[Rezwan]

Thanks Belbear! It looks great! Dynamic. I feel James Bond might pop out at some point.

[Rezwan]

Aeronaut wrote: A podcast is just an MP3 file that you can record on your computer, then upload to the podcast directories.

OK, so what do we need? 2 turntables and mic? How do we set up a roving studio? Can I use an iphone that records my conversation and just call someone, have an interview, and podcast it at the same time? Where does one publish the podcast to? How do you get on itunes and such?

What are the minimum recording equipment needs for taking this on the road?

[Rezwan]

Aeronaut wrote: One of our credibility problems is that since we don’t use superconducting magnets, we have neither the budget nor the bigger than life pix to capture the average person or average investor’s imagination, unless we can get FoFu into the engine room and/or life support system in the next Star Trek movie. Remember all those stubby silos in the engine room’s background? Who’s to say those aren’t water jackets shielding the fusion reactors?

Or get it on a Firefly transport. The engine room on that show looks a lot like LPP’s experimental space. It’s supposed to be a fusion engine. And Firefly is definitely “sexy”. Plus it appeals to the rugged individualist. The show’s been canceled, but the fans and stars live on. And they’re known to be dedicated. Do we have any Firefly fans here who also post to Firefly blogs? Has that show slipped off the radar? Not possible.

[Rezwan]

Hey Kyle, just left a message for you. I love the direction you’re going in.

On a related note, I looked into Sage nonprofit software. Brilliant stuff, but it’s over $3000! The lady mocked our organization. Well, not really. She just said they work with nonprofits that have at least a $500,000 operating budget, and she knew we couldn’t afford them until we add a couple of zeros onto our budget! Nonprofit industry, who knew.

But she did suggest I go to techsoup.org, which I did, and I’ve just signed up. Check it out and tell me what software you think we should get for administrating our (soon to grow) donor base.

Warwick – interesting post. This reminds me of your comments elsewhere about the end of poverty being more due to the ideas of the enlightenment than the raw energy unleashed. Without money, energy and time, good ideas remain just ideas. Ideas, can, of course, make things more efficient, thus reducing the amount of energy, money or time required. But action is ultimately physical. And physical things eat time, energy, money.

The goal shouldn’t be to figure out how to better exploit the people who are working on a solution, but how to support them. You don’t want them worrying about their rent/mortgage/children/health etc. You just want them worrying about the problem you want solved. Also, we want to get people to support this avenue of research for aneutronic fusion in general – draw more money to it from all around, and for other aneutronic projects. Investment + support, not auto-exploitation.

And, about the micro-investors – you’d have to change a lot of laws.

[Rezwan]

Viking Coder wrote: Your choice of words does not show you to be cognizant and capable of critical, independent thought; rather, it shows a pridefully ignorant ideologue who values juvenile insults, cherry-picking sophistry and “I’m not touching you” style threats over rational, primary resource based discussion.

OK Viking Coder, as for ROE, this is also problematic. Well, actually – he’s capable of such thought, and has many lucid moments, he just seems to prefer baiting and such.

So, for me, it’s not about his ignorance or intelligence, and it’s not about primary resource based discussion. It’s more primal. It’s about intentions of engagement. Are you trying to touch the stranger’s mind, or just stomp around and trample them?

Viking Coder wrote: Yes, “people who reference the peer-review published & independently validated research should be put to death” is a threat.

Did he actually say this? Where?

Viking Coder wrote:
Why is that any different than opening threads on evolution through natural selection on a discussion board frequented by a creationist?

I don’t have a problem with that. I think that, if properly moderated, a conversation between creationists and natural selectionists can be very illuminating. As can conversations between any apparently polarized factions. Illuminating about much more than the topic itself.

Being Iranian American, with a Born Again Christian mother and an Mullah Grandfather, with enthusiastic NRA and Libertarian cousins and flaming liberal cousins, and another cousin who is all about “the secret” and the power of positive thinking…I have a lot of experience with dead-end polarizing conversations. They are only dead ends because the participants put a lot of energy into keeping them polarized, and blocking out others. It takes a lot of work – starting with a nice, deep breath – to get these participants to have a real conversation with each other and to see and hear each other.

I’ve done this work, on many occasions, and gotten to different points of insight. It’s really cool, too. Those moments of reflection when a person slips out of position and into that open space…. Of course, after that moment of appreciation, the participants invariably snap back into position. But at least for a moment there was a human connection and a glimmer of understanding and a possible way out of an ideological impasse.

[Rezwan]

I’m thinking “podcast”. How do we set one up? Then we could also have guest speakers and mini-lectures and – oh, songs. Who knows.

[Rezwan]

And, to break the tension – here’s a humorous interlude:

http://prometheuscomic.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/prometheus-persuade-simpleton.jpg

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:
P.S.
You may recall that I once warned you that opening discussion threads on the subject of Gore-Bull Warming was asking for highly inflammatory and divisive flamewars. You said you were curious, and thought it might be fun. It seems you overestimated your capacity for amusement (and tolerance of disagreement).

And, as I recall, you were the one who brought in all the inflammatory, divisive, flamethrower verbiage!

How are you measuring tolerance for disagreement? You’re the one who simply asserts things more shrilly when you hear a different viewpoint.

My issue is that I can’t even begin to GET to the topic on which to agree or disagree, if the procedure of talking about it is the way you make it.

In other words, when faced with someone who has a death grip on their topic (“My PRECIOUSSSSSS”) you can’t really explore the topic, because they’re stuck on a position and are just re-iterating it over and over. Nothing playful or interesting about that. It gets repetitive and boring.

Also, you set up the GW straw man bogeyman. You claim that they are obstructionist and forcefully consensus seeking and their science is based on nothing. And then you conduct the mirror image of procedure. Producing reputatious reports (and if those guys’ science is bunk, then who’s to say the reports you produce are not also bunk – it’s all bunk. Science doesn’t exist), and shout down any rebuttals.

This isn’t the way to get to the heart of the matter. It isn’t the way to connect with other people. It isn’t the way to arrive at revelations about what’s happening.

What are you trying to accomplish?

If you’re just trying to get people to see what a clever guy you are, nobody’s fool, someone who can stand up to those GW bogeymen – well, OK. Maybe that’s working. Kind of ego driven. And a big “so what” from me.

You just don’t get what I’m talking about. I can tell you’re about to get defensive and slip into a position. And then hold that position by grasping at soundbites. Hard habit to break. It’s hard to see the person beyond the position.

Hmmmm.

More to say. I’ll get back to this later.

[Rezwan]

I think you’d better look up the word “threat”. I have personally threatened nobody.

This isn’t the only place. You often use dehumanizing language to refer to people with a different opinion, and have asked for bodily injury and death elsewhere.

It may seem innocuous to you, but it’s not.

This isn’t about the content of the argument – it’s not about whether GW is right or wrong. It’s about how you approach engaging other people in conversation.

You keep going for alienating, ridiculing and polarizing. You have some good points to make, I don’t see why you wrap it up the way you do.

[Rezwan]

if we put $10 million into something, well in a couple years they’d need another $50 million, and a couple years after that they’d need another $200 million and so on.

You could cap it at 10 million. That would definitely cover LPP’s experiment with enough room for contingencies. Then you could see if it needed more. This is an opening avenue of fusion research – a bold attempt at a new approach, and with a superior fusion fuel.

There is the thrill of science here! Boldly exploring something new.

What is it that people want? Spending millions on lunar landing prizes so that rich tourists can visit the moon. Does that affect all of mankind? Wouldn’t some work on fusion – which could potentially supply the energy for everyone to visit the moon or at least have decent lives be a priority?

Somehow we have to make fusion – and for now the very impossibility of it – sexy.

Now is the time to kick some “impossible” fusion butt, not to wuss out. Pathetic.

[Rezwan]

First of all, does it violate any known laws of physics, in which case it’s really a science experiment.

That’s a strange statement. Science experiments are things that violate known laws of science? In any case, this was not a reference to focus fusion. The ideas behind it don’t violate laws of physics. The dpf does achieve fusion. The question is – can it be tweaked to achieve net energy with the modifications suggested by Lerner et al.

I think the Google folk are referring to the ever receding success line for fusion. A promising idea appears, but then as you get closer to making it happen, you discover that it’s much harder to do than you thought. This has occurred with the mainstream fusion community, laser & magnetic fusion. There is the risk of it’s occurring with the dpf. When they say here:

Fusion and cold fusion, for example, are both areas where we felt that we could not develop enough expertise. Furthermore, the amount of money that would be required to make real progress was prohibitive: if we put $10 million into something, well in a couple years they’d need another $50 million, and a couple years after that they’d need another $200 million and so on.

Cold fusion is superfluous. This statement applies to mainstream fusion. This is a problem faced by all fusion researchers.

Check out “Sun in a Bottle” – the definitive unrelenting, unyielding criticism of fusion research. I think the folks at Google read it. Oddly, the biggest problem the book sees with fusion research is the “wishful thinking” of fusion scientists. This, itself, bothered the author most of all.

Fair warning to not promise anything with focus fusion until AFTER the successful completion of proof of concept experiments.

But that book was interesting. Lots of paradoxes. We want to try to do on earth, what the sun does, without the mass. Pretty cheeky. Scientists who try to do this are derided as “wishful thinkers” and con artists for asking for money to try to do something very difficult. This is the mainstream folk I’m talking about. And, of course, the mainstream isn’t working with boron-proton fusion – which is an order of magnitude harder. So what does that make focus fusion?

[Actually, it makes focus fusion pretty interesting. The book is all about how scientists are failing while trying to stabilize and control the plasma (containing a sun in a bottle, of the title), while focus fusion is about leveraging the plasma’s own instabilities. It doesn’t violate any known laws – not much is known, actually. But because not much is known, this approach may turn out to not work, either. We can’t guarantee everything, and we can’t know until, of course, the proof of concept research is done.]

This book, rips fusion research to shreds and practically calls for the tarring and feathering of fusion scientists. However, at the beginning of the book, it says “In the long term, fusion is the only option.” However, by the end of the book, the author is so hopeless that he just seems to settle for fission energy.

This attitude toward fusion research is a real barrier to progress. Because the problem is so hard to solve, folks are not willing to apply resources to it, and just hoping for a miracle some time in the “long term”. If not wishful thinking, it’s wishful denial.

The fusion community needs to overcome this stigma. Perhaps by comparison to other things. For example, how much money has been spent to find a cure for cancer? And has a cure been found yet? How much is finding a cure for cancer worth? And, along the way of finding a cure, haven’t we learned that eating oranges and exercising is a good idea? Likewise the quest for fusion may take some work. Are we prepared to do that work? Is it worth it? And can we consume less energy and develop alternative energy sources along the way? Why do people single out fusion as “pie in the sky”. Curing cancer is also pie in the sky. We all get old and die. Why are we wasting money on that? Whatever reason you come up with – it should be similar for fusion.

The book was unfair towards fusion – because really, I see so much waste and fraud in other fields, and the fusion guys – they’re trying to solve a problem. Some of them crack under pressure, a few have been fraudulent – but not more so than any field. The quest marches on. Why isn’t it a priority? Possibly because we have plenty of energy in the US, and our military is fine at controlling access to oil. The people who would really benefit from energy – the rest of the world, have more immediate needs and no means to fund it…and so forth.

You know – we need a strategy meeting to talk about fusion perceptions. That should be the next meeting. Let’s set something up.

[Rezwan]

And I believe last year there was a single donation for $10,000. It was sent anonymously, so we don’t know who to thank. But that was great as well!

[Rezwan]

Warwick wrote: My understanding was that LPP didn’t need any more cash to finance proof of concept but now it’s not clear for me? Rezwan?

What gave you this understanding? Let me know so I can clarify it elsewhere on the web.

LPP has partial funding. They will need more funding to complete the proof of concept.

Kyle wrote: I am confident that a non-profit micro-contributor approach could, through several low-to-no cost marketing approaches, raise these monies for the non-profit and the non-profit could, through a grant process, help fund the LPP proof of concept.

Advocacy groups from environmental lobbying organizations to space advocacy groups use this approach; in particular, the planetary society raised seven figures on multiple occasions for its “Solar Sail” projects. I imagine that a number of the regular posters to this forum might, like me, have received the many requests for funding for this project the planetary society put out in the past several years.

Kyle, you’re right on with this. It’s a very good approach to take. We tried this initially, but not in an organized fashion as a nonprofit would. Just as a website, with a linked paypal account, and no dedicated person or team of people following through.

We now have some seed money to try and develop into a fully-functioning, effective nonprofit to do what you have suggested here.

Is the primary problem with the above solution just the lack of expertise and the money for office supplies and shipping?

Money isn’t just for office supplies and shipping. It’s mostly for expertise. The major budget of a nonprofit organization is staff salaries. The staff raises money to cover their own salaries, and the programs. Programs also usually involve salaries. Like, if you want to give healthcare to people, you pay the people delivering the health care. If you want science to happen, you pay scientists to work.

Unfortunately, it takes money and time to raise money. Like fusion, the nuclei don’t want to fuse unless you hit them with a lot of energy. And once they do, they give back energy. More out than in makes it sustainable – I’m not expressing this analogy well.

The nonprofit development goal here is to turn FFS into an effective, resilient fusion advocacy organization that reaches out to everyone it can, and attracts action and money for the pursuit of fusion.

Obviously, a focus fusion 501c organization would not benefit from the decades long and lengthy existing donor base the planetary society had to call on for its project, …

Yes, we don’t have their well developed donor base. That is our number one goal! Although it’s really cool that we have a core group of consistent donors (more than 40! Thank you all! You’re the best! The only folks on this site who actually pay cash! Your names will go down in the book of Fusion!) From this base, we raised over four thousand dollars this year.

Doesn’t sound like much – but over the years it’s kept the site afloat and attracted investor $ to real research. Think what we could do with more typical nonprofit organization funding. FFS’ goal is definitely to grow along the lines of the planetary society. It’ll take expertise, and building on our strengths – on all the folks who are interested in FFS now.

What is your own expertise in this field?

but this project would likely have two things going for it: one, broader, ‘sexier’ appeal;

Sexier appeal? How do you figure? Do elaborate.

What I get from most people is that fusion is just impossible, a pipe dream, so we can’t do it (a lesser problem is the group that thinks this is so self-evident and simple, it must already be funded and done).

When you think of other nonprofits, they offer something with immediate and risk-free benefits. Food for the poor, job training, pictures of stars and planets…Fusion research is pretty risky. It might not work.

This is why we have to make the quest itself sexy, and the successful resolution of the quest – well I think that reward is pretty self-evident.

Yes. The real challenge here is how to make the quest for fusion as sexy as a net-energy result.

I’m wondering how Edison kept up his spirits after the 50th useless lightbulb. Maybe after the 600th worked, he looked back fondly at lightbulb 263 and thought – “that one was really my favorite”.

and two, a much smaller financial target. (A six-figure target is much easier to raise than seven.)

I think LPP needs a low 7 to complete things.

But you’re right. Once we develop into an effective nonprofit with all the mechanisms of fundraising that come with that, the money could be raised. Humanity needs fusion, and we have to pull together to make it happen. It’s a collective endeavor. Perfect for a nonprofit to champion.

Additionally, don’t forget the tax advantage with the non-profit approach for the micro contributors; we wouldn’t have the possible roi, but I suspect most of us would want to contribute for more altruistic and scientific reasons anyway.

Ugh. Taxes. We’ll have to be careful to maintain our 501c3 status. We can’t be a fundraiser for LPP which is a private company. But if we do start raising serious money, I’m sure there are ways to be compliant and still achieve these goals.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: Believe it or not, this is bigger. It is leveraging whole countries’ economics, and has the potential to pauperize much of the world. Energy production and CO2 emission are the carotid arteries of the planet. Control them, and you control everything.

I’m from Iran. That country has had its economy and politics leveraged by western policies for some time now. (It also has a lot of energy production and C02 – but that doesn’t seem to have helped it much). Big problems, but I still don’t feel the panic you do.

FF has the blessed potential to short-circuit the entire racket.

Fusion ex-machina. I do have to point out here that fusion is under-funded, and many approaches are seen as futile scams in their own right. Read “sun in a bottle” – the dude gets almost as righteous as you – except against fusion rather than GW. Until I see full funding of LPP and other fusion projects, GW is an ally.

(Yes, “racket” in the full-blown sense of RICO violation, and more.)

Of all the rackets you target. You don’t have any comparative data here. Oh, because you cherry pick the estimates of the costs based on countries adopting the most draconian policies. Of course.

The fumbling and bumbling of COP15 has kept much of the worst abuse from going into effect in the short term,

This is how it works. No need to panic, these things get sorted out. Cost benefits happen. Bjorn Lomborg’s book:

Lomborg has little doubt that global warming is occurring, that human activities are a factor, and that all of this presents us with problems and challenges. However, he is adamant that there is no need to panic, that attempts to cut greenhouse emissions now are a costly waste of time, and that adaptation for the medium-term future, coupled with investment in research and development (R&D) for the longer term, would make for a more sensible way forward.
— review of Bjorn Lomborg’s book, “Cool It”

Your approach is to hope for a fusion-ex-machina event, and to smear a different set of scientists.

and the exposure of Climategate has begun to give actual hard scientists the nerve and the cover to bring their data and research pushes to the fore. Nothing like direct evidence of insiders conspiring to free objectors from the smear of being called “conspiracy theorists”!

The process takes time. The “peer review lag” effect. And then there will be “objectors” to the “conspiracy theorists” and so on. Have fun wading through all the reports as it asymptotically approaches some sort of other consensus – or not.

The carbon exchange market, BTW, was anticipated to be accelerated from the Billion$$ range into the Trillions$$ in a few years had the “legally-binding” constraints that were eagerly anticipated at COP15 gone into effect. The consolation prize is a roll-over of the present market, so Gore et al. will have to be content with their present rate of enrichment for a few years.

Cherry picking conjecture about economic impacts. Haven’t you read the “Black Swan” yet? You think climate effects are hard to predict – economic anticipations are even more meaningless. I have quite a few friends who didn’t think they’d lose their houses, and this is well before COP15.

MEANWHILE, two major developments are set to derail the whole enterprise. 1) Real scientific testing and independent research, and 2) Focus Fusion.

So you have absolute faith that, as long as they are “objectors” to the “consensus”, then they will be doing “real scientific testing”. Interesting criteria.

And…back to focus fusion – still short on the funding. Hoping to jump on the GW gravy train. But if you can drum up the money from your “objector” colleagues – that’ll be great.

We’ve hopefully dodged not just a bullet, but a tactical nuclear artillery shell.

Quite a few people around the world have dodged and continue to dodge American bullets, bombs and shells. It’s funny that you’re so panicked about this GW shell aimed at the American way of life. Kind of poetic. A great nation taken down by its own fears.

As for opportunistically leveraging the Greenie-Scare environment to fund FF, be VERY careful which dogs you lie down with. People like Chu may not just give you fleas, but turn and tear your throat out if you seem to be undercutting their agendas. And FF would in fact render his entire agenda irrelevant. Beware!

Yeah, see, there’s that fear again. You seem like a very fearful person. You scare me more than greenies. With greenies, I nod for a while, acknowledging their fears of warming – but then talk about policies, and use that Bjorn Lomborg approach to get them to relax on the extreme policy responses, and move to more sensible responses. It doesn’t panic me. Didn’t expect COP to pass the scary stuff.

But with you…it’s just all fear. And the need to jail greenies and defund interesting energy saving research? I’d like a world with more research of all kinds, whether it ends up being useful or not. Knowledge increases.

I also like the theoretical questions raised by global warming. More research into climate will eventually lead to advances in terraforming. Add to that GW-panic induced fusion research and who knows – one day, centuries, millenia from now, there will be “Ringworld” engineers.

It doesn’t seem to me you know how to have fun with this. It seems to me that all you want to do is cancel out GW climate research and carry on with things as they are. Is your lifestyle that perfect that you don’t want anything rocking it?

GW folks have one kind of fear, and you have another kind. I just don’t find yours compelling. It doesn’t seem like you want to explore possibilities – more like you just want to shut certain people up.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:
As for CO2, here’s the deal:
Once the smoke clears from Climategate, and the full extent of the carbon-control hoax is exposed, all the subsidy-grabbing greenie projects will have to be defunded, and many of their scamboni founders and floggers jailed. Then we can begin encouraging maximum CO2 production to help Planet Earth get over its CO2 famine*. A target of returning to the geological average of 1,000-2,000 ppm should be set, which will greatly boost agriculture and food supply.

(FF doesn’t need to hitch its wagon to the diseased CO2-remediation horse. Economics is more than sufficient motive power.)

To the extent AGW assertions can’t be substantiated, neither can yours.

However, as to the bit about FF not needing to hitch its wagon – the history of fusion research funding is very closely tied to panics such as this GW thing represents (Racing Russians for nuclear supremacy, OPEC fears). I can prove it, too. No need to doctor the graph or throw out the “mona loa” data. Steve Chu, is trying to leverage GW for fusion even as we speak.

Your assertions above don’t seem strategic, or useful to the fusion endeavor. And it sounds like you’ve got an inverse consensus thing going. Swallowing the criticisms whole.

Have you put this kind of energy into iraq-gate? Or wall-street-bailout-gate? How many billions, trillions is that?

And these cap and trade scams of which you speak with utter contempt – how egregious are they compared to status quo scams today? Isn’t Wall Street continually coming up with ridiculously pointless economic instruments that keep money in the hands of a few rich people and don’t create jobs or anything for the rest of us? One speculative bubble after another? Why don’t you take on wall street structural issues? This is not a “science” issue, it’s a wall street subsidy mechanism issue. You’d need to change that across the board – not just for the one GW market segment.

Of all the scams, why is this the one that outrages you the most?

It seems you have a disproportionate, passionate and highly emotional response to the green stuff. Such language you use. I get the feeling this is a smoke screen for something. Not sure what. Is your goal really to defund “subsidy-grabbing” green projects (are they greater subsidy-grabbers than our beloved status quo wall street fat cats?) and to jail and flog the project founders?

What I have a problem with is the alienating tone of voice this keeps falling back into. At some point, I will set up a cap and trade policy on our forums re: GWarming-mongering. I think you’ve used up your allotment of comments you can make on this subject.

From Terry Pratchet:

Keep the peace. That was the thing. People often failed to understand what that meant. You’d go to some life-threatening disturbance. Like a couple of neighbors scrapping in the street over who owned the hedge between their properties. And they’d both be bursting with aggrieved self-righteousness, both yelling…and they all expected you to sort it out.

And they could never understand that it wasn’t your job. Sorting it out was a job for a good surveyor and a couple of lawyers, maybe. Your job was to quell the impulse to bang their stupid fat heads together, to ignore the affronted speeches of dodgy self-justification, to get them to stop shouting, and to get them off the street. Once that had been achieved, your job was over…

Of course, if your few strict words didn’t work, and Mr. Smith subsequently clambered over the disputed fence and stabbed Mr. Jones to death with a pair of gardening shears, then you had a different job, sorting out the notorious Hedge-Argument Murder.

Such a froth.

[Author]

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