The Future of Cold Fusion Could be Here

Good science is always rooted in good data, but the most entertaining science is the stuff that transcends the need for data by rooting itself fantastical claims and a rejection of the idea that data is even necessary. So naturally it’s a thrill to learn that two Italian scientists claim to have successfully developed a cold fusion reactor that produces 12,400 watts of heat power per 400 watts of input. Not only that, but they’ll be commercially available in just three months. Maybe.

Cold fusion is a tricky business—some say a theoretically implausible business—and exactly zero of the previous claims of successful cold fusion have proven legitimate (remember when North Korea developed cold fusion?). Hypothetically (and broadly) speaking, the process involves fusing two smaller atomic nuclei together into a larger nucleus, a process that releases massive amounts of energy. If harnessed, cold fusion could provide cheap and nearly limitless energy with no radioactive byproduct or massive carbon emissions.

Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi claim to have done exactly that. Their reactor, they claim, fuses atomic nuclei of nickel and hydrogen using about 1,000 watts of electricity which, after a few minutes, is reduced to an input of just 400 watts. This reaction purportedly can turn 292 grams of 68 degree water to turbine-turning steam – a process that would normally require 12,400 watts of electricity, netting them a power gain of about 12,000 watts. They say that commercially-scaled their process could generate eight units of output per unit of input and would cost roughly one penny per kilowatt-hour, drastically cheaper than your average coal plant.

The problem is, they haven’t provided any details on how the process works. After their paper was rejected by several peer reviewed scientific journals, it was published in the Journal of Nuclear Physics—an online journal apparently founded by Rossi and Focardi. Further, they say they can’t account for how the cold fusion is triggered, fostering deep skepticism from others in the scientific community.

Based on this lack of even a theoretical basis for the device’s function, a patent application was rejected. Their credibility isn’t helped by the fact that Rossi apparently has something of a rap sheet, which allegedly includes illegally importing gold and tax fraud.

But the duo does have something going for them in the fact that they’ve demonstrated their device publicly. In a press conference last week they fired up their reactor and, if the video evidence and reports are to be believed, generated some power. Whether or not they achieved cold fusion is unclear, but other physicists present confirmed that electricity was produced.

It’s anyone’s guess what’s really going on with this bizarre story, but should it turn out Rossi and Focardi have achieved true cold fusion you’ll hear more about it here—and everywhere else.

You can catch a glimpse of their setup in the video below, though a lack of English subtitles makes the full nature of the press conference difficult to parse. If you speak italian and can lend some insight, please do so in the comments.

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Posted in: Andrea Rossi,carbon emissions,cold fusion,gold,italian,physics,reactor,Sergio Focardi,The Future of Cold Fusion Could be Here

Regarding Carbon Dioxide Emissions 2010 Worst Year Ever

“Worst year ever,” the Simpson's comic book guy might say about 2010's carbon dioxide emissions.

A record-setting 36.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide were added to the atmosphere in 2010. That's a 45 percent increase in the global annual release of carbon dioxide by humans since 1990, reports the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in the report "Long-term trend in global CO2 emissions."

Although many industrialized nations made cuts in the amount of carbon dioxide pollution they created, the rapid growth of India, China, Brazil and other developing nations resulted in a net increase during the two decades studied in the report.

The good news is that countries which signed on to the Kyoto Protocol seem likely to meet their reduction goal of 5.3 percent from 1990 levels. The European Union-27 and Russia decreased emissions by 7 percent and 28 percent respectively, between 1990 and 2010. Japan's emissions stayed at about the same level.

The United State's annual release of carbon dioxide increased 5 percent between 1990 and 2010.

After the global economy was shaken in 2008, emissions fell. But from 2009 to 2010 carbon dioxide made a serious comeback. Emissions increased 5.8 percent during that period, the fastest ever. Major economies, China (10 percent), India (9 percent), USA (4 percent) and the EU-27 (3 percent) led the pack in increased emissions of carbon dioxide pollution.

 

The record setting increase in emissions between 2009 and 2010 was really more of a return to normal after the economic recovery, and didn't necessarily represent a massive failure in reduction plans. For example, the report notes that the EU-27's emissions were lower in 2010 (4.4 billion tons) than in 2007 (4.6 billion tons).

On a person-by-person basis, the United States is still the world's number one carbon dioxide polluter, although China now releases more. The USA emits 18.6 tons of carbon dioxide per person, compared to China's 7.5 tons and the EU-27's 8.8 tons.

Despite trends towards renewable energy, hybrid cars and other more efficient technologies, power generation (40 percent) and road transportation (15 percent) account for the lion's share of pollution production, in both the industrialized and the developing world.

The European Commission’s report is based on data from the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research as well as country by country statistics.

Carbon dioxide allows ultraviolet radiation from the sun to pass through the Earth's atmosphere. That radiation then heats the surface, producing infrared radiation. But carbon dioxide traps infrared radiation within Earth's atmosphere, and causes average global temperatures to rise.

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Posted in: atmosphere,carbon dioxide,carbon emissions,environment,kyoto,Regarding Carbon Dioxide Emissions 2010 Worst Year Ever,russia

Can We Count On Weather Machines?

An NAS workshop looks to offset the effects of global warming with intensive, large-scale engineering projects to intentionally alter the climate. Does anyone think this is a good idea?

Ever since prehistoric man first set fires to drive game towards hunters and cliffs, humans have altered their environment for their own gain. No more so than in the years since the Industrial Revolution, when carbon emissions began to drastically alter Earth's climate and atmosphere.

And now that we know definitively that humans can alter Earth's climate, some scientists have begun investigating ways to deliberately change the weather to offset the negative impact of a century of inadvertent human generated climate change.

 

The name for that deliberate, targeted climate change is geoengineering, and its on the mind of everyone from the National Academy of Sciences to Barack Obama's science adviser.

On Monday, the National Academy of Sciences held a workshop on geoengineering, following an interview where White House Science Adviser John Holdren recommended increased research into the subject. While the scientists at the workshop agreed that it was possible, there was disagreement about when to start testing the ideas, and whether or not the cure might be worse than the problem.

According to National Public Radio, one of the more popular ideas involves seeding the sky with sulfur particulate to reflect the rays of the sun and cool the Earth. This solution mimics the changes in climate that follow large volcanic eruptions. In a recent article, The Atlantic Monthly deemed this the "Blade Runner scenario," and listed some other possible geoengineering schemes, including pouring huge amounts of iron into the ocean to encourage carbon-absorbing algae blooms and using a fleet of 1,500 ships to churn up seawater to create more light reflecting clouds.

As Matt Springer at ScienceBlogs notes, no one is sure if any of these plans will work, if geoengineering is even legal, or what unintended nightmare consequences may result from wholesale disruption of the Earth's carefully balanced ecosystem.

The global warming that results from man-made carbon emissions has shown that we can profoundly alter the climate. But the scientists interviewed in all those articles seem torn by the question of whether or not more human generate change is the appropriate, cheapest, and safest way to address the climate problem.

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Posted in: air. global warming,Can We Count On Weather Machines?,carbon emissions,climate,clouds,earth

Asian Air Pollution Behind Rising Global Temperatures

Coal-derived emissions pouring from smokestacks across Asia are--perhaps counterintuitively--responsible for a pause in global warming in the decade following 1998, but that’s no real reason to celebrate. The halt in rising temperatures is a result of the large amounts of sulfur in those emissions, which can have a cooling effect on the planet. But the huge spike in greenhouse gas emissions is still very real, and over time its delayed impacts will be realized when emerging countries rein in pollution.

           At least, that’s the latest on the global warming front via a paper released Monday by researchers at several universities, including Boston and Harvard Universities in the States and Finland’s University of Turku. The halt in rising global temps from 1998 to 2008 is something of a mirage, the researchers say, and the effects of all that carbon that went into the air alongside the sulfur will become apparent in the long term.

          The paper, if taken as truth, ties up a loose end for those who believe global warming is a man-made phenomenon. From 1998 to 2008, global temperatures were flat even as the developing world spewed tons upon tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, increasing global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels by at third. Some called this evidence that global temperatures and carbon emissions aren’t as directly linked as some might like to think.

           But most of those carbon emissions came from coal fueling the explosive growth of Asian economies, and with coal emissions comes sulfur. Sulfur is a key ingredient in the formation of aerosols, which form hazy cloud layers that reflect heat from the sun back into space. These aerosols, the paper argues, are responsible for the halt in rising temperatures.

          But the halt in rising temperatures isn’t likely to last, the researchers say. When emerging economies begin to take a harder line against pollution, those sulfur emissions will decline as well. And while sulfur can persist in the atmosphere for several years, eventually those aerosols will disperse and global temperatures will begin climbing again, this time with countless more tons of carbon already in the atmosphere.

          

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Posted in: aerosols,air. global warming,atmosphere,carbon emissions,china,coal,environment,pollution