The Texas well that started a revolution and changed the world forever

Permian shale, Texas [image credit: fulcrium.com]

Not a bad idea from someone who admitted “I was just trying to keep my job”.
H/T The GWPF

Two decades ago, an engineer tried a new way to get gas out of the ground. Energy markets and global politics would never be the same, writes Russell Gold @ The Wall Street Journal.

DISH, Texas – Twenty years ago this month, a well was drilled here that changed the world.

Nothing at the time suggested the unassuming well in this rural town north of Fort Worth would hobble OPEC, the powerful oil cartel that had governed prices of the world’s most important commodity for more than a generation. Or that it would help turn the U.S. into a global energy exporter, or shuffle the geopolitical deck.

But it did all of that – and more.

Gerald Marsh, A Theory of Ice Ages

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An interesting contribution to the ice age debate here. Problems with Milankovitch and CO2-related theories are discussed.

Thongchai Thailand

Gerald Marsh, retired Argonne National Laboratories Physicist, challenges the usual assumption that ice age cycles are initiated by Milankovich Cycles and driven by the Arrhenius effect of carbon dioxide. He says that the key variable here is “low altitude cloud cover” driven by cosmic rays. A paper worth reading.

ABSTRACT

1. The existing understanding of interglacial periods is that they
   are initiated by Milankovitch cycles enhanced by rising atmospheric
   carbon dioxide concentrations. During interglacials, global temperature is
   also believed to be primarily controlled by carbon dioxide concentrations,
   modulated by internal processes such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
   and the North Atlantic Oscillation. Recent work challenges the
   fundamental basis of these conceptions.
2. INTRODUCTION
   The history of the role of carbon dioxide in climate begins with the work of Tyndall 1861 and later in 1896 by Arrhenius. The concept that carbon dioxide controlled climate fell into disfavor for a variety of reasons until…

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Nature Unbound IX – 21st Century Climate Change

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A wide-ranging discussion of climate scenarios here, including the likely efficiency of global carbon sinks and the pros and cons of a forthcoming solar grand minimum.

Climate Etc.

by Javier

A conservative outlook on 21st century climate change

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Ever wonder where the 275 billion taxpayers money went that got poured down the EU carbon trading system hole?

Talkshop readers may remember a damning report by UBS about the billions of public money lost in the ETS carbon trading system. It calculated that if the money had been invested in modernising the European power generation fleet, CO2 could have been cut by 40% (and generate a huge number of high quality jobs). EU emissions rose 1.8% last year.

Despite all the recent turmoil over the UK steel industry and meetings in Brussels today, the reality is that the European Union has actually been subsidising the Chinese steel industry for years, in payments hidden amongst its efforts to combat Climate Change.

Using complex methods of carbon credits and carbon offsets, the EU devised rules on climate change ended up paying Chinese steel manufacturers billions to upgrade their steel mills and other energy intensive industry.

According to the analysis company, European Insights, almost €1.5 billion was paid to over 90 steel plants in China with the purpose of modernising them to consume less energy, and making the plants more efficient. Taken with the downturn in Chinese trade and the need for them to reduce world market prices to sell their product, the output of these mills has flooded onto the European market making steel products artificially cheap and endangering thousands of jobs in the UK. One plant alone, Anshan Iron and Steel, received a payment of €150 million to help pay for the installation of up to date equipment and replace the old inefficient Communist era machinery.

Why is London’s Central line so hot? Science has the answer

Bank station on the Central Line

This has little or nothing to do with the weather. Ingenious engineers needed to find ways to take some of the heat off London’s perspiring Central Line travellers.

The London Underground is hot. But nowhere is hotter than the Central line, which is routinely so hot that it exceeds the EU limit at which it is legal to transport cows, sheep and pigs, says Wired UK.
. . .
Cooling the Central line in particular presents an almost impossible puzzle for TfL [Transport for London] to solve.

CFACT billboard — Russia funneled cash to Greens to cripple energy

June 21, 2018 by CFACT

CFACT’s kicked off a new billboard on busy I-10 in Louisiana which reads, “Russia funneled Green groups millions of dollars to oppose fracking & cripple American energy,” and asks, “How’s that for COLLUSION?”

The billboard campaign was spearheaded by CFACT’s Graham Beduze and Adam Houser.

Russia wants to reduce and eliminate competition to its energy exports with the goal of keeping prices high and the world, particularly Europe, dependent on Russian energy.

What better allies could Putin find but the free world’s network of Green pressure groups?

The coldest place on Earth is nearing the ultimate limits of our planet

Antarctica

A spot of light reading during the current UK heatwave…how does minus 98 degrees Celsius at Earth’s surface sound? This study of Antarctic data finds that ‘the air needs to be extremely dry to get temperatures this far below zero. Any water vapour in the air tends to heat it up, albeit slightly.’

So cold it would be painful to breathe says ScienceAlert.

Just how cold can it get on Earth? Colder than we thought, apparently. A new study of satellite data reports that valleys in Antarctica’s ice sheets can reach close to minus 100 degrees Celsius (or minus 148 degrees Fahrenheit).

UK beer sales restricted amid CO2 shortage

Bad news for beer-loving football fans in the UK as the World Cup progresses. This is the same gas that climate-obsessed governments want to spend a fortune of our taxes – some from beer – on capturing and burying. You couldn’t make it up.

Food wholesaler Booker is rationing beer and cider because of a shortage of CO2 used in carbonated drinks, reports BBC News.

The Tesco-owned retailer, which is used by bars, restaurants and traders, is capping customers to 10 cases of beer, and five of cider or soft drinks.

It is more evidence that a scarcity of CO2 is hurting the food and drink sectors, and comes after Heineken and Coca-Cola faced disruption.

Swansea Bay tidal lagoon rejection decision criticised

Dead in the water: Swansea tidal lagoon [image credit: BBC]

In the end this project was just too expensive and too risky it seems. Even wind power offered better value, and without the 90-year subsidy commitment.

A decision by the UK government not to back the world’s first tidal power lagoon could have been made 18 months ago, according to the man who led an independent review into the plans.

Charles Hendry backed the £1.3bn Swansea Bay project in his government-commissioned review of January 2017.

Heathrow airport: MPs vote in favour of expansion

Climate miserablists wail, but public demand and commercial reality have taken priority. The skies over west London are set to become even busier. Air travel is expanding worldwide and protesters can’t change that, but the location is still controversial for some.

MPs have backed controversial plans to build a third runway at London’s Heathrow airport, reports BBC News.

The government won a key vote in the Commons by 415 votes to 119 – a majority of 296.

Judge throws out climate change lawsuit against ‘Big Oil’

An ambitious attempt to extort vast sums of money from the oil industry, by using the US legal system to bypass normal democratic political process on the pretext of supposed climate problems, has drawn an expensive blank in court.
H/T The GWPF.

San Francisco (AP) — A U.S. judge who held a hearing about climate change that received widespread attention ruled Monday that Congress and the president were best suited to address the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming, throwing out lawsuits that sought to hold big oil companies liable for the Earth’s changing environment.

New York announces ‘Energy Storage Roadmap’ to hit low carbon goals

New York’s other Battery: Battery Park in Manhattan (image credit: Gryffindor @ Wikipedia)

New York expects to change its future weather by installing lots of expensive mega-batteries, according to the Governor. But is fear of a harmless trace gas essential to life more like superstition than science?

The state has set a target to install 1.5GW of batteries by 2025, reports Energy Live News.

New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has announced an ‘Energy Storage Roadmap’ to guide the state toward its energy storage target of 1.5GW by 2025.

How Long Do We Have To Wait For Global Warming to be Proved? Is Thirty Years Enough?

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Since climate scares were first sponsored by governments, neither the theory of man-made causality nor the evidence for it have improved. Models have failed to predict what actually happened. Time’s almost up for alarmists.

American Elephants

Fool Me Once Shame on You,
Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me.

It was just 30 years ago this week that James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee during a prolonged heat wave, which” he described as a climate event of cosmic significance.” Just to be sure he arranged for the meeting room to be warmer than usual. He expressed to the senators “his high degree of confidence” in “cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.”

There was an accompanying paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research, and it ignited a world wide panic that continues today about the energy structure of the entire planet. So 30 years on we can pause and take a look at just how well his predictions have turned out, and check on how we are doing.

Mr. Hansen’s testimony described three possible…

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Paris slams brakes on electric car-sharing scheme

Thumbs down for Paris e_car scheme [image credit: businessinsider.com]

Another ‘green’ fantasy bites the dust in the face of old-fashioned economic realities. Once again, without massive subsidies of public money the numbers just didn’t add up. Calling a taxi seems to have won the day. Now it’s see-you-in-court time as recriminations kick off.

The city of Paris is pulling the plug on an electric car-sharing system once hailed as the future of urban transport, with officials voting to cancel the contract in the face of mounting losses, as Phys.org reports.

The more than 4,000 silver Autolib hatchbacks had become a fixture on the streets of the French capital, with docking stations for the electric vehicles found every few blocks.

Forecast predicts below-average hurricane activity

Image credit: sanibelrealestateguide.com

US researchers who accurately forecast last year’s busy Atlantic hurricane season are not expecting a similar level of activity this year, partly due to lower sea surface temperatures as El Niño effects fade away.

Hurricane season didn’t officially start until June 1, but Subtropical Storm Alberto made an appearance early, causing more than $50 million in damage as it made its way inland and up the coast in late May, reports Phys.org.

Twelve people—seven in Cuba and five in the U.S.—died as Alberto’s fallout included flooding, landslides, tornados and mudslides.

Is Alberto’s early-season appearance an indicator of another active Atlantic hurricane season? Not necessarily, according to predictions by researchers at the University of Arizona.

Ted Cruz demands investigation into taxpayer-funded global warming ‘advocacy’

Borrowing Hollywood titles like ‘a clear and present danger’ isn’t going to overcome the fact that colourful predictions made about the climate by modellers and climate alarmists in general have failed to materialise. BBC – take note.

‘It is propagandizing’ – Daily Caller reporting.

Republican senators asked federal investigators to look into whether or not several National Science Foundation (NSF) grants broke federal law, including funding projects lawmakers sought to “influence political and social debate” on global warming.

Norway tests tiny electric plane, sees passenger flights by 2025

Avinor’s electric plane [image credit: inhabitat.com]

It’s tiny, hard to get into and battery weight is still a major problem, but the latest ‘green’ toy has got off the ground. However, Norway is also one of the world’s leading oil and gas exporters. Crude oil and natural gas accounted for 40% of the country’s total export value in 2015.

OSLO (Reuters) — Norway tested a two-seater electric plane on Monday and predicted a start to passenger flights by 2025 if new aviation technologies match a green shift that has made Norwegians the world’s top buyers of electric cars.

Wear white on the solstice to celebrate polar bear success in a warming world

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Add polar bear non-decline to the long list of climate alarms that the doomsters have got embarrassingly wrong.

polarbearscience

Wednesday 21 June is the longest day of the year: wear something white tomorrow to acknowledge and celebrate the success of polar bears despite such low summer sea ice since 2007 that 2/3 of them were predicted to disappear.

White tie, white shirt, white socks work too. Keep cool and signal to the world that you love outstanding survivors of climate change,  fat though they may be.

Read here and here.

Global sea ice extent at 19 June 2018, well past the end of the intensive spring feeding period for polar bears:

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The alarmists are getting restless, funding cuts are leading to ever wilder predictions.

James Anderson, of ozone hole fame says:

The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero.

But that’s not all. Not only is the Arctic ice going to disappear, but WE are too.

Australian cold snap produces heavy snow, challenges some records

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Weather report speaks of ‘remarkably heavy early-season snow’ in parts of the Australian alps. Makes a change from tedious climate alarmist whingeing about bits of Western Antarctica ‘melting’.