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Tim Cavanaugh | December 30, 2004

Ron Bailey gives the hairy eyeball to his crystal ball.

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gaius marius|12.30.04 @ 2:37PM|#

Renewed government funding for cold fusion research is likely. Could this be the solution to any global warming worries? Naturally, ideological environmentalists would oppose it. Recall that neo-Malthusian Paul Ehrlich warned that cold fusion by providing humanity with a cheap inexhaustible energy supply would be "like giving a machine gun to an idiot child." Luddite Jeremy Rifkin declared, ""It's the worst thing that could happen to our planet."

cold fusion is probably a lark -- but i always am amazed by the faction of humanity that stands resolutely against techne. it's as if they really believe we're better off in caves. a-ma-zing.

|12.30.04 @ 2:40PM|#

"cold fusion is probably a lark"

Same could be said of fission in 1904.

|12.30.04 @ 2:45PM|#

My prediction: Gaius Marius will continue to infuriate and confound me by not capitalizing anything, ever.

|12.30.04 @ 2:51PM|#

I hope Ron Bailey is wrong about the social security reform not happening.

C'mon Bush, get rid of that shit, and the income tax, you can do it man. You got a mandate man.

Adam|12.30.04 @ 2:54PM|#

The Federal government will continue to lose the "War on Drugs"

Goin' out on a limb there, Nostradamus Bailey..

|12.30.04 @ 2:56PM|#

Yeah, the republican domestic stuff isn't going anywhere. Maybe some minor stuff like making the tax cuts permanentish but inertia wins. Bad or good? Depends on your confidence in the ability of these guys to fashion and execute wise policy. I'd say yay for inertia.

I'm wondering about the whole Excellent Mesopotamian Adventure. Declare victory and get out right after the election? Spun as a brilliant military victory unparalled in human history? Or a stab in the back? Or muddle on until the newly elected Ayatollahs tell us to get out? Then what?

|12.30.04 @ 3:00PM|#

I predict that America is on the decline...

Just kidding, hehe.

|12.30.04 @ 3:06PM|#

I want to quibble with a statement at the end of the article. It's not that the statement is necessarily false, it's just that it hasn't been demonstrated to the satisfaction of this number-savvy physicist:

But there is a bright side�the high prison population explains a good bit of our plummeting crime rates.

At first glance it sounds reasonable. But I want further examination. Let's start with something that most people here would probably agree with: Violent crime is indeed plummeting. But how many in that record number of prisoners are violent criminals or probable violent criminals? If a large portion of the rising prison population is due to victimless crimes then we may have to look elsewhere to explain the drop in violent crime.

Somewhat more controversially, even if the increase in people behind bars is due to non-violent crimes with victims (e.g. fraud), we still have to look elsewhere. (Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to hear that we're arresting more people for identity theft, but I wouldn't use that good news to automatically explain every other piece of good news.)

Somewhat less controversially, we have to look at the composition of the crimes. If we're arresting record numbers of gang-bangers for drive-by shootings and liquor store robberies, that wouldn't automatically explain a decline in the number of rapes reported.

Also, some types of criminals have a higher rate of recidivism than others. Imprisoning more criminals who would have higher recidivism rates could certainly explain the decline in violent crimes. On the other hand, imprisoning people with lower recidivism rates, while certainly a good thing if they committed violent crimes, would not necessarily explain a drop in violent crimes.

Finally, some cross-sectional and time-series comparisons would be good. Have increases in incarceration rates in various states come before or after a drop in violent crime? When comparing different states, are drops in violent crime correlated with rising prison populations?

It's all well and good to look at 2 numbers (lower violent crime rates, larger prison population) and conclude that there's a possible connection to investigate. It's quite another thing to prove the connection.

If the numbers have been crunched then I would be happy to concede the point. But as a scientist and college instructor, I enjoy pounding into people's heads the care that must be exercised when working with numbers.

|12.30.04 @ 3:08PM|#

How about a 2:1 Euro over the dollar Ron?

|12.30.04 @ 3:24PM|#

I've been surfing over at the Santa Fe Institute for something profound to say about predicting. I guess the best summary of my little foray is to report that, even THEY can't predict, or, if they do, on a very narrow basis.

But echoing thoreau, it's hard enough to get facts straight, much less predict.
Has anybody told Jacob Sullum yet about that little flip comment?

|12.30.04 @ 3:34PM|#

I can't believe people are still talking about cold fusion. When you try to get the "+" particle to cohabitate with the other "+" particle, you have to do enough work to overcome their dislike for each other.

Cold fusion is the belief that you can pay a low rent counselor that will make everything hunky dory ...

|12.30.04 @ 3:34PM|#

The lower crime rate is most likely the result of an aging population.

I predict the thwarting of an act of terrorism by TSA officials. Through their screening procedure, the will find a passenger with an explosive shoved up his ass. The so-called "As Bomber" will have us wistfully remembering the days when all we had to remove was our shoes as we choose a screening line based upon the size of the TSA employee's hands.

|12.30.04 @ 3:40PM|#

jeffie,

One of the main differences between "Cold Fusion" today and fission in 1904 is that the experimental results that Pons and Fleischman reported in the late 1980s could not be replicated. AFAIK, in 1904, no one claimed to have initiated an actual controlled high-energy fission reaction. I'll believe "energy too cheap to meter" when I see it. I'll also bet you $20.00US that it won't be "cold fusion."

|12.30.04 @ 3:47PM|#

Ayatollah Usoe,

Thanks for the image. The first thing I thought of was that South Park episode where Mr. Garrison gets so angry at the airlines he develops his own transportation device that requires you to use your mouth and hands to control, and the butt post to keep you inside. (All before Sept. 11, 2001.)

Warren|12.30.04 @ 4:14PM|#

I predict inflation will top 8%

|12.30.04 @ 4:23PM|#

Warren,

In 2005? I'd take out a home loan to get a piece of that action ...

gaius marius|12.30.04 @ 4:27PM|#

The lower crime rate is most likely the result of an aging population.

can you present data to corroborate, mr usoe? it makes sense intuitively, but i'd like to look for myself.

Ronald Bailey|12.30.04 @ 4:29PM|#

RE: "Flip Crime Comment" -- already taken to task by others offline. Here's my reasoing:

Of course, we shouldn't be putting non-violent drug offenders in prison (in fact there should be no such thing as "drug offenders"), however, a good bit of the violent crime can be traced to gang warfare over selling territories and the like--therefore putting violent drug crime perpetrators behind bars is likely to cut violent crime on the streets.

As John DiIulio pointed out some time ago in his surveys of prison inmates, each felony inmate averaged commiting 16 crimes besides the one they were caught and convicted for. In addition, there is something to the broken windows theory of law enforcement--it turns out that people who are prone to petty crimes like turnstile jumping are also more likely to commit more serious crimes such as robbing people. By enforcing laws against petty crimes, one also prevents more serious ones by incarcerating people for petty offenses and by warning other would-be perpetrators that the law will be enforced.

Therefore, unless one is arguing that our prisons are filled only with non-violent drug users, then it is the case that casting a wider net for all types of criminals combined with surer punishment will cut crime on the streets.

|12.30.04 @ 4:35PM|#

Ron Bailey,
The big variable nobody has quantified is the definition of crime.
How much could be defined out of existence if vice laws were all suddenly repealed?

The White Anglo Saxon Protesta|12.30.04 @ 4:35PM|#

Predictions that WILL NOT come true:

Politicians, pundits and armchair economists will cease referring to trade between concerns in the U.S. and nations such as China � who are nearly so if not alone in refusing to allow their currency to be traded, subsidize their heavy industry to the hilt, often with "nonperforming loans," and who only just this year got around to acknowledging that maybe private property might be a good thing � as "Free Trade."

Libertarians and others posting on H&R will study Ayn Rand's fiction and nonfiction carefully enough not to make incorrect assertions such as "Rand hated working people," or that acts of goodwill between individuals are always and in all cases altruistic, and therefore, forbidden by Objectivism, or that Rand was a "Libertarian author."

Said posters will refrain from ad hom attacks on one another.

Said posters will refrain from ad hom attacks on others with whom they disagree.

The WASPB will come out with "The Gridlock Manifesto," calling for a Constitutional amendment declaring that both the House and Senate shall forevermore be split exactly 50-50, Republican and Democrat, that an even number of Justices serve on the Supreme Court with all ties resolved by a vote of the citizenry, and that there should be Co-Presidents, with the Democratic Co-Prez working from the White House, and and the Republican Co-Prez working out of the Even Whiter House.

Bill O'Reilly will succeed Dan Rather as CBS anchor.

|12.30.04 @ 4:47PM|#

The lower crime rate is most likely the result of an aging population.

Clinton said years back that it is demographics. Then he fucked it in imagining he was seizing the opportunity to keep crime low with the 100,000 police officers and so on. But he was right about the cause. The ending of the Baby Boom created a low ratio of youths to humans.

Ronald Bailey|12.30.04 @ 4:57PM|#

Actually, crime savants were predicting the rise of the "superpredators" as the Echo Boom became teenagers. It didn't happen.

See URL: http://www.brook.edu/views/testimony/diiulio/19960228.htm

|12.30.04 @ 4:59PM|#

Do the crime savants mean superpredators like in Clockwork Orange?

|12.30.04 @ 5:17PM|#

Said posters will refrain from ad hom attacks on others with whom they disagree.

Only after you pry the keyboard out of my cold dead hands, buster.

The White Anglo Saxon Protesta|12.30.04 @ 5:31PM|#

"Only after you pry the keyboard out of my cold dead hands, buster."

Yup, that's about what I figured.

|12.30.04 @ 5:49PM|#

Said posters will refrain from ad hom attacks on others with whom they disagree.

BANKY

Well, boys--you're rich in love--

(indicating Jay)

Well, you're in love. And to top that off, you've got your own monkey. What more could two guys from Jersey possibly want?

JAY

All those fucks to stop talking shit about us on the Internet, for starters.

BANKY

What do I keep telling you? There's not much you can do to stop that. Well, short of showing up at all their houses and beating the shit out of them, I guess.

Jay and Bob suddenly freeze. They look at each other and smile.

Ayn_Randian|12.30.04 @ 6:32PM|#

Thank you, WASPB, for saying all the stuff about Rand ignorance that I have been meaning to say.

I am going to channel gaius marius and say that Western Civilization will end because we will all become obsesively individualistic, in which case people like me will think "What the hell is so great about a communitarian society anyway?"

Libertarians will continue to idiotically fritter their votes and moral support to idiot Republicans, except for the staff of reason, which will be sympathetic to Democrats, probably a psycho-epistemological problem with their roots more in Heinlein than Rand.

Charles Paul Freund and Cathy Young will be asked to join National Review, but they will decline, leaving said magazine to continually masturbate to pictures of Ronald Reagan.

A new group to the right of the flat-tax people will receive prominence for an even better proposition: the head tax.

|12.30.04 @ 6:36PM|#

A new group to the right of the flat-tax people will receive prominence for an even better proposition: the head tax.

Why should I have to pay twice as much as everybody else on this planet?

|12.30.04 @ 7:31PM|#

Cold Fusion is the "perpetual motion machine" of the 21st century along with every other "free energy" scams you find on the net. Ronald embarasses himself by giving it any credence.

|12.30.04 @ 7:35PM|#

Actually, crime savants were predicting the rise of the "superpredators" as the Echo Boom became teenagers. It didn't happen.

IIRC, it was Clinton's take, in line with the savants, that we had a window of opportunity (to do whatever) during the youth trough. Those savants apparently concentrated on numbers of youths rather than ratios of youth to human. By the mid '60s we had the famous 51% of population under the age of 25.

|12.30.04 @ 7:47PM|#

I am reluctant to conclude a priori that cold fusion is impossible. The field has received a little more attention from mainstream physicists in the past few years. I don't know enough to say whether it's because there's a good idea that got discredited because of some sloppiness in 1989, or whether it's because some kooks are getting undeserved sympathy from people who want to keep an open mind.

What I do know is that Jason framed the basic issue: There's a huge barrier to overcome when you try to fuse 2 protons. Some of the confusion may come from the fact that hydrogen can be absorbed into certain metals and ceramics at very high densities (and for all I know, palladium may be one of those metals). Sometimes the density of hydrogen inside these materials can actually exceed the density of liquid hydrogen. However, that density is still far too small to achieve fusion, unless there's something else that I'm missing.

I'm open to being proved wrong on this, but I think I see the source of the confusion: People are only thinking about the high densities involved and not comparing them with the densities actually needed.

Now, if somebody told me that the densities were 200 times those of liquid hydrogen I would give it some serious thought. It's been demonstrated that muons (particles similar to electrons but about 200 times heavier) can catalyze fusion by forming muonic hydrogen molecules (basically, a hydrogen molecule where the muons are substituted for electrons). The muons, being heavier, allow the nuclei to come closer together. Even that is not enough for spontaneous fusion, but supposedly it reduces the energy that you need to add to initiate fusion.

|12.30.04 @ 8:13PM|#

thoreau's law:

Too much physics in one post may kill any interest in the thread.

|12.30.04 @ 8:13PM|#

I did some googling: Adsorption of hydrogen into palladium is an area of hot interest because of applications to hydrogen production and storage for fuel cells.

I wouldn't be terribly shocked if there's some sort of exothermic chemical reaction when you adsorb hydrogen into palladium, immerse it in some sort of electrolytic solution, and then run a current through it. For all I know, that may even be what Pons and Fleischmann observed in 1989. However, it isn't fusion, and it certainly isn't generating more energy than you put in. It might seem that way, but only if you fail to account for the energy needed to extract hydrogen from water.

Some sort of exothermic chemical reaction, coupled with the high density of hydrogen in palladium, is probably what's motivating the newfound interest in "cold fusion." For all I know, the field might even yield some real technological benefits. However, as long as the researchers convince themselves that they're observing fusion they'll never figure out what's really going on and they'll never make anything useful out of it.

|12.30.04 @ 8:14PM|#

Bill-

My apologies.

|12.30.04 @ 8:19PM|#

thoreau,

No apologies to me needed. (I am a lowly holder of a master's in physics.) Your post simply sent my mind out of the realm of H&R and into that of Scientific American.

|12.30.04 @ 8:29PM|#

Obtaining the hydrogen needed for the "hydrogen economy" seems to be the biggest sticking point. What we really need are some major advancements in solar energy. All that sunlight! It's like being in the middle of the ocean with no fresh water to drink.

|12.30.04 @ 9:41PM|#

"What we really need are some major advancements in solar energy. All that sunlight! It's like being in the middle of the ocean with no fresh water to drink."

Why not just build a Dyson sphere and collect it all. It's not like the rest of the solar system is using all that energy. ;)

|12.30.04 @ 11:30PM|#

Ugh, trying to dust off long unused physics parts of my brain.

"The muons, being heavier, allow the nuclei to come closer together. Even that is not enough for spontaneous fusion, but supposedly it reduces the energy that you need to add to initiate fusion."

I seem to recall from my physics days that muonic catalyzation was the theory behind the possibility of cold fusion back in the day. Problem is, you can't come within a country mile of the energy density/time requirements (Rayleigh's criterion?) through the introduciton of heavy electrons. Muons are the low rent counselors.

I agree that I can't imagine someone looking at chemistry to try to overcome that lovely inverse square field at awfully close to r=0 range. Since chemistry as a whole is driven by the same force acting at much longer ranges, it is hard to see how you would get much help from any crystal structure scenario.

I remember thinking at the time that we really need a better handle on nuclear strong force to see if it is really possible. Pet theory: We know that electrons tunnel. What happens if you can get the strong nuclear force carrier (don't even know what it is called) to tunnel through the potential barrier caused by the positive charge on the proton?

Ah for the days of coming up with completely untestable hypotheses on a chalkboard. If only I didn't suck at differential equations.

|12.31.04 @ 12:00AM|#

Jason-

I'm not familiar with the theories that were floating around when Pons and Fleischmann first made their announcements, but muon catalysis probably wouldn't have been one of them, because ordinary matter doesn't have muons floating around. I only brought up muon catalysis to justify my criterion that the distance must shrink by a factor of at least 200 for fusion to be plausible.

And, as I think about it, reducing the distance by a factor of 200 would increase the density of hydrogen by a factor of 8 million, not 200. So confinement effects in palladium can't possibly facilitate fusion. The forces needed to bring about that confinement would shatter the bonds between palladium atoms.

What happens if you can get the strong nuclear force carrier (don't even know what it is called) to tunnel through the potential barrier caused by the positive charge on the proton?

I no longer recall what the particles mediating the strong force are called. However, the short range of the nuclear force has nothing to do with the repulsive electrical potential. The nuclear force is short-ranged and that's just the way it is. The distance over which those particles can tunnel is limited by the nuclear force, not the electrical force.

In the end, one way or another you need to get the protons close enough for that attractive force to do its thing. And for that you need to overcome electrical repulsion, as you pointed out.

Fun fact: The energy released in a fission bomb is primarily due to electrical forces, not nuclear forces. The nuclear forces bring protons together, the electrical forces push them apart. I learned this when I was a TA for freshman physics and one of the problems was to calculate the electrical energy released in a fission reaction.

|12.31.04 @ 11:03AM|#

The US dollar will reverse its decline, interest rates and (CPI) inflation will remain low, US govt bonds will rally, and gold will plummet to $300, confounding and perplexing the too-confident majority of economists and America-bashers.

|12.31.04 @ 1:54PM|#

Thoreau:

Gluon. One of the best names. Can't believe I forgot it. Also forgot that charge isn't related to strong force range. See? This is why you are doing what you are doing and I am not.

Like many things in my life, I am much more interested than talented.

|12.31.04 @ 3:16PM|#

Jason-

Were you a physics major at some point? Just curious.

|1.1.05 @ 2:12AM|#

I guess none of you guys noticed that the whole cold fusion thing was fully vetted in the August 2004 Popular Mechanics. QED.

It seems that all the serious CF researchers so far have got blown up. That's a sure sign that they're on the right track, eh?

If you need the plans for a cold-fusion reactor, you can buy them for $12.95 from a guy advertising in the back pages of PM. Here's your chance to make history! Why wait?