[Preface Added 11/24/2011:

Several New Energy Times readers have been confused and have contacted me about this post. Please accept my apologies. I can see that some introduction is required.

On Nov. 12, Swedish Public Radio broadcast a news story on Ny Teknik and Mats Lewan’s coverage of the Rossi story. I wrote a post about it here.

On Nov. 16, Norbert Andersson, Ny Teknik acting editor in chief published, on Ny Teknik, a response to the Swedish Public Radio broadcast.

With the help of New Energy Times reader KHM, we translated Andersson’s text into English, and it follows below.

Andersson is defending against Swedish Public Radio’s comment that Ny Teknik is advertising a scam. Andersson’s response is that Ny Teknik’s coverage of the Rossi story is justified because it has brought “high waves” of debate and extensive discussion to the topic. Andersson also says the public has been served by the reader comments to their Rossi articles.

“It is the strength of our readers that they can enrich our own reporting,” Andersson wrote.

Andersson’s explanation is similar to Brian Wang’s (Editor of Next Big Future): “I will continue to report on this even if it is a fraud, because it is still news that there is large scale technical fraud.]

[Thanks to KHM for translation improvement]

The Radioshow “The Media” Missed the Debate
By: Norbert Andersson, Ny Teknik Acting Editor in Chief
Published November 16, 2011 00:00

This weekend, the radio show “The Media” (P1) examined Ny Teknik’s coverage of the energy catalyst that Italian Andrea Rossi has invented and which he believes is based on cold fusion.

It is a good thing that the radio critically reviews the media world, including Ny Teknik.

In spite of the program having the theory that Ny Teknik and our reporter Mats Lewan market a criminal swindler, we have to accept it. It is not easy to gain an understanding of the theories that might explain what is happening in Rossi’s catalyst, especially for the program’s reporters, who have no deeper knowledge of technology and must rely on what others say about it.

This is in contrast to Mats Lewan, who has studied the various theories of the catalyst, he has a Master of Science (Engineering Physics) and knows what requirements you must have of a catalyst that is claimed to produce energy.

But the crucial mistake in the program was that “The Media” did not tell in what context that Ny Teknik has released the bulk of reporting on Andrea Rossi. Namely, directly adjacent to a major debate on our Web site nyteknik.se.

Every time Mats Lewan has reported on new routes of the Energy Catalyzer, the debate has gone high waves.

Hundreds, and sometimes over a thousand, various comments have been scrutinizing and discussing the reports. The comments are in scale many times larger than our own articles on the subject.

Most comments are serious and provide new aspects.

There is among our readers a large number of experts that through the comments give other readers – and even Ny Teknik´s Editorial – more knowledge and new perspectives.

It is the strength of our readers that they can enrich our own reporting.

Sure it sometimes pops up silly remarks and offensive or just malicious comments.

We delete the worst comments because the comments field on nyteknik.se is not a place to vent one’s aggression, but a serious discussion forum.

So I invite you who has not previously discussed on our Web site, to contribute with your knowledge and experience in our comments. To the joy and benefit of all readers.

On Nov. 2, John Brandon published a story on Andrea Rossi and his claim of an “energy catalyzer” on Fox News.

Brandon speculated, based on what he read on Sterling Allan’s free energy blog, that U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center San Diego was Rossi’s mysterious customer and that they measured and verified Rossi’s test.

On Nov. 9, I asked James Fallin, the director of public affairs at SPAWAR San Diego, “is there any truth to the suggestion published on Fox News that SPAWAR is, or is considering purchasing any device from Andrea Rossi?”

“No truth at all,” Fallin wrote.

On Nov. 11, Mark Gibbs, writing for Forbes.com, wrote that Craig Brown, who operates the Free Energy Truth Web site, claimed that Rossi’s “first” customer was Austin, Texas, based National Instruments Corp.

Gibbs checked with National Instruments. According to John Pasquarette, Vice President of Corporate Marketing and eBusiness, National Instruments did not purchase a 1 MW cold fusion plant from Rossi.

Sander Olson, a writer for Next Big Future, contacted me yesterday about the SPAWAR rumor.

“After having read your articles on E-CAT and receiving independent confirmation from SPAWAR that they are not taking possession of any device from Rossi,” Olson wrote, “I have decided that he is almost certainly a fraud and [I] will not pursue an interview. I always suspected that he was a fraud and I now find the evidence overwhelming. Thank you for providing assistance in this matter.”

Nevertheless, Brian Wang, the owner of the Next Big Future Web site, published a story today promoting Rossi’s alleged technology.

“Leonardo Corporation is offering one megawatt E-Cat plants for sale, that are capable of producing hot water, or low temperature steam,” Wang wrote.

[Added: 17:04h. Source: Next Big Future. Author: Brian Wang. “I will continue to report on this even if it is a fraud, because it is still news that there is large scale technical fraud. So if it is true it is news and if it is fake it is news. You are free to ignore the posts. I agree that there is plenty of weird things going on with Rossi. I find the other [people] who are working in the field to be far more credible, but Rossi is out front and has the biggest news making activity. It is a circus high wire act without a net. It is news when they are on the high wire and it will be news when or if they fall off.”]

Good dialogue with New Energy Times reader Bruce Burman today:

Burman: Great blog these days with the E-Cat stuff.  You know, if you were not pointing out this reality, the entire LENR field would look like kooky fringe pseudoscience when this is done playing out.

Krivit: Thank you Bruce.

Burman: Because you are closer to the ground floor on this stuff, what is your opinion as to the likelihood of a true LENR power device coming online over the next 15 years?

SK: That is the most common question I get and the hardest to answer. I can only guess: A small low-power device: High likelihood.

BB: Is there enough real research being done to get us there?

SK: As far as I know, and at the moment, the field does not have the forward motion it needs. So right now, no.

BB: Do the brightest minds believe it to be possible?

SK: This is the very good news. Yes, without a doubt. Strong support exists both experimentally and theoretically. Particularly with people outside the field who are not cold fusion believers, they see the possibility of weak interactions/neutron-capture LENR processes. I’m not a [paid promoter] for WLT, but I think they are light years ahead of anybody else. I have spoken with people who have taken the time and who have the capacity to understand it, and WLT seems to be a game changer.

Either Larsen needs to get going and make it happen, or somebody else has to figure out what Larsen has figured out, or improve on Larsen’s understanding, and then make it happen.

[Added, 18:00h]

BB: My big concern is we’re going to turn our planet into an other Venus with the trajectory we are on, everyone wants the perfect energy source (cheap, clean, plentiful) or nothing is going to change.

I guess I am trying to figure the odds of a game changer. Thanks for the info on Larsen I will brush up on it this weekend.

SK:
– Modern civilization is built on the assumption and expectation of a perpetual supply of cheap fossil fuel energy.
-Availability of cheap fossil fuel energy is on a gradual downward trajectory.
– Modern civilization’s consumption of energy is on a gradual upward trajectory.
– Solar doesn’t work at night and windmills doesn’t work when there is no wind.
– The idea that any large society will voluntarily and significantly reduce its energy consumption is a fantasy.
– Uranium-thorium breeder reactors can provide hundreds of years of low-waste power but we would have to build hundreds of them.
– We need no asteroid to hit the Earth to cause widespread devastation.
– Without a game-changer, we are on track for a disaster.
– There is no time for fantasies or fraud.

[Added, 20:36h]

SK: Larsen wrote one of the best overviews of LENR on Doug Natelson’s blog. Here is an excerpt:

“LENR-related phenomena have been episodically reported in mainstream scientific literature for over 100 years. In the past, most such discoveries were either written-off as experimental error or simply inexplicable anomalous phenomena — scientific curiosities with no sensible theoretical explanation. Unlike strong interaction fission and fusion, even substantial fluxes of LENRs in condensed matter do not typically produce large amounts of dangerous ‘hard’ photon or neutron radiation, or long-lived radioactive isotopes, so they could easily go unnoticed or sometimes even mimic prosaic chemical isotopic ‘fractionation’ processes — hidden in plain sight, as they say.

“All of this prior 100-year history is understandable because LENR triggering mechanisms in condensed matter systems are very subtle, depending on multistep, nanoscale, many-body, collective quantum phenomena that are very difficult to reliably replicate unless one has mastery of certain key elements of nanotechnology and plasmonics that are required to do so. Indeed, the requisite technical knowledge and related fabrication techniques in nanotech that are crucial to conducting truly productive interdisciplinary R&D programs in LENRs have only become available within the past several years — they simply didn’t exist 20 or even 10 years ago. Today, they finally do.”