[Chuctanunda]

Akhenaten: Again, at the risk of being overly repetitive, Stefan Molyneux operates a web site and does interviews. The interview I refer you to is with Dr. Robert Zubrin, whose reputation and credential and beyond reproach. If you really don’t like Molyneux, then just get the book. I just thought a nice preview video would help you take interest in the subject. And all the things you talk about are explained in scholarly fashion, and in the Socratic tradition. If you’re completely emotionally wedded to your apocalyptic visions and just can’t let go of them, then spare yourself the effort of learning anything else. If not, My referral here is my sincere effort to help you gain necessary insight.

[Chuctanunda]

Aknhenaten: If you’re saying nuclear fusion is not yet viable, you are correct. This focus fusion project is attempting to engineer what is hoped to be a more feasible approach to fusion than the more conventional tokamak process. Tens of billions of dollars and decades of research by the top physicists around the world are working on ITER, the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor, located in France. Net energy from fusion is what powers the universe. That’s not in question. The challenge is akin to harnessing lightning, on a much bigger scale. Focus fusion is being developed with known physical principles and at least theoretically viable engineering. To say something can’t work without trying, just because it hasn’t been done successfully yet, well the Wright Brothers got the last laugh in their “impossible” endeavor. But then you must somehow think we might just succeed, and cause a huge increase in energy use and, heaven forbid, population increase.

[Chuctanunda]

Aknenaten: “Malthusian” is the term favored by Dr. Robert Zubrin in his book “Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism”. I highly recommend purchasing and reading this, with an open mind. The misleading, deceptive, fraudulent information of decades of deliberate effort by many powerful agendas gets exposed, with the highest degree of scholarship and journalistic integrity. Knowing what I know I see through the stuff you keep insisting on as true. I challenge you to be intellectually honest by reading this book, and be prepared to have your view of these things changed. For a quick overview, see Stefan Molyineux interview Dr. Zubrin on YouTube. As for DDT having anything to do with ebola or zika or any other virus, well Dr. Zubrin has a whole chapter dedicated to what he calls “criminal pseudo-scientists”.

[Chuctanunda]

Akhenaten: Thanks for the links. We really need for others to proffer their expert opinion. Maybe there’s something to it. But to throw out all of known physics on the word of an amateur with a mere MA is asking a lot. Of course the Focus Fusion program director, Eric Lerner, is the author of the unorthodox but compelling proposition, and book title, “The Big Bang Never Happened”. His original area of expertise is plasma physics and plasma cosmology. Maybe ether mechanics dovetails with plasma physics in some way. We’ll definitely need more input from independent sources, before we can confidently announce “Eureka!”.

[Chuctanunda]

Akhenaten: Malthusians will always see the glass as completely half empty, even when it’s completely full. The long trajectory of human history, from the beginning of agriculture, up to today, and on into the future is testament to ever increasing progress, resulting from ever greater energy efficiency and energy abundance. And “rapid” population expansion is just an opinion. If population growth corresponds to increased human prosperity, then it’s not so “rapid” after all. Malthusians think any population growth is bad. They think the human race to be some sort of invasive species on the planet. As for DDT, just don’t drink it. It really kills bugs, dead.

[Chuctanunda]

Akhenaten: Can you direct us to a publication for the physical principles you postulate here? Granted “spin” is a fundamental component of physics. But I would rally like to see some substantial confirmation of your non standard proposition. And certainly you have access to a renowned team of physicists here with the Focus Fusion team. If you present your work in a scholarly fashion, they might be able to comment intelligently.

[Chuctanunda]

Akhenaten: What’s needed for fusion is high temperature. On the sun this temperature is achieved naturally by the sun’s massive gravity, with temps in the millions of degrees in the center. This is sufficient heat to cause a nuclear chain reaction, thus generating still more heat, that heats us and the whole solar system. Focus Fusion creates the necessary heat using plasma physics and the inherent instabilities to generate a plasmoid. The temps here I think are measured in the billions of degrees. The Focus Fusion team is doing yeoman’s work overcoming the couple of major engineering hurdles to make this viable I invite you again to view the YouTube, (and Google Archive) presentation by Dr. Lerner. He is one of a handful of plasma physicists competent to lead such an effort. I suggest being open minded and learn from this. It doesn’t help to be a “Know it all”, especially when all you know is wrong. Approach this with child like wonder and amazement. There’s too much of what’s here you’re just not seeing yet.

[Chuctanunda]

Akhenaten: Looks like we strayed off topic. Your original claim that practical fusion energy would not be helpful to the world somehow got diverted to the much falsely maligned DDT. Again I refer you to the great effort of Dr. Zubrin, both on YouTube, and more comprehensively in his book, “Merchants of Venom”. The main point being technological advances, especially in the all critical area of cheap abundant energy, have allowed a human population to continuously expand while human living standards expand simultaneously. Focus Fusion holds the great promise, perhaps in less than ten years, of being a giant leap forward in human living standards and quality of life. And as an aside, if I may be permitted, Dr. Zubrin’s greatest claim to fame is in his advocacy for and direct research and development of the human Mars mission. Besides cheap abundant energy here on earth, Focus Fusion may well be a viable energy source for a Mars mission. It may be possible with Focus Fusion to reduce the flight time of such a mission from the current six months with chemical rockets, to less than a month. So let’s cheer on the entrepreneur scientists of this Focus Fusion project. I’m here on this board to I hope to have a front row seat in the making of history. Godspeed to our Focus Fusion Pioneers!

[Chuctanunda]

Akhenaten: Gaining energy or containing it? A nuclear bomb is fusion energy, as is the sun, and all the stars. The technical challenge is in controlling the energy output. Just as a lightening bolt contains large quantities of electricity, it is not of a generally useful kind. What Focus Fusion attempts to do is produce the energy in a pulsed fashion, and at a cyclic rate that can feed directly into the grid. Check out the Focus Fusion video on YouTube. Dr. Lerner takes us through the physics step by step, so even I can understand it.

[Chuctanunda]

Akhenaten: I hate to have to disagree with you, but I must vociferously disagree with you, First, Stefan Molyneux in conducting the interview of Dr Robert Zubrin. His book “Merchants of Despair”, that he overviews in the interview, is very scholarly and doesn’t contain major errors like you suggest. Further, it is well known and not even in dispute that tens of millions of people, mostly children, died in third world countries due to the overblown concern of environmental harm, especially to birds, from DDT use. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was the rallying cry for this insane hysteria. Beyond that, DDT is a simple chemical. Viruses are complex genetic invaders. It’s impossible for DDT to have any causal connection to these complex biological organisms. And I just checked your link. There’s nothing there about DDT, which is a pesticide used to kill mosquitoes, intending to prevent malaria. More importantly, the major premise here is the doom and gloom fallacy of Malthus and his modern day descendants in radical environmentalism, and the long trajectory of historical record of ever increasing resource abundance from advances in technology.

[Chuctanunda]

Akhenaten: What you’re saying has been wrong every time it’s tried, and for good reason. Resource abundance is completely a resulting factor of technology. Now days technology is actually accelerating, i.e., Moore’s Law. Check out Robert Zubrin with Stefan Molyneux on YouTube. They do a tremendous interview on this whole subject of Malthusian doom and gloom prognostication. And Zubrin has a book “Merchants of Venom” where he goes into a lot of detail, and sources his information. BTW life expectancy is suppose to decrease, as well as food supply, as population increases, according to Malthus and company.

[Chuctanunda]

Akhenaten: Malthusians have been and will always be totally wrong. It’s not a question of population increasing, but of that increase outstripping resources. In reality, as population increases, living standards, life expectancies, etc., constantly improve. The Malthusians insist population increase is to be dreaded as they are convinced it will lead to mass starvation. Reality has and continues to prove them wrong. And fusion energy will be a very big blow to their doom and gloom prognostications.

[Chuctanunda]

Fusion will make electricity affordable for the two billion who don’t have it now. The trend seems to be as prosperity increases, population growth rate decreases. Fossil fuels will be less important, and can be used cleanly and efficiently. I really don’t see any down side. The trajectory of human history is one of progress as energy becomes cheaper and more abundant. The so called “malthusians” have always been wrong, but they never give up.

[Chuctanunda]

Does this in any way effect the cosmology debate between The Big Bang and BBNH? Also, is the spectrographic method used reliable in measuring 13 billion year age for a star? And it seems to me anything that doesn’t directly contradict relativity is confirming. If this is their claim to success, congratulations in not overturning a 100 year old theory today.

[Chuctanunda]

Thank you, Dr. Lerner. You put my mind at ease. I definitely don’t want you distracted from your progress on focus fusion energy. This is more important than winning the debate over dark matter.

[Author]

Posts