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.
energy and fields, press and newspapers

Utica report card: Ohio’s natural gas production at record levels

by Shane Hoover, April 4, 2018 in Inde.Online.com

Utica Midstream conference gives update on Utica Shale production and development.

NORTH CANTON Ohio has produced more natural gas than it uses since early 2015. Driven by prolific Utica Shale wells, the state produced a record 1.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas last year.

Much of the regional economic development around that production has been in the form of pipelines and processing facilities.

Two interstate natural gas pipelines — Energy Transfer’s Rover project and the NEXUS Gas Transmission pipeline — cross Stark and neighboring counties.

climate-debate, energy and fields

Gas needed for low-carbon targets says National Grid

by P. Homewood, April 8, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Bit by bit, some reality appears to be intruding into the make believe world of the Climate Change Act:

No credible scenario’ exists for hitting the UK’s 2050 decarbonisation targets without continued reliance on gas, the National Grid has warned.

In a new report, entitled The Future of Gas: How gas can support a low carbon future’, the grid says that it is not feasible to switch over to electric heating on the scale required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80 per cent of 1990 levels by the middle of this century.

climate-debate

Top Climate Scientist: CO2 Model Assumptions “Invalid”…”Natural Climatic Variations Dominate”!

by P. Gosselin, April 6, 2018 in NoTricksZone

The addition of an esteemed Norwegian climate scientist to the London-based GWPF will help bring some sobriety back to a science that has all too often been immersed in alarmism.

The London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) recently announced Professor Ole Humlum of Norway was joining its Academic Advisory Council.

This brings another persuasive voice to the influential think tank.

climate-debate

Hot Days Near Tokyo Today Not More Than 70 Years Ago…No Trend Since 1926!

by P. Gosselin, April 7, 2018 in NoTricksZone

If you haven’t already picked up a copy of the The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change, please do get your hands on one.

According to its author Marc Morano, people have been snatching them up and a third printing has started. The book even made the Amazon top 100 best selling books for awhile.

It also ranked first in a number of categories. In his book, NoTricksZone gets mentioned 4 times and even took up one full page at one spot!

So now on to today’s post…

better to know...?

Estimated 40 Percent of Scientists Doubt Manmade Global Warming

by National Association of Scholars, January 03, 2011

PRINCETON, NJ (January 3, 2011)—S. Fred Singer said in an interview with the National Association of Scholars (NAS) that “the number of skeptical qualified scientists has been growing steadily; I would guess it is about 40% now.”

Singer, a leading scientific skeptic of anthropocentric global warming (AGW), is an atmospheric physicist, and founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), an organization that began challenging the published findings of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the 1990s. SEPP established the Leipzig Declaration, a statement of dissent from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that has been signed by over one hundred scientists and meteorologists.

climate-debate

UAH finds a warming error in satellite data, lowers “tropical hotspot” temperature trend, contradicts IPCC models

by Anthony Watts, April 6, 2018 in WUWT

Weather Satellite Wanders Through Time, Space, Causing Stray Warming to Contaminate Data

In the late 1990s, the NOAA-14 weather satellite went wandering through time and space, apparently changing the record of Earth’s climate as it went.

Designed for an orbit synchronized with the sun, NOAA-14’s orbit from pole to pole was supposed to cross the equator at 1:30 p.m. on the sunlit side of the globe and at 1:30 a.m. on the dark side, 14 times each day. One of the instruments it carried was a microwave sounding unit (MSU), which looked down at the world and collected data on temperatures in Earth’s atmosphere and how those temperatures changed through time.

climate-debate

The Pause Has Returned.

by P. Homewood, April 5, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Hadcrut now have numbers out for February, giving an anomaly of 0.523C, measured against the 1961-90 baseline, slightly down on January’s 0.556C.

This means that the last six months have been below 0.59C.

It is clear that temperatures are settling down at a similar level to the period between 2002 and 2007, following the record El Nino of 2015/16. Bear in mind as well that the degree of accuracy, according to the Hadley Centre, is about +/-0.1C. As such, it cannot be said that there has been any statistically measurable warming since 2001, or indeed previously.

It is possible temperatures may drop further in coming months, with weak La Nina conditions established, although these are predicted to disappear by the summer.

climate-debate

Global Temperature Report: March 2018

by Anthony Watts, April 4, 2018 in WUWT

March temperatures (preliminary)

Global composite temp.: +0.24 C (about 0.43 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.

Northern Hemisphere: +0.39 C (about 0.70 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.

Southern Hemisphere: +0.10 C (about 0.18 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.

Tropics: +0.06 C (about 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) above 30-year average for March.

February temperatures (revised):

Global Composite: +0.20 C above 30-year average

Northern Hemisphere: +0.24 C above 30-year average

Southern Hemisphere: +0.15 C above 30-year average

Tropics: +0.03 C above 30-year average

(All temperature anomalies are based on a 30-year average (1981-2010) for the month reported.)

 

 

 

better to know...?, energy and fields, press and newspapers

Bahrain hits (black) gold with biggest shale discovery in world

by Catherine Philp, April 5, 2018 in TheTimes

Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa al-Khalifa said it was not yet known how much of the oil could be extracted. The scale of the find, however, is about to make it a big player in the global market, significantly boosting its economy and raising its profile in the region, where it plays a smaller fiddle to its giant neighbour, Saudi Arabia.

See also here

better to know...?, sciences-general

Science is Not Truth

by Donna Laframboise, April 4, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatch

SPOTLIGHT: As the influence of religion has waned, we’ve placed science on a pedestal – mistaking it for an oracle of truth.

BIG PICTURE: Richard Harris has written a startling book about the state of medical research. The preface to Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions includes a warning about scientific naivety:

Most of science is built on inference rather than direct observation…Science progresses by testing ideas indirectly, throwing out the ones that seem wrong…Gradually, scientists build stories that do a better job of approximating the truth.

better to know...?, sciences-general

Earth’s stable temperature past suggests other planets could also sustain life

by Anthony Watts,  April 3, 2018 in WUWT

Theories about the early days of our planet’s history vary wildly. Some studies have painted the picture of a snowball Earth, when much of its surface was frozen. Other theories have included periods that would be inhospitably hot for most current lifeforms to survive.

New research from the University of Washington suggests a milder youth for our planet. An analysis of temperature through early Earth’s history, published the week of April 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, supports more moderate average temperatures throughout the billions of years when life slowly emerged on Earth. (…)

energy and fields

A new coal war frontier emerges as China and Japan compete for energy projects in Southeast Asia

by P. Homewood, April 3, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

A joint report by Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and CoalSwarm indicates that Southeast Asia will be the new epicentre of coal production. Asia accounts for 85 per cent of new coal power development in the world’s top 20 coal producing countries, with China as the leader of the pack. However, while tighter restrictions on domestic coal plants have been imposed by the central government to curb pollution, Beijing has pushed the development of high-efficiency, low-emission coal plants across Southeast Asia as part of the “Belt and Road Initiative”.

As China is expanding its influence, Beijing’s foremost strategic competitor in Asia, Japan, is being forced to step up efforts to combat its shrinking influence in the region. The booming energy sector of Southeast Asia, especially coal, is proving to be the new front line in the geopolitical rivalry between Asia’s two industrial giants.

climate-debate

Antarctic Temperature Data Contradict Global Warming…”Much Warmer” 105 Years Ago!

by P. Gosselin, April 3 , 2018 in NoTricksZone

Despite all the alarmist claims of an Antarctic meltdown, it is well known that the trend for sea ice extent at the South Pole has been one of growing ice rather than shrinking ice over the past 4 decades.

Naturally many factors influence polar sea ice extent, such as weather patterns, winds, ocean currents and sea surface temperature cycles. One factor of course is also surface air temperature, which according to global warming theorists is rising globally (…)

climate-debate

Ocean Temps Falling Feb. 2018

by Ron Clutz, March, 2018 in ScienceMatters

The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

  • The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
  • SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
  • A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.

HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source, the latest version being HadSST3.  More on what distinguishes HadSST3 from other SST products at the end.

 

 

 

better to know...?, climate-debate

Climate-Related Deaths Down by 98.9%; Last Year All-Time Low

by Bjorn Lomborg, April 2, 2018 in ClimateChangeDispatsch

CCD Editor’s Note: In 1920, CO2 levels were 303 PPM or 0.03%. Last year they were 406 PPM or 0.04%. Despite our global population quadrupling, climate deaths have actually gone down as CO2 levels have gone up. Lomborg explains why with the now-standard, often-by-rote “this does not mean that there is no global warming” caveat.

climate-debate

The Sahara Is Growing (Even Though It’s Wetter & Greener!)

by P. Homewood, April 1, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers).

Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences.

The study suggests huge increases in vegetation in areas including central Chad and western Sudan.

climate-debate

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #310

by Anthony Watts, April 1, 2018 in WUWT

Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org) The Science and Environmental Policy Project

THIS WEEK: By Ken Haapala, President

California Litigation, Monckton: Last week’s TWTW discussed on the public nuisance lawsuits by San Francisco and Oakland against oil companies claiming carbon dioxide (CO2)-caused global warming / climate change will cause harm in the future. It focused on the filing amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief by three distinguished Professors of Physics – William Happer, Steven Koonin and Richard Lindzen (Three Profs). The brief accepted the data and evidence used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and the Climate Science Special Report (CSSR) by the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). However, the Three Profs demonstrate the conclusions in the reports are not established, and, at best, premature. They assert:

“Our overview of climate science is framed through four statements

(…)

climate-debate

Uh oh– analysis of GHCN climate stations shows there is no statistically significant warming – or cooling

by Mark Fife, April1, 2018 in WUWT

This is my eighth post in this series where I am examining long term temperature records for the period 1900 to 2011 contained in the Global Historical Climatology Network daily temperature records. I would encourage anyone to start at the first post and go forward. However, this post will serve as a standalone document. In this post I have taken my experience in exploring the history of Australia and applied it forward to cover North America and Europe.

The way to view this study is literally a statistic-based survey of the data. Meaning I have created a statistic to quantify, rank, and categorize the data. My statistic is very straight forward; it is simply the net change in temperature between the first and last 10 years of 1900 through 2011 for each station.

climate-debate

Climate Science Integrity And Intelligence At All Time Record Low

By Tony Heller, April 1, 2018 in TheDeplorableClimSciBlog

With temperatures of -30C and Arctic sea ice nearing its winter maximum, government climate scientists and their useful idiots in the press announce that Arctic sea ice is “near an all time low.”

In the actual Arctic, sea ice extent is increasing, more than

double six months ago, and essentially identical to all recent years (…)

 

better to know...?, climate-debate

Lake Chad Might Be Shrinking, But It Has Nothing To Do With Climate Change

by P. Homewood, April 1, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

Lake Chad – a source of water to millions of people in West Africa – has shrunk by nine-tenths due to climate change, population growth and irrigation. But can a scheme dating back to the 1980s save it?

“It’s a ridiculous plan and it will never happen.” That’s the reaction many people have to the idea of trying to fill up Lake Chad and restore it to its former ocean-like glory by diverting water from the Congo river system 2,400km (1,500 miles) away.