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.
The chart below is taken directly from figures provided by the U.S. government’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) website, specifically its 2016 Global Carbon Project spreadsheet on the Historical Budget tab. In terms of gigatons of carbon, and from 1770 to 2004, it itemizes the growth rate of radiative forcing by atmospheric CO2 and the growth rate of oceanic absorption, what is known as a “carbon sink.”
by Alan Jones, interviews peter Ridd, July 28, 2017 in JoNova
Corals have a little thermometer built in them, when you take a core of them from many years ago we know what the temperature of the water was back when Captain Cook sailed up the coast, it was actually about the same temperature then. It was colder 100 years ago, but it has recovered from that. The temperatures on the reef are not even significantly warmer than average on a hundred year timescale.
Corals that bleach in one year will be less susceptible to bleaching in following years
We present a decadal-centennial scale Holocene climate record based on trace elements contents from a 65 cm stalagmite (“Père Noël”) from Belgian Père Noël cave. Père Noël (PN) stalagmite covers the last 12.7 ka according to U/Th dating. High spatial resolution measurements of trace elements (Sr, Ba, Mg and Al) were done by Laser- Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). Trace elements profiles were interpreted as environmental and climate changes in the Han-sur-Lesse region.
by Tony Heller, July 29, 2017 in DeplorableClimateScinceBlog
The New York Times said yesterday that heatwaves in the past were “virtually unheard of in the 1950s”, temperatures approaching 130 degrees didn’t used to occur, and summer temperatures have shifted towards more extreme heat.
(…) Every single claim in the article is patently false, and the exact opposite of reality. The authors intentionally started their study in a cold period, after the extreme heat of the 1930’s.
Now that the alarmists have had their day trumpeting the IPCC’s worst case scenario (it’s unlikely and becoming more so), let’s look at their best case scenario (hidden by journalists). The risk probabilities are asymmetric: the good news is more likely than the bad news. This is inspirational, telling people that we can make a better world.
“From the 1950s to today, 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic have been produced, with around half of it made since 2004. And since plastic does not naturally degrade, the billions of tons sitting in landfills, floating in the oceans or piling up on city streets will provide a marker if later civilizations ever want to classify our era. Perhaps they will call this time on Earth the Plastocene Epoch.”
Les 5 supermajors sont par ordre de chiffre d’affaires en 2015 :
Royal Dutch Shell (Pays-Bas) : 272,2 milliards de dollars et une production de 3,0 millions de barils équivalents pétrole par jour contre 421,1 G$ et 3,1 Mbeb/j en 2014);
ExxonMobil (États-Unis) : 268,9 G$ et 4,1 Mbeb/j (contre 411,9 G$ et 4,0 Mbeb/j en 2014) ;
BP (Royaume-Uni) : 226,0 G$ et 3,3 Mbep/j (contre 359,8 G$ et 3,2 Mbep/j en 2014);
Total (France): 165,4 G$ et 2,3 Mbep/j (contre 236,1 G$ et 2,15 Mbep/j en 2014) ;
Chevron (États-Unis): 138,5 G$ et 2,6 Mbep/j (contre 200,5 G$ et 2,6 Mbep/j en 2014).
About half of the CO2 emitted by man gets absorbed by the oceans and so does not stay in the atmosphere. Here there are certain areas of the ocean that are especially efficient CO2 sinks, while others do not absorb so well. What follows is a look of the newest literature on the subject.
A new study shows that difference in water temperature between the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans together with global warming impact the risk of drought and wildfire in southwestern North America.
That’s right, according to NASA, sea levels are going DOWN! This is big news. How come the media hasn’t mentioned it?
NASA satellite sea level observations for the past 24 years show that – on average – sea levels have been rising 3.4 millimeters per year. That’s 0.134 inches, about the thickness of a dime and a nickel stacked together, per year.
The hidden consequences of a massive use of intermittent renewable energy systems for electricity production are highlighted, using existing electricity production data from Germany from the last 5 years, where presently a system is in operation with an installed capacity of about 50 GW in wind turbines (sum of onshore and offshore wind) and 40GW in photovoltaic panels.This fleet of intermittent renewable systems produces more than half of the yearly renewable electrical energy of Germany, the rest being produced by hydro, so-called ‘biomass’ and a very small fraction of geothermal sources
U.S. evolves into coal, gas and oil global energy giant supplying world’s hungry energy markets
David Middleton’s excellent WUWT article addressing the resurgence of the American coal industry as well as the growing role of U.S. natural gas production in creating global gas export markets hits the nail on the head in demonstrating how dominant the U.S. has become in producing and supplying global energy markets at home and abroad with growing demands for fossil fuels.
The IEA agency clearly recognizes the U.S. as the global driver of a huge transformation of the world’s natural gas energy markets.
While US scores with increased rig count and production, the oil industry in the Middle-East is festering with under investment. Said to be in trillions, the lack of investment could boomerang as supply deficit within a decade. Let’s not forget that oil exploration is a long term development in which a decade is but short. Why are the investors moving away?
Australia is often thought of as an ancient and quiescent continent — the sleeping giant in a world where landscapes dramatically change in front of our very eyes.
In the Bay of Naples, Europe’s most notorious giant is showing signs of reawakening from its long slumber.
Campi Flegrei, a name that aptly translates as “burning fields”, is a supervolcano. It consists of a vast and complex network of underground chambers that formed hundreds of thousands of years ago, stretching from the outskirts of Naples to underneath the Mediterranean Sea. About half a million people live in Campi Flegrei’s seven-mile-long caldera, which was formed by vast eruptions 200,000, 39,000, 35,000 and 12,000 years ago.
Weinberg advised OPEC to change tack and go back to what it set out to do initially: stifle U.S. shale by pumping at maximum. “They should let prices crash to kill shale and then aim for steady price increases in the long term,” Weinstein told Bloomberg. The question remains, however, whether OPEC, with oil-reliant budgets already strained, could afford this tactic reversal now that they’ve suffered price lows for an extended period of time.
However, China, the new climate-change champion, is leading the charge in a global building splurge that will see 1,600 of those dirty, villainous coal-fired power plants all across our planet. Even the New York Times, one of the most fervent voices of catastrophic global-warming alarmism — and one of the most vociferous critics of Trump’s decision to dump Obama’s Paris climate deal — has admitted that China’s coal plans make it “virtually impossible” to meet the Paris accord goals.
Well, Dr. James Hansen, the man who invented the global warming scam and our favorite failed serial doomcaster, recently addressed the cratering of a 30-year prediction he made in 1988.
Back then, he said the globe would warm up by one full degree by 2018 under the “business as usual” rubric … not. Here’s the story as written up in “Spin” magazine in 1988.
There’s a recent and good post here at WUWT by Larry Kummer about sea level rise. However, I disagree with a couple of his comments, viz …
This question all revolves around whether the rate of sea level rise is relatively steady, or whether it is accelerating … so how do we tell the difference?
When I read that, I (like everyone else) assumed that corrections to the satellite sea level data since 1993 have now led to a revised trend toward faster (not slower) sea level rise. Right?
A commentary appearing here at the Swiss Baseler Zeitung (BAZ) slams a recently published British paper on moss growth in Antarctica that gave the impression the south polar continent was greening up due to climate change.
The BAZ writes that the paper is an example of “how today science is manipulated and used for political purposes“.
Le site carbonbrief a publié le 30 juin 2017 un article sous le titre : « Des corrections majeures aux données satellitaires augmentent de 140% le réchauffement depuis 1998[1] »
Précisons d’abord que Les satellites ne mesurent pas directement la température. Ils sont équipés de capteurs sensibles à la luminance de l’atmosphère et de la mer dans le spectre des infrarouges. Pour en dériver la température, des traitements informatiques sur les données brutes sont nécessaires.
As a new scientific paper (Turney et al., 2017) indicates, the Southern Ocean encompasses 14% of the Earth’s surface. And according to regional temperature measurements that have apparently not been subjected to warming “corrections” by data adjusters, the Southern Ocean has been cooling in recent decades.
La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse