The following was submitted by Gordon Docherty, a British engineer.
Dear Reader,
Ever since my earliest years, when I watched with avid interest the Apollo programme and experienced the purpose and impetus that it gave to the highest ideals mankind and of ‘making the world a better place’ (who can forget those first pictures of the Earth from space and Earthrise over the moon), I have been filled with a need to play may part in also giving meaning to life and dignity for all. This feeling has only grown stronger in me over the years as I have watched with dismay the unbridled lust for wealth take its toll on the planet and on each and every one of us (even those who consider themselves otherwise ‘wealthy’). Now, in these ‘interesting’ times, I have once more been reminded that the only true wealth is that afforded by helping each other through the joint application of our skills, work and enthusiasm to produce and support real, high quality, new and innovative products that, in turn, improve the quality of life and the dignity of all (one reason why I became a Fairtrade speaker 16 years ago).
So, when I heard of reports that Andrea Rossi had developed a “remarkable new device” – the E-Cat – I was keen to follow this development further to see if there was any substance to the claims being made. To my surprise – and delight – test after test proved both positive and thought provoking, positive because the tests kept on producing positive results, thought provoking because each new test threw up new questions that were then answered by subsequent tests and so on – until the test of October 28th, where a substantial E-Cat installation was tested by an, as yet, anonymous customer.
In parallel with this, and other, developments, developments in the wider world have been pointing with ever increasing clarity to a world in crisis:
- Financial market instability and the lack of real growth is threatening the livelihood of many, many people
- To secure energy supply, there is an increasing unease about possible Nuclear Weapons Proliferation – including in areas that power much of the world today
- Climate change, whether man made or natural, is taking hold. To simply ignore it is no longer an option. Even if the cause is natural, our current use of limited fossil fuels is certainly no help to slowing the rate of change
- Exploring for oil and gas is now risking major ecological disaster – as well as potential geological problems (from releasing trapped gas into the water supply to reducing the ability of rock formations to ‘slip’ over one another)
- A growing sense of helplessness is both leading to a loss of faith and is being led by it
- Falling standards of living are impacting in particular the vulnerable in society, the young, the old and the infirm
- Energy infrastructure that was put in place many years ago is now requiring expensive and far reaching changes to deal with the expected demands of the 21st century at a time when demands on resources and land are also increasing
- No serious solutions are currently ‘out in the mainstream’ that could being to address the other issues being seen.
Given the predicament we are now all in, therefore, I cannot understand why governments in the supposedly ‘enlightened’ developed world have singularly failed to innovate in an area common to all of us that underlies every one of the problems above – namely the availability of cheap, clean, safe and reliable energy. After all, it is around eighty years ago that Rutherford carried out his first tests in atomic fission. Study after study has revealed that our economic well-being and, indeed, our very survival, depend upon access to inexpensive ‘energy for all’. So, why the apparent disinterest? Now, some say that the days of ‘cheap energy’ are over, but then that is just another way of saying that you can have no energy unless you are rich, a virtual death sentence to all except those at the very top of the financial ladder, and even then their future is no longer certain.
So, while inventors struggle on in Dense Plasma Fusion (Lawrenceville Plasma Physics), Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (Rossi, Piantelli, ….) or other more exotic forms of energy (tapping into the very fabric of space itself), governments around the world continue to “fight it out” for the same old reserves of oil, coal, gas and uranium, all of which are very finite and all of which are difficult to extract, come from unstable political regions of the world and/or are dangerous to handle. Now, of course, there are “greener” alternatives such as solar and wind, but they do still come with a very high price tag and they are still subject to the age-old problems of reliability of supply, distribution and maintenance.
To make matters worse, the global economy, like an addict in the final throws of an addiction, has been making ever greater demands on the reserves it does have, so squandering what are, in their own right, precious resources required also for medicines, fertilizers and other ‘hi-tech’ or ‘high value’ materials.
Now, some have argued that we could just go “cold turkey” and turn off the oil and the coal, something that will inevitably happen in any case a few years down the line from now if the status quo remains unchanged. Such an approach, however, is pure folly as it would just accelerate the deaths of the billions of people that those wishing to “save the planet” are seeking to avoid, as our systems of survival – water, food production, heat / light, waste disposal – all slowly degraded and failed, one by one.
Better by far, then, that rather than ‘resigning ourselves to our fate’, we reignite that bold spirit of adventure we once had, taking hold of our own destinies once more, and inventing ways to move beyond our current downward spiral of ‘addiction’: it is worth remembering that the advances of the 19th and 20th centuries were not motivated by money alone (or even mainly), but by a burning desire to raise the standards of living and quality of life for all. We, too, are now being called upon to play our part, just as our forefathers were, only now we must ensure that these improvements do not also ‘cost us the Earth’.
With this in mind, therefore, I set about trying to wake up the government here in the UK to raising its sights beyond ‘the usual suspects’ – fossil, fission and farms – to look at more exotic forms of energy to overcome our current limitations whilst simultaneously improving the environment for all. Initially, I made enquiries to the Department of Energy and Climate Change via my local MP, to see if I could stimulate interest that way. Unfortunately, I found what many have found: no real interest was shown beyond the “business as usual” agenda – even though this agenda really does threaten to ‘cost us the Earth’.
Not to be defeated, however, I have now set up an ePetition here in the UK, for those who refuse to just wait around like “sitting ducks”, to ‘take up the cause’ and call upon Parliament to purchase, test and report on the E-Cat, to determine the validity of the claims being made about the device and to send out a message that we will not just accept out fate lying down. For, if it can be shown that the E-Cat is valid:
- we can stop burning oil that we need for medicines, fertilizers, hi-tech materials
- more than 80% of Europe’s current known reserves of Nickel, the E-Cat’s main “fuel”, are to be found in Greece. So, this would solve the Greek problem “at a stroke”
- there is enough Nickel on the Earth alone for more than 1.5 billion year’s worth of E-Cat operations
- the E-Cat is truly versatile, scalable, safe and clean (no nasty by-products), so allowing it to be used in many different ways to complement other sources of energy
- it would be a truly very inexpensive source of energy, at least until “tapping the vacuum” became a widespread reality
- it is available now – so allowing the issues of damage to the environment, geological stability, climate change, energy for young and old, and the financial crisis (growth) to be addressed straight away.
I therefore call upon all who have read this article who are UK citizens or who live in the UK to sign up to the ePetition today at:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.
to make your voice heard.
For those of a more cautious nature, I do point out in the ePetition the downside risk – purchase + test costs in addition to the upside risks (surely a ‘no-brainer’ given the predicament we are all now in). What I did not mention in the ePetition, however, (to keep it short) is that the “official figures” for meeting the UK’s green energy commitment for CO2 reduction by 2020 are £200Bn for new offshore wind farms, £10-20Bn per site for 6 new nuclear power stations, and £25Bn (or 10x if buried) for wiring those coastal facilities into the spine of the national grid in the UK, resulting in bills that are expected to top £3000 per year per household (alone) for heating and lighting by 2020 (currently they are around £1200 per year per household and that is already too much for many old and young people). Add to that average fuel prices of over £1.33 / litre (or more) (over £6 or $9.70 / gallon) at the pump – costs added to any item delivered anywhere by road or rail), and investing in testing a Rossi device (or 2 or 3 or …) that has passed muster on every test undertaken so far is just common sense.
So, whether an avid supporter, a sceptic, or even a “naysayer”, please show your support for encouraging serious consideration of the “already on the table” E-Cat alternative by supporting the e-petition if you live in the UK or are a UK citizen – after all, if the naysayers are right, buying and testing an e-cat is a tiny sum compared to the £300-£400Bn (that is £300,000,000,000 to £400,000,000,000) that needs otherwise to be paid out, whereas, if the avid supporters are right, well, that’s £400,000,000,000 to spend on something else, like helping old people survive the winter (the worst aside, we will all be old one day), use oil more wisely and stimulate the world economy by removing the shackles that keep it enslaved.
Finally, please don’t just read this article and then just put it down with an “every way you look at this you lose” attitude. Please encourage all you know, who can, to sign up to this ePetition:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.
Yours faithfully, and in hope,
Gordon Docherty
