In this extract from his new book When Google Met Wikileaks, WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange describes the special relationship between Google, Hillary Clinton and the State Department — and what that means for the future of the internet:
Eric Schmidt is an influential figure, even among the parade of powerful characters with whom I have had to cross paths since I founded WikiLeaks. In mid-May 2011 I was under house arrest in rural Norfolk, about three hours’ drive northeast of London. The crackdown against our work was in full swing and every wasted moment seemed like an eternity. It was hard to get my attention. But when my colleague Joseph Farrell told me the executive chairman of Google wanted to make an appointment with me, I was listening.
Four years ago I broke the story in this paper that the EPA was conducting illegal toxicity experiments on human beings. In short, the EPA intentionally exposed hundreds of humans in a gas chamber to exceedingly high levels of air pollutants like diesel exhaust, soot and smog in hopes of causing serious health effects that the agency could point to as justification for its costly and stringent outdoor air quality standards. Study subjects included the elderly (up to age 80), asthmatics, diabetics and people with heart disease — the very people EPA claims are most susceptible to air pollution. EPA failed to tell these study subjects it believed the experiments could cause death.
New Nasa study of the Antarctic from space has thrown the case for climate change into disarray after finding that more NEW new ice has formed at the Antarctic than has been lost to its thinning glaciers.
The US space agency research claims an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is “currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from melting glaciers.
Global warming theories have been thrown into doubt after Nasa also claimed current horror predictions into future sea-level rises may not be as severe.
Major studies previously made the case for global warming being a man-made problem, including the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which said that Antarctica was overall losing land ice.
But a Nasa spokesman said: “According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001.
“That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.”
Soviet-born scientist, Nikolai Shkolnik, has invented the world’s most powerful and efficient combustion engine, and patented it in the US.
In 1975 Russian physicist Nikolai Shkolnik left the Soviet Union for the U.S. after graduating from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. For 10 years he worked as a consultant for struggling innovation companies. Throughout these years, he was constantly preoccupied with one question – why are modern car engines so inefficient?
Shkolnik developed his own high-efficiency hybrid cycle (HEHC) engine, which became a key step towards his dream. He was helped by his son Alexander, who eventually graduated from MIT and had become an expert in system optimization.
Nikolai Shkolnik is convinced that, among other things, the education he received in the USSR helped his ambition to create a revolutionary engine.
“There are big differences between American engineers and those trained in Russia,” said Shkolnik. “American engineers are incredibly effective in what they do, and it usually takes two or three Russian engineers to replace one American. However, Russians have a broader view of things, which has to do with their education; at least in my time it did. They are capable of achieving goals with a minimum of resources.”
Blast from the past
The father and son inventors were inspired by the idea of a rotary engine, whose principles were first proposed in the mid-20th century by German inventor, Felix Wankel.
Ordinary piston engines have many rotating and moving parts, which reduces their efficiency. The Wankel engine, however, has an oblong chamber with a triangular rotor inside it, whose movements create different sections in the chamber where fuel is injected, compressed, burnt and released.
Despite their higher efficiency, rotary engines failed to win wide recognition because they were not very reliable and not environmentally-friendly.
Rotary engines reincarnated
The Shkolniks founded the LiquidPiston company and created their own version of a rotary engine where the rotor has the shape of a nut that revolves in a triangular chamber, thus resolving the shortcomings of the Wankel engine. In addition, the Shkolniks’ engine creates a so-called isochoric combustion that is fuel burning with the volume remaining constant, thus improving efficiency.
The inventors created five models of an absolutely new engine, one after another, the latest of which was first tested in June when it was installed on a sports cart. The tests lived up to all expectations.
Compact and powerful
The Shkolniks’ miniature engine weighs under two kilos, has a capacity of just three horsepower, and has an efficiency factor of 20 percent. By way comparison, a typical piston engine of the same displacement of 23 cubic centimeters has an efficiency factor of just 12 percent, while a piston engine of the same weight would generate just one horsepower.
Source: Press photo
The efficiency factor of such engines improves dramatically with the increase in their volume. For example, the Shkolniks’ next engine will be a 40-horsepower diesel motor. Its efficiency will be 45 percent, which is higher than the best diesel engines in modern trucks. At the same time, it will weigh just 13 kg, while equivalent piston engines currently weigh about 200 kg.
In the future, the Shkolniks’ compact and powerful engines are planned to be used in light drones, hand power saws and electric generators.
DARPA money
To date, the Shkolniks’ startup has received $18 million in venture investment, including $1 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
U.S. aviation mostly uses JP-8 fuel, and the military wants all military hardware to run on it, which incidentally, can be used by diesel engines. These engines, however, are rather bulky, which is why DARPA is taking a close look at the Shkolniks’ designs.
Written by Patrick J. Michaels and David E. Wojick
Britain’s quitting the European Union sets the stage for a major mess in the funding of British science. Whatever the merits of Brexit, as the withdrawal is popularly called, exiting the present labyrinthine structure of EU science funding is going to be pure chaos. Government funding of science is always capricious and often wasteful. Brexit is merely going to present the world with a new record for this folly.
The basic problem is that government funding of science is very complex. First the government or government-related science office formulates a specific research program, and then gets it funded. Then it develops and publishes requests for proposals. Then the researchers develop and submit detailed proposals, which the government studies, ultimately choosing some and funding their awards. The process normally takes several years from concept to award. It can hardly take less.
Government funding of science is always capricious and often wasteful. Brexit is merely going to present the world with a new record for this folly.
The EU presently funds a lot of British researchers, as it should given that Britain pays over 12 percent of the European Union’s operating budget. British universities reportedly get about 16 percent of their research funding from Brussels, well over a billion dollars a year. Given that this 16 percent is an average, some universities probably get a significantly larger fraction of their revenue from EU funding.
The EU funding of British science should end as soon as Britain stops paying its EU dues. There is a lot of talk about multi-year negotiations between the incoming Brexit government in Britain and the European Union, but the political reality is that Britain can stop paying its dues anytime it wants to. It is hard to imagine a government whose mandate is to leave the EU continuing to send them billions of pounds that it could use for its own purposes.
The point is that there is no way that Britain can simply replace that EU funding (assuming it wants to), even if it has the money to do so. It will first have to go through its own lengthy competitive funding procedures. Many of the existing EU-funded projects will probably be dropped midstream, their funding wasted. There is no reason the new British government should choose to continue these EU-chosen projects; quite the contrary, given the Brexiteers’ apparent disdain for Brussels. There may well be a multi-year gap in which nothing is funded to replace the present projects.
Untangling the science funding is thus going to be a true mess, unless Britain can work a deal to simply pay for continued EU funding as an associated country. Some small non-EU countries do this. But given that Britain is handing Brussels a big budget cut, such a side deal may not be possible. Moreover, the philosophy of Brexit would seem to preclude Britain ceding funding decisions to the EU, which these associated deals require. The fact that the research community came out loudly against Brexit does not help their case of need.
What this shows is not that Brexit is wrong, but rather that government funding of science is often a mistake. Funding of science by governments is not necessary for economic progress. The intrinsically political nature of the process makes it often wasteful as well.
Brexit is merely a very large example of something that repeatedly happens. An expensive research program is launched because it is politically attractive. Large sums are spent, and then the program is killed midstream, because the politics change. Half a project gives no results, so the money and researchers’ time is simply wasted.
The U.S. government is certainly prone to this kind of waste, to begin with because we get a new House of Representatives every two years, and that is where the money comes from. We also get new, politically appointed department and agency heads with every new presidential administration, if not more frequently. These officials often want to “restructure” their research program, as it is called. Or a new office director may want to do something new, within the existing budget, killing ongoing work in the process.
This sort of project chopping probably happens many, many times a year, at all levels. But the hundreds or thousands of chops are individually too small to be noticed outside of their immediate research community. Tremendous amounts of money and research talent is wasted in this way.
So when the screaming from the unfunded British universities starts, as it almost certainly will, keep in mind that this is just a very large case of the waste that plagues U.S. government-funded science as well. Science and politics do not mix.
*****
Patrick J. Michaels is the director of the Cato Institute’s Center for the Study of Science. David Wojick is head of DEWA, a cognitive science and policy analysis consultancy.
Climate science has become a politically-corrupted, agenda-driven, federally-beholden science-industrial complex; along with a military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about in his 1961 farewell address.
As he stated: “The prospect of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of scientific-technological elite.”
The corruption of climate science by some misguided individuals in the quest to “save the planet” is the most egregious example of the larger problems facing science in general. The problems are causing rapid erosion of credibility in science and environmental issues. Some are talking about the growing problems, but few even want to acknowledge them until it directly impinges their work and career. The public is becoming increasingly aware and angry about the intellectual and political elitism that is the source of the decline in standards and values. A central theme to the Brexit vote in the UK and the rise of Donald Trump is the rejection of the elite trio of the financial, political, and academic enclaves that are destroying people’s lives.
Writing in the journal Nature, a group of scientists have documented that temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula have been falling steadily for the last 18 years at the rate of nearly one degree Fahrenheit per decade, countering earlier warming trends.
During the second half of the 20th century, the Antarctic Peninsula experienced an extended warming period igniting fears of apocalyptic catastrophes like that depicted in the 2004 Hollywood climate change disaster film, “The Day After Tomorrow.” According to the new essay, however, titled “Climate science: Cooling in the Antarctic,” scientists are now saying that the warming trend was caused by natural factors and reversed itself again by natural causes just before the turn of the millennium.
Nature’s editor noted that although the Antarctic Peninsula is “frequently presented as a case study of rapid warming,” scientists John Turner and colleagues have now shown that warming trends have abated and “for the early years of the twenty-first century the peninsula has in the main been cooling.”
Retired professional science writer, Edsel Chromie, enters the arena of online open peer review with a novel hypothesis on electro-magnetic energy that encompasses a number of disciplines including geology, physics and chemistry as well as astronomy. Below Edsel recounts his 40-year experience seeking to advance a concept that has drawn the ire of establishment experts:
I copyrighted my Hypothesis titled “Electromagnetic Field Energy; The Key to Solution of Scientific Mysteries of the Universe.” on May 6, 1978. I telephoned our local Public Television Station in 1979 to see if they would be interested in discussing it. I was told that if it was not written by a professional Physicist they were not the least bit interested.
I went to our local TV Station in 1979 and demonstrated for our local news reporter, Jack White, how I can assimilate the visual appearance of a sunspot depicted in the encyclopedia with a sheet of paper covered with steel shavings. A sunspot was described as an explosion of hydrogen gas that had seeped from the interior of the Sun.
Some interesting consequences about the nature of the soul here, which we flesh out later (get it?). Also, more proof that Equality is not part of the system.
1 IT remains now for us to show that the distinction among things did not result from different movements of the free-will of rational creatures, as Origen maintained in his Peri Archon. For he wished to refute the objections and errors of the early heretics, who strove to prove that the different nature of good and evil in things is owing to contrary agents.
But on account of the great difference which he observed both in natural and in human things, which difference apparently is not preceded by any merits,–for instance that some bodies are lightsome, some dark, that some are born of pagans, some of Christians,–he was compelled to assert that all differences to be found in things have proceeded from a difference of merits, in accordance with the justice of God.
No need for you to feel “scientifically challenged” anymore; there is an App for nearly everything now. It appears that one of the easiest ways to become a “scientist” (concerned or not, my personal view) is to join the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). That group has already millions of members (so it claims) and you are most welcome to join. No experience or other credentials required — if anything, just a few dollars from your wallet.
Really; I’m not kidding. The UCS is just one of several so-called “widely recognized scientific bodies” that pretend to know what’s good for you and everyone else on earth. And it’s so easy to join and to become another one of their many “scientists,” concerned or not. You can endorse any of their many campaigns by adding your name, address and contact (email) information, and (may also add) a small donation to support their latest outcry over what is being claimed to ail the world.
Karl Popper, the master mind who described and made readily available to us the modern scientific method has a great piece on pre-scientific and pseudo-scientific theories in his lecture: Science as Falsification
“These theories appear to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, open your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirmed instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refuse to see it …”
The correction of intellectual error is often an arduous task. At the beginning of what is now known as science Galileo Galilei took on such a challenge and we are quite familiar with his story. It would seem that we should have learned to not place a great deal of confidence in human reason when the subject of our inquiry involves the natural world or universe. However, the most recent case involving continental drift and Alfred Wegener discloses that even modern scientists have a great tendency to cling to intellectual reasoning over empirical observation.
To anyone familiar with the history of science and the scientific hypothesis known as the greenhouse effect of certain atmospheric gases, it should be no surprise that I will likely face opposition similar to that faced by Galileo or Wegener as I attempted to disclose the fact that this popular hypothesis is based upon a fundamentally incorrect assumption.
This unstated assumption is that sensible heat can be transferred from a colder body to a warmer body, from a volume of the colder, generally upper, atmosphere to a volume of warmer, generally lower, atmosphere or from the colder atmosphere to the warmer earth’s surface that generally exists during midday.
The best answer to most of the claims by climate activists and their political allies is simply: so what?
“Climate change is real,” they say. So what? Gravity and sunrise are also real. That doesn’t mean we cause them or we would be better off without them. Climate has been changing since the origin of the atmosphere billions of years ago.
But, “manmade climate change is a fact,” they respond. So what? It is obviously warmer in urban areas than in the countryside because of manmade impacts. But the only place where carbon dioxide (CO2) increase causes a temperature increase is in computer models preprogrammed to show exactly that. All records show that temperature increase precedes CO2 increase.
All that should matter to public officials is whether our CO2 emissions are in any way dangerous. Since they are almost certainly not, the $1 billion spent every day across the world on climate finance is mostly wasted.
For almost thirty years, I have taught climate science at three different universities. What I have observed is that students are increasingly being fed climate change advocacy as a surrogate for becoming climate science literate. This makes them easy targets for the climate alarmism that pervades America today.
Earth’s climate probably is the most complicated non-living system one can study, because it naturally integrates astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, geology, hydrology, oceanography and cryology, and also includes human behavior by both responding to and affecting human activities. Current concerns over climate change have further pushed climate science to the forefront of scientific inquiry.
Today, a negative correlation is observed in the amount of rainfall in north-western Africa and north-western Europe. If a humid winter climate prevails in north-western Europe, the climate in north-western Africa is dry. Due to melting ice sheets, this correlation was reversed in the early Holocene period; this resulted in both regions being humid respectively dry at the same time. Radical climate change occurred. The researchers have published their report in the current edition of Nature Geoscience.
Climate determined by opposing atmospheric pressures
Winter climate in north-western Europe and in the Mediterranean region is controlled by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), i.e. the variation in the difference of atmospheric pressure between the Azores high in the south and the Icelandic low in the north. The researchers aimed to find out how the NAO will respond to melting ice sheets and glaciers around the North Atlantic as they are doing now due to climate change.
For 10 years he worked as a consultant for struggling innovation companies. Throughout these years, he was constantly preoccupied with one question – why are modern car engines so inefficient?
Source: Press photo
Government funding of science is always capricious and often wasteful. Brexit is merely going to present the world with a new record for this folly.
Some are talking about the growing problems, but few even want to acknowledge them until it directly impinges their work and career. The public is becoming increasingly aware and angry about the intellectual and political elitism that is the source of the decline in standards and values. A central theme to the Brexit vote in the UK and the rise of Donald Trump is the rejection of the elite trio of the financial, political, and academic enclaves that are destroying people’s lives.
Below Edsel recounts his 40-year experience seeking to advance a concept that has drawn the ire of establishment experts:
However, the most recent case involving continental drift and Alfred Wegener discloses that even modern scientists have a great tendency to cling to intellectual reasoning over empirical observation.
