A UCLA professor who exposed corruption while also challenging the legitimacy of certain California fuel regulations, has sued the university for firing him.

The McCarthyism of the environmental movement: A UCLA professor who exposed corruption while also challenging the legitimacy of certain California fuel regulations, has sued the university for firing him.

Enstrom charged in 2008 that his colleagues exaggerated the adverse effects of particulate matter in order to justify expensive diesel fuel regulations to the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Enstrom testified in the same year to the state Senate that the lead contributor to the CARB report, Hien T. Tran, paid $1,000 for his Ph.D. from a fake university, and members of a CARB panel had exceeded their mandated three-year term limits by decades.

Shortly after Enstrom revealed the misconduct, UCLA began sending him notices of termination and has refused to compensate him for more than a year’s worth of work….

Tran was eventually suspended for 60 days, and one professor who had served on the CARB panel for 26 consecutive years was removed and later put back on the panel. John Froines, who has publicly supported diesel fuel regulations, was on a committee that voted to dismiss Enstrom.

Read the whole thing. It illustrates why attending UCLA for a science education is clearly a waste of time. They don’t want to teach their students science. They want to teach them propaganda.

Engineers have successfully tested a spare reaction wheel on Mars Odyssey in their effort to bring the spacecraft back into full operation.

Engineers have successfully tested a spare reaction wheel on Mars Odyssey in their effort to bring the spacecraft back into full operation.

After more than 11 years of non-operational storage, the spare reaction wheel passed preliminary tests on Wednesday, June 12, spinning at up to 5,000 rotations per minute forward and backward. Odyssey engineers plan to substitute it for a reaction wheel they have assessed as no longer reliable. That wheel stuck for a few minutes last week, causing Odyssey to put itself into safe mode on June 8, Universal Time (June 7, Pacific Time).

A new poll in Nevada repeats what was found in North Carolina: Obama appears to be losing a significant percentage of the black vote.

A new poll in Nevada repeats what was found in North Carolina: Obama appears to be losing a significant percentage of the black vote.

Both polls could be noise. If true, however, the Democrats cannot win. Without 95% of the black vote they just do not garner enough votes from any other group to win.

And if this is true, it will also mean that the racism in the black community might finally be abating. Voting for a candidate merely because of skin color is still bigotry, no matter what the skin color. If the black community is finally gaining the ability to see past skin color it will be a very good thing.

China is in its final preparations for the launch of its next manned mission.

The new colonial movement: China is in its final preparations for the launch of its next manned mission, expected any day now.

This is the key quote from the article:

China aims to build a space station around 2020 based on the space rendezvous and docking technology that is currently being tested. Several components will be sent into space separately before being assembled into a space station through a variety of docking procedures.

Mars Odyssey put itself into safe mode on Friday when it detected problems with one of the three reaction wheels used to orient the spacecraft.

Mars Odyssey put itself into safe mode on Friday when it detected problems with one of the three reaction wheels used to orient the spacecraft.

If this space probe goes down, it will make it more difficult to rely data back from Opportunity, now on the Martian surface, and Curiosity, due to land in two months.

The North Carolina legislature has passed a bill that requires its coastal planning commission to ignore the accelerated sea level rise predictions of global warming scientists and instead use more conservative numbers.

The North Carolina legislature has passed a bill that requires its coastal planning commission to ignore the accelerated sea level rise predictions of global warming scientists and instead use more conservative numbers.

To put it another way, North Carolina has decided, for coastal planning purposes, to use the slower linear rise in sea level that can be extrapolated from the actual data that scientists have gathered for the past century, and not use the models pushed by the IPCC and other global warming scientists that predict an acceleration of sea level rise in the next century due to human-caused global warming.

This decision by North Carolina has happened because increasingly people of good conscience no longer believe anything the global warming activists in the climate field are telling them. These scientists either perpetuated scientific fraud to sell the idea of human-caused global-warming, or have been willing to whitewash the fraud of other scientists. Rather than listen to them, the North Carolina legislature has decided to interpret the data independently. The legislature might very well be wrong, but what else can they do? They certainly can’t trust the claims of the climate field.

Unless they can find a buyer the United Kingdom will close down its 3.8 meter infrared UKIRT telescope on Mauna Kea in 2013.

Telescope for sale: Unless they can find a buyer the United Kingdom will close down its 3.8 meter infrared UKIRT telescope on Mauna Kea in 2013.

This is a tragedy. A 3.8 meter telescope is no slouch and can do amazing research. The problem is that all the available money in ground-based astronomy is now being eaten up by the construction of giant telescopes in the 20 to 40 meter range.

What astronomy needs are some wealthy philanthropists who would like to buy these mid-sized telescopes, put their names on it, and finance their operation. This is how most big telescopes were made possible before World War II.

Construction of the world’s largest ground-based telescope has been approved by the European Southern Observatory.

Construction of the world’s largest ground-based telescope has been approved by the European Southern Observatory.

No one should get too excited about this announcement. They still need to raise 90% of their funds to build it, and to do so they have to get agreements from the four member countries of the European Southern Observatory. It will be years, probably at least a decade, before this 40-meter truly gigantic telescope sees the light.

On the way home

We are right now driving between Las Vegas and Hoover Dam, and should be home late tonight. Thus, I should be able to resume blogging sometime tomorrow. I will also write up a description of my experiences this past week and post it tomorrow.

Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) has backed down and modified the language he had inserted in the NASA budget bill that would have limited the number of commercial space companies NASA could subsidize.

Good news: Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) has backed down and modified the language he had inserted in the NASA budget bill that would have limited the number of commercial space companies NASA could subsidize.

From Clark Lindsey:

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) , who is Chairman on the Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations committee, put language into the recent House budget for NASA that requiree NASA to down-select immediately to one primary contractor in the commercial crew program. This would obviously eliminate competition on price and rule out redundancy in case one system is grounded. He has now relented and is willing to allow for “2.5 (two full and one partial) CCiCAP awards”.

As I wrote earlier, the success of Dragon is putting strong political pressure on Congress to support the independent commercial space companies over the NASA-built and very expensive Space Launch System (SLS) that Congress had mandated. Expect to see more elected officials back down in the coming year, with the eventually elimination of SLS from the budget.

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