by Reuters, May 11, 2017
Germany’s SolarWorld, once Europe’s biggest solar power equipment group, said on Wednesday it would file for insolvency, overwhelmed by Chinese rivals who had long been a thorn in the side of founder and CEO Frank Asbeck, once known as “the Sun King”.
by Tony Heller, May 10, 2017
Global warming alarmists and climate scientists have predicted that the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free by 1979, or 2000, or 2008, or 2012, or 2013, or 2015, or 2020, or 2030, or 2050 or …
by Michael Thomas c/o Anthony Watts, May 10, 2017
An important aspect of the climate change debate can be summed up like this: “One position holds that medieval warm temperatures reached levels similar to the late twentieth century and maintained that the LIA was very cold, while another position holds that past variability was less than present extremes and that the temperature rise of recent decades is unmatched”. This video challenges whether the rise of recent decades is unmatched.
by Olivier Appert, Président du Conseil Français de l’Energie
in Connaissance des Energies, 10 mai 2017
Depuis la découverte du colonel Drake en 1859, le pétrole a joué de façon continue un rôle majeur dans la politique économique américaine et sur le plan international, il a été un outil clé du leadership américain. Au fil du temps, cette politique a dû composer avec une modification des rapports de force sur le marché pétrolier. La révolution récente des hydrocarbures non conventionnels a été un game changer majeur. Au fond, la politique pétrolière du nouveau président américain n’est qu’un retour aux sources.
by MIT prof. Richard Lindzen, April 25, 2017
MIT atmospheric science professor Richard Lindzen suggests that many claims regarding climate change are exaggerated and unnecessarily alarmist.
by Keenan et al., November 8, 2016, Nature
Terrestrial ecosystems play a significant role in the global carbon cycle and offset a large fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The terrestrial carbon sink is increasing, yet the mechanisms responsible for its enhancement, and implications for the growth rate of atmospheric CO2, remain unclear.
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Jim McIntosh , David Mulberry and 2 others posted in Air-Climate-Energy (Jim McIntosh 9 May at 11:18): Reposting because those AGW alarmists hate this report. Yes, plants are doing it better than any carbon tax and they do it for free… as long as we don’t cut them down. You’d think we’d learn by now that managing climate comes back to how we have mismanaged the planet’s forests.
by Linnaeus University, May 9, 2017 in ScienceDaily
It is becoming more and more appreciated that a major part of the biologic activity is not going on at the ground surface, but is hidden underneath the soil down to depths of several kilometres in an environment coined the “deep biosphere”. Studies of life-forms in this energy-poor system have implications for the origin of life on our planet and for how life may have evolved on other planets, where hostile conditions may have inhibited colonization of the surface environment. The knowledge about ancient life in this environment deep under our feet is extremely scarce.
by University of Bristol, September 9, 2011 in ScienceDaily
Ultra high precision analyses of some of the oldest rock samples on Earth provides clear evidence that the planet’s accessible reserves of precious metals are the result of a bombardment of meteorites more than 200 million years after Earth was formed.
by UNSW Sydney, May 9, 2017 in ScienceDaily
Fossils discovered by UNSW scientists in 3.48 billion year old hot spring deposits in the Pilbara region of Western Australia have pushed back by 580 million years the earliest known existence of microbial life on land.
he Pilbara deposits are the same age as much of the crust of Mars, which makes hot spring deposits on the red planet an exciting target for our quest to find fossilised life there.”
Winter, apparently, does not want to step back and let spring in as May snow has once again covered the Russian capital ahead of the annual V-Day parade. Meteorologists say May 2017 is on track to break the precipitation record from 1922.
“Storms of such power in Moscow take place once in 30-35 years,” Evgency Tishkovets from the Fobos weather monitoring centre told local Govorit Moskva radio, adding that it is possible that this May can break an absolute record from 1922.
by Quereda et al., 2016
“on comparing the temperature of urban areas and rural areas, various researchers have concluded that the urban effect could account for between 40% and 80% of the observed thermal trend in the last few decades,”
by Kenneth Richard, May 4, 2017
According to overseers of the long-term instrumental temperature data, the Southern Hemisphere record is “mostly made up”. This is due to an extremely limited number of available measurements both historically and even presently from the south pole to the equatorial regions.
Below is an actual e-mail conversation between the Climate Research Unit’s Phil Jones and climate scientist Tom Wigley. Phil Jones is the one who is largely responsible for making up the 1850-present temperature data for the Met Office in the UK (HadCRUT).
by Jasmin Fox-Skelly, BBC, May 4, 2017
Throughout history, humans have existed side-by-side with bacteria and viruses. From the bubonic plague to smallpox, we have evolved to resist them, and in response they have developed new ways of infecting us.
However, what would happen if we were suddenly exposed to deadly bacteria and viruses that have been absent for thousands of years, or that we have never met before?
by Dr. John D. Harper, FGSA,FGAC, PGeol., former director of the Geological Survey of Canada © May 2017
I have recently been asked to comment on three articles published in The Economist. My background for such a response is as a Professor of Petroleum Geology and Sedimentology (ret.), a former Director-Energy for the Geological Survey of Canada, a former researcher in industry, and as an academic researcher on sea level changes and climate documentation through geologic time, Natural Resources of the Future and a couple of decades of studies in the Arctic.
1) Skating on thin ice: The thawing Arctic threatens an environmental catastrophe. Apr 27, 2017
2) The Arctic as it is known today is almost certainly gone. April 29, 2017
3) Thaw point: As the Arctic melts the world’s weather suffers. April 29, 2017
by University of Tromso, May 5, 2017 in ScienceDaily
Bedrock of Earth got severely beaten up by hothouse climate conditions during one of planet’s mass extinctions some 200 million years ago. But the process also allowed life to bounce back.
The hothouse conditions of this mass extinction caused oceans to eventually become depleted of oxygen, and thus become unbearable to live in. But weathering of silicate in the bedrock of Pangea, and subsequent formation of carbonate, tied up the CO2 into the minerals, slowly removing the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.
by McGill University , EPSL, May 5, 2017, in ScienceDaily
Conventional theory holds that all of the early Earth’s crustal ingredients were formed by volcanic activity. Now, however, earth scientists have published a theory with a novel twist: some of the chemical components of this material settled onto Earth’s early surface from the steamy atmosphere that prevailed at the time.
More than 90% of Earth’s continental crust is made up of silica-rich minerals, such as feldspar and quartz. But where did this silica-enriched material come from? And could it provide a clue in the search for life on other planets?
by DMI (Danish Meteorological Institute), May, 2017
Here you can follow the daily surface mass balance on the Greenland Ice Sheet. The snow and ice model from one of DMI’s climate models is driven every six hours with snowfall, sunlight and other parameters from a research weather model for Greenland, Hirlam-Newsnow.
See also, Study: Antarctica’s ice sheet survived warmer times, remains stable today
See also, Antarctic study shows central ice sheet is stable since milder times
by Peter Teffer, May 4, 2017 in euobserver
The EU’s statistical agency Eurostat announced Thursday (4 May) that CO2 emissions resulting from the EU’s energy use have “slightly decreased” in 2016, compared to the year before.
But Eurostat’s press release did not mention that the small decrease has not made up for the small increase in CO2 emissions the year before, and that more CO2 was emitted in 2016 than in 2014.
by Jean-Claude Pont, c/o Uskek, 3 mai 2017
Jean-Claude Pont écrit au rédacteur en chef de « Science … & pseudo-sciences », à propos de l’article « réchauffement climatique » paru dans le numéro 317 de la revue. Il entend rectifier ce qu’il tient pour « des manquements importants, parfois des ambiguïtés, voulues ou inconscientes ».
by University of Maryland, in Nature, February 27, 2017
in ScienceDaily
New research suggests that plate tectonics began later in Earth’s history
But new research suggests that this was not always the case. Instead, shortly after Earth formed and began to cool, the planet’s first outer layer was a single, solid but deformable shell. Later, this shell began to fold and crack more widely, giving rise to modern plate tectonics.
by Carlos Jaramillo et al., Science Advances, May 3, 2017
The Neogene history of Amazonia is essential for understanding the evolution of the rainforest and associated fauna living in one of the most diverse places on Earth. A central question about our understanding of Amazonia remains unsolved: Did continental-scale marine flooding occur in western Amazonia during the Neogene? Miocene marine transgressions in the continental interior would have had a profound effect on the diversification and structuring of both terrestrial and aquatic Neotropical communities
by Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor, May 4, 2017
A new paper has been published in the Analysis section of Nature called Reconciling controversies about the ‘global warming hiatus.’ It confirms that the ‘hiatus’ or ‘pause’ is real. It is also rather revealing.
It attempts to explain the ‘Pause’ by looking into what is known about climate variability. They say that four years after the release of the IPCC AR5 report, which contained much about the ‘hiatus’ it is time to see what can be learned.
One could be a little sarcastic in saying why would Nature devote seven of its desirable pages to an event that some vehemently say never existed and maintain its existence has been disproved long ago. Now, however, as the El Nino spike of the past few years levels off, analysing the ‘pause’ seems to be coming back into fashion.
by Yves Goddéris et al., April 10, 2017, Nature Geoscience
The onset of the late Palaeozoic ice age about 340 million years ago has been attributed to a decrease in atmospheric CO2 concentrations associated with expansion of land plants, as plants both enhance silicate rock weathering—which consumes CO2—and increase the storage of organic carbon on land. However, plant expansion and carbon uptake substantially predate glaciation
by M. Duncan and R. Dasgupta, April 25, 2017, Nature Geoscience
We suggest that immobilization of organic carbon in subduction zones and deep sequestration in the mantle facilitated the rise (~103–5 fold) and maintenance of atmospheric oxygen since the Palaeoproterozoic and is causally linked to the Great Oxidation Event. Our modelling shows that episodic recycling of organic carbon before the Great Oxidation Event may also explain occasional whiffs of atmospheric oxygen observed in the Archaean.
by Michael Cooper, May 2, 2017
Anyone with doubts about China’s demand for energy including for thermal coal needed to sustain its gigantic economy should cast their eyes over the latest statistics for power generation from Beijing’s National Statistics Bureau.
These data are a treasure trove in terms of revealing trends in China’s energy production and appetite for thermal coal sourced from both inside China and from imports shipped from countries including, Australia, Indonesia and Russia.