The State of Global Shale

by The American Interest, September 6, 2017


While the United States gears up for what is expected to be a record-breaking production year in 2018, the rest of the world remains far away from catching up to America’s runaway shale success. But while the U.S. may be the only country producing commercially significant volumes of shale today, it’s not the only one with sizable shale reserves—according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Argentina, Algeria, and China all have more shale gas than the United States, and Russia has nearly as much tight oil

Histoire longue des cyclones aux Antilles

by Benoît Rittaud, 13 septembre 2017


Le cyclone Irma qui a dévasté Saint-Martin et Saint-Barthélémy dans les Antilles françaises a servi de prétexte à de nombreux commentateurs et journalistes pour en remettre une couche sur les “dérèglements climatiques d’origine humaine”. Comme d’habitude, les vagues éléments de prudence rappelant qu’on ne peut tirer de conclusions d’un élément isolé ont vite été noyés par les “appels à l’action” et l’invocation de l’Accord de Paris de 2015.

Or s’agissant du climat aux Antilles l’année 2015 a été importante pour une toute autre raison que la signature de l’Accord de Paris : c’est l’année de publication d’un article de recherche tout à fait passionnant sur les ouragans dans cette région du monde.

Open letter to UN Secretary-General: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists

by Habibullo I. Abdussamatov  +125/et al., November 29, 2012, in Washington Post


On November 13, 2012, you said at Yale: “The science is clear; we should waste no more time on that debate.”

We the undersigned, qualified in climate-related matters, wish to state that current scientific knowledge does not substantiate your assertions.

Past Sea Levels Rose 4-6 Meters Per Century, Shorelines Retreated 40 Meters Per Year…Without CO2 Flux

by Kenneth Richard, September 7, 2017 in NoTricksZone


This modern rate  –  just 0.17-0.18 of a meter per century has remained relatively unchanged from the overall 20th century average, and there has been no statistically significant acceleration in the sea level rise rate (just 0.0042 mm/yr-²) since 1900.

The evolution of Hurricane Irma’s disinformation campaign

by Paul Homewood, September 7, 2017 in ClimateChangeDispatch


(…)

In other words, there have now been four hurricanes as strong or stronger since 1980, about one every decade, and certainly nothing like the “unprecedented” impression left by the headlines.

And as we know, prior to Allen in 1980, we had very little in the way of measurements in mid-ocean.

A closer look at the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, widely acknowledged to be by far the most powerful storm to hit the US, emphasizes this fact.

Unanticipated Stability: Latest Polar Conditions Show No Signs Of Global Warming Melting

by P. Gosselin, August 16, 2017 in NoTricksZone


Weather and climate analyst Schneefan here writes of “early frost” in the Arctic and how Greenland snow and ice have grown after being hit by a “snow bomb”. This contradicts the expectations of global warming alarmists.

The polar summer this year appears to have ended prematurely. The mean temperature of the central Arctic above 80°N has remained under the long-term average over the entire summer and even dipped below the freezing point about a week earlier than normal (1958-2002 mean).

Evènements naturels extrêmes : pas d’augmentation

by Uzbek, 7 février 2017, in ClimatoRéalistes


Il se produit en moyenne 300 catastrophes naturelles par an, soit presque une par jour ; nous en sommes informés en temps réel  et la responsabilité du réchauffement est presque systématiquement invoquée. Il se diffuse ainsi dans l’opinion l’idée d’un dérèglement climatique qui irait en s’accentuant sous l’effet du réchauffement. Les différentes sources de données  exploitées dans cet article sont convergentes : il n’y a pas d’augmentation de la fréquence , de l’intensité et de la durée des événements  extrêmes depuis le début de l’ère industrielle, qu’il s’agisse des cyclones et des tempêtes, des inondations, des sécheresses et des vagues de chaleur . Cela est d’ailleurs admis par le GIEC dans son rapport spécial sur les événements extrêmes de 2012, et dans son 5ème rapport d’évaluation de 2013.

Voir également ici, ici et  ici 

Possible hominin footprints from the late Miocene (c. 5.7 Ma) of Crete?

by Gerard D. Gierlinski et al., August 31, 2017 in Proc.Geologist’sAssoc.


We describe late Miocene tetrapod footprints (tracks) from the Trachilos locality in western Crete (Greece), which show hominin-like characteristics. They occur in an emergent horizon within an otherwise marginal marine succession of Messinian age (latest Miocene), dated to approximately 5.7 Ma (million years), just prior to the Messinian Salinity Crisis.

Texas Major Hurricane Intensity Not Related to Gulf Water Temperatures

by Ph.D.  Roy Spencer, August 29th, 2017 in GlobalWarming


As the Houston flood disaster is unfolding, there is considerable debate about whether Hurricane Harvey was influenced by “global warming”. While such an issue matters little to the people of Houston, it does matter for our future infrastructure planning and energy policy.

Let’s review the two basic reasons why the Houston area is experiencing what now looks like a new record amount of total rainfall, at least for a 2-3 day period over an area of tens of thousands of square miles.

Which oil and gas companies are preparing for the future? Executive Summary

by Tarek Soliman et al., November 2019, in CDPinthe pipeline


  • This report introduces CDP’s League Table for oil and gas companies, highlighting company performance across a range of portfolio, emissions and water-related metrics which indicate carbon risk preparedness and highlights earnings risks for oil and gas companies.
  • Highest ranked companies are Statoil, Eni and Total.
  • Lowest ranked companies are Suncor, ExxonMobil and Chevron.

Can Oil Sands Pay Off at Just $50 a Barrel?

by Kevin Orland, August 24, 2017 in BloombergNews


Canada’s tar sands, which contain the planet’s third-largest oil reserves, were a prized possession for global energy companies when crude was trading above $100 a barrel. But since prices fell to $50 in 2015, where they have lingered, Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Marathon Oil have unloaded their holdings amid concerns that these capital-intensive projects would struggle to turn a profit.

(…) In recent earnings announcements, Suncor and rival Cenovus Energy Inc. said they can now sustain production with oil at $40 a barrel without jeopardizing the dividend they pay shareholders.

Why ‘Hide The Decline’? There Has Been No Net NH Warming Since The 1940s

by Kenneth Richard, August 31, 2017 in NoTricksZone


In the press release for a newly published and controversial  peer-reviewed scientific paper, Australian scientist Dr. Jennifer Marohasy unveiled one of climate science’s better-kept secrets.

She and her colleagues are well aware that the post-1940s Northern Hemisphere (NH)  proxy evidence from tree-rings, bore holes, pollen, etc., consistently fails to affirm sharply rising temperatures from the late 20th century onwards.

Natural Gas Looks Hurricane-Proof, for Now

by Nathaniel Bullard, September 1, 2017 in BloombergView


Since 2005, the U.S. has added more than 120,000 gas wells, mainly in Texas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and Colorado. In 2015, there were 555,000 in total.

Those onshore wells have not just made up for declining offshore production, they have handily exceeded it. Offshore gas is now only 4 percent of total U.S. withdrawals. Texas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and Colorado are 53 percent of all production.

Evidence for Little Ice Age in Antarctica

by UC Santa Cruz Newscenter, August 31, 2017 in WUWT


Changes in the sources of nitrogen and the composition of the phytoplankton community are more likely to account for the differences seen in the isotope data, Huckstadt said. “It looks more like a shift at the base of the food web, probably related to the transition from the Little Ice Age to current conditions, causing changes in the phytoplankton community,” he said.

See also: “Here we present new data from the Ross Sea, Antarctica, that indicates surface temperatures were ~ 2 °C colder during the LIA, with colder sea surface temperatures in the Southern Ocean and/or increased sea-ice extent, stronger katabatic winds, and decreased snow accumulation.”

A new estimate of biodiversity on Earth

by University of Chicago Press Journals, August 30, 2017 in ScienceDaily


To date, about 1.5 million species have been formally described in the scientific literature, most of them insects. Proportionally, bacteria comprise less than 1% of all described species.

In a new paper published in The Quarterly Review of Biology (September 2017), researchers from the University of Arizona have estimated that there are roughly 2 billion living species on Earth, over a thousand times more than the current number of described species.

The onset of widespread marine red beds and the evolution of ferruginous oceans

by Haijun Song et al., August 2017, in Nature


Banded iron formations were a prevalent feature of marine sedimentation ~3.8–1.8 billion years ago and they provide key evidence for ferruginous oceans. The disappearance of banded iron formations at ~1.8 billion years ago was traditionally taken as evidence for the demise of ferruginous oceans, but recent geochemical studies show that ferruginous conditions persisted throughout the later Precambrian, and were even a feature of Phanerozoic ocean anoxic events.

La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse