Utopia, you are standing in it!

Below an article in the top Aussie newspaper, The Australian, published a few days ago.

In today’s blog Dr Andrew Barclay, senior research fellow in our Commons 1640-1660 project, returns to his exploration of the days leading up to the restoration of Charles II. In this final instalment, we turn to 29 May 1660, as Charles entered London as King for the first time...

Charles II entered London in triumph on 29 May 1660, his 30th birthday. Three weeks earlier Parliament had proclaimed him as King. He had landed at Dover on 25 May and had made stops at Canterbury and Rochester en route to the capital. On 29 May he was greeted at St George’s Fields in Southwark by the lord mayor of London. The huge procession, mostly formed of the army, the London trained bands and the City worthies, crossed London Bridge and then proceeded through London to Whitehall. The parade took seven hours to pass through the City…

14 OCTOBER 1943

“The mission of October 14th had demonstrated that the cost of such deep penetrations by daylight without fighter escort was too high … the Eighth Air Force was in no position to make further penetrations either to Schweinfurt or to any other objectives deep in German territory.” US Official Report on the Schweinfurt Raid.

It is a great tragedy of war that commanders can blindly persist with plans which have been repeatedly proven to be dangerously misguided. After World War I, visionary young officers in a number of countries argued that in the future wars would be won not by armies or navies but by fleets of aircraft bombing enemy cities, in what became known as `strategic’ bombing. World War II saw the creation of such strategic bombing fleets, chiefly by the British and Americans, of which perhaps the strongest and the most famous was `The Mighty…

A damaged B-17 bomber being protected by two P-51 fighters.

In the Second World War the bedrock of US strategic bombing tactics in Europe was formation flying in a self-defending 54-aircraft combat wing, which was both dangerous and physically exhausting. Extreme physical effort was required from the pilot to keep station in the turbulence generated by hundreds of propellers. The pilots flying in wing positions depended on the skill of element leaders right up to combat wing level. Poor flying by the leaders, and the constant seesawing of positions, added to pilot fatigue and ran the risk of collisions or breaking the formation, thus providing Luftwaffe day fighters with “cold meat”—isolated aircraft.

Flying consisted of sliding the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator bombers around to maintain the integrity of the formation. Banking was dangerous because of the close proximity of other aircraft. Frequent throttle changes were required, which could…

Why have epidemiological forecasts been so wrong and what to do about it

If we look at the forecasts, we got from epidemiologists initially in the Covid-19 pandemic it has turned out that they have massively wrong. While tragic the number of people who has died in this pandemic has been much lower than forecasted.

The reason given by epidemiologists then is that that is because of interventions – lockdowns. But then you made the wrong kind of forecast – you forgot to forecast what would happen IF lockdowns were implemented.

Furthermore, how do you explain the numbers in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan? There were no lockdowns (until recently) and we haven’t seen a massive death told, which was forecasted by the kind of epidemiological models used for example by the epidemiologists at the Imperial College in the UK.

Similarly, in Sweden with no lockdown, which as the only…

Heavy losses over Germany became the norm in 1943. The attrition reached a peak on August 17 when the 8th Air Force attacked the fighter assembly plant at Regensburg and the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt. Of the 376 aircraft dispatched on the double raid, 60 were lost and many more written off. A second raid on Schweinfurt in October cost the Americans 77 aircraft lost and another 133 damaged out of 291 dispatched. After the second Schweinfurt raid, bombing operations were temporarily suspended. It was brutally clear that the bombers would have to be escorted to and from targets deep in Germany. However, there were no aircraft capable of fulfilling this role.

The USAAF’s P-38 Lightning and P-47 Thunderbolt fighters lacked the performance to meet enemy fighters on equal terms and the range to escort the bombers over Germany. The Luftwaffe could now choose the time and place to attack…

If you’re looking to wreck a grid and send power prices into orbit, then pin your power hopes to wind and solar power delivered at mother nature’s whims.

South Australia did; it suffers the world’s highest retail power prices and became the butt of international jokes for a series of weather-related mass blackouts.

Looking for an example? Take a scan of what’s depicted above.

That’s the ‘performance’ of Australia’s wind power fleet so far this month – courtesy of Aneroid Energy

Spread from Far North Queensland, across the ranges of NSW, all over Victoria, Northern Tasmania and across South Australia its 7,295 MW of capacity routinely delivers just a trickle of that.

Collapses of over 3,000 MW or more that occur over the space of a couple of hours are routine, as are rapid surges of equal magnitude, which make the grid manager’s life a living hell, and provide the…

The focus here is on heavy duty engines. Of course they have to claim that carbon dioxide, vital to plants and vegetation, is a ‘pollutant’ but this is from the crazy side of today’s climate-obsessed world.
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Southwest Research Institute engineers have developed the next generation of clean diesel engine technology to reduce hazardous nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon dioxide emissions while minimizing fuel consumption, says Green Car Congress.

Working with regulatory agencies, vehicle manufacturers and suppliers, SwRI combined engine modifications with integrated aftertreatment technology and control strategies to reach near-zero emissions levels (0.02 g/hp-hr NOx emissions).

SwRI developed the technology for the California Air Resources Board (CARB). The work is described in a pair of SAE Technical Papers.