Tous les articles par Alain Préat

Full-time professor at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium apreat@gmail.com apreat@ulb.ac.be • Department of Earth Sciences and Environment Res. Grp. - Biogeochemistry & Modeling of the Earth System Sedimentology & Basin Analysis • Alumnus, Collège des Alumni, Académie Royale de Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux Arts de Belgique (mars 2013). http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=2a8crwkksq&lg=fr&pag=858&rec=0&frm=0&par=aybabtu&id=4471&flux=8365323 • Prof. Invited, Université de Mons-Hainaut (2010-present-day) • Prof. Coordinator and invited to the Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium (Belgian College) (2009- present day) • Prof. partim to the DEA (third cycle) led by the University of Lille (9 universities from 1999 to 2004) - Prof. partim at the University of Paris-Sud/Orsay, European-Socrates Agreement (1995-1998) • Prof. partim at the University of Louvain, Convention ULB-UCL (1993-2000) • Since 2015 : Member of Comité éditorial de la Revue Géologie de la France http://geolfrance.brgm.fr • Since 2014 : Regular author of texts for ‘la Revue Science et Pseudosciences’ http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/ • Many field works (several weeks to 2 months) (Meso- and Paleozoic carbonates, Paleo- to Neoproterozoic carbonates) in Europe, USA (Nevada), Papouasia (Holocene), North Africa (Algeria, Morrocco, Tunisia), West Africa (Gabon, DRC, Congo-Brazzaville, South Africa, Angola), Iraq... Recently : field works (3 to 5 weeks) Congo- Brazzaville 2012, 2015, 2016 (carbonate Neoproterozoic). Degree in geological sciences at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) in 1974, I went to Algeria for two years teaching mining geology at the University of Constantine. Back in Belgium I worked for two years as an expert for the EEC (European Commission), first on the prospecting of Pb and Zn in carbonate environments, then the uranium exploration in Belgium. Then Assistant at ULB, Department of Geology I got the degree of Doctor of Sciences (Geology) in 1985. My thesis, devoted to the study of the Devonian carbonate sedimentology of northern France and southern Belgium, comprised a significant portion of field work whose interpretation and synthesis conducted to the establishment of model of carbonate platforms and ramps with reefal constructions. I then worked for Petrofina SA and shared a little more than two years in Angola as Director of the Research Laboratory of this oil company. The lab included 22 people (micropaleontology, sedimentology, petrophysics). My main activity was to interpret facies reservoirs from drillings in the Cretaceous, sometimes in the Tertiary. I carried out many studies for oil companies operating in this country. I returned to the ULB in 1988 as First Assistant and was appointed Professor in 1990. I carried out various missions for mining companies in Belgium and oil companies abroad and continued research, particularly through projects of the Scientific Research National Funds (FNRS). My research still concerns sedimentology, geochemistry and diagenesis of carbonate rocks which leads me to travel many countries in Europe or outside Europe, North Africa, Papua New Guinea and the USA, to conduct field missions. Since the late 90's, I expanded my field of research in addressing the problem of mass extinctions of organisms from the Upper Devonian series across Euramerica (from North America to Poland) and I also specialized in microbiological and geochemical analyses of ancient carbonate series developing a sustained collaboration with biologists of my university. We are at the origin of a paleoecological model based on the presence of iron-bacterial microfossils, which led me to travel many countries in Europe and North Africa. This model accounts for the red pigmentation of many marble and ornamental stones used in the world. This research also has implications on the emergence of Life from the earliest stages of formation of Earth, as well as in the field of exobiology or extraterrestrial life ... More recently I invested in the study from the Precambrian series of Gabon and Congo. These works with colleagues from BRGM (Orléans) are as much about the academic side (consequences of the appearance of oxygen in the Paleoproterozoic and study of Neoproterozoic glaciations) that the potential applications in reservoir rocks and source rocks of oil (in collaboration with oil companies). Finally I recently established a close collaboration with the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences of Belgium to study the susceptibility magnetic signal from various European Paleozoic series. All these works allowed me to gain a thorough understanding of carbonate rocks (petrology, micropaleontology, geobiology, geochemistry, sequence stratigraphy, diagenesis) as well in Precambrian (2.2 Ga and 0.6 Ga), Paleozoic (from Silurian to Carboniferous) and Mesozoic (Jurassic and Cretaceous) rocks. Recently (2010) I have established a collaboration with Iraqi Kurdistan as part of a government program to boost scientific research in this country. My research led me to publish about 180 papers in international and national journals and presented more than 170 conference papers. I am a holder of eight courses at the ULB (5 mandatory and 3 optional), excursions and field stages, I taught at the third cycle in several French universities and led or co-managed a score of 20 Doctoral (PhD) and Post-doctoral theses and has been the promotor of more than 50 Masters theses.

Why does climate sensitivity increase over time in models? A look at two possibilities

by A. Zaragoza Comendador, August 16, 2018 in WUWT


Note: if the terms used in this article seem confusing, check out the previous one.

Introduction

It’s well known that climate models show increasing sensitivity over time: for a given forcing, the true long-term temperature increase (ECS) is higher than what you’d estimate if you simply extrapolated from the past (ECS_hist). In other words, the ECS-to-ECS_hist ratio is above 1. This article tries to work out why climate models behave like that; that is to say, the variable I’m trying to explain is the ECS-to-ECS_hist ratio.

Now, there’s probably too many hyphens and underscores in the text. So it will be more readable if I clarify that, every time I talk simply about ‘correlation’, I mean the correlation of thing X with the ECS-to-ECS_hist ratio. If other kind of correlation is mentioned, I’ll say so explicitly.

A new volcanic province: an inventory of subglacial volcanoes in West Antarctica

by M. Van Wyk De Vries et al., August 16, 2018 in Geol.Soc.London


Abstract: The West Antarctic Ice Sheet overlies the West Antarctic Rift System about which, due to the comprehensive ice cover, we have only limited and sporadic knowledge of volcanic activity and its extent. Improving our understanding of subglacial volcanic activity across the province is important both for helping to constrain how volcanism and rifting may have influenced ice-sheet growth and decay over previous glacial cycles, and in light of concerns over whether enhanced geo- thermal heat fluxes and subglacial melting may contribute to instability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Here, we use ice-sheet bed-elevation data to locate individual conical edifices protruding upwards into the ice across West Antarctica, and we propose that these edifices represent subglacial volcanoes. We used aeromagnetic, aerogravity, satellite imagery and databases of confirmed volca- noes to support this interpretation. The overall result presented here constitutes a first inventory of West Antarctica’s subglacial volcanism. We identified 138 volcanoes, 91 of which have not previously been identified, and which are widely distributed throughout the deep basins of West Antartica, but are especially concentrated and orientated along the >3000 km central axis of the West Antarctic Rift System.

The intensification of the water footprint of hydraulic fracturing

by A.J. Kondash et al., August 15, 2018 in ScienceAdvances


Abstract

Unconventional oil and gas exploration in the United States has experienced a period of rapid growth, followed by several years of limited production due to falling and low natural gas and oil prices. Throughout this transition, the water use for hydraulic fracturing and wastewater production in major shale gas and oil production regions has increased; from 2011 to 2016, the water use per well increased up to 770%, while flowback and produced water volumes generated within the first year of production increased up to 1440%. The water-use intensity (that is, normalized to the energy production) increased ubiquitously in all U.S. shale basins during this transition period. The steady increase of the water footprint of hydraulic fracturing with time implies that future unconventional oil and gas operations will require larger volumes of water for hydraulic fracturing, which will result in larger produced oil and gas wastewater volumes.

Nature Unbound IX – 21st Century Climate Change

by Javier, June 28, 2018


A conservative outlook on 21st century climate change

Summary: For the past decade anthropogenic emissions have slowed down, and continuation of current trends suggests a peak in emissions by 2050. Atmospheric CO2levels should reach 500 ppm but might stabilize soon afterwards, as sinks increase their CO2uptake. Solar activity is expected to continue increasing after the present minimum, as the millennial cycle works its way towards a late 21st century peak. The reduction in the rate of warming might continue until ~ 2035 followed by renewed warming, and temperature stabilization at about +1.5°C above pre-industrial. The pause in summer Arctic sea ice melting might also continue until ~ 2035. Renewed melting is probable afterwards, but it is unlikely that Arctic summers will become consistently ice free even by 2100.

Spiegel Science Journalist Takes Climate Heat-Hysteria Head On: “Speculation”…”Time For A Cool Examination”

by A. Bojanowski, August 4, 2018 in NoTricksZone/Der Spiegel


Geology major, science journalist Axel Bojanowski just penned a commentary at Spiegel Online on the recent hot weather hype we witnessed in the wake of Europe’s warm and unusually dry summer.

The title of his commentary: “Overheated – Forest Fires, Drought, Heat – Has The Climate Catastrophe Already Arrived? Time For A Cool Examination.”

See also here

Evidence for the impact of the 8.2-kyBP climate event on Near Eastern early farmers

by M. Roffet-Salque et al., August 13, 2018


This study reveals that animal fats preserved in pottery vessels from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site of Çatalhöyük recorded the abrupt 8.2-thousand years B.P. climatic event in their hydrogen isotopic compositions. In addition, significant changes are observed in the archaeology and faunal assemblage of the site, showing how the early farming community at Çatalhöyük had to adapt to climate change. Significantly, this contribution shows that individual biomolecules preserved in ancient animal fats can be used to reconstruct paleoclimate records and thus, provides a powerful tool for the detection of climatic events at well-dated onsite terrestrial locations (i.e., at the very settlements where human populations lived).

Glacier depth affects plankton blooms off Greenland

by Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR), Auhsut 14, 2018 in ScienceDaily


The unusual timing of highly-productive summer plankton blooms off Greenland indicates a connection between increasing amounts of meltwater and nutrients in these coastal waters. Researchers now show that this connection exists, but is much more complex than widely supposed. Whether increasing meltwater has a positive or negative effect on summertime phytoplankton depends on the depth at which a glacier sits in the ocean.

“So, the study shows that further melting of Greenland’s glaciers only leads to stronger summer plankton blooms under very specific conditions, an effect that will ultimately end with very extensive further melting,” Hopwood summarizes the results of the study.

Trees and climate change: Faster growth, lighter wood

by Technical University of Munich (TUM), August 14, 2018


Wood density of European trees decreasing continuously since 1870

Trees are growing more rapidly due to climate change. This sounds like good news. After all, this means that trees are storing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in their wood and hence taking away the key ingredient in global warming. But is it that simple? A team analyzed wood samples from the oldest existing experimental areas spanning a period of 150 years — and reached a surprising conclusion.

But the most important finding for practical and political aspects is that the current climate-relevant carbon sequestration of the forests is being overestimated as long as it is calculated with established but outdated wood densities. “The accelerated growth is still resulting in surplus carbon sequestration,” says Pretzsch. “But scaling up for the forests of central Europe, the traditional estimate would be to high by about ten million metric tons of carbon per year.”

Blow to warmists, the proposed ‘Anthropocene’ epoch has been denied by ICS

by Anthony Watts, August 13, 2018 in WUWT


The global body tasked with naming geological eras, the International Commission on Stratigraphy, has rejected the proposed Anthropocene epoch,  the controversial ‘geological’ epoch in which mankind allegedly dominates natural processes. The international commission has now rejected the proposal and has instead split the Holocene Epoch into three different geological ages, all of which were primarily shaped by natural, not human factors.

See also here

Some Good News—About Natural Disasters, of All Things

by Dr. R. Pielke, August 14, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch


In his posthumously published book “Factfulness,” the Swedish statistician Hans Rosling describes a paradox: “The image of a dangerous world has never been broadcast more effectively than it is now, while the world has never been less violent and more safe.”

A case in point: natural disasters. The earth will always be volatile, but despite recent fires, volcanoes, and hurricanes, humanity currently is experiencing a stretch of good fortune when it comes to disasters.

It’s difficult to be “factful” about disasters—the vivid trauma of each event distracts observers from the long-term decrease in destructiveness.

But climate activists make the problem worse by blaming every extreme weather event on human-caused climate change, hoping to scare people into elevated concern.

Germany’s Renewable Energy Disaster – Part 2: Wind & Solar Deemed ‘Ecological Disasters’

by ‘Stop These Things‘, August 14, 2018


Germany’s wind and solar experiment has failed: the so-called ‘Energiewende’ (energy transition) has turned into an insanely costly debacle.

German power prices have rocketedblackouts and load shedding are the norm; and its idyllic countryside has been turned into an industrial wasteland, with its forests, no exception (see above).

Hundreds of billions of euros have been squandered on subsidies to wind and solar, all in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide gas emissions. However, that objective has failed too: CO2 emissions continue to rise.

Evaluation du coût de blackout dans l’Union Européenne

by Ernest Mund, 13 aoüt 2018, in ScienceClimatEnergie


La fourniture d’électricité est essentielle au développement économique d’une nation et à son harmonie politique et sociale. Les profondes mutations subies actuellement par le système électrique dans lequel la part des énergies renouvelables intermittentes ne cesse d’augmenter, présentent des risques pour cette fourniture. Il importe d’en assurer la sécurité. Evaluer le coût d’un blackout est donc un élément d’information essentiel, qui devrait être pris en compte dans toute décision future d’investissement en matière de génération de puissance.

(…)

Laughable weather station maintenance causes highest ever temperature record in Spain

by Anthony Watts, August 6, 2018 in WUWT


h/t to Dr. Ryan Maue

In Spain, Paco Eslava García has been following my lead on the poor quality of weather stations that produce record-high temperatures. I recently pointed out how the tentative all time high temperature in Africa could very well be due to being at an airport. I also pointed out that high temperature records in the Los Angeles area could be a product of poor siting. Such as this station on the roof of the Santa Ana fire station:

The rise of Climate superstition: Droughts, heatwaves, random noise is “proof” of anything you like

by JoNova, August 7, 2018


All around the world the climate druids are at work.

Show me the error bars

Once upon a time a scientist talked about thirty year trends and anachronistic things like “confidence intervals”. Now, thanks to the discovery of Unscience, any noisy, random short data is fair game to be declared undeniable climate change. Periods of flooding also qualify, as do periods of nice weather, though strangely no one mentions those. Where are the headlines? If climate change caused drought on the East Coast of Australia, it’s also causing average rain and good crops in Western Australia.

In terms of scientific data analysis we don’t get that many droughts or six-day-August-heatwaves to analyze. They’re complex phenomena caused by multiple factors and we only have short records. This makes them ideal to be oversold to hapless folk as a “sign” of climate change.

(…)

The Major Change in the Global Warming Groupthink Between 1990 and 1995

byTim Ball, August 12, 2018 in WUWT


Somebody said economists try to predict the tide by measuring one wave. This puts them in the same league as climate scientists trying to predict the climate by measuring one variable, CO2. It is no surprise that an amalgam of the two, climate and economics, produces even worse results, but that is what happened early in the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) deception.

(…)

Ice sheets of the last ice age seeded the ocean with essential nutrient silica

by University of Bristol, August 10, 2018 in ScienceDaily


Silica is needed by a group of marine algae (the microscopic plants of the oceans) called diatoms, who use it to build their glassy cell walls (known as frustules).

These plankton take up globally significant amounts of carbon — they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, and act as a natural carbon sink when they die and fall to the bottom of the ocean — and form the base of the marine food chain.

The researchers are also planning to use more complex and realistic computer models to delve deeper into the potential changes in the global silica cycle since the last glacial maximum. These might include more accurate representations of ocean currents, recycling of silica in the water column, and potential changes to the marine algal community.

A Global Warming Hiatus in Northeast China

by Sun X. et al., 2018 in CO2Science


Paper Reviewed
Sun, X., Ren, G., Ren, Y., Fang, Y., Liu, Y., Xue, X. and Zhang, P. 2018. A remarkable climate warming hiatus over northeast China since 1998. Theoretical and Applied Climatology 133: 579-594.

A prominent feature of all climate model projections is their prediction that temperatures should be rising in response to ever-increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases. However, for the past two decades global surface air temperatures have not warmed to the degree predicted by the models, which lack of warming has been a conundrum to the climate alarmist movement.

Le CO2 et le climat avec et sans effet de serre

by Georges Geuskens, 6 août 2018 in ScienceClimatEnergie


De tous temps les hommes se sont intéressés au climat et ont tenté de prévoir son évolution. Dès l’Antiquité il était connu que des caractéristiques géographiques comme la latitude mais aussi l’altitude ou le voisinage de vastes étendues d’eau avaient une grande influence sur le climat. Sur cette base les climatologues ont été amenés à distinguer différents types de climats tels que tropical, désertique, tempéré, polaire, etc. Ensuite, il est progressivement apparu que le climat est un système extrêmement complexe qui dépend de l’activité solaire ainsi que de  la distance et de l’orientation de la Terre par rapport au Soleil, facteurs qui varient à des échelles de temps très différentes.

Climate Scientist Calls Out Media (and Mann) ‘Misinformation’ On Wildfires And Global Warming

by Michaele Bastach, August 10, 2018 in WUWT


With wildfires engulfing over 620,000 acres of California, there’s been a concerted media campaign to single out man-made global warming as the primary force behind the deadly blazes.

But that’s not what the data suggests, according to University of Washington climate scientist Cliff Mass.

“So there is a lot of misinformation going around in the media, some environmental advocacy groups, and some politicians,” Mass wrote in the first of a series of blog posts analyzing the California wildfires.

“Back to the future of climate change”

by Anthony Watts, August 10, 2018 in WUWT


Syracuse University professor uses ancient marine sediment as benchmark for present, future climate models

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Researchers at Syracuse University are looking to the geologic past to make future projections about climate change.

Christopher K. Junium, assistant professor of Earth sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), is the lead author of a study that uses the nitrogen isotopic composition of sediments to understand changes in marine conditions during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)–a brief period of rapid global warming approximately 56 million years ago.

Junium’s team–which includes Benjamin T. Uveges G’17, a Ph.D. candidate in A&S, and Alexander J. Dickson, a lecturer in geochemistry at Royal Holloway at the University of London–has published an article on the subject in Nature Communications (Springer Nature, 2018).

Growth In Thermal Generation Continues To Outpace Renewables In China

by P. Homewood, August 9, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Anybody who thinks China is rapidly shifting to renewable energy needs to look at the latest electricity data from the China Energy Portal.

Whilst wind and solar generation has increased by 51 TWh year-on-year in Q2, thermal has increased by 176.9 TWh.

https://chinaenergyportal.org/2018-q2-electricity-and-energy-statistics/

Multiple NASA Studies Confirm Bedrock Heat Flow Behind Melting Polar Ice, Not Global Warming

by James E. Kamis, August 7, 2018 in ClimateChangeDisatch


In what amounts to dissension from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) climate change policy, a series of just-released studies by working-level scientists prove that geological and not atmospheric forces are responsible for melting of Earth’s polar ice sheets.

La canicule d’ici et l’hiver de là By: Martin Pettitt – CC BY 2.0

by Martin Pettitt, 8 août 2018, in Contrepoints


S’exprimer, sans recul, sur une canicule localisée à l’échelle du climat mondial constitue une erreur déontologique.

Il est regrettable que certains utilisent la vague de chaleur actuelle — qui au demeurant n’a rien d’anormal — afin de faire de nouveau miroiter la catastrophe climatique annoncée depuis 1992.

Le livre Des changements dans le climat de la France : histoire de ses révolutions météorologiques, du Dr Fuster, est sorti en 1845, alors qu’on ne produisait pas encore de pétrole. Dans ces 500 pages richement documentées, l’auteur passe en revue les aléas du climat en France depuis la conquête de la Gaule par Jules César jusqu’à son époque.

Voici quelques exemples tirés de ce livre, afin de montrer que la canicule que nous vivons n’a absolument rien d’anormal …

Tornadoes : Historical Records and Trends

by NOAA, August 2018


One of the main difficulties with tornado records is that a tornado, or evidence of a tornado must have been observed. Unlike rainfall or temperature, which may be measured by a fixed instrument, tornadoes are short-lived and very unpredictable. If a tornado occurs in a place with few or no people, it is not likely to be documented. Many significant tornadoes may not make it into the historical record since Tornado Alley was very sparsely populated during the 20th century.

Much early work on tornado climatology in the United States was done by John Park Finley in his book Tornadoes, published in 1887. While some of Finley’s safety guidelines have since been refuted as dangerous practices, the book remains a seminal work in tornado research. The University of Oklahoma created a PDF copy of the book and made it accessible at John Finley’s Tornadoes(link is external)

See also here