The following post was submitted by Gerard McEk
In the latest issue (number 6 of 2014) of the Dutch magazine “De Ingenieur” I found an article called “The mosaic of the future”. The “Foundation Technology Vision of the Future” (Dutch: “Stichting Toekomstbeeld der Techniek”) selected six world wide community challenges for 2050: scarcity of natural resources, climate change, population trends, living longer and different, new connectivity and world power shifts.
The foundation has looked for ‘signals’ in the society of how these challenges should be treated/repealed. Workshops of many experts helped to find the solutions. In the section on climate change, they found the following ‘signals’ to counter this problem:
- Breakthrough of cold fusion, the production of energy by nuclear fusion at ‘normal temperatures.
- The development of the ‘travelling wave reactor’ in which uranium 238 (‘waste’ uranium) is being used. An energy source without carbon dioxide and it solves a nuclear waste problem.
- Biomass and synthetic gas can be used to make plastic, oil is not required anymore.
- ‘Acology’ combines architecture and ecology. Large scale buildings were living, working, agriculture are being combined as an efficient and self supplying unit with a minimum of environmental load.
- The thrust that politicians can solve the society problems decays. The thrust in non-governmental organizations, networks, internet groups etc. grows. The political system will change.
What made me enthusiastic is that these experts are far more aware of cold fusion than I expected, which is great news. What is also unusual, is that this was published in a relatively conservative magazine for engineers, the one and only magazine of the Dutch Foundation of Engineers (KIVI)!
About a year ago after the successful tests in 2013, I tried to have one of the science editors of the magazine to write something about Rossi’s E-Cat. He replied: cold fusion is ‘pseudoscience’ and should therefore not be written about in serious magazines as “De Ingenieur”.
Now things seem to have changed and cold fusion is being treated as something real, although they are not fully convinced as in advance of the article they write: “… A breakthrough in this (CF) area is not very likely, but if it does, then it would have a huge impact, that is why we have added this ‘signal’ “.
You can be critical about whether or not carbon dioxide is the main cause of climate change. Additionally I would think CF also influences scarcity of natural resources and will certainly cause a power shifts in the world, however, I think it is good that cold fusion is being considered again and also that is has been published in a main science magazine, so there is light on the horizon for cold fusion!