How to Boil a Frog

Pierre Gosselin reports at NoTricksZone on Germany’s War On Diesel Takes A Setback … Environment Ministry Activism Exposed, Absurd Risk Claims

Ministry of Environment’s, media’s absurd claims

To underscore the risks of diesel fumes and to spread fear of diesel engines, Germany’s Ministry of Environment (UBA) recently released “new findings” claiming diesel engines are responsible for 6000 premature deaths every year.

Those of us who’ve educated ourselves with the help of John Brignell’s Sorry, wrong number! and its companion The epidemiologists – Have they got the scares for you! will immediately suspect the figure to be derived from bad epidemiology serving political purpose.

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Forbidden Speech from Speakers’ Corner

Breitbart published the text of a speech drafted by Martin Sellner, replacing the one that he’d originally planned to deliver at the centre of the Free Speech Universe; Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London, England, UK. As Herr Sellner was denied entry into the UK, lest he upset the thugs, it was instead delivered by “Tommy Robinson”, having made the most of the verboten aspect to maximise the number of eyes and ears at the event and around the globe.

THE FULL SPEECH BY SELLNER FOLLOWS:

Dear Friends, dear Britons, dear lovers of free speech.

I assume you all are lovers of free speech because you have come to Speakers’  Corner.

You might not understand all the fuss happening today around this speech. Honestly, I don’t understand it either.

My name is Martin Sellner. I am an Austrian patriot, and at the moment, I’m sitting in a detention cell in Colnbrook Bypass near Heathrow. My smartphone was taken and my girlfriend Brittany was separated from me. I currently don’t know where she is. We will be deported on Sunday.

Five minutes ago, they unlocked our cells and my fellow inmates are gathering in the prison wing. They are mostly illegals and eastern European criminals.

What brought me into this situation? What was my crime?

Democracy

Democracy is not how one elects one’s masters; it’s how one selects one’s servants.

Protectionism isn’t all Beer and Skittles

US President Donald Trump’s political response to the rust belt could do more harm than good to middle America with a virtual tax that will help a diminishing number in the manufacturing sector.

A recent Breitbart article about Trump’s tariff scheme titled ‘Our Factories Were Left to Rot:’ American Workers Thank Trump for Ending ‘Betrayal’ of Unfair Trade was brought to my attention on Facebook. I responded off the cuff:

Protectionism isn’t all beer and skittles.

It can hurt consumers more than what it benefits workers. And the unskilled workplaces of yore in the industry are exactly where they were 30 years ago: 30 year ago.

Troll Bridges

In the realm of free speech; people are free to say anything and accept the consequences. Free speech is an innate right but no right is without a burden of responsibility for actions and consequences of exercising that right.

In the realm of free speech; people have the right to ignore what is being said. People cannot be forced to listen.

In the realm of free speech; people are free to argue freely about what is being said; to allow an audience to think and to make up their own minds as to the validity/veracity of what was being argued; in the reality of the audience.

A Tortured Monkey of the Media

John Cadogan has a popular YouTube channel called AutoExpertTV.

In his latest contribution, he castigates Volkswagen for being just like Hitler and accuses them of torturing monkeys in gas chambers.

While I agree that Volkswagen’s management culture since ca. 1990 is less welcome than a bout of tinea, John twists his knob way past 10 … and it appears to have fallen off completely.

In the published script (not a transcript) John vents:

What is it with these Volkswagen arseholes and poison gas? This time they’re torturing monkeys.

Yes. Torturing!

The Greenhouse Effect Fallacy

Every now and then, one stumbles upon articles that clearly expose the scientific paucity upon which climatic catastrophism is constructed. But it is not in the interests of those who profit from catastrophism to recognize their errors. Instead they denounce the independent thinkers as heretic infidels for speaking against dearly held belief.

Frank Schnell wrote in 2016:

The so-called “Greenhouse effect” is one of the most persistent fallacies in popular science. It is a flawed speculation left over from the late 19th century, when it was first entertained by such scientific luminaries as Joseph Fourier, John Tyndall, and Svante Arrhenius.

In fact, however, the so-called “greenhouse gases” do not “trap” infrared energy radiated from the surface of the Earth, as proposed; they merely slow its inevitable return to outer space.

A Time For Prayer

Rudyard Kipling

In times of war and not before,
God and the soldier we adore.
But in times of peace and all things righted,
God is forgotten and the soldier slighted.

A Spectre of Meltdown

Turning it off and on again will not fix the problem.

Remain Calm

Timothy Prickett Morgan writes about a couple of the latest significant security threats to computers at The Next Platform. If thinking about computers hurts your brain; avert thine eyes. Else, it discusses and refers to details which I won’t reproduce here so it’s worth a click.

Chip designers’ tricks are back-firing as those tricks can be exploited by user code running on the machine, potentially exposing deeply-held secrets to nefarious types. The user code can be injected into systems by an injudicious click of a mouse button.

Why Wind Farms Suck

Found this paper.

Flow Adjustment Inside and Around Large Finite-Size Wind Farms

Abstract
In this study, large-eddy simulations are performed to investigate the flow inside and around large finite-size wind farms in conventionally-neutral atmospheric boundary layers. Special emphasis is placed on characterizing the different farm-induced flow regions, including the induction, entrance and development, fully-developed, exit and farm wake regions. The wind farms extend 20 km in the streamwise direction and comprise 36 wind turbine rows arranged in aligned and staggered configurations. Results show that, under weak free-atmosphere stratification (Γ=1 K/km), the flow inside and above both wind farms, and thus the turbine power, do not reach the fully-developed regime even though the farm length is two orders of magnitude larger than the boundary layer height.