‘Biggest Oil Discovery In UK Waters This Century’

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

Find adds to series of wells that may be biggest beneath UK waters this century.

Hurricane Energy has made a further oil discovery west of the Shetland Islands days after Royal Dutch Shell and BP won exploration licences in an area the UK is counting on to breathe new life into its struggling oil and gas industry.

The latest find adds to a series of successful wells drilled by Hurricane in a geological formation that analysts say looks likely to be the biggest new oil discovery beneath UK waters this century.

Shell and BP were last week awarded licenses to drill in nearby exploration blocks in a sign of renewed interest among large oil and gas groups in the west of Shetland region even as they withdraw from more mature parts of the North Sea.

Hurricane is expected to announce that initial data from its Halifax well indicates the presence of a 1km-deep oil column and that, crucially, it appears to be part of “a single large hydrocarbon accumulation” connected to the company’s adjacent Lancaster field.

This would increase confidence behind the London-listed explorer’s claim to be sitting on the largest undeveloped discovery on the UK continental shelf and aid efforts to attract investment in the field from international oil majors.

Full story

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

March 26, 2017 at 03:38AM

What Causes global temperature – Quiz

via Scottish Sceptic
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via Scottish Sceptic http://ift.tt/1wv5Sjx

March 26, 2017 at 01:48AM

New Literature Strongly Suggests CO2 Residence Time In The Atmosphere Is Exaggerated!

via NoTricksZone
http://notrickszone.com

As usual, there are many highly interesting posts on climate science at the German Die kalte Sonne site. What follows is one of the latest, on Harde’s controversial paper:
========================================

Is CO2 residence time in the atmosphere exaggerated?

By Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
(German text translated/edited by P Gosselin)

The CO2 content in the earth’s atmosphere has risen to a level that surpasses any level seen over the past 800,000 years (Fig. 1). While during the ice ages the CO2 concentration dropped to 180 ppm, it rose to 250 – 300 ppm during the warm periods (interglacials). The reason for this CO₂ development is foremost is the gassing out of CO2 from warmed up interglacial water.

Since the start of the industrial revolution the CO2 concentration has reached well above the typical range seen during the previous interglacials. Currently the atmospheric CO2 concentration is a bit over 400 ppm.

Fig. 1: CO₂-concentration over the past 80,000 years. Source: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, via Climate Central.

The big question now is how long will it take nature to bring down the anthropogenic CO2 build-up if CO2 emissions were to be massively cut back? Let’s assume that beginning today all coal, oil and gas were to be banned outright. How many years would it take for the CO2 to be absorbed by the natural cycles from the atmosphere?

IPCC: 1000 years

The 5th IPCC report writes here that 60 – 85% of the anthropogenic CO2 would disappear from the atmosphere in about 1000 years. But the complete removal would take a few hundred thousands of years. In Chapter 6 from Working Group 1:

The removal of human-emitted CO₂ from the atmosphere by natural processes will take a few hundred thousand years (high confidence). Depending on the RCP scenario considered, about 15 to 40% of emitted CO₂ will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years. This very long time required by sinks to remove anthropogenic CO₂ makes climate change caused by elevated CO₂ irreversible on human time scale.”

Other experts say 100 years

According to the German Ministry of Environment (UBA) things are, however, quicker. At the UBA website we find:

Carbon dioxide is a colorless and odorless gas whose average residence life in the atmosphere is 120 years.”

German climate scientist Mojib Latif also accepts a similar figure: Infranken.de reported on 13 January 2016 on a presentation made by Latif within the scope of a Lion’s Club event:

‘CO2 remains in the air 100 years’
Climate scientist Professor Mojib Latif as a guest speaker brought attention to climate change at the New Year’s meeting. […] ‘When we blow CO2 into the air, then it stays there for 100 years,’ said Latif.”

New paper: Just a few years

Hermann Harde of the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg described in a paper that appears in the May 2017 journal Global and Planetary Change and which is already available online presents a new approach that points to a much shorter residence time in the atmosphere. According to Harde, excess CO2 remains in the atmosphere on average only 4 years:

Scrutinizing the carbon cycle and CO₂ residence time in the atmosphere
Climate scientists presume that the carbon cycle has come out of balance due to the increasing anthropogenic emissions from fossil fuel combustion and land use change. This is made responsible for the rapidly increasing atmospheric CO₂ concentrations over recent years, and it is estimated that the removal of the additional emissions from the atmosphere will take a few hundred thousand years. Since this goes along with an increasing greenhouse effect and a further global warming, a better understanding of the carbon cycle is of great importance for all future climate change predictions. We have critically scrutinized this cycle and present an alternative concept, for which the uptake of CO₂ by natural sinks scales proportional with the CO₂ concentration. In addition, we consider temperature dependent natural emission and absorption rates, by which the paleoclimatic CO₂ variations and the actual CO₂ growth rate can well be explained. The anthropogenic contribution to the actual CO₂ concentration is found to be 4.3%, its fraction to the CO₂ increase over the Industrial Era is 15% and the average residence time 4 years.”

This value is not to be confused with the residence time of single CO2 molecules in the atmosphere. Here there’s widespread agreement that the molecules themselves remain in the air only a few years before they get replaced by CO₂ from the oceans in the sense of an equilibrium reaction.

via NoTricksZone http://notrickszone.com

March 26, 2017 at 01:47AM

Who leans left – falls left. The Dirty 129.

via Defeat Climate Alarmism
https://defyccc.com

This is a summary of When Silicon Valley Went Off the Cliff, focusing on connections and parallels between the short lived “ban alarmism” and climate alarmism.  From January 28 through  February 8, a number of Silicon Valley and Washington state corporate executives participated in an attempt to topple President Trump, orchestrated by the Left after President Trump signed  the original order, Executive Order No. 13769 Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States on January 27.  WA Attorney General Bob Ferguson, one of the Attorneys General at United for Clean Power, filed a stinky lawsuit against President Trump and succeeded to halt implementation of the Executive order.  129 corporations, who hold monopolies in Internet search, “social media,” TV and movie streaming, as well as other markets for speech and press, filed an Amici Brief supporting the rogue Attorney General against the President.  Their reaction to the Executive order was so out of proportion that an analogy with climate alarmism immediately sprung  to mind.  Here, I do not recite the original Executive order because I expect that readers did not trust to the Fake Stream Media reporting about it.

Some of the social dynamics behind this overreaction are described in my essay, When Silicon Valley Went Off the Cliff.  This new low looks like a development of climate alarmism, compressed in time from 30 years to 10 days and happening on the scale of corporations instead of nations.  Like a small scale experiment with societal instability, one might say.  Richard Lindzen briefly addressed the phenomenon of societal instability in his now classic article Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus (1992):

“What the above amounts to is a societal instability. At a particular point in history, a relatively minor suggestion or event serves to mobilize massive interests. While the proposed measures may be detrimental, resistance is largely absent or co-opted.”

The latest social experiment, performed by the Left on the executives of some of the most powerful, wealthiest, and sophisticated corporations, confirmed  the power of bogus issues.  CAGW narrative has developed into its present formidable form because it is a completely bogus issue.  CO2 emissions present no conceivable danger.  Unlike real issues and conflicts, bogus issues are one-sided.  There are only two positions to be had on bogus issues: being concerned (a high degree of concern is alarm) or being unconcerned.  Unconcerned people just move on.  For example, a scientist who can choose a topic of research would not work on a bogus issue when he or she can work on a real one.  An honest reporter cannot cover a bogus issue.  The most he or she could do is write an article with a title like, “Why X Should not Interest You,” and then move to other subjects. Therefore, promoters of a bogus issue meet no opposition.  If they pitch a reporter and the reporter turns them down, they can move on to the next reporter until they find one who believes them.  If they have sufficient resources, the alarmists can promote his reporting and force others to follow.  That was the case with global warming in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

The power of ACT NOW! is well known in marketing and advertising.  Climate alarmists are not alone in using this slogan.  Infomercial channels are built around act now! but they sell products well below $100.  It is surprising that so many people fell for the act now! trick and were sold the climatist agenda, the agenda that threatens the existence of our civilization.  Act Now, Regret Later.

Media frenzy, the well-crafted appearance of consensus, logical and statistical fallacies that would be obvious to outsiders, blindness to hidden agendas, and the echo-chamber effect are the factors that contributed to the rise of climate alarmism. These also show up in the overreaction to the Executive order.

Thanks to H.J. for collaboration in writing this article.

via Defeat Climate Alarmism https://defyccc.com

March 26, 2017 at 01:19AM