Archives mensuelles : janvier 2018

energy and fields, press and newspapers

U.S. on Track to Top Russia as World’s Largest Oil Producer, Upending Global Trade and Geopolitics

by Haaretz and Reuters, January 29, 2018

Surging shale production is poised to continue pushing U.S. oil output to more than 10 million barrels per day – toppling a record set in 1970 and crossing a threshold few could have imagined even a decade ago. The U.S. government forecasts that the nation’s production will climb to 11 million barrels a day by late 2019, a level that would rival Russia, the world’s top producer.

(…)

New technology, new fields

The next phase of shale output growth depends on techniques to squeeze more oil from each well. Companies are now putting sensors on drill bits to more precisely access oil deposits, using artificial intelligence and remote operators to get the most out of equipment and trained engineers.

climate-debate

High geothermal heat flux in close proximity to the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream

by Rysgaard et al., January 22, 2018 in NatureSci.Reports

The Greenland ice sheet (GIS) is losing mass at an increasing rate due to surface melt and flow acceleration in outlet glaciers. Currently, there is a large disagreement between observed and simulated ice flow, which may arise from inaccurate parameterization of basal motion, subglacial hydrology or geothermal heat sources. Recently it was suggested that there may be a hidden heat source beneath GIS caused by a higher than expected geothermal heat flux (GHF) from the Earth’s interior.

climate-debate

What are, in fact, the grounds for concern about global warming?

by Javier, January 30, 2018 in AndyMay WUWT

Climate change is a reality attested by past records. Concerns about preparing and adapting for climate change are real. However, the idea that we can prevent climate change from happening is dangerous and might be anti-adaptive. Certain energy policies that might have no effect on climate change could make us less able to adapt.

Physics shows that adding carbon dioxide leads to warming under laboratory conditions. It is generally assumed that a doubling of CO2 should produce a direct forcing of 3.7 W/m2 [1], that translates to a warming of 1°C (by differentiating the Stefan-Boltzmann equation) to 1.2°C (by models taking into account latitude and season). But that is a maximum value valid only if total energy outflow is the same as radiative outflow. As there is also conduction, convection, and evaporation, the final warming without feedbacks is probably less. Then we have the problem of feedbacks that we don’t know and cannot properly measure. For some of the feedbacks, like cloud cover we don’t even know the sign of their contribution. And they are huge, a 1% change in albedo has a radiative effect of 3.4 W/m2 [2], almost equivalent to a full doubling of CO2.

climate-debate

Un El Niño hors norme ne signifie pas la reprise du réchauffement mondial

by Uzbek, 24 janvier 2018 in ClimatEnv&Energie

Dans un communiqué du 18 janvier 2018, l’OMM (Organisation météorologique mondiale) classe 2017 dans les trois années les plus chaudes depuis le début des mesures. Le record reste détenu par l’année 2016 (+ 1,2° C au-dessus des températures de la période pré industrielle) suivie par l’année 2015 (+ 1,1° C) toutes deux influencées par un épisode El Niño intense.

L’année 2017 serait ainsi l’année la plus chaude sans influence d’un phénomène El Niño. L’OMM suggère ainsi une reprise du réchauffement mondial après une pause des températures de plus de 17 ans.

(…)

better to know...?, pollution-contamination

L’ Empire des Métaux Rares

by Edouard Guigue, 13 janvier 2018

Que sont les métaux rares ? Des ressources peu connues mais essentielles au fonctionnement de l’espace mondialisé. Insérées au cœur de tout appareil électronique, sans elles aucune de nos technologies numériques n’existerait. Composant également la plupart de nos technologies vertes (éoliennes, panneaux solaires ou voitures électriques), leurs modes de production laissent toutefois perplexe sur leur capacité à s’établir comme alternatives durables aux énergies fossiles. La pollution ne serait pas réduite mais simplement délocalisée… essentiellement en Chine où 95% des terres rares sont produites. Un chiffre qui par ailleurs devrait nous alarmer sur la situation de dépendance à la Chine dans laquelle le reste du monde  -dont l’Europe- se trouve depuis les années 1980. Guillaume Pitron nous présente une enquête de six ans, dont les résultats sont à retrouver dans son livre La guerre des métaux rares.

climate-debate

Why 2017’s “Third Warmest Year on Record” is a Yawner

by E. Calvin Beisner, January 29, 2018 in WUWT

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) press release headline January 18 was blunt: “NOAA: 2017 was 3rd warmest year on record for the globe.” The tagline that followed made the inference obligatory for all climate alarmists: “NOAA, NASA scientists confirm Earth’s long-term warming trend continues” (emphasis added).

The New York Times trumpeted, “2017 Was One of the Hottest Years on Record,” adding, “Scientists at NASA on Thursday ranked last year as the second-warmest year since reliable record-keeping began in 1880, trailing only 2016. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which uses a different analytical method, ranked it third, behind 2016 and 2015.”

The UK Guardian likewise proclaimed, “2017 was the hottest year on record without an El Niño, thanks to global warming.”

Similar headlines appeared around the world. (…)

climate-debate

Greenland Is Getting Colder–New Study

by P Homewood, January 29, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Using satellite data, a group of scientists has studied the development of temperature over the past 15 years in a large part of Greenland.

More precisely, they looked at surface temperatures (the temperature close to the Earth’s surface) in a part of the country that is not covered by ice—around one fifth of the surface area of Greenland.

Intuitively, you may think that temperature throughout all of Greenland has been increasing, but that is not the case. When you look at the yearly average, the ice-free parts of Greenland show a slight drop in temperature between 2001 and 2015. With swings in temperature from year to year.

However, these results should not be interpreted as “proof” that the Earth is not warming, say the scientists behind the research, which is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

climate-debate, press and newspapers

GREEN MYTH EXPOSED: CHINA’S CO2 EMISSIONS JUMPED BY 4% LAST YEAR

by The New York Times, January 26, 2018 in GWPF

Experts say one annual increase doesn’t indicate China is returning to an era when its emissions grew by leaps and bounds. But the increase illustrates the challenges and compromises Beijing must juggle if it wants to stoke its economy and at the same time keep its environmental promises. […]

See also here and  here

energy and fields, press and newspapers

Oil Boom Gives the U.S. a New Edge in Energy and Diplomacy

by Clifford Krauss, January 28, 2018 in TheNewYorkTimes

HOUSTON — A substantial rise in oil prices in recent months has led to a resurgence in American oil production, enabling the country to challenge the dominance of Saudi Arabia and dampen price pressures at the pump.

The success has come in the face of efforts by Saudi Arabia and its oil allies to undercut the shale drilling spree in the United States. Those strategies backfired and ultimately ended up benefiting the oil industry.

Overcoming three years of slumping prices proved the resiliency of the shale boom. Energy companies and their financial backers were able to weather market turmoil — and the maneuvers of the global oil cartel — by adjusting exploration and extraction techniques.

climate-debate

Global SST data confirms cooling is on the way

by P Homewood, January 27, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

I see that reality is beginning to intrude upon the dangerous global warming team. They say ” it is plausible, if not likely, that the next 10 years of global temperature change will leave an impression of a ‘global warming hiatus’.”
Climate is controlled by natural cycles. Earth is just past the 2003+/- peak of a millennial cycle and the current cooling trend will likely continue until the next Little Ice Age minimum at about 2650.See the Energy and Environment paper at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0958305X16686488
and an earlier accessible blog version at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-coming-cooling-usefully-accurate_17.html

climate-debate

Le climat et son histoire

by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, 2012 in CairnInfo

Beaucoup de gens, à juste titre, sont impressionnés par les prédictions pessimistes du GIEC  relativement à la fin du xxie siècle, et il est fort possible que ces prédictions soient justifiées. La tâche de l’historien, c’est plutôt de resituer l’histoire du climat dans des périodes récentes ou moins récentes et de réfléchir, ensuite, en toute indépendance, en toute objectivité, sur ce qui nous attend, tant en fonction de ce qui s’est passé déjà, qu’en fonction des résultats impressionnants que nous proposent, avec raison sans doute, les sciences exactes.

climate-debate

Crucial Climate Verdict, Fledgling Evidence

by Donna Laframboise, January 26, 2018 in BigPictureNews

BIG PICTURE: In 1995, a 40-year-old climate modeller named Ben Santer was in charge of Chapter 8 of the UN’s upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Nothing in the other 49 chapters mattered more than the question his team was expected to answer: Was global climate change wholly natural – or was it partially caused by human activity?

better to know...?, biology+acidification

A ‘marine motorhome for microbes’: Oceanic plastic trash conveys disease to coral reefs

by Cornell University, January 25, 2018 in ScienceDaily

Plastics make ideal vessels for colonizing microscopic organisms that could trigger disease if they come into contact with corals,” Lamb said. “Plastic items — commonly made of polypropylene, such as bottle caps and toothbrushes — have been shown to become heavily inhabited by bacteria

better to know...?, climate-debate

HISTOIRE DES TEMPÊTES

by E.  Garnier, septembre 2012, in Risques, les Cahiers de l’Assurance

Ce travail tente de prouver l’intérêt pour l’assureur d’une approche historique consacrée aux tempêtes et aux cyclones entre 1500 et nos jours. Les exemples de la France, de l’Europe et de l’océan Indien montrent que ces événements extrêmes sont en réalité des facteurs de permanence historique et que les archives peuvent être très utiles pour estimer leur sévérité. Dans cette perspective, une simulation du coût actuel de la tempête atlantique de mars 1937 est réalisée. Elle révèle que les sociétés littorales de cette époque étaient nettement plus résilientes. Enfin, l’étude prouve que, depuis la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, la vulnérabilité a augmenté plus rapidement que l’aléa tempête, notamment depuis les années 1990 avec l’urbanisation croissante des littoraux.

only geology

Sensitivity to lunar cycles prior to the 2007 eruption of Ruapehu volcano

by T. Girona, C. Huber, C. Caudron,  January 24, 2018 in Nature

A long-standing question in Earth Science is the extent to which seismic and volcanic activity can be regulated by tidal stresses, a repeatable and predictable external excitation induced by the Moon-Sun gravitational force. Fortnightly tides, a ~14-day amplitude modulation of the daily tidal stresses that is associated to lunar cycles, have been suggested to affect volcano dynamics. However, previous studies found contradictory results and remain mostly inconclusive. Here we study how fortnightly tides have affected Ruapehu volcano (New Zealand) from 2004 to 2016 by analysing the rolling correlation between lunar cycles and seismic amplitude recorded close to the crater. (…)

better to know...?, climate-debate

TAO Sea and Air Temperature Differences

by Willis Eschenbach, January 24, 2018 in WUWT

(…) I like the TAO buoy data because we can be sure that it is free of urban heat islands, changes in location, instrumentation changes, and many of the other problems that plague land-based stations. It is also measured very frequently, typically every ten minutes. This lets us explore the daily cycles of air and sea temperature, solar radiation, longwave radiation, humidity, and the like.

climate-debate

Alarmist Retreat Begins: Natural Factors May Cause New Global Warming Hiatus

by Dr Benny Peiser, January 24, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch

The solar variability is not negligible in comparison with the energy imbalance that drives global temperature change.

Therefore, because of the combination of the strong 2016 El Niño and the phase of the solar cycle, it is plausible, if not likely, that the next 10 years of global temperature change will leave an impression of a ‘global warming hiatus.’ —James Hansen et al, 18 January 2018

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has lodged a new complaint with the BBC about its misleading reporting on global warming.

See also here

climate and geology, climate-debate

Groundbreaking AGW-Undermining Study: Greenland’s Warming, Ice Loss Due To Geothermal Heat

by K. Richard, January 24, 2018 in NoTricksZone

A few years ago, 10 glaciologists publishing in the journal Nature Geoscience asserted that “large parts of the north-central Greenland ice sheet are melting from below” due to high geothermal heat flux forcing (Rogozhina et al., 2016).

In a new paper published in Scientific Reports, 4 more glaciologists (Rysgaardet al., 2018) report that “hot vents” (or hot springs) of geothermally-heated water underneath the Greenland ice sheet can explain localized rising temperatures and glacial melting.

climate and geology, climate-debate

Worse than we thought’ – climate models underestimate future polar warming

by  FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY,  January 23, 2018, in WUWT, A. Watts

The researchers published their findings this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists frequently look to the Eocene to understand how the Earth responds to higher levels of carbon dioxide. During the Eocene, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was more than 560 parts per million, at least twice preindustrial levels, and the epoch kicked off with a global average temperature more than 8 degrees Celsius – about 14 degrees Fahrenheit – warmer than today, gradually cooling over the next 22 million years. These characteristics make the Eocene a good period on which to test our understanding of the climate system, said Laura Cotton, study co-author and curator of micropaleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

climate-debate

Istvan Marko, le scientifique qui aimait le CO2

by A. Préat et al., 22 janvier 2018, in Arguments

Ce numéro spécial de la revue “Arguments” est dédié à la mémoire d’István Markó, professeur à  l’UCL, décédé inopinément en août 2017. Au cours des dix dernières années cet éminent scientifique a consacré toute son énergie et utilisé ses très grandes compétences à l’analyse des données expérimentales et théoriques concernant l’évolution du climat pour arriver à la conclusion que la théorie du réchauffement climatique d’origine anthropique était non fondée. Toute cette théorie aux conséquences politiques, économiques et sociales gigantesques repose sur une seule et fragile hypothèse : le CO2 renverrait vers la Terre une partie du rayonnement qui devrait s’échapper vers le vide interplanétaire et il en résulterait une élévation de température. Or, il n’existe aucune preuve scientifique liant un réchauffement climatique à une augmentation de la teneur en CO2 dans l’atmosphère.

climate-debate

Emergent constraint on equilibrium climate sensitivity from global temperature variability

by P.M. Cox et al., January 18, 2018 in Nature

Equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) remains one of the most important unknowns in climate change science. ECS is defined as the global mean warming that would occur if the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration were instantly doubled and the climate were then brought to equilibrium with that new level of CO2.

(…)

This metric of variability can also be calculated from observational records of global warming3, which enables tighter constraints to be placed on ECS, reducing the probability of ECS being less than 1.5 degrees Celsius to less than 3 per cent, and the probability of ECS exceeding 4.5 degrees Celsius to less than 1 per cent.

better to know...?

New Study: German Agreed 2050 CO2 Reductions Could Cost Astronomical $2.8 TRILLION By 2050!

by  P. Gosselin, January 20, 2018 in NoTricksZone

It has long been dawning on most people that the costs of Germany’s Energiewende (transition to green energies) have been spectacularly underestimated. As Germany rushes into its foray with renewable energies, principally wind and sun, we are finding out that many of the costs involved were never taken into account.

(…)