Archives quotidiennes :

better to know...?, energy and fields

CERAWEEK IEA chief sees need for investments in existing oil, gas fields

by T. Gardner, Mar 10, 2025 in Reuters

HOUSTON, March 10 (Reuters) – Fatih Birol, the director of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, said on Monday there is a need for investment in oil and gas fields to support global energy security.
The comment puts the energy watchdog for industrialized nations more in line with President Donald Trump’s pro-drilling agenda, after it came under pressure from fossil fuel advocates years ago for proposing an end to new oil and gas projects.
“I want to make it clear … there would be a need for investment, especially to address the decline in the existing fields,” he said at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston. “There is a need for oil and gas upstream investments, full stop,” he said.
Birol has been under pressure from Trump’s administration and from the president’s fellow Republicans in Congress for the IEA’s shift in recent years toward a focus on clean energy policy.
In 2021, the IEA said companies should not invest, opens new tab in new coal, oil and gas projects if the international community wants to reach net zero emissions by mid-century to fight climate change. Countering global warming was a key priority for the administration of former President Joe Biden.
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better to know...?, climate-debate

Climate Crusader SLAPPed: Michael Mann Sanctioned For ‘Extraordinary’ Misconduct

by R. Bryce, Mar 13,2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch 

My, oh my, how the worm has turned.

Thirteen months ago, in the op-ed pages of the New York Times, University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann and his lawyer, Peter J. Fontaine, were crowing about their victory in federal court a few days earlier. [emphasis, links added]

They were thrilled that a jury in Washington, DC, had decided that the defendants in the case, Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn, had defamed Mann.

The jury awarded the combative academic one dollar in compensatory damages from Simberg and Steyn. It also awarded Mann punitive damages of $1,000 from Simberg and $1 million from Steyn.

Mann claimed the jury’s decision was “a victory for science and it’s a victory for scientists.”

In their February 15, 2024, op-ed, Mann and Fontaine said, “We hope this sends a broader message that defamatory attacks on scientists go beyond the bounds of protected speech and have consequences… However, we lament the time lost to this battle. This case is part of a larger culture war in which research is distorted and the truth about the climate threat is dissembled.”

Yes, well.

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As reported here on Substack by Roger Pielke Jr., a federal court in Washington, DC, ruled yesterday that Mann and his lawyers acted in “bad faith” and “made false representations to the jury and the Court regarding damages stemming from loss of grant funding.”

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climate-debate

Temperature rising

by Nature Geoscience, Mar 12, 2025

A record-breaking start to 2025 extends the recent period of exceptional warmth and raises questions over the rate of ongoing climate change.

This January saw global mean surface temperature reach 1.75 °C above the preindustrial climate1. The unprecedented heat continues a period of warmth beginning in 2023 that has seen records repeatedly broken. The surge in temperature back in 2023 was in part expected due to the combination of human driven climate change and the onset of El Niño — which is characterized by higher global temperatures. However, the magnitude of the jump was surprising2 and many climate scientists expected temperatures to fall somewhat as El Niño came to an end in the second half of 2024. The continued record temperatures are puzzling and raise questions as to whether it is natural variability or an acceleration in anthropogenic warming. Quantifying the causes and impacts of the recent warmth could reveal important insights into our future.

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A third, potentially more concerning explanation for the drop in cloud cover is an emerging low-cloud feedback, whereby low cloud cover decreases with rising temperature, which further intensifies warming5. How clouds respond to warming remains one of the biggest uncertainties in understanding the climate response to carbon dioxide emissions. A strong low-cloud feedback could lead to more future warming than currently anticipated.

Pinning down the contributing factors to the recent exceptional warmth could prove invaluable for constraining our future trajectory. In particular, we need to clarify what has driven the observed changes in cloud cover. As records continue to fall, now more than ever, it is essential we understand the complex interplay between greenhouse gas driven warming and short-term climate variability.

climate-debate

Guardian Falsely Claims Climate Change is Intensifying Cyclones

by E. Worall, Mar 13, 2025 in WUWT

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Are climate modellers putting the effect before the cause when it comes to long term cyclone frequency and intensity vs surface temperature? Because there is a very simple possible explanation for why atmospheric and ocean surface temperature is rising but cyclone frequency and intensity are decreasing – cyclone frequency and intensity likely have an inverse relationship with ocean surface and atmospheric heat content. Cyclones are powerful dissipators of surface heat, an uptick in cyclones would cause an immediate and sustained drop in surface temperature.

Bonus points for anyone who has a good theory for what causes more cyclones – I mean a theory which doesn’t contradict observations.

La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse