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Think tanks have played a decisive role in the organised obstruction of climate action, denying, minimising, or derailing ambitious climate change mitigation. This research briefing reviews the case of the Ludwig von Mises Institutes and the Property and Freedom Society, a network of ultra-libertarian groups active around the world, which we refer to as the Mises Institute Network in the mobilisation and the dissemination of climate policy opposition discourse. We review the origins, the history, the global distribution and the climate-related output of 31 Mises Institutes between 2000 and 2021. Our analysis reveals climate obstruction messaging based on a critique of climate science, principled objections to state intervention and planning and the social forces supporting climate change mitigation, as well as advocacy of free-market environmentalism as a suitable alternative to established climate politics. While Mises social theory includes a determined critique of environmentalism, it paid limited attention to climate change before 2016. From 2016, there has been a concerted effort to disseminate climate opposition discourse featuring a clear spike in published articles during 2019. Contextually, 2019 saw the U.S. Green New Deal proposal and the European Union Green Deal decision suggesting a tipping point for advocating free-market environmentalism in response to climate change to contend the increased state intervention discourse emerging in domestic and international climate policy planning. Additionally, ties exist between scholars of Mises Institutes to a broad range of business groups ranging from gold, trade and investment firms in Germany, tobacco companies in the U.S., business school, consulting and service firms in Spain, and metal employer association and financial groups in Sweden. Furthermore, the network is engaging in an international effort to recruit new members into the ultra-libertarian movement, with an active university presence and active online campaign to spread Mises’ philosophy and recruit more members, particularly students and young people, to the movement. Despite the lack of transparency and limited evidence of fossil industry funding, the Mises Network of think tanks has a clear voice in the denial and delaying think tank train, gaining speed at this pivotal moment in time. Our results indicate a dedicated effort to spread climate change opposition messages across the network. The core ideology of the Austrian economics tradition related to Ludwig von Mises provides the climate change opposition with a straightforward repertoire of arguments. Put simply, the coordinated activities of Mises Institutes across countries illustrates an attempt to circulate widely opposition to climate policy based on the radicalism of Mises social theory that focuses on resistance to government intervention and a form of market fundamentalism as a primer to maintain business as usual at the behest of the planet.

Reducing the fuel consumption of today's vehicle fleet is of great importance due to the environmental impact of using fossil-based fuels. The turbocharged compression ignition (CI) engine is widely used for trucks. The CI engine efficiency is dependent on the operating point, in terms of rotational speed and load. The selection of load point can be controlled by selecting suitable gears, but remains a challenging task during dynamic driving, due to the turbocharger dynamics which introduces a lag in the system. Electric turbocharger technologies can improve the engine response time, but developing efficient control strategies can be challenging. Due to turbocharger lag, all conditions that are reachable in stationary operation for the turbocharged CI engine are not always reachable during dynamic events, for example after an up-shift where the engine speed and torque demand changes rapidly. In this work the fuel saving potential of electric turbocharging for a heavy-duty truck performing a long-haulage driving mission is investigated. An electric turbocharger control strategy is proposed and evaluated. The results show that the fuel consumption can be reduced using the electric turbocharger, when comparing to a conventional turbocharged CI truck performing a long-haulage driving mission. A turbocharged CI engine model suitable for optimal control of transient behavior is developed. Sub-models are validated using data describing the components, and the model suitability for optimal control is shown with a tip-in example. To increase the model accuracy, the torque model is extended with a further dependence on the air-fuel ratio and operating point dependent losses. The complete engine model is parameterized for a set of stationary load points. The model is validated using data from a dynamic engine test, where it is shown that both the stationary and dynamic features in the data is represented well by the model. The developed engine model is used as a foundation in an optimal control problem setup to solve fuel optimal accelerations including gear changes. The setup is used to investigate the impact of driveshaft flexibility on the optimal control results, when compared to a stiff driveshaft model. Apart from a slight increase in fuel consumption, the driveshaft flexibility is shown to have minor effects on the fuel optimal control signals, in terms of general torque output and gear shift characteristics. The hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) technology can potentially reduce the consumption of diesel fuel, but how to design and control the system, consisting of several degrees of freedom remains a challenging task. Energy optimal accelerations of a CI parallel HEV with electric turbocharger is investigated using the optimal control problem setup. The results show that the electric turbocharger is used when the electrical energy cost is high, and the usage of the crank shaft motor is increasing with decreasing electric energy cost. To summarize, the developed models and problem setups enable investigations of different powertrain configurations and optimal control of these. One conclusion is that the energy savings using an electric turbocharger and crank shaft motor during accelerations are significant. Funding agencies: Linköping Center of Informatics; Control LINK-SIC

The diesel engine remains one of the key components in the global economy, transporting most of the worlds goods. To cope with stricter regulations and the continuous demand for lower fuel consumption, optimization is a key method. To enable mathematical optimization of the diesel engine, appropriate models need to be developed. These are preferably continuously differentiable, in order to be used with a gradient-based optimization solver. Demonstration of the optimization-based methodology is also necessary in order for the industry to adapt it. The paper presents a complete mean value engine model structure, tailored for optimization and simulation purposes. The model is validated using measurements on a heavyduty diesel engine. The validated model is used to study the transient performance during a time-optimal tip-in, the results validate that the model is suitable for simulation and optimization studies.

The Swedish alternative movement’s place-making activities in the seventies have been understood as an attempt to escape the political sphere. In this thesis, I investigate the ideas and practices of societal transformation seen in rural intentional communities and, to a lesser degree, urban sites. Challenging the idea that such intentional communities were solely concerned with the creation of ‘perfect places’, I study the tensions between community and society, lifestyle and the political sphere, and how the present relates to the future. Drawing on the field of utopian studies and the conflict inherent in the concept of utopia between the ‘no place’ and the ‘good place’, combined with relational perspectives on social movements and places, I analyse specific places and general place-making processes and their connection with the wider world. Using interviews from the late 1970s and a broad variety of written sources, both internal records such as bulletins and correspondence and published material such as newspapers, the four empirical chapters address, in order, prefigurative politics; the question of estrangement; relationships between the individual and the societal sphere; and the broader networks envisioned and enacted in Sweden’s alternative milieus.My findings show that the form of transformation produced at alternative sites largely concerned the question of setting a good example—a tactic that demanded visibility and hands-on engagement in their local community. Yet this was matched by an apparent lack of interest in national politics that stemmed from their idea of a translocalized struggle designed to create more such communities. I argue that the conceptualization of alternative places as estranged entities is only partly valid. In light of my results a more apt description would be that they were engaged in a political strategy that broke with a tradition of addressing their demands to the state, and instead pursued a human-rights inspired tactic of enabling other ‘ways of life’. The conclusion is that the alternative milieus bridged the social movement practices seen in Sweden in the late sixties and in the early eighties.

The thesis is about investigating the inlet and outlet pipes effect on the compressors measured performance. From measurements made in a gas stand, a thermodynamic model is to be created and the compressor efficiency further investigated. The temperatures and pressures entering and leaving the compressor does not have to be the same as the temperatures measured in the gasstand, because of the thermodynamics of the pipes that connects the measurement equipment and the compressor. During a gasstand test the turbocharger is connected in a test bench, it is connected with pipes on both the compressor and turbine side, to simulate the hot exhaust gases from the car engine and the pressure increase over the compressor. The air entering and leaving the turbocharger through the different pipes is controlled and all the entering and leaving temperatures and pressures are measured. Gasstand data from different tests are available during the thesis, one specific turbocharger is used as references during the modeling. Models of the inlet and outlet pipes are created and connected to a compressor model. The model is controlled to give the same mass flow as the measured data, to ensure that the work cycle is followed. The effects of the non ideal inlet and outlet pipes on measured compressor efficiency is studied with help of this model and the main impacts on the measured compressor efficiency are discovered. The result shows that the measured values used to calculate the compressor efficiency could change, depending on the measurement positions on the inlet and outlet pipes.

Uppsatsen Kvinnotyperna på modet går igenom hur tidningen Charme hjälper till att skapa olika kvinnlighetstyper. Utifrån Judith Butlers teori om genus och queer performances ses bilder och text som exempel på hur en kvinnlighet formeras i tidningen Charme. En tidning som bara existerar mellan åren 1921-1933 och säger sig rikta sig till den moderna kvinnan. Hur kan denna moderna kvinna ha sett ut och på vilka sätt skiljer hon ut sig från andra typer av kvinnligheter? Exempel på kvinnlighets-skapande faktorer ges från dels arbete men även från nöjesliv och nationalitet.