being misinterpreted as positive results.
    — Langmuir #4, #5?

    With all this negative evidence, how can Fleischmann, Pons and others continue? The short answer is that true believers can always find something to encourage them, and they can ignore the rest.

    Support grew rapidly in the 90’s but has since dwindled to nearly zero.
    — Langmuir #6

    Lot’s more. Enjoy.

  8. Yonason

    Thanks, DAV, I’ll look at them.

    What Julian Schwinger said…
    https://youtu.be/m8j73-hhh1s?t=384
    (6:34 – 7:00)
    “The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors’ rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science.

    Sums up what’s been done to scientists skeptical of global warming. If you don’t advance the currently favored narrative, you are rejected, no matter what you’re earlier accomplishments.

    Schwinger didn’t claim it was true or not, but his contribution was to offer a theory of how it might work, if indeed it did, without violating any known physics. Saying it did, is yet another straw man.

  9. DAV

    Uh, yeah again. It’s a Conspiracy to hide the Truth led by Big Energy. The YouTube video with the Speak and Spell voice proves it.

    Offering a theory of how something that hasn’t been shown to exist might work is right up there with theorizing about why space aliens are visiting us in a cloak of secrecy.

    And, yes, it violates the first law of thermodynamics. Show that it doesn’t. Also, as pointed out in the SciAm article, the byproducts of fusion are absent. Where’d they go?

    Incidentally, the video is the audio version of Schwinger’s biography (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Schwinger) which has little to do with cold fusion and certainly doesn’t give any in depth reasons for his believing in CF. Why post it?

  10. Yonason

    “It’s a Conspiracy to hide the Truth led by Big Energy. ” – DAV

    No. It was a conspiracy to stifle academic freedom of inquiry, as was clear from the quote I posted by Schwinger.
    (You are inordinately fond of straw men.)

    This interview of Eugene Mallove also makes it clear that resistance against Cold Fusion was the opposite of defense of scientific integrity.
    https://youtu.be/avpoIAKvYmU

    And here is a bit more of what Schwinger has to say about cold fusion.
    http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue1/colfusthe.html
    “My first attempt at publication, for the record, was a total disaster. “Cold Fusion: A Hypothesis” was written to suggest several critical experiments, which is the function of hypothesis. The masked reviewers, to a person, ignored that, and complained that I had not proved the underlying assumptions. Has the knowledge that physics is an experimental science been totally lost?”

  11. Yonason

    PART 2

    “Offering a theory of how something that hasn’t been shown to exist might work is right up there with theorizing about why space aliens are visiting us in a cloak of secrecy.” – DAV

    Two words that prove that is a very silly objection – “Manhattan Project”

    Also, as Schwinger writes here…
    https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SchwingerJcoldfusiona.pdf
    “Reproducibility is often cited as a canon of science. And so it is, in established areas. But, early in a study of a new phenomenon that involves an ill-understood macroscopic control of a microscopic mechanism, irreproducibility is not unknown. That was so at the onset of microchip studies. It also appeared in the initial phase of the discovery of high temperature superconductivity, which, by the way, is a prime example of ’embracing the concept’ without having ‘to understand the mechanism’.”

  12. Yonason

    PART 2

    Your SciAm article is from 1999. However, this one from 2016 admits there’s something very real about the phenomenon, even though he denies it’s nuclear.
    https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/its-not-cold-fusion-but-its-something/
    Many scientists around the world are doing research into what is now called LENR, and have been producing clear positive results (it has always been a lie to say there weren’t any) for nearly 2 decades now. It’s beyond silly to deny that.

    It is something real, whether nuclear or not, and the unethical folks who sabotaged further research are a disgrace to the scientific profession. The sad part is that those unethical folks are rapidly proliferating in every field. Looks like we may be witnessing Schwinger’s predicted “death of science.
    currently unfolding. …or, maybe it isn’t dying, just molting?

    Some of the progress that’s been made…
    https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/jmag0904/episodes/2014-04-24T11_40_44-07_00

    https://youtu.be/KM82RW7_II4

  13. Yonason

    PART 3

    Your SciAm article is from 1999. However, this one from 2016 admits there’s something very real about the phenomenon, even though he denies it’s nuclear.
    https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/its-not-cold-fusion-but-its-something/
    Many scientists around the world are doing research into what is now called LENR, and have been producing clear positive results (it has always been a lie to say there weren’t any) for nearly 2 decades now. It’s beyond silly to deny that.

    It is something real, whether nuclear or not, and the unethical folks who sabotaged further research are a disgrace to the scientific profession. The sad part is that those unethical folks are rapidly proliferating in every field. Looks like we may be witnessing Schwinger’s predicted “death of science.
    currently unfolding. …or, maybe it isn’t dying, just molting?

    Some of the progress that’s been made…
    https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/jmag0904/episodes/2014-04-24T11_40_44-07_00

    https://youtu.be/KM82RW7_II4

  14. DAV

    Two words that prove that is a very silly objection – “Manhattan Project”
    So you don’t know the difference between something well-founded in physics vs. a questionable one with non-reproducible results.

    It is something real, whether nuclear or not, and the unethical folks who sabotaged further research are a disgrace to the scientific profession.
    IOW: not only a conspiracy but one without any explanation or reason.

    However, this one from [SciAm] 2016 admits there’s something very real about the phenomenon, even though he denies it’s nuclear.
    So then it’s not cold fusion. What’s your point?

    https://mathscholar.org/2019/03/lenr-a-skeptical-perspective/

    Keep dreaming.

  15. Yonason

    “So then it’s not cold fusion. What’s your point?” – DAV

    I didn’t say it wasn’t cold fusion, the author did.

    My point is that those who were denying that it had any reality are now grudgingly admitting it has. And, since nothing but nuclear reactions can produce as much energy as they have repeatedly seen (yes, they have), I suspect they will move the goalposts yet again when they realize they are wrong about that, as well.

    As to the Manhattan project, it was only a few years earlier that the atom, which everyone “knew” couldn’t be split, was split. That would probably not have happened in the group-think of today’s academia. And if it had, the powerful vested interests that do not want competition for funds would have suppressed the research, as was done to cold fusion scientists, based on slander and lies that arose out of the ethical vacuum of the time (which has only gotten worse).

    “He claims he can WHAT?! Split the atom? That’s preposterous!”

    It’s not a dream. It’s a nightmare.

  16. DAV

    Y:Your SciAm article [with many reasons against cold fusion] is from 1999. However, this one from 2016 admits there’s something very real about the phenomenon, even though he denies it’s nuclear.
    D:So then it’s not cold fusion. What’s your point?
    Y:I didn’t say it wasn’t cold fusion, the author did. My point is that those who were denying that it had any reality are now grudgingly admitting it has

    The author saying it wasn’t cold fusion is somehow grudgingly admitting it really is? Sheesh! Hard to argue with someone who posts nonsupporting evidence to support his argument. As in, author: “something there but it’s NOT WHITE.” Yonason: “See? He grudgingly admitted it is really WHITE!”

    Um, yeah, yet again.

  17. Yonason

    “As in, author: “something there but it’s NOT WHITE.” Yonason: “See? He grudgingly admitted it is really WHITE!”” – DAV

    More like…

    “something there but it’s NOT WHITE.” – author
    “He grudgingly admitted there’s something there, and perhaps eventually may get around to admitting it is really WHITE!” – more accurate approximation of what I actually wrote, which was…
    “I suspect they will move the goalposts yet again when they realize they are wrong about that, as well.”

    I’ve made my argument that “cold fusion” researchers have been treated like AGW “deniers.” DAV distorts what I write and invokes starwmen to “prove” me wrong. I don’t see any reason to pursue this further.

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