Cold Fusion and Global Warming

It's been awhile since I talked about either Cold Fusion or Global Warming, but both have been on my mind a lot lately. I guess we'll start with Global Warming... Well I'm not sure if you've heard, but Mars is warming up too. What does this mean? Well at a minimum it would suggest that not all of the warming we're seeing is man-made, that some of it is natural. Of course one can now argue that it's even more important than ever to curb C02 emissions. I mean it's one thing if they're keeping us from descending into another ice age, but it's another if they're making a warm situation even warmer... I'm not sure I would make that argument, but it's out there if anyone wants to borrow it.

Here is the argument I would make... That I will not listen to anyone who talks about the severity of Global Warming (or Global Climatic Instability, or whatever) who is unwilling to consider Nuclear Power as a possible solution. Because you've immediately undermined your argument. You cannot with one side of your mouth say "Global Warming is the greatest threat humanity faces" and then say, "But no, we would never consider Nuclear Power as a possible solution, it's too dangerous." More dangerous than the "greatest threat to humanity"? Obviously you can't have it both ways, and if you try I'm just going to ignore anything and everything else you say.

Personally I think Nuclear Power is a good idea even in the absence of Global Warming. In fact I'm not only pro Nuclear Power, I'm pro Nuclear Waste! We've got these big, largely uninhabited deserts out here in the west, why not put them to good use and store nuclear waste here? This is where people start to look at me funny, but to be pro Nuclear Power without being, on some level, pro Nuclear Waste an hypocrisy only slightly less egregious than the one I previously mentioned involving Global Warming and Nuclear Power.

So here's the deal, you want me on board with the whole Global Warming thing? Make wide-spread adoption of nuclear power the central plank in your campaign and I'm your man. I'll sign petitions, I'll show up to protests, heck I will even storm the barricades. Leave Nuclear Power out and I become a borderline Global Warming Denier, because if the true believers don't think it's bad enough to reconsider Nuclear Power, how on earth can I believe it's that bad?

Of course this entire rant may be moot, since cold fusion could ride over the horizon and save us all. An article published just last month in Naturwissenschaften entitled "Further evidence of nuclear reactions in the Pd/D lattice: emission of charged particles" gives yet more proof that the cold fusion phenomenon is real. For those too lazy to follow the link, here's the abstract with the important parts bolded:

Almost two decades ago, Fleischmann and Pons reported excess enthalpy generation in the negatively polarized Pd/D-D2O system, which they attributed to nuclear reactions. In the months and years that followed, other manifestations of nuclear activities in this system were observed, viz. tritium and helium production and transmutation of elements. In this report, we present additional evidence, namely, the emission of highly energetic charged particles emitted from the Pd/D electrode when this system is placed in either an external electrostatic or magnetostatic field. The density of tracks registered by a CR-39 detector was found to be of a magnitude that provides undisputable evidence of their nuclear origin. The experiments were reproducible. A model based upon electron capture is proposed to explain the reaction products observed in the Pd/D-D2O system.

See! Nothing to worry about