Tom Whipple has written another excellent update on the state of affairs in the world of LENR in the Falls Church News-Press (Falls Church, Virginia) newspaper. In an article titled “The Peak Oil Crisis: The Next ‘Keystone’ Debate”, Whipple predicts that next year there will be a major media stir in when it becomes apparent (following the assumed successful conclusion of the 1MW E-Cat plant by Andrea Rossi) that LENR is an energy technology which will seriously disrupt the existing energy producing industries.
Here’s a link to the article: http://fcnp.com/2015/11/10/the-peak-oil-crisis-the-next-keystone-debate/
Whipple paints two very different pictures when predicting how LENR will be received. In the United States, he is pessimistic about the initial reception that LENR will get. He writes:
In a matter of days after it becomes apparent that the technology is valid and could shake the economy to its core, television ads will start claiming that the technology is bad for your health, and that it should be tested for another 30 or 40 years before the public is endangered. The TV ads naturally will be accompanied by a rush of lobbyists to Capital Hill seeking to outlaw or at least mandate years of testing before it can be released to the public. It will sound a lot like the campaign against AC electricity 120 years ago.
However, Whipple sees a very different situation unfolding in China, where we know that Industrial Heat has already been active in preparing the ground for the introduction of the E-Cat:
Fortunately, however, the leadership of Industrial Heat, which at least for the minute seems to be the company that could be the first to offer this technology for sale, has a stratagem to circumvent to what will surely become widespread opposition to the technology. Industrial Heat simply took the technology to China where PR firms, lobbyists, congressmen and TV commercials have zero impact on decision makers. Moreover, China, where people are dying from their own coal smoke, is desperately in need of a clean source of energy ASAP.
Personally I think it’s probably too early to be so definitive in forecasting how a LENR roll-out will go. There will certainly be entrenched interests who will feel threatened by the emergence of the E-Cat — but I expect there will also be widespread public support and enthusiasm for an energy technology that is safe, clean and much cheaper than the current options. If public opinion is firmly behind LENR as a real alternative technology, politicians in the United States, or any other country with a democratic form of government, who stand in its way might feel real pressure from voters. However this assumes that the voting public would be getting accurate information about LENR — and if Industrial Heat or Leonardo Corporation are wanting to sway public opinion in favor of the E-Cat, they would have to finally have a strong public relations presence to provide education and accurate information about their technology.
As far as China goes, I agree that if the Chinese government is behind the E-Cat, it will make things much easier for its introduction. However, China has billions of dollars invested in other energy projects, including solar, wind and nuclear, with the jobs of probably millions of people connected to these projects, and it is unlikely that it would immediately drop them in order to push LENR alone. The Chinese government is not immune from pressure and opinion from its own people. There may be some delicate balancing that will need to be done in order to avoid major economic and political disruption there.
So at this point I don’t have a firm expectation on how things will develop if LENR hits the market — there are so many variables at play — but the stakes are very high around the world when it comes to energy, and it will certianly be very interesting to see how things materialize.
