Earth’s mysterious hum recorded underwater for first time

Image credit: strangesounds.org

But amplitude variations in the hum did not correlate with the seasons as once thought.

Scientists finally capture hum coming from the centre of the Earth, reports GeologyIn.

Although we like to think we know everything – and technology has advanced so much we practically have the answer to everything we don’t know at our fingertips – there are still plenty of mysteries left to solve.

For the past few decades, something has been becoming increasingly clear: Earth constantly hums, even though we can’t hear it.

Matt Ridley: Britain needs to embrace the shale revolution

Shale gas drilling site [image credit: BBC]

Current forecasts say gas will be providing 7 times more energy worldwide than all renewables by 2040. Why import it when it’s in the ground?
H/T The GWPF

Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing are the biggest energy breakthrough of the century, writes Matt Ridley in The Times.

Gas will start flowing from Cuadrilla’s two shale exploration wells in Lancashire this year. Preliminary analysis of the site is “very encouraging”, bearing out the British Geological Survey’s analysis that the Bowland Shale beneath northern England holds one of the richest gas resources known: a huge store of energy at a cost well below that of renewables and nuclear.

Energy riches fuel bitcoin craze for speculation-shy Iceland

Bitcoin [image credit: BBC]

Renewable energy has an unwelcome customer: ‘Bitcoin emits the equivalent of 17.7 million tons of carbon dioxide every year’ according to one recent report. Unless or until its bubble bursts, that figure is expected to rise.

KEFLAVIK, Iceland (AP) — Iceland is expected to use more energy “mining” bitcoins and other virtual currencies this year than it uses to power its homes, says AP News.

With massive amounts of electricity needed to run the computers that create bitcoins, large virtual currency companies have established a base in the North Atlantic island nation blessed with an abundance of renewable energy.

The new industry’s relatively sudden growth prompted lawmaker Smari McCarthy of Iceland’s Pirate Party to suggest taxing the profits of bitcoin mines.

The initiative is likely to be well received by Icelanders, who are skeptical of speculative financial ventures after the country’s catastrophic 2008 banking crash.

Renewables Rush Sends Germans Back to the Dark Ages: Blackouts Now Part of Daily Life

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Germans are supposed to understand engineering but that doesn’t seem to apply to their leaders, at least where ideological obsession is a factor.
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Talkshop link: Diesel generators installed in South Australia

STOP THESE THINGS

Mutti Merkel’s suicidal obsession with sun &
wind sends Germans to a New Dark Age.

Renewable energy zealots keep ranting about the ‘inevitable transition’ to wind and solar power. The only thing inevitable about it, is rocketing power prices and routine blackouts.

If you don’t believe us, ask a German, South Australian or a Victorian.

All three have been hijacked by lunatics, obsessed with nature’s wonder fuels, the sun and wind; all three suffer retail power prices which are the highest in the world (or in Victoria’s case, rocketing in that direction); and all three have suffered, and will continue to suffer, mass blackouts and routine load shedding, simply because they’re attempting the impossible.

If the tech-savvy Germans can’t make wind and solar power work (despite trillions of euros in subsidies), it’s a pretty fair bet that this wholly weather-dependent nonsense isn’t going to work anywhere on…

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Historic energy milestone: US oil output surges to new record highs

The US Permian Basin has massive oil and gas reserves [credit: theamericanenergynews.com]

No sign of demand for oil fading any time soon, despite all the climate propaganda from wishful thinkers. Even web searches for ‘peak oil’ have declined as US production has soared. Everyone knows, or ought to, that turning the oil tap off would collapse any industrial economy in days.
H/T The GWPF

US crude oil output surges to new all-time record highs in January. It’s a great day for the US energy industry, a great day for the frackers, and a great day for American-style capitalism, says Mark J. Perry of AEIdeas.

I haven’t used the Drudge Report siren in a long time, but thought it was appropriate today to announce a monumental and historic US energy milestone: US crude oil production set a monthly record in January of 10.2 million barrels per day (bpd), based on the EIA’s most recent monthly forecast that was released yesterday (see top chart above).

January’s crude oil production topped the previous record of 10.04 million bpd established back in November 1970, more than 47 years ago.

Bordeaux’s ‘magnificent’ lost vintage pushes small growers to the edge

Bordeaux in south western France
Credit: worldatlas.com

The French wine industry in Bordeaux is counting the cost of the unusual April 2017 frosts that wiped out 40% of its expected crop, with some growers losing over 70%. Nothing like it had happened in the region for over 25 years. Quote: “As of January 3, banks are starting to pull back. They’ve been sending out letters demanding that short-term loans be paid back immediately”.

Surveying a nearly empty cellar, Frederic Nivelle of Bordeaux’s prestigious Chateau Climens, reflects on what might have been an outstanding year for the sweet white Sauternes wine, reports Phys.org.

“We have nine batches which are satisfactory but not enough to produce a Climens,” Nivelle says of the 2017 harvest.

“It’s a shame, it had a nice potential.”

‘Sinking’ Pacific Island Touted as Prime Climate Change Victim is Actually Rising Out of the Sea: Study

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More climate alarm propaganda goes up in smoke.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

From Breitbart:

A University of Auckland study examined changes in the geography of Tuvalu’s nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, using aerial photographs and satellite imagery.

It found eight of the atolls and almost three-quarters of the islands grew during the study period, lifting Tuvalu’s total land area by 2.9 percent, even though sea levels in the country rose at twice the global average.

Co-author Paul Kench said the research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, challenged the assumption that low-lying island nations would be swamped as the sea rose.

“We tend to think of Pacific atolls as static landforms that will simply be inundated as sea levels rise, but there is growing evidence these islands are geologically dynamic and are constantly changing,” he said.

“The study findings may seem counter-intuitive, given that (the) sea level has been rising in the region…

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Leaky atmosphere linked to lightweight planet

Solar wind at Mars [image credit: universetoday.com]

The researchers say ‘the solar wind likely only had a very small direct effect on the amount of Mars atmosphere that has been lost over time.’ This makes them suspect that ‘a magnetic field is not as important in shielding a planet’s atmosphere as the planet’s gravity itself.’ It was always hard to see how the magnetic shield theory worked when Venus with its dense atmosphere has little magnetism.

The Red Planet’s low gravity and lack of magnetic field makes its outermost atmosphere an easy target to be swept away by the solar wind, but new evidence from ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft shows that the Sun’s radiation may play a surprising role in its escape, reports Phys.org.

Why the atmospheres of the rocky planets in the inner solar system evolved so differently over 4.6 billion years is key to understanding what makes a planet habitable.

Toward a better prediction of solar eruptions

Solar flare [image credit: NASA/SDO]

The “entangled magnetic ‘rope’ forms” leading to eruptions sound similar to Birkeland currents, which can become like ‘twisted or braided rope’ and also feature in auroras.

A single phenomenon may underlie all solar eruptions, according to researchers from the CNRS, École Polytechnique, CEA and INRIA in an article featured on the cover of the February 8 issue of Nature.

They have identified the presence of a confining ‘cage’ in which an entangled magnetic ‘rope’ forms, causing solar eruptions, reports Phys.org.

It is the resistance of this cage to the attack of the rope that determines the power and type of the upcoming flare.

This work has enabled the scientists to develop a model capable of predicting the maximum energy that can be released during a solar flare, which could have potentially devastating consequences for the Earth.

Reduced energy from the sun might occur by mid-century—now, scientists know by how much

Well, they may think they do. But once they accept that the Sun can vary its output they have to accept it can vary up or down. If there’s a ‘grand minimum’ then there should be a ‘grand maximum’ (which may have just happened), and all points in between. Claims of ‘human-induced climate change’ have to be weighed against natural variation. The fact that reports like this are starting to appear suggests the writing is on the wall for climate warmists, due to natural factors they used to claim were too trivial to mention.

The sun might emit less radiation by mid-century, giving planet Earth a chance to warm a bit more slowly but not halt the trend of human-induced climate change, says Phys.org.

The cooldown would be the result of what scientists call a grand minimum, a periodic event during which the sun’s magnetism diminishes, sunspots form infrequently, and less ultraviolet radiation makes it to the surface of the planet.

Scientists believe that the event is triggered at irregular intervals by random fluctuations related to the sun’s magnetic field.

Travel chaos in France as snow blankets Paris

Closed due to snow [image credit: BBC]

This is the place where top politicians met to ‘save the world’ from climate change aka global warming. Who needs snowploughs in cities any more?

Snowfall has caused huge traffic jams and hampered train services in the Paris region as the French capital experiences its first real dose of wintry weather this season, reports France 24.

The Meteo France weather service put the greater Paris region on alert for snow and black ice on roads, among 28 departments it expected to be on alert across the country until late on Wednesday.

The weather caused major gridlock across the city, with more than 700 kilometres (430 miles) of traffic jams recorded by Tuesday evening, and similar congestion expected through Wednesday after the snowfall intensified overnight.

Existence of dark matter questioned by new observations

Image credit: phys.org

When does absence of evidence become evidence of absence? Dark matter has never been detected despite years of effort. Here we have ‘a universal phenomenon that demands new explanations’, says the lead researcher. Galaxies in disc-shaped planes appear to mirror what we see with solar systems – like ours – and their planets.

An international team of astronomers led by the University of Basel in Switzerland has looked at the movement and distribution of satellite galaxies in the constellation Centaurus A and finds that their observations call into question the existence of dark matter, says The Space Reporter.

The findings are reported in the journal Science.

Dark matter is a hypothetical type of invisible matter that has never been directly observed because it does not emit or interact with electromagnetic radiation. Its existence has been inferred by its apparent influences on visible matter and light.

The Forgotten Renewable: Geothermal Energy Production Heats Up

Credit: energy.gov

California is – somewhat optimistically perhaps – looking to phase out its use of fossil fuels, and equally reliable alternatives need to be found and developed.

Experts say the American West is full of geothermal reservoirs whose energy could power millions of homes. But extracting that energy isn’t easy, as NPR explains.

Three and a half hours east of Los Angeles lies the Salton Sea, a manmade oasis in the heart of the Mojave Desert.

It was created in 1905, when a canal broke and the Colorado River flooded the desert for more than a year. The Sea became a tourist hotspot in the 1950’s, perfect for swimming, boating, and kayaking.

But now, people are coming here looking for something else.

Treason.

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Pointman dissects the import of the Nunes memo, and the deeper malaise lurking behind its revelations.

Pointman's

With the publication of the FISA memo, you’re going to be getting finely detailed analyses, retrospective construction of the pertinent timelines, what’s actually in it and so on. Instead of following that route, I’d like to make some general observations, drawn from my own experiences dealing with similar but more modest situations, about how the events detailed in it could ever come about, who I think are the other culprits ducking furiously the fan-propelled ordure, the eternal question of what is to be done, and last but not least, what are the deeper implications of the insight America has just had into the inner workings of what President Trump rightly named the Washington swamp.

As usual, Trump has used the opportunity to its most devastating effect. It’s another Trump Zugzwang, with no non-damaging way out of it for the opposition. He’s been extremely careful to stay remote from its…

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White House seeking to slash renewable energy research: report

US wind farm [image credit: Steve Wilson @ Wikipedia]

Some resistance is inevitable but the policy is clear: let the renewables industries pay more for their own research.
H/T Phys.org

The Trump administration will ask Congress to cut funding for clean energy and energy efficiency programs by 72 percent in this year’s budget, according to a report in the Washington Post, underscoring its preference for fossil fuels.

The Post said it had obtained draft documents that outlined the administration’s starting point for negotiations for the 2018 budget, set to be unveiled in February.

Congress, which is ultimately tasked with deciding appropriations, could push back—but the documents signal the White House’s policy priorities, the newspaper said.