Massive Oil Discovery In Alaska: U.S. Poised For Record Oil Production

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)http://www.thegwpf.com

The massive find of conventional oil on state land could bring relief to budget pains in Alaska brought on by slumping production in the state and the crash in oil prices.

The new discovery was made in just the past few days in Alaska’s North Slope, which was previously viewed as an aging oil basin.

Spanish oil giant Repsol (REPYY) and its privately-held U.S. partner Armstrong Energy announced the find on Thursday, predicting production could begin as soon as 2021 and lead to as much as 120,000 barrels of output per day.

The oil resources lie in a well, called Horseshoe, that’s 75% owned by Denver-based Armstrong. Repsol owns the rest of this well.

There are increasing signs that shale oil producers are preparing to ramp up output after surviving a two-year price war with OPEC.

America is likely to set a record-breaking 2018, taking out the all-time oil production high set in 1970, according to new forecasts published this week by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

OPEC’s price war did spark a wave of bankruptcies, painful job cuts and a dip in U.S. oil production as crude plummeted to as low as $26 a barrel. Domestic output peaked at an impressive 9.6 million barrels per day in April 2015.
But the oil boom didn’t collapse completely. U.S. oil output fell only a little, bottoming out at 8.7 million barrels in July 2016 and has since stabilized.

All eyes are on the frenzy of shale activity in the Permian region. Frackers have scrambled to add rigs in the Permian. The rig count has nearly tripled from a low of 132 last April to 308 now.

The EIA also cited changes to its forecasting model that better account for how U.S. rigs have become vastly more efficient.

Those efficiency gains have been critical. Lower prices, better technology and improved balance sheets have allowed U.S. shale companies to do more with less.

Full post

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

March 12, 2017 at 05:24AM

Some WUWT milestones and some housekeeping

via Watts Up With That?http://ift.tt/1Viafi3

Recently, this blog passed a few milestones that I thought would be worth sharing with readers. For all of our critics and the vitriol all they throw our way, I challenge any of them to find a climate related blog that even comes close to the level of readership we enjoy here. We recently passed […]

via Watts Up With That? http://ift.tt/1Viafi3

March 12, 2017 at 04:43AM

Merkel’s Lead Minister Signals Germany Ready To Give Up Leadership Role Against Climate Change!

via NoTricksZonehttp://notrickszone.com

Germany appears poised to make a fundamental course correction in its climate and energy policy.

Chancellery Minister Peter Altmaier says the days of going-it-alone on climate protection are about to end. Photo source: here.

Germany has long been a steadfast and influential proponent of “climate protection”. Also the country’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), directed by climate doomsday professor Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, has been one of the most influential European players in underpinning the science that has shaped Europe’s stringent  climate policy. The PIK has worked relentlessly in close partnership with the UN and North American climate institutes.

That construct, however, may soon be dealt a serious blow as one of Angela Merkel’s closest ministers, Peter Altmaier, told a group of industry leaders that Germany’s days of “going-it-alone on climate protection” are about to end — this according to the highly reputable online Die Welt here.

As Germany’s power industry reels from massive multi-billion euro record losses and power consumers get left in the dark by the hundreds of thousands as power supply gets cut off, the German government may finally be realizing that its climate and energy policy has only wrought tremendous pain and no benefit.

Daniel Wetzel of Die Welt writes:

In climate protection Germany has always played the roles of a front-runner and a model pupil. This now appears to be over.”

Last Friday at the ritzy Hotel Adlon in Berlin, Chancellery Minister Peter Altmaier spoke before a group of business leaders and CEOs, and reportedly reaped thunderous applause when he signaled “the expensive climate-political go-it-alone” by Germany “may soon be over“.

According to Die Welt, Altmaier said: “I am totally convinced that the path of national targets is false” and what’s needed in the near future are “European and international targets“.

So far Germany’s approach has not worked, and has been sharply criticized by industry and environmental economists, who say it “has not saved one extra gram of CO2 under the roof of the European Emissions Trading.”

Whether Altmaier’s views get implemented by the Merkel government remains to be seen. However, the movement to relax the country’s draconian climate protection policies appear to be gaining steam. Die Welt writes that Altmaier’s position are also in agreement with the recently minted “energylab 2030” energy concept by leaders of Merkel’s CDU party:

Special national targets for climate protection are counter-productive and thus fundamentally should be dropped.”

Die Welt writes that the German government finally may have realized that its grandstanding target of reducing CO2 emissions twice as fast as the rest of Europe was “over-ambitious”.

What could have led to these signals of fundamental course change? Die Welt’s Wetzel ends the article by writing:

Among experts it is sure that the federal government’s bold promise made in 2010 of cutting back CO2 emissions 40% by the end of the decade will be significantly missed.”

via NoTricksZone http://notrickszone.com

March 12, 2017 at 03:40AM

“Climate Science” is Upside Down (recap)

via Defeat Climate Alarmismhttps://defyccc.com

Recap for the FSM viewers:

The so-called “climate science” is completely upside down.  The anthropogenic release of carbon dioxide (CO2) is beneficial for humans and nature.  Approximately 15% of the world’s agricultural production is due to the elevated amount of CO2 in the air (see reference [1]).  The small and slow warming, which is expected from CO2 release, is also beneficial for humans and nature.  (There was steep warming probably due to solar activity increase in the 80’s and 90’s but no warming in the last 19 years.)   The claims that “climate change” is to blame for all the world’s disasters are nothing but myths.  I cannot go into details in this short post, but the science matters were mostly settled in the 1983 Nierenberg Report with the most un-alarming conclusions.  After that, the genuine scientific research and observations suggested that there’s even less concern to be had about potential harm and actually more benefits. For example, it was found that increase of CO2 concentration in the air not only enhances plant growth but decreases plant water demand [1].  The politics of climate alarmism (conceived by the United Nations politicians) gave birth to the perverted “climate science,” not other way around.

Ideology of climate alarmism (as preached by IPCC, complicit  NGOs and Obama administration) can be defined as a primitive cult complete with worshiping idols, claiming that natural disasters happen because we do not listen to its shamans and necessary sacrifices. Many prominent scientists and non-scientists talked about that.  Some examples: Lindzen: “As with any cult … they get more and more fanatical“, Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate: “Global warming has really become a new religion.“, Monckton of Brenchley: “They have gotten religion, but they call it science“, Cardinal Pell: “In the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.“, William Happer, Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University: “climate change cult“,  Michael Crichton (about environmentalism in general), and myself here & here. The energy industry (including nuclear and hydro power, not only fossil fuels) is demanded as the first sacrifice.  I will not speculate what demands will follow, but humans emit CO2 when we breathe, and these emissions are substantial (about 5% of the total).  There is nothing metaphorical about calling climate alarmism a cult or a religion.

2) Al Gore has been a fanatical follower of the climate cult since at least 1988.  As a Vice President of Democrats, having science among his responsibilities, Al Gore was a “patron saint” of the scientists and the distributor-in-chief of NSF grants. Thus, Al Gore had almost total control of American scientific institutions from 1992 – 2000.  I can guess that he did everything in his power to eliminate actual scientists and to put environmentalists (especially climatists) in positions of power in all those organizations.  Bill Clinton has contributed by cutting off funding to civilian nuclear research, probably at urging of the environmental NGOs [2].

The National Academy was not an exception.  Its previous president is no better than the current one, Marcia McNutt. Ralph Cicerone has made a career in the “Earth System Science” and has a personal stake in climate alarmism.  He was also a Chancellor of infamous UC Irvine in 1998 – 2005.  Following the so-called Climategate (2009-2010), Science published a weird statement in defense of climate science fraud and its perpetrators, signed by 255 Academy members. Science illustrated the statement by a fake photo, purporting to show polar bears in distress.  No counter-statement from the Academy or its members was issued.  It seems now is too late for concerns about the National Academy, which is beyond repair.  The nation needs an alternative to it.

The situation in the scientific societies is no better. The American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Association were the last to stand because they had the most knowledge in the subject matter, but even they cracked in the end (the societies, not their members).  The federal government yields enormous power these days.  In this case, its pressure is combined with the pressure from the UN bodies and UN affiliated NGOs, hostile foreign governments and media. On the bright side, some resistance is going on in APS.

A favorite canard by the climate alarmists is that skeptics are funded by “fossil fuels interests.”  Nothing could be further from truth.  “Fossil fuels” corporations do not fund skeptics.  On the contrary, they fund environmentalists and alarmists, and avoid any association with skeptics.  Apparently, the corporations have adopted such policies after RICO had been applied to the tobacco companies in the late 90’s.  The majority (or at least a large part) of all scientists and engineers knowledgeable in physics, chemistry and Earth sciences are employed or contracted by oil and gas companies and related industries.  The effect of the RICO expansion was to silence these independent scientists and to shut down all independent research related to the “climate change.”  That made Al Gore and associates a monopoly in the climate-related sciences.

Whatever the original motive to expand the reach of RICO was, the climate alarmists (and the Left, in general) understand very well that they can silence productive Americans by threatening businesses that employ them, or with which they are or were “associated.”  And they threaten businesses continuously and hysterically.

3) Marcia McNutt, current president of the National Academies of Sciences, was the chief editor of Science magazine.  In that position she implemented policy to represent only one side (the wrong side) of the scientific debate on “climate change” and CO2, and shut off all other sides.  Although she went to extremes on this policy, she was not the one to start it.  Richard Lindzen (Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Science) reported the following incident [3]:

“In the spring of 1989 I prepared a critique of global warming, which I submitted to Science, a magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The paper was rejected without review as being of no interest to the readership. I then submitted the paper to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, where it was accepted after review, rereviewed, and reaccepted–an unusual procedure to say the least. In the meantime, the paper was attacked in Science before it had even been published. The paper circulated for about six months as samizdat.”

Unfortunately, it became the policy of almost all peer-reviewed journals in the U.S. and Europe.  As bizarre as it sounds, skeptics are forced to publish their scientific papers in Chinese journals! Some examples are: Monckton, Soon, Legates, Briggs, Why models run hot, published in the Chinese Bulletin of Science.

FSM stands for Fake Stream Media, which includes CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, WaPo, HuffPo etc.

References and Some Literature

[1] Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change,  Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts (2014)

[2] Rupert Darwall, The Age of Global Warming: A History (2013) – a book

[3] Richard Lindzen,  Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus (1992) – excerpts and a link to the full article
[4] Richard Lindzen,  Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions? (2008 – 2012)

[5] Richard Lindzen,  Science in the Public Square:  Global Climate Alarmism and Historical Precedents (2013)

[5] U. S. Senate Minority Report: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims (2008 – 2009)
[6] Craig Idso, Robert M. Carter , S. Fred Singer,  Why Scientists Disagree About Climate Change (November 23, 2015)
[7] Ivar Giaever, Nobel laureate in Physics: Resignation from American Physical Society (2011)
[8] Oregon Petition (1998) signed by 31,000+ scientists and experts

[9] Watts Up With That? – the leading website on the “climate change” debate, run by meteorologist Anthony Watts

via Defeat Climate Alarmism https://defyccc.com

March 12, 2017 at 01:13AM