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.
It is clear that 2017 was a very warm year. Tomorrow, NOAA, NASA and the UK Met Office will announce by how much. It won’t be a record-breaker, but it will be in the top five, and that has already started comments about why it has been so hot. After all, the record-setting El Niño temperatures of the 2015-16 are over – so why did it remain so hot? The reason, according to some, is clear: the resurgence of global warming. The year 2017 is the hottest non-El Niño year ever and therefore signifies a dramatic increase of global warming after 20-years or so when the global temperature hasn’t done very much.
Scientists have found strong evidence that 2018 will see a big uptick in the number of large earthquakes globally. Earth’s rotation, as with many things, is cyclical, slowing down by a few milliseconds per day then speeding up again.
You and I will never notice this very slight variation in the rotational speed of Earth. However, we will certainly notice the result, an increase in the number of severe earthquakes.
Geophysicists are able to measure the rotational speed of Earth extremely precisely, calculating slight variations on the order of milliseconds. Now, scientists believe a slowdown of the Earth’s rotation is the link to an observed cyclical increase in earthquakes.
Quartz.com here presents an interesting chart which tells us the green energy revolution of the past 30 years has resulted in practically nothing. It’s been a flop. Fossil fuels remain as wildly popular as ever.
Vast ranges of volcanoes hidden under the oceans are presumed by scientists to be the gentle giants of the planet, oozing lava at slow, steady rates along mid-ocean ridges. But a new study shows that they flare up on strikingly regular cycles, ranging from two weeks to 100,000 years—and, that they erupt almost exclusively during the first six months of each year. The pulses—apparently tied to short- and long-term changes in earth’s orbit, and to sea levels–may help trigger natural climate swings. Scientists have already speculated that volcanic cycles on land emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide might influence climate; but up to now there was no evidence from submarine volcanoes. The findings suggest that models of earth’s natural climate dynamics, and by extension human-influenced climate change, may have to be adjusted
The 2014-2017 El Nino “warm blob” was likely created, maintained, and partially recharged on two separate occasions by massive pulses of super-heated and chemically charged seawater from deep-sea geological features in the western North Pacific Ocean. This strongly supports the theory all El Ninos are naturally occurring and geological in origin. Climate change / global warming had nothing to do with generating, rewarming, intensifying, or increasing the frequency of the 2014-2017 El Nino or any previous El Nino.
If proven correct, this would revolutionize climatology and key aspects of many interrelated sciences such as oceanography, marine biology, glaciology, biogeochemistry, and most importantly meteorology. Information supporting a geological origin of El Ninos is diverse, reliable, and can be placed into five general categories as follows: (…)
by Ron Clutz, January 12, 2010 in ClimateChangeDispatch
The Pomeroy essay focuses on theories in the field of psychology and describes stages through which they rise, become accepted, challenged and discarded.
It has long seemed to me that global warming/climate change theory properly belongs in the field of social studies and thus should demonstrate a similar cycle.
by Jillian Ambrose, January 9, 2018, in TheTelegraph Business
Cuadrilla will be allowed to test wells in the Sussex countryside until 2021 to see whether the fossil fuel flows from underground limestone rock could be a commercial source of homegrown energy.
The unanimous approval of the county council does not include permission to use the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, but is nonetheless likely to reignite local opposition.
Summary: Here are brief excerpts and my comments from a speech by an eminent climate scientist. It illuminates important aspects about one of the great public policy debates of our time. He was speaking candidly to his peers, but we can also learn much from it.
“Some Thoughts from a Reluctant Participant”
Presentation by Richard Alley.
At the Forum on Transforming Communication in the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise — Focusing on Challenges Facing Our Sciences.
Given at the 2018 Annual Conference of the American Meteorological Society, 7 January 2018.
One of the key effects of the end-Permian mass extinction, 252 million years ago, was rapid heating of tropical waters and atmospheres.
How this affected life on land has been uncertain until now.
In a new study published today, Dr Massimo Bernardi and Professor Mike Benton from the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol show how early reptiles were expelled from the tropics.
According to Webster’s, science is: “knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws.”
The way I see it, science is a method of discovering truths. For the idea to make any sense at all, though, we need first to agree that scientific truth is objective. Now, a particular truth or fact may of course be unknown, or poorly understood, or wrongly apprehended, at a particular time. But in science, one man’s truth must be the same as another’s. (…)
by Tony Heller, January 11, 2018 in TheDeplorableClimSciBlog
Afternoon temperatures during the first week of January have been declining in the US for a century, and have dropped more than ten degrees during the last decade.
Princeton University researchers have found that the climate models scientists use to project future conditions on our planet underestimate the cooling effect that clouds have on a daily — and even hourly — basis, particularly over land.
The researchers report in the journal Nature Communications Dec. 22 that models tend to factor in too much of the sun’s daily heat, which results in warmer, drier conditions than might actually occur. The researchers found that inaccuracies in accounting for the diurnal, or daily, cloud cycle did not seem to invalidate climate projections, but they did increase the margin of error for a crucial tool scientists use to understand how climate change will affect us.
SPOTLIGHT: We’re told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific organization that makes scientific determinations. But that isn’t true.
The world has nothing to worry about reserves. After 40 years of fearing energy shortages, we now live with abundance. Guard against false narratives, not scarce resources says Samuele Furfari, Professor at Université libre de Bruxelles.
Though mass extinctions wiped out staggeringly high numbers of species, they barely touched the overall ‘functional’ diversity — how each species makes a living, be it filtering phytoplankton or eating small crustaceans, burrowing or clamping onto rocks.
Germany’s utopian dream of transforming itself into the world’s green powerhouse is collapsing as its political and media establishment is mugged by reality. The country’s climate obsession has turned into one of the country’s biggest political and economic handicaps, making Germany almost ungovernable.
La fermeture des centrales nucléaires belges pourrait entraîner une augmentation de 50% des émissions de CO2 liées à la production d’énergie d’ici 2030, selon le professeur d’économie Johan Albrecht (UGent – Université de Gand), qui est également membre de l’institut de réflexion Itinera. Cela alors que le gouvernement fédéral et les entités fédérées doivent négocier dans les semaines à venir le Pacte énergétique, qui doit fixer l’avenir de la production d’électricité en Belgique.
Prologue: I have been writing recently about Sea Level Rise, both as particular local examples ( Guam, Canton, Miami, New York, and NY/NJ ) and in the series SEA LEVEL: Rise and Fall, of which this is the fourth installment.
Series Take Home Messages:
Overall, the seas have been rising, slowly and inexorably, since the end of the last Ice Age, with some blips and bumps along the way. In general, they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future — at somewhere between 4-12 inches [10-30cm] per century. This rate is an imminent threat to populated areas built nominally at today’s existing sea level.
Dans un essai édifiant, le journaliste Guillaume Pitron dévoile “la face cachée de la transition énergétique et numérique”. Selon lui, le recours aux éoliennes, panneaux solaires et autres véhicules électriques n’a fait que déplacer l’impact de l’activité humaine sur les écosystèmes.
Science is hard. Some easy problems you can solve by hard work, if you are in the right place at the right time and have the right skills. Hard problems take the combined effort of multiple groups looking at the problem, publishing results and finding fault with eachother’s work, until hopefully no-one can find any more problems. When problems are hard, you may have to publish something that even you don’t think is right, but that might advance the discussion.
The calculation of an unbiased sea surface temperature record is a hard problem. Historical sea surface temperature observations come from a variety of sources, with early records being measured using wooden, canvas or rubber buckets (figure 1), later readings being taken from engine room intakes or hull sensors, and the most recent data coming from drifting buoys and from satellites.
A new study published Jan. 8 in the journal Nature Geoscience reveals that strong El Nino events can cause significant ice loss in some Antarctic ice shelves while the opposite may occur during strong La Nina events.
by Paul Homewood, January 8, 2018 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat
The England & Wales Precipitation Series has now been updated for last year.
Precipitation totalled 952mm during the year, slightly above the series average of 918mm. In ascending order, 2017 ranked 158th.
There seems to be little evidence of any real trends. Whatever trend can be winkled out of the numbers will likely be too small to notice, and swamped by the natural variability in the data.
The wettest years remain 1872 and 1768. The driest were 1788 and 1921.
Short summary: scientists sought political relevance and allowed policy makers to put a big thumb on the scale of the scientific assessment of the attribution of climate change.
La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse
