Captain Seamus in December 2011 (audio clip below the fold), rolling down the window on what he believes to be true about cold fusion:



I do believe in basic science. I believe in participating in space. I believe in analysis of new sources of energy. I believe in laboratories, looking at ways to conduct electricity with -- with cold fusion, if we can come up with it. It was the University of Utah that solved that. We somehow can’t figure out how to duplicate it.

Physicists Debunk Claim Of a New Kind of Fusion By MALCOLM W. BROWNE, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES BALTIMORE—Hopes that a new kind of nuclear fusion might give the world an unlimited source of cheap energy appear to have been dealt a devastating blow by scientific evidence presented here. In two days of meetings lasting until midnight, members of the American Physical Society heard fresh experimental evidence from many researchers that nuclear fusion in a jar of water does not exist. Physicists seemed generally persuaded as the sessions ended that assertions of "cold fusion" were based on nothing more than experimental errors by scientists in Utah.

Um. I'll be gentle here. Other than to point out this New York Times article, published on May 3, 1989—more than 22 years earlier—completely debunking Mitt Romney's cold fusion claim.So the reason they couldn't duplicate their experiment is that there was nothing to duplicate. I know Mitt loves Utah, but the University of Utah most definitely didn't solve that. And more than two decades later, not only has Mitt Romney failed to figure that out, he's still confused about why you can't roll down the windows on jet airplanes.

To be fair to Mitt, however, there is something of a double standard at work here. I mean, can you imagine the ridicule if Sarah Palin had said these things?

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. He doesn't even have a clue about what the discovery of cold fusion was supposed to mean. It had nothing to do with conducting electricity. It was about generating power.