This holiday weekend, be sure to remember the U.S. Memorial Day, which is Monday. I’m offline except maybe for some time tonight and tomorrow morning.
Feel free to discuss the usual topics at WUWT.
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worth noting:
23 May: UK Independent: Tom Bawden: No gas found in the Weald basin: Does this spell the end of the Government’s dream of a fracking revolution?
The Government’s dream of kickstarting a fracking revolution has suffered a major setback after a survey of one of the UK’s great shale gas hopes found no evidence of gas in the area.
And while the same survey – of the Weald basin, stretching from Wiltshire to Kent – did find an estimated 4.4 billion barrels of oil, the scientist who oversaw the project admitted it would be so difficult to extract that the basin would be unlikely to yield even 0.5 per cent of the oil so far extracted from the North Sea.
Robert Gatliff, director of energy and marine geoscience at the British Geological Survey, which produced the report, said: “It’s not a huge bonanza. But we have to see what happens.” He added: “It is going to be a challenge for the industry to get it out.”
The North Sea has produced about 40bn barrels of oil since the 1970s and is likely to yield between three billion and 24 billion more, according to industry estimates. But Mr Gatliff expects the Weald basin to yield no more than 220m barrels of oil, based on a generous extraction rate of about 5 per cent of the total estimated “resource”. This is less oil than Britain consumes in six months.
Asked if the findings were a let-down for the Government, Energy minister Michael Fallon said: “It’s not a let-down or a let-up. It is what it is.” …
Dr Robert Gross, director of the Centre for Energy Policy and Technology at Imperial College London, said: “This survey underlines the need to keep a sense of perspective about the prospects for land-based fossil fuel production in the UK. It is highly unlikely that the UK will replicate the US experience in the foreseeable future.”
Bob Ward, director of policy at the London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute, said the findings “do not substantiate the continuing hype surrounding the UK’s shale gas and oil resources”…
The UK government is encouraging the industry, which has yet to produce any shale hydrocarbons on a commercial scale, by offering tax breaks to producers and financial incentives to local communities. Today, it proposed changing trespass laws to allow frackers to drill under households without their permission and an extra £20,000 of compensation to affected communities per horizontal well.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/no-gas-found-in-the-weald-basin-does-this-spell-the-end-of-the-governments-dream-of-a-fracking-revolution-9428918.htm
22 May: Bloomberg: EIA Cuts Monterey Shale Estimates on Extraction Challenges
By Naureen S. Malik and Zain Shauk
The Energy Information Administration slashed its estimate of recoverable reserves from California’s Monterey Shale by 96 percent, saying oil from the largest U.S. formation will be harder to extract than previously anticipated…
New production methods may eventually unlock the formation and make it possible to economically extract the resources, Sieminski said. “The rock is there, the technology isn’t there.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-21/eia-cuts-monterey-shale-estimates-on-extraction-challenges-1-..html
We’ll have a clue in their reaction to this paper:
Mark Stoval (@MarkStoval) says: “I have been complaining that this site refuses to allow me to use my WordPress account but no one seemed to pay much attention to my story…Can anyone here use the WordPress button to log on and post here anymore?”
This has been a pain in the bew-tocks for well over a year. I have multiple WordPress blogs so I can keep the political shit all in one place. Here’s how I log into WUWT: I log out of all my blogs. I open my main blog account and log in. I then open WUWT and make sure I’m not signed in here with the wrong account, If I am, I log that account out (upper right), close WUWT, then open it again. At this point, I’m usually able to comment, unless WP has timed me out on my blog. Often I have to use the Change option here, below the Leave a Reply window, and log in to my WP account AGAIN, in order to comment.
If that doesn’t work, I howl like a wolf, drink water with the moon’s reflection in it and shake my juju stick while wearing a debbil mask and a loincloth and dancing widdershins around the fire.
All of these procedures are about equally effective.
Note: WordPress doesn’t track your accounts by user name. It’s your eddress that counts. Every WP blog should be set up with a different user name and user eddress. Too bad they didn’t tell you about that. You have to get into your WP account info and edit it. Don’t forget the juju stick.
‘Nother Note: It’s probably best not to log into any WordPress accounts with “keep me logged in” checked if you’re going to comment elsewhere..
[Ah, that’s the problem. Dancing windershins only works if your center-of-gravity is upside down on the other side of the equator. But you still have to bruise yourself below the knee. 8<) .mod]
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I’m glad someone responded to Mark. I wanted to but I had no info that might help.
PS When I was a kid Jujubes were one of my favorite candies to get at the snack bar when we went to the movies. I never knew they came in a stick!
Open thread, here goes… was the meteor shower a bust for everyone else last night or was it my crummy vantage point? I saw one outstanding meteor at 1:50am Eastern Standard Time and thought “Aw riiight! Here we go!” then nada, bupkiss, zippo. I thought I might, maybe, coulda seen a couple of other very faint streaks but I can really only count that one excellent meteor.
We have some light pollution around here but it’s not all that bad and the night was virtually cloudless. Anyone get a good show or was it a bust for all?
I am looking for authoritative articles about Great Lakes ice. I am apparently looking in the wrong places because I am not finding much.
My wife and her sister are traveling on the UP and have asked some questions that , as usual, I can’t answer with the expectation that I will find answers. This is my failure alarm.
I spent the winter of 1956-57 on Lake Michigan at the Naval Training Center in North Chicago and that year it looked like the ice was pretty thick, but had to judge from the beach because of wind-driven folding and ridges.
The specific questions I’ve been asked:
How thick does it get? (on average, maximum)
Do the lake ice over every year? What has been the pattern for the last 60 years or so?
When does it normally clear (I found one place that said “March”)?
Do they all ice up? At about the same time?
ATdhvaannkcse
“…thick, but haRd to judge from the beach…”
This may be a stupid comment, but has anyone noticed that in the tropical and mid latitudes, we are having fewer and weaker tornados and hurricanes, lower accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) and the Arctic and Antarctic regions seem to be having more cyclones? Is this really what’s happening and does anybody know the reason?
23 May: Bloomberg: Julie Bykowicz: Steyer’s Climate Group Targets 7 Republicans for Attacks
The super-political action committee financed by billionaire and former money manager Tom Steyer will try to raise climate change as an election issue in four U.S. Senate races and three gubernatorial contests this year, the group announced this morning.
NextGen Climate Action Committee had raised $9.3 million through the end of April to spend on 2014 elections — almost all of it from Steyer himself…
NextGen will aim its advertising at seven Republicans who have expressed doubt that human activity contributes to climate change or haven’t stated clearly their belief in it.
The group’s Senate candidate targets are Colorado’s Cory Gardner, Iowa’s Joni Ernst, Michigan’s Terri Lynn Land, and former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, who is running in New Hampshire. The super-PAC, which can raise and spend unlimited sums, also plans to attack Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, Florida Governor Rick Scott and Maine Governor Paul LePage.
“The debate on climate change is settled: it is here, it is human-caused, and it is already having a devastating impact on our communities, but we need to accelerate the level of political support to address this critical issue before it’s too late,” Steyer said in a statement. “This means making politicians feel the heat — in their campaign coffers and at the polls.” …
Steyer has pledged $50 million of his own money, while trying to raise another $50 million from wealthy donors for the campaign. Through the end of April, FEC reports show, he’d netted just one big check, $10,000 from Mitchell Berger, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, lawyer and top Democratic fundraiser…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-22/steyer-s-climate-group-targets-7-republicans-for-attacks.html
***B’berg’s Drajem & Chediak think we’ll believe this “acceptance” is “unlikely”:
23 May: Bloomberg: Obama Divides Power Players With Rule Utilities Accept
By Mark Drajem and Mark Chediak
The Obama administration’s upcoming greenhouse gas rules are gaining acceptance from an ***unlikely quarter — power companies…
Power company executives, while cautioning that they aren’t privy to the plan’s details, greet the Environmental Protection Agency’s promise of a flexible approach with sentiments ranging from eager endorsement to grudging acceptance…
“Our goal is to work with EPA to make sure the rule works,” said Joe Dominguez, senior vice president of Exelon Corp. (EXC) “There needs to be a pathway towards meaningful reductions.” …
For some power companies, the rules will help save nuclear reactors or boost investments in wind farms…
“We see a potential upside,” said Chuck Barlow, vice president of environmental strategy and policy for Entergy, which owns coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants, including the Indian Point facility north of New York City. “It would be an opportunity for our nuclear facilities.” …
That view isn’t shared by lobbyists for coal producers such as Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU) who call the EPA plan the latest salvo in a “war on coal” that would result in lost jobs and less reliable energy. …
Exelon chief executive Chris Crane said the rules will give his company a chance to go to state regulators and talk about how its nuclear fleet, which is suffering because of low electricity prices, could thrive…
“Peabody supports technology advancement and continuous emissions improvement, while opposing proposed rules that would punish electricity consumers and act outside of the bounds of the law,” said Beth Sutton, a spokeswoman for Peabody.
Lobbyists for coal producers such as Peabody and related companies met in private with administration officials last week to warn against taking a broad approach, and said the EPA’s plan could result in an over-reliance on natural gas, according to a presentation prepared for the meeting and provided to Bloomberg. ..
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-22/obama-divides-power-players-with-rule-utilities-accept.html
however, some of us have memories:
3 pages: 23 Aug 2012: NYT: Eric Lipton: Ties to Obama Aided in Access for Big Utility
Early in the Obama administration, a lobbyist for the Illinois-based energy producer Exelon Corporation proudly called it “the president’s utility.” …
Exelon’s top executives were early and frequent supporters of Mr. Obama as he rose from the Illinois State Senate to the White House. John W. Rogers Jr., a friend of the president’s and one of his top fund-raisers, is an Exelon board member. David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime political strategist, once worked as an Exelon consultant, and Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayor and Mr. Obama’s former chief of staff, helped create the company through a corporate merger in 2000 while working as an investment banker…
White House records show that Exelon executives were able to secure an unusually large number of meetings with top administration officials at key moments in the consideration of environmental regulations that have been drafted in a way that hurt Exelon’s competitors, but curb the high cost of compliance for Exelon and its industry allies…
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/us/politics/ties-to-obama-aided-in-access-for-exelon-corporation.html?_r=0
H.R. says:
May 24, 2014 at 7:02 pm
————————————-
Ditto on the one good flash. Otherwise only several faint streaks. The one good streak was around 1:50 am Pacific time.
According to this entry from late April, the Skeptical Science website believes that there is no ‘pause’ after all:
“We found that when the HadCRUT4 data are extended to cover the whole globe, some of the apparent slowdown in global warming over the past 16 years disappears.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/how_global_warming_broke_the_thermometer_record.html
They believe that the adjustments to the record have been too strong and have been ‘suppressing’ temperatures. Personally I am skeptical as Anthony has shown that urban heat bias has not been properly accounted for. And that temperature records are not of a high enough standard for scientists to draw conclusions.
So I guess we can call off the search for the missing heat that supposedly dwells in the bottom of the ocean?
New:
Reinterpreting ERSST EOFs 1-4
It’s a concise technical document that includes an alert about Mann’s clever trick to redefine the Atlantic to match Trenberth’s deep ocean “missing heat” narrative.
If you removed all the greenhouse gasses from the Earth wouldn’t the atmosphere warm up by conduction from the surface? Wouldn’t the surface be hotter as the infra red from the Sun would not be attenuated?
Here is an interesting essay from Pointman
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/the-age-of-unenlightenment/
@goldminor says:
May 24, 2014 at 9:27 pm
H.R. says:
May 24, 2014 at 7:02 pm
————————————-
Ditto on the one good flash. Otherwise only several faint streaks. The one good streak was around 1:50 am Pacific time.
=====================================================
Whew! Thanks, goldminor. I was hoping it wasn’t just me. I also have had a chance to ask my son about it. He and his wife went out to a reservoir away from town so they could look across the water; guaranteed no trees and little light pollution. They only spotted a few faint streaks.
So much for “100 and maybe 1000 per hour.”
Kelvin Vaughan says:
May 25, 2014 at 3:51 am
Most of the energy from the Sun comes in as shortwave radiation, not surprisingly, around visible wavelengths, as evolution optimized for that. While the Sun’s surface puts out a lot more IR than the Earths’s surface, the Sun only occupies an angular size of 0.5° and that results in the Earth radiating a lot more IR than it receives. See http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Transmission_png
If the atmosphere and clouds didn’t block so much incoming radiation, the surface would warm up a little.
That video is certainly interesting and the idea probably has some practical applications, but it also mentions nothing about cost. How much money should we divert from schools, hospitals, emergency aid, … public employee pensions, to fund this dream?
You know, this is one of the major problems of the IPCC/AGW/EPA/etc… scam. Resources that are wasted on useless technologies (i.e. carbon capture/sequestration) could be used on development of new energy sources and technologies. I am all for solar and nuclear, within certain applications as the technology stands now. Solar for road signs, remote well heads, barns, ornamental lights and other low energy non-critical uses.
Nuclear for power generation, fossil for mobile and transport and so forth.
As time goes and need increases (opening new markets and financial needs/resources) the technological development and engineering ingenuity will take care of advances; as long as the choke and negativity from so called environmentalists is not held down our throats the way it is.
Those inventors live about 30 minutes from me here in north Idaho. My guess is it would be hugely expensive, fraught with problems and is never going to happen unless the Feds mandate it. Cool idea though.
In response to video posted by ch, May 24th 2.01 pm (and the 800 year lag one by the same video author)
This is very good science-based PROPAGANDA, but does not give a balanced scientific account. The key “evidence” is claimed to be the starring role of CO2 in getting the Earth out of ice ages.
The video downplays the roles of water vapour and clouds, and the changes in albedo as the snow/ice melt. Several warming effects occur all at the same time as the Earth comes out of ice ages. The alarmist view picks on the CO2 effect and claims it to be dominant, and in control of the other effects. My sceptic view is that there is considerable uncertainty about the sizes of the warming effects, and that CO2 may have been little more than a spectator, rather than the main driver.
Even if CO2 had a large warming effect during ice ages (cold and dry), there are reasons to expect that effect to be much less significant now, when things are warm and wet. This is the “saturation” of the greenhouse effect, which some claim to have “debunked”, but which in reality is very important at todays CO2 and water vapour levels.
Take an informal survey of your associates. Ask if they think Arctic ice and Greenland glaciers have melted substantially melted at present. Ask what they think caused that. Then start talking science and facts. Your should be alert for the eyes to glaze over as soon as they see where you are going. Why does that happen? In order to accept what you are saying there is a huge psychological barrier. They would have to accept that the government, the media, the UN, their president, the news anchor person, their teachers, scientist, etc., etc. have been lying to them for years and years about a very serious issue. Even if they could accept, then they would have to ask why. Very scarey. It’s never going to happen until those authorities themselves admit they’ve been lying, exaggerating, were in error.
Nuclear power has no chance of increasing its share of generation, as shown in my articles on The Truth About Nuclear Power.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-truth-about-nuclear-power-part-one.html
The TANP articles show that (one) modern nuclear power plants are uneconomic to operate compared to natural gas and wind energy, (two) they produce preposterous pricing if they are the sole power source for a grid, (three) they cost far too much to construct, (four) use far more water for cooling, 4 times as much, than better alternatives, (five) nuclear fuel makes them difficult to shut down and requires very costly safeguards, (six) they are built to huge scale of 1,000 to 1,600 MWe or greater to attempt to reduce costs via economy of scale, (seven) an all-nuclear grid will lose customers to self-generation, (eight) smaller and modular nuclear plants have no benefits due to reverse economy of scale, (nine) large-scale plants have very long construction schedules even without lawsuits that delay construction, (ten) nuclear plants do not reach 50 or 60 years life because they require costly upgrades after 20 to 30 years that do not always perform as designed, (eleven) France has 85 percent of its electricity produced via nuclear power but it is subsidized, is still almost twice as expensive as prices in the US, and is only viable due to exporting power at night rather than throttling back the plants during low demand, (twelve) nuclear plants cannot provide cheap power on small islands, (13) US nuclear plants are heavily subsidized in at least 6 ways but still cannot compete, (14), more evidence of economic inferiority as projects are cancelled, reactor vendors grow desperate, nuclear advocates tout low operating costs and ignore high capital costs, nuclear utilities never ask for a rate decrease, and high nuclear costs are buried in a large customer base, (15), safety regulations are routinely relaxed to allow the plants to continue operating without spending the funds to bring them into compliance, (16) there are many, many near-misses each year in nuclear power plants, with more and more to come as the plants age beyond their design life, (17) there are serious safety issues with short term, and long-term, storage of spent fuel, (18) spent fuel reprocessing has many safety issues, (19) nuclear plants create adverse health effects on people and other living things, (20) disasters via meltdown or explosion at Chernobyl, (21) Three Mile Island, and (22) Fukushima, (23) a near-disaster occurred at San Onofre resulting in permanent shut down, (24) there is a similar looming disaster at St. Lucie, (25) the inherent unsafe characteristics of nuclear power plants required government shielding from liability, or subsidy, for the costs of a nuclear accident via the Price-Anderson Act, and (26) the serious public impacts of evacuation and relocation after a major incident, or “extraordinary nuclear occurrence” in the language used by the Price-Anderson Act.
It will be a few days, got a few work trips the next few weeks, but I will try to address each and every one of your points (unless somebody beats me to it) and read your article.
While there is a lot of truth on what you say, there is also a huge benefit to the environment and economy should this type of power generation was allowed to be developed. “ALLOWED” being the operative word here, because greenies freak out at anything that is not ‘green’ in their eyes (they seem to miss the obvious of the dark side of renewables). I think you oversimplified some of the issues and neglected a whole lot behind others.
I had a chance to visit the Lake Superior ice pack this weekend. Stuck an 8 foot oar straight down by a large iceberg and could not touch the bottom of it. This is some serious ice, not skim ice that’s for sure. The larger icebergs sticking up.a few feet above the waterline could be down 20 feet or more imo. With cool calm weather that ice could be around until the 4th of July or later.
SC-Slywolf says:
May 24, 2014 at 10:02 am
john says:
May 24, 2014 at 7:01 am
India hits U.S., China with solar imports anti-dumping duties
Does Pachauri have iterests in Indian solar?
—————-
I would Imagine he does but that could be in a blind trust. I would say he throws some weight in the financial sector(s) in India and was amazed to see he was involved in MEOR (Microbial Enhanced Oilfield Recovery) work for the oil industry. (see below).
From Wikipedia:
Pachauri was on the Board of Governors, Shriram Scientific and Industrial Research Foundation (September 1987); the Executive Committee of the India International Centre, New Delhi (1985 onwards); the Governing Council of the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi (October 1987 onwards); and the Court of Governors, Administrative Staff College of India (1979–81) and advises such companies as Pegasus Capital Advisors, the Chicago Climate Exchange, Toyota, Deutsche Bank and NTPC.[12] He has served as member of many societies and commissions. He has been the Member of Board of the International Solar Energy Society (1991–1997), World Resources Institute Council (1992), while Chairman of the World Energy Council (1993–1995), President and then Chairman of the International Association for Energy Economics (1988–1990), and the President of the Asian Energy Institute (Since 1992).[13] He was a part-time advisor to the United Nations Development Programme (1994—1999) in the fields of Energy and Sustainable Management of Natural Resources.[14] In July 2001, Dr R K Pachauri was appointed Member, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India.[14]
In 2005, Jack Babcock founded Glori Oil Ltd. in Houston, Texas based on Pachauri’s MEOR (patented as BEOR in 2006) process (see Glori Energy filed SEC S-1 October 2011). Glori Oil Ltd. engages in the recovery of oil trapped in reservoirs in existing oil wells using carbon dioxide as a driver in a process known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). In May 2011, Glori Oil Limited changed its name to Glori Energy Inc…[15] By 2007, Pachauri’s MEOR was deemed unsuccessful, and Pachauri and Glori are no longer associated.
Chris Edwards says:
May 24, 2014 at 8:25 am
Can someone here help and answer this? IF humans are causing a problem burning too much fossil fuel for the planet to handle (I doubt this) then would not the O2 content of the atmosphere be going down? And if the powers that be really thought that CO2 was bad would they not ban the catalytic converters we all are forced to use (for very little reason these days) that magnify the output of CO2 from our cars and trucks?
Chris I too am interested in the C02 and water producing Catalytic Converter, I have seen a few references on advocate sites (for the manufacture and replacement of same) and some have had links to an EPA internet site where the EPA was blaming the converters for the rapid increase in C02, but when you click on those old links they take you Nowhere, This seems rather strange as I could find a report by Dr Hal Campbell, Professor California State University – Humbolt College of Natural Resources and Science. His paper laments the lack of progress in replacing the converters with newer technology that would achieve significant reductions to so called greenhouse gases and cites in his paper.
Quote [In April of 2006, STWA reported that the EcoChargR had successfully passed EURO3 emission standards, besting their previous performance, during tests conducted at the National Motorcycle Quality Inspection & Certification Center in Shanghai, China. (Save the World Air Inc., 2006)
Scientific confirmation of the physics associated with the application of short-pulse magnetic fields to crude oil and derivative fuels (gasoline and diesel fuel) have been presented in two leading industry journals over the past two years. The results of this extensive scientific study were published, and are available for review, in the Journal of Energy and Fuels (Reducing the Viscosity of Crude Oil by Pulsed Electric or Magnetic Field, R. Tao and X. Xu), and also in the Journal of Modern Physics B (Viscosity Reduction in Liquid Suspensions by Electric and Magnetic Fields, R. Tao and X. Xu)] end quote.
He implies that tests at an EPA recognised facility
Quote [Independent tests of this technology were conducted at the EPA recognized Northern California Diagnostics Laboratory in 2001 on an early model Ford to test for effects on older automobiles, that did not use catalytic converter technology. These tests were conducted in strict conformance to EPA testing protocols, which do not provide for alteration of fuel-air mixture, resulted an amazing 71% reduction in overall exhaust emissions, while also garnering a correspondingly impressive 49% increase in gas mileage for the test vehicle. These tests confirm that integration of high strength magnetic fields within the fuel delivery and pre-combustion process could be used successfully to reduce exhaust emissions and thereby lessen the need for catalytic incineration of unburned exhaust gases].end quote
I tried to find some independent confirmation, but all that is out there is the usual Wikki claims of conspiracy and dead end to links and no links to official testing at the EPA at all which is surprising given the claims and/or anything pertaining to pulsed electric or magnetic fields and fuel manipulation by these methods.
I also did a cursory search on our hosts site thinking that this issue would be covered somewhere, it probably is but I could not find it.
Is it just a whacko claim that has been debunked or one ignored by the EPA as too simple a solution, and one that would interfere with the urgency/need of taxing evil C02.
Like you I would be happy to see some testing of the claims even though I don’t see rising C02 as any real relevance in the real rather than alarmist world. Does anyone have working links to such accredited work?
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