Dr David Evans: Four fatal pieces of evidence
Dr David Evans lays out four crucial pieces of evidence, and calls for a debate with Prof Andrew Pitman. But the evidence is so unarguably strong for skeptics, we know that the name-calling-team-who-want-our-money will do anything to avoid a public debate. If the evidence is “overwhelming” why are they so unwilling to explain it? — Jo Nova
Biomass vs. Fossil Fuels: Thinking of CO2 Emissions in Terms of Nature’s “Battery”
by Indur Goklany
September 21, 2011
One of the reasons governments have been pushing biomass burning is the notion that it would displace fossil fuels and thereby reduce CO2 emissions. Biomass is renewable and displaces fossil fuels. But would it reduce CO2 emissions? (MasterResource)
Posted in Climate change, CO2 benefits, Dioxycarbophobia, Energy
New Discoveries May Propel Americas To The Top Of The Energy League
Wednesday, 21 September 2011 08:52 Simon Romero, The New York Times
For the first time in decades, the emerging prize of global energy may be the Americas, where Western oil companies are refocusing their gaze in a rush to explore clusters of coveted oil fields.
Posted in Development, Energy, Fracking
New Yorkers back fracking 45 to 41 percent, poll shows
Forty-five percent of New York state voters support natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale for the economic benefits versus 41 percent who oppose it because of its environmental impact, a poll said on Wednesday.
Support for a new tax on drilling companies fell to 51 percent from 59 percent in August, the Quinnipiac University poll said. (Reuters)
Posted in Development, Energy, Fracking
UK Climate Change Select Committee Chairman Welcomes Huge Shale Find
Wednesday, 21 September 2011 19:06 David Blair, Financial Times
Britain’s first drilling campaign for shale gas has beaten expectations, with the company responsible estimating 5,660bn cubic metres lie beneath the county of Lancashire in north-west England. This suggests the UK has significantly more of the resource than earlier surveys predicted.
After completing three exploration wells, Cuadrilla Resources said on Wednesday that its licence area held enough “gas-in-place” to supply Britain’s entire annual gas requirement for more than 56 years – at least in theory. (GWPF)
Deep under Lancashire, a huge gas find that could lead to 800 ‘fracking’ wells
By Jonathan Brown
The discovery of huge underground deposits of natural gas in Lancashire could lead to a massive expansion in the controversial process of “fracking” (fracturing rock), resulting in hundreds of new wells being sunk across the countryside.
Up to 200 trillion cubic feet of gas has been located by Cuadrilla Resources, which holds the licence to exploit the Bowland Shale area outside Blackpool, and claims 1,700 new jobs may now be created as a result of the discovery. (Independent)
Green Worries: Cheap Gas Will Undermine Renewable Subsidies & Investment
Wednesday, 21 September 2011 14:35 The Press Association
Green campaigners against unconventional gas warned developing the fossil fuel could draw investment away from the UK’s renewable industry.
A company exploring for controversial “shale gas” in the UK says it could drill hundreds of wells in Lancashire to tap into vast gas resources underground.
Cuadrilla Resources, whose exploration efforts near Blackpool had to be halted earlier in the year amid concerns they were causing tremors, said there were 200 trillion cubic feet of gas under the ground in the area.
A percentage of the gas could be recovered for use in the UK’s energy mix, providing up to 5,600 jobs, including 1,700 in the local area, at the peak of production, the company has suggested.
But campaigners against the unconventional source of gas warned developing the fossil fuel could draw investment away from the UK’s potentially huge renewable industry. (GWPF)
Posted in Energy, Fracking, Green scams
Sand mining emerges as another fracking threat
Fracking, the latest craze in the quest to produce oil and gas, has been blamed for environmental problems ranging from flammable tap water to minor earthquakes. Now a new risk is emerging: sand mining.
To squeeze hydrocarbons out of shale through hydraulic fracturing of the rock — the process known as fracking — producers need to pump an enormous amount of sand and other materials into the ground.
Obtaining the sand for this requires removing the top layer of earth over a sandstone deposit and using heavy equipment and large amounts of water to produce the fine grains.
According to some environmentalists and residents of affected areas, sand mining poses a threat to air and water quality. (Reuters)
Posted in Activists, Development, Energy, Fracking
SolarWorld says China competition unfair
Frank Asbeck, chief executive of Germany’s No.2 solar company SolarWorld, has criticized Chinese rivals for eating into the market share of European peers, potentially driving them out of business. (Reuters)
Posted in Corporate welfare, Green scams
Leadership: The administration is bent on finalizing as many as 15 loan guarantees for green energy ventures before the stimulus deadline. How detached from reality can this White House be? (IBD)
Scandal: Two top executives of the bankrupt solar panel firm will refuse to answer questions about possible fraud and the waste of taxpayer dollars. Unlike oil execs, they and the administration have much to hide.
Posted in Corporate welfare, Green scams
IPCC: sky will be full in 20 years
And could 15% of Greenland’s ice melt in a decade?
It is not only Al Gore who began to jump the shark every day. The most active members of the IPCC are doing the same thing. Be careful: the shark may eventually devour you. (The Reference Frame)
Analysis: Extreme steps needed to meet climate target
New research, to be published in the journal Climatic Change in November, suggests humankind may have to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere on a vast scale if emissions keep rising after 2020. (Reuters)
Posted in Activists, Climate change, Green scams, IPCC, PlayStation® climatology, Propaganda
There is a new paper by Gerald Meehl of NCAR and other collaborators that has been announced in the media; i.e. see in the International Business Tribune [h/t to Watts Up With That]
Global Warming on Temporary Hold Thanks to Deep Oceans
First, I am glad the authors implicitly acknowledge the importance of the ocean heat changes as the primary diagnostic of climate system heat changes, as I have urged in my papers
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2003: Heat storage within the Earth system. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 331-335.
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55.
There are two major issues, however, with the new study that the authors [that the news article reports on] did not seem to recognize: (Roger Pielke Sr.)
Lorne Gunter: Global warming is afraid to come out of hiding
Over the past decade, global surface temperatures have flatlined. While 2010 was a warm year in the northern hemisphere and 2011 has been warm in much of the U.S., globally temperatures have failed to surpass 1998. Despite all the histrionics about man-made global warming, the predicted temperature rise has failed to materialize even as CO2 emissions have increased. Pat Michaels, a climatologist who is currently senior fellow for research and economic development at George Mason University in Virginia, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in late July, ”there has been no statistically significant warming trend since November of 1996 in monthly surface temperature records.” (National Post)
Peter Foster: Deep-sixing global warming
Claims that the deep oceans absorb the missing heat are an admission that temperatures have stalled
A study from the Boulder, Colo.-based National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) claims to have found all that missing heat from global warming’s “lost decade:” It’s lurking in Davy Jones’s locker.
According to official science, global temperatures were meant to rise this century in line with increasing levels of man-made carbon dioxide, but didn’t. Now the puzzle has allegedly been solved: the heat is more than 300 metres below the world’s oceans, where it appears conveniently safe from physical verification.
According to the study’s official press release, “deep oceans may absorb enough heat at times to flatten the rate of global warming for periods of as long as a decade — even in the midst of longer-term warming.”
Note “may” and “at times.” Note also how “periods as long as a decade” matches nicely with the (most recent) period of no warming that has to be explained (away). (Financial Post)
Posted in Climate change, PlayStation® climatology, Propaganda
Sorry, But With Global Warming It’s The Sun, Stupid
Larry Bell
Man-made global warming crisis crusaders are now facing a new threat. Their anti-fossil carbon-based premise for alarmism is being challenged by new scientific evidence of important solar influences upon climate that can’t readily be blamed on us. Not that there wasn’t lots of good evidence of this before. Actually, there has been, and it has been routinely denigrated and ignored.
Only this time, the high-profile international source will be impossible for the entrenched scientific establishment to casually dismiss. No, not after experiments at the world’s leading physics laboratory, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland recently revealed an inverse correlation between periodic changes in sunspot activity levels, and quantities of cosmic rays entering Earth’s atmosphere that trigger surface-cooling cloud formations. (Forbes)
Posted in Climate change, Research, Solar
U.S. won’t back binding climate deal with financial conditions
NEW YORK – The U.S. would not consider a climate deal “genuinely binding” if it excludes the biggest emerging economies or if those countries’ commitments were conditional upon financial support from developed countries, the lead U.S. climate negotiator said Monday. (Thomson Reuters Point Carbon)
Canberra eyes carbon pact for all nations at UN climate talks
Continue reading
Posted in Activists, Climate change, Enviros, IPCC, UN
The Incredible Global Transition Back To Coal
Tuesday, 20 September 2011 17:39 Gregor MacDonald, Business Inside
Coal’s share of global primary energy consumption is soaring.
There are many unfortunate outcomes to Peak Oil. One of the more serious is the world’s transition back to coal. Expensive BTU from crude oil has influenced the energy adoption pathway of the Developing World for ten years now, pushing the five billion people in the Non-OECD towards coal. My work has documented this shift for some time. But, I have paid less attention here at Gregor.us to the effect this paradigmatic change will have on our climate.
In this week’s release of the EIA’s International Energy Outlook, I found the following graph, projecting carbon emissions out to 2035. The EIA is correct to note the surge in emissions from coal. – see: World Energy Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions by Fuel 1990-2035 in billion MT.
Posted in Climate change, Coal, Development, Dioxycarbophobia, Energy
On Green Hell Blog On JunkScience.com On Corporate Energy Subsidies
