ATLANTIS RISING Number 16

The Politics of
NEW ENERGY
If the Inventors Are Learning How to Solve Our Energy Problems,
Why Isn't More Happening?

The little-known battle
waged by energy
Researchers and Inventors
has higher stakes than Bill
Gates and his industry
could ever create.

By JEANE MANNING

It's a high-concept story, to use the language of Hollywood: Inventor wants to save the world from ecocide-from choking on ail fumes, roasting under greenhouse gases or bang poisoned' by nuke waste. However, oil merchants, nuclear power lobbies and fuel-tax-supported governments don't want the inventor to get the help needed to develop and mass-market his Fuel-less Energy invention. At least not while they're raking in the money and looking for untapped customers in the third World.

Variations on this story are occurring in real life in various parts of the world. If the mass media were reporting it, the public would take notice. Ever since a Hebrew named David faced up to the Philistines champion killer, the public has relished the drama of Underdog vs. Giant. Today, for example the media report every nuance of Microsoft-as-Goliath tactics. while smaller software companies prepare technological slingshots and the United States government takes a few shots using anti-monopoly laws.

The little-known battle waged by energy researchers and inventors has higher sakes than Bill Gates and his industry could ever create At stake is the right of independent innovators to compete on a level playing field-in a multi-trillion-dollar game dominated by giant fossil-fuel companies.

(Today the field is not level. Revolutionary new energy inventions are denied patents and their researchers in most cases are denied funding, while billions of dollars go to development of harmful energy technologies Adding further insults. today's ensconced experts' deny approval for non-conventional energy research, thus discouraging investors who may have funded the independent innovator who has depleted his or her own resources. Then the media quote the old-paradigm experts and ignore or ridicule the anomalous discoveries. To survive these
rebuffs, individual researchers need strength.)

Also at stake is the big picture - will humanity move from dirty energy technologies to nonpolluting inventions fast enough to ease climate-change catastrophes, or before an earthquake somewhere creates nuclear havoc? As well as weather-havoc penalties if the clean energy warriors lose their battle, The stakes, include major prizes if they win. We could reclaim a living planet. Oil wars would become history.

FUTURISTS PREDICT RESISTANCE OVERCOME

If not the mass media then who is watching this drama? John L Petersen of the Arlington Institute, for one. He writes future-oriented reports that the highest levels of American government have used for strategic planning. In his new book, Out of the Blue, he writes about "Wild Cards and Other Big Future Surprises: How to Anticipate and Respond to Profound Change." A wild card is a major surprise high-impact event with a scope - and speed of change that challenges human capabilities to the extreme. In his list of potential wild cards, Petersen's impact index gives a rating high to "energy revolution." In this scenario, a near-future scientific breakthrough makes our traditional energy sources obsolete -- Cold Fusion and Zero-Pointist, editor, student or other researchers can save the world single-handedly.

If the nineties' were more like the sixties would commercial generators that require no "fuel' in order to produce heat and electricity become a reality? Early indicators include the 1995 announcement of the Patterson Power Cell, and many other experiments that sporadically give more power output than input.

Petersen lists the vast implications of an energy revolution. Improvements to the ecosystem could be rapid and vast. Japan could have energy independence. Decentralization of the control of energy would affect society. However he says there could be much opposition to an energy revolution.

Other relevant wild cards graphically presented in his book are these possibilities. -Massive lengthy disruption of the national electrical supply; room-temperature superconductivity arrives; fuel cells replace internal combustion engines cold fusion is embraced by a developing country.

Sir Arthur Clarke is another futurist who shares Petersen's prediction that an energy revolution could begin before the year 2000. In the June 5. 1998 issue of Science. Clarke writes about cold fusion. "Now I have little doubt that anomalous energy is being produced by several devices. The literature on the subject is now enormous, and my confidence that "new energy" Is :' real slowly climbed - and has now reached the 99% level."

Clarke quotes a fellow scientist, also a former skeptic of cold fusion, who says the problem now is too many conflicting theories. However. there is now strong evidence for the energetic reactions in certain materials at low temperature.

Brushing aside the problem of conflicting theories on cold fusion, Clarke reminds us that the steam engine Was around for a long time before anyone explained exactly how it works. The challenge, he says, is to see which of the competing inventions is most reliable. "My guess is that large-scale industrial application will begin around the turn of the century... at which point one can imagine the end of the fossil-fuel-nuclear age."

Sifting through the enormous literature mentioned by the knighted futurist is the task taken on by individuals with Internet web sites and by editors of new publications -- notably Hal Fox of New Energy News and Dr. Eugene Mallove of Infinite Energy magazine. Both editors have a lot to say, passionately about the politics of energy. For example Hal Fox writes "the resistance d the majority of the scientific community to accept new scientific experiments, models and theories slows down scientific progress: denies employment to highly-qualified scientists, for failure to abide by accepted dogma; denies funds for dissident research; and denies publication of new discoveries in some prestigious journals."

These denials "have delayed the development of several discoveries in the new-energy area." Fox emphasizes.

Mallove also writes about academic policies. He told participants at the International Conference on Cold Fusion this year, "We know that the pathway before us leads ultimately to the end of the Fossil Fuel Age and the end of "business as usual' by the Scientific Establishment -ignoring and disparaging data that does not fit preconceived 'theories of everything' in physics."

Both men focus more attention on the good news however. Fox is gleefully collecting patents on new energy technology chat holds promise for cleaning up radioactive waste, and Mallove delights in finding yet another under-publicized invention char is close to being marketable, such as a water-based cavitation device which appears to put out significantly more energy than is needed to power it --putting out at the multi kilowatt level. .

ENERGY REVOLUTION -- WHO AND WHAT

The lone inventors who are making breakthroughs to a new paradigm - not merely improvements to today's energy technologies - come from every corner of the planet.

For example, Alvin Marks of Athol, Massachusetts, has a radically different way to get electricity from sunlight. Unlike low-efficiency conventional solar photovoltaics, his flexible film Lumeloid and rigid solar panels trademarked Lepcon mimic photosynthesis. Microscopic antennae, grown molecule by molecule with nanotechnology, are embedded in the film and the panels. Instead of the four or five dollars per watt capital cost for today's solar electricity, this inventor with a proven track record (the first efficient polarized lenses, and other successful inventions) figures he could bring the capital cost down to thirty cents per watt. Where is the support for this good-news invention? The support has come and gone. The Central Intelligence Agency, for example, funded a portion of his research. The CIA wants the durable rigid panels for their spy satellites.

In India. Paramahamsa Tewari is a nuclear physicist who in his spare time builds an innovative magnetic power generator. about the size of a kitchen stone He calls it the Space Power Generator because it taps into the energy that surrounds us as its source of power Earlier this year a test engineer from Colorado. Toby Grotz, packed up case of highly accurate test instruments and traveled to India to test Tewaris' machine. It does put out more power than goes into it from any battery. The next step for Tewari Is to close the loop-feed back excess power to run the machine and exclude any battery or other input of conventional power.

Although there's a capital cost for the apparatus involved in new energy inventions, there is no cost for fuel, whether the source of power is sunlight, ocean currents (Blue Energy Canada), atmospheric air movement efficient windmills using new super-efficient generators) or the energetic background "zero-point fluctuations of the vacuum' that are present everywhere in and around us or in outer space. Even polluted water has been used as a source of energy in recent in. mentions, with no harmful byproducts.

Meanwhile, planetary citizens 'fight brush fires' to save local ecologies without knowing about the revolutionary inventions. Use of the wrong energy technologies causes most of their headaches. For example, the Yadana Pipeline through Burma into Thailand is plowing ruthlessly through rain forests, displacing villages of indigenous protesters In Germany, nearly 10,000 demonstrators tried to blockade a Train carrying high-level nuclear waste this spring. Then there was activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, murdered in Nigeria where he protested against the messes created by Shell Oil. Sometimes citizens do put out the brush fires -- hill people around the Narmada river in India at least delayed the building of a massive dam which would displace their homes. But their efforts may be better spent in persuading governments to investigate the new inventions for clean sources of power.

ESTABLISHMENT GUARDS THE SEAT OF POWER

Oil consortiums are at the helm of the world's economy and would want to stay there. Companies such as British Petroleum Shell and ARCO are buying solar-power equipment factories in order to be in the forefront as a warming world shifts to renewable energy technologies. But are they pushing the accelerator for that shift or keeping the brakes on?

On May 13, 1990, news services carried a report on the oil lobby's use of studies on prehistoric climate changes. "The American Petroleum Institute is apparently coordinating a plan to persuade the public that global warming is based on shaky science." Philip Clapp president of National Environmental Trust, added, "This is exactly what the tobacco industry did for years-push industry-funded junk science to convince the public that there was no connection between smoking and cancer."

Based on internal memos obtained by NET, the U.S. oil industry planned to spend $5 million over two years to set up a global climate science data center to persuade media, legislators and the public that it is an objective source of information; "Identify, recruit and train a core group of previously independent scientists and hand-pick other scientists "whose research n this field supports our position." Set up a new group to put industry information in the hands of school children and their teachers, under the name Science Education Task Group. Give out grant money for 'research contracts that may by deemed appropriate."

The oil lobby's strategy apparently worked, many people will tell you that global warming is an unproven theory and not to worry about climate change. However, internationally the insurance industry is finding that it is too expensive to pay for the increasing incidence of weather disasters, and the industry, especially in Europe and Japan, wants to withdraw its investments from the oil patch and instead invest in renewable energy.

Despite the touted "million solar roofs" initiative, the US government isn't making any drastic changes. Its Climate Change Initiative will subsidize "remedies that have been tried before, with no remarkable results" as science writer Marsha Freeman puts it. She says the older variety of renewable energy technologies -- wind, geothermal, bio-mass, small-scale hydro -- can't compete in the marketplace, and says the money would be better spent on the "technologies for the next century that, rather than being a drain on the economy, would increase its efficiency and productivity." The federal government not only ignores new energy technologies when passing out the dollars; it stilt spends about $25 billion yearly to subsidize fossil fuels.

Some scientists that I met recently think that their government should also stop paying for the billion-dollar hot fusion program, because it is an industrial research project to benefit the power industry. And the utility companies don't want hot fusion! Why do taxpayers pay the bill? Because the hot fusion lobby spends money freely to perpetuate itself.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) is not totally ignoring new energy technologies these days. An Assistant Secretary at the DoE, Robert W. Gee, recently wrote a letter to William Thomas of Washington, D.C. In public hearings Thomas had asked if the DoE is investigating "zero point energy" science. Surprisingly, Gee said that DoE scientists and others have done so, and are "still in the stage of demonstrating scientific feasibility. Thus far, results show that there is a net residual energy even at the zero absolute temperature, under vacuum conditions." Eight patents have been issued on zero-point energy, Gee said, "including one issued to the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory. .. Presently, scientific feasibility studies are in the beginning stages and the developments of a technology for energy production for, ZPE may be decades away."

Why "decades away"? New-energy researchers, such as Wingate Lambertson, Ph.D say it would take only a fraction of that time if they had funding for serious team efforts. They. They have already demonstrated sporadic successes, and need help in engineering their inventions into reliable products for the marketplace. To quote consumer advocate Ralph Nader, "It is time to bring the citizens' agenda into the 21st century, so that it can keep pace with the corporate agenda. We must create new democratic mechanisms by which citizens can make their will felt, and regain control of what they already own."

YOUTH CONFRONTS ENERGY CHALLENGE

Who could mobilize public support for low-cost clean energy technologies that would provide abundant power everywhere day and night? I expect the answer is that people of common sense will take leadership soon. Apathy ruled during the recent "cocooning" trend while it was fashionable to curl up in our homes and turn our backs on the dangerous outer world. As we approach the new millennium, however, a "de-cocooning" is seen in North America at the same time as a new idealism is emerging, according to the Trends Journal, "The de-cocooning trend is being propelled by a new generation of serious young adults, nature-loving youngsters and a new wave of immigrants. According to Trends' research, young activists -- mostly college students and teenagers -- are rediscovering that the young generation has a responsibility to do its part to make the world a better place.

Trends Journal speaks of a coming class of Global Age hippies who criticize cocooning as an "ostrich response -- an unacceptable escapism that ignores society's needs.

On the surface, today's emerging activists don't resemble the sixties protesters who refused to go to war (whether or not they knew that the Vietnam war was about oil). In the late 90's, environmentally concerned youth are tackling issues in their own way.

MARCH FOR PEACEFUL ENERGY

Richard Laskin, for example, is in his final year at the University of Maryland. While fellow students talked about whether they might be sent off to fight oil wars in deserts or jungles, Laskin decided to do something. He's organizing a rally in Washington, D.C. ON October 24 of this year -- a March for Peaceful Energy. Although people on the internet around the world are cheering him on and offering suggestions, and although the planned rally in the capital city has a full lineup of speakers, it will take many thousands of dollars to handle the logistics. If enough money is secured soon for a stage and proper equipment, popular entertainers will donate their time. The rally can focus public attention on energy solutions, and build coalitions among diverse groups who are serious about improving our world. In the unlikely possibility that the event makes money, it will go to energy development projects for Third World countries.

Website for the March for Peaceful Energy is http://peacefulenergy.com and http://www.indax.com/peace Richard Laskin's e-mail is plantseedK@aol.com. Tax-deductible donations for March for Peaceful Energy go to non-profit society: DC Solar, c/o University of Maryland, College Park, Stamp Student Union, Box 73, College Park, MD, 20742.

Jeane Manning is the author of The Coming Energy Revolution, 1996, Avery Publishing Group. Available through Atlantis Rising.

Out of the Blue by John L. Petersen, 1997, the Arlington Institute, 2101 Crystal Plaza Arcade, Suite 136, Arlington, VA 222202

Pictures from the Atlantis Rising Video Clash of the Geniuses.