In The News

[knocker]

NOAA researchers release study on emissions from BP/Deepwater Horizon controlled burns

During the 2010 BP/Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill, an estimated one of every 20 barrels of spilled oil was deliberately burned off to reduce the size of surface oil slicks and minimize impacts of oil on sensitive shoreline ecosystems and marine life. In response to the spill, NOAA quickly redirected its WP-3D research aircraft to survey the atmosphere above the spill site in June. During a flight through one of the black plumes, scientists used sophisticated instrumentation on board, including NOAA's single-particle soot photometer, to characterize individual black carbon particles.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110920_gulfplume.html

(Credit: U.S. Coast Guard photo)

[Alan Robinson]

That's what I'd call incomplete combustion.

[knocker]

Stand up to Putin and stop the Cold Rush

Ben Macintyre

The Arctic must be put under global law to avert the catastrophe threatened by the scramble for its fuels

On a recent visit to Norway I travelled to Hammerfest, the most northerly town in Europe, a former fishing village at the farthest tip of the inhabitable earth, perched on the edge of Arctic waters.

It was cold. Eye-streamingly, spit-freezingly, ear-gnawingly cold. But not cold enough.

After centuries in the grip of polar ice, the once-frozen north is thawing at a staggering rate. This month scientists from Bremen reported that owing to “man-made global warming” Arctic ice is melting at the fastest pace for 40 years. In 30 years’ time, the polar region could be fully defrosted.

Hammerfest perfectly illustrates the brutally vicious circle of global warming and Arctic oil exploration. The town is home to a vast terminal that processes gas brought from the Snøhvit (Snow White) gas field along an 87-mile underwater pipeline, the longest in the world.

The melting of the polar ice is enabling oil companies to explore further and drill deeper than ever before. In April Norway announced the discovery of another oil field at Skrugard with an estimated half a million barrels, 40 miles north of Snow White. As more oil is found and more greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere, the icemelt quickens, allowing the discovery of yet more. Fossil fuel emissions are making more fossil fuels accessible. The Arctic may contain one fifth of the world’s undiscovered gas and oil, a flood of fuel that could turn the region into a chilly Saudi Arabia.

The oil producers are in the enviable position of selling something that automatically makes more of what they sell available. That is splendid news for oil companies, and the Arctic powers scrabbling for rights to the undersea loot — Russia, Canada, the US, Norway and Denmark (via Greenland). But for the planet, the so-called Cold Rush under way in places such as Hammerfest is a self-accelerating ecological calamity.

The old Arctic is dying. Once the ideal of exploration, the region seemed perfectly empty, a place so hostile that it belonged to all and none. And so the explorers competed to reach the pole, less a place than a geometric and romantic notion. The gains they sought were intangible. The very pointlessness of the endeavour was the point. The explorers came by ski, dogsled and hot-air balloon. The French, in a moment of inspired madness, imagined a two-man submarine that would slip under the ice and then pop up at the pole in an “Open Polar Sea”, a theory based on pure wishful thinking. Despite the intense (and frequently suicidal) competition to get there, the frozen north was shared, because it was not somewhere anyone might live, let alone prosper, but an idea.

The American explorer Robert Peary looked north and saw “a great white disc stretching away apparently infinitely”. When he reached the North Pole in 1909 (claiming, controversially, to be the first) he wrote: “I have won the last great geographical prize . . . the finish, the cap, the climax, of 300 years of effort, loss of life, and expenditure of millions by some of the best men of the civilised nations of the world.”

Much of Peary’s great white disc is now an open polar sea, while nations compete for the great prizes beneath. In 2007, the Russian explorer Artur Chilingarov completed half the French plan by taking a submarine beneath the pole to plant a Russian flag, and insisting: “The Arctic is ours and we should manifest our presence”. Here was a precise expression of the Putin credo: technologically adept, greedy and aggressive.

But Russia is not alone in seeking to exploit the newly accessible north. Canada proclaims “a real, growing, long-term presence in the Arctic”. Denmark will soon lay formal territorial claim to the pole. The US bickers with Canada over the sovereignty of the Northwest Passage, once imaginary, now a profitable shortcut over the top of the world, open for much of the summer.

The Arctic, once a shared idea, is being carved up, to get at what the US Geological Survey calls “the largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum mining remaining on Earth”. But we will burn through that swiftly enough, forcing the ice pack faster into retreat by the implacable science of ice reflecting the sun’s heat, while water absorbs it.

For the inhabitants of Hammerfest, the wonderful world of Snow White has turned out to be smutty. In 2007, when the processing plant opened, technical problems meant that excess gas to be “flared” — oil-speak for “burnt pointlessly”. Soot descended on the town. Snow White’s flares were held largely responsible for a 3 per cent rise in Norway’s greenhouse gas emissions that year.

This would not be the first catastrophic Arctic oil rush. In the 1860s, whalers who had plundered the southerly oceans headed north in search of fresh whale oil. The whales and walrus were killed off in vast numbers, and with them the Eskimo community. One whaling captain described how “mothers took their starving children to the burying grounds and then strangled them or let the intense cold end their misery”.

Now there is another stampede to strip the place of its natural resources, with little thought for the climatic and human consequence. It was always hard to reach the North Pole on foot, but it may soon be impossible, because the ice will be sea, melted by the fuels rendered retrievable through climate change.

Unless the cycle is broken. Not mediated by international treaties, or slowed, but halted. The WWF has called for a moratorium on all new oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. Greenpeace has launched a campaign to declare the Arctic international territory, off limits for drilling, declaring: “The area around the North Pole should be a ‘global commons’, collectively owned by humanity under the auspices of the United Nations.”

The Arctic was once unowned, when it was assumed to contained nothing of value. Now it should become a shared place again, because its lethal riches threaten the world.

Changing the status of the Arctic would require a fundamental shift in international law, an heroic act of collective willpower by the civilised nations of the world, and a willingness to stand up to bruisers such as Putin.

The dream of a shared Arctic might seem fanciful, futile, a project destined to end in failure and disappointment. But then that is exactly what they said about humanity’s quest to reach the North Pole, until we got there.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article3176230.ece

[Gray-Wolf]

Not a lot to add to that W.S.!

[knocker]

Using the energy in oil shale without releasing carbon dioxide in a greenhouse world

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28, 2011 — New technology that combines production of electricity with capture of carbon dioxide could make billions of barrels of oil shale — now regarded as off-limits because of the huge amounts of carbon dioxide released in its production — available as an energy source. That's the topic of the latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions" podcast series.

Adam Brandt, Ph.D., notes in the podcast that almost 3 trillion barrels of oil are trapped in the world's deposits of oil-shale, a dark-colored rock laden with petroleum-like material. Brandt and colleague Hiren Mulchandani are at Stanford University.

The United States has by far the world's largest deposits in the Green River Formation, which covers parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The domestic oil shale resource could provide 1.2 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels. But concerns over the large amounts of greenhouse gases — mainly carbon dioxide — released by current methods prevent many companies from trying to extract oil from shale.

Brandt's answer is EPICC — a self-fueled method that generates electricity, as well as the heat needed to produce that electricity from shale. The report, which appears in ACS' journal Energy & Fuels, describes how EPICC could generate large amounts of electricity without releasing into the atmosphere carbon dioxide from burning the shale. That carbon would be captured and stored underground as part of the production process.

###

The new podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from www.acs.org/globalchallenges.

[Alan Robinson]

http://www.dmi.dk/dm...obal_opvarmning

According to an article in Geophysical Research letters it seems now that physical processes near the tropopause are not entirely understood. The suspicion is that abnormal thunder storms which extend into stratosphere transport enormous volumes of ice crystals from the troposphere, and in the form of water vapour further towards the poles by the Brewer Dobson circulation.

The occurrence of such thunderstorms since 2001 has for some reason been less frequent, and calculations indicate that reduced water vapour in the lower stratosphere has moderated the general rise of surface temperatures.

Anne Mette K. Jørgensen at the Danish Meteorological Institute comments that such discoveries only make more difficult the task of explaining climate change to the general public. When the frequency of these very high thunderstorms returns to normal, we shall very likely see global temperatures increasing with a vengeance.

(The article here is written in something like tabloid newspaper style, so this is my loose translation containing the essentials).

Edited October 7, 2011 by Alan Robinson

[Gray-Wolf]

Well fancy that?

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/climatesnapshot/2011/09/27/nasa-it-rained-so-hard-oceans-fell

[Kained]

"Ultraviolet light shone on cold winter conundrum"

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-15199065

It would seem the Sun is now, at least partially recognised, as having an effect on climate.

Edited October 10, 2011 by Kained

[loafer]

Well fancy that?

http://www.vancouver...ard-oceans-fell

So, if I get this argument right, sea levels have fallen because there are more clouds, causing more rainstorms.

Two obvious questions;

1 why doesn't the rain which falls reach the sea? where does it go under this model?

2 why don't the implied increase in clouds reduce solar gain and therefore reduce temperatures, self correcting the issue?

In truth, the "article" is not journalism, it is badly thought out and highly partial propaganda..

[Methuselah]

"Ultraviolet light shone on cold winter conundrum"

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-15199065

It would seem the Sun is now, at least partially recognised, as having an effect on climate.

Has that ever truly been in any doubt?

[pottyprof]

Has that ever truly been in any doubt?

Yes Pete, it has been in doubt. There are many articles claiming that the sun has no effect on climate. It was even discussed on here with many of our regular posters at the time who support the whole AGW idea pointing this out with glee. Then they say that people who don't support the AGW theory are plain wrong.

[Iceberg]

Sorry PP I can't remember anybody or any articles "claiming that the sun has no effect on climate".

IT was exactly this kind of taking things said out of context that led to me stop contributing in here, I read the thread for the first time in weeks, I see that nothing has really changed...Shame. Shame for NetWeather.

[pottyprof]

Sorry PP I can't remember anybody or any articles "claiming that the sun has no effect on climate".

IT was exactly this kind of taking things said out of context that led to me stop contributing in here, I read the thread for the first time in weeks, I see that nothing has really changed...Shame. Shame for NetWeather.

Funny thing is, I've found part of what I was looking for and you were involved in that discussion... Selective Memory Syndrome ?

[Iceberg]

Not at all post it for all to see it's quite easy to link to a NW page or thread.. Don't be shy.

[pottyprof]

Do what I did and look in the archive..... I'll post a bit later.

[Iceberg]

Why on earth do I want to look for something that doesn't exist. ?

I'll await evidence for anybody or any articles "claiming that the sun has no effect on climate" on NW

If not then maybe NETW forum members/team members will stop this kind of behaviour.

[VillagePlank]

Wow - slow down guys.

Amongst the more longer time serving members, it is well known that I am a strong advocate of solar induced climate change. I have my reasons, and, as of yet, have been unable to demonstrate them to the 95% certainty level required for someone else to take it seriously. Which is why I am largely silent on the matter.

If I can take a step backwards and not engage in schadenfreude I am certain that everyone else can.

[jethro]

Why on earth do I want to look for something that doesn't exist. ?

I'll await evidence for anybody or any articles "claiming that the sun has no effect on climate" on NW

If not then maybe NETW forum members/team members will stop this kind of behaviour.

On the subject of behaviour.... you're the one jumping up and down and shouting the odds, I agree it isn't welcome so please stop.

On the topic of Solar influence....the consensus view of those who support the theory of AGW (I include many forum members here and the IPCC) has been that the only variance which may impact climate is the difference in TSI. It had been decreed that the changes in recent decades in the TSI was not a determining factor in climate change, it couldn't account for the temperature changes we have experienced and thus was irrelevant to the climate discussions. In short, there was no Solar impact upon climate other than full blown ice ages. It was also decided that as periods such as the LIA and the MWP were not deemed to have been global events then the quiet Solar activity was merely a coincidence.

It is the sceptical side of this polarised debate which has argued time and again that merely measuring TSI and deciding that is the only contributing factor to climate which is attributable to the Sun, is not only un-scientific but short sighted and the pro side who have held on to TSI as being the only factor worth measuring. And Iceberg you have been a major contributor to those discussions, you have long argued that if the Sun had an impact it would be instantly measurable in the global temperature record, you've even posted comparison charts trying to decipher and discern a clear lag pattern.

[Iceberg]

Hang on Jethro, I have simply pulled up a member of the forum team who made a baseless comment about other people on this forum which in the process did nothing but polarised the debate and I am suddenly in the wrong by a forum moderator am I not allowed to point out that this has happened ?

What you've said it not my position and is not the position of the IPCC.

Either it's acceptable for people of the forum team to put words in peoples mouths or say things that are not true or it's not, if it's not then it should not be allowed.

All I did was visited a part of the forum I've not been too for quite a while only to find myself and others implied in something that was not true.

Why don't people stop trying to decide what views myself and others have held and actually discuss the science

[Kained]

I'm sure there's more recent material but as jethro outlines, the Sun's effect has previously been relegated as it has been perceived as a constant allowing greenhouse gases to take a more prominent role.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7327393.stm

"Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun's activity."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11650-climate-myths-global-warming-is-down-to-the-sun-not-humans.html

"The 2007 IPCC report halved the maximum likely influence of solar forcing on warming over the past 250 years from 40% to 20%."

"Similarly, there is no trend in direct measurements of the Sun's ultraviolet output and in cosmic rays. So for the period for which we have direct, reliable records, the Earth has warmed dramatically even though there has been no corresponding rise in any kind of solar activity."

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/19990408/

"According to Shindell, the new study also confirms that changing levels of energy from the sun are not a major cause of global warming."

[Gray-Wolf]

Surely we all both know ,and accept, that climate starts with the Sun?

Why is this now a topic for unrest amongst folk?

We (mankind) are trashing our planet (ask the sea life in New Zealand!) and it is the impacts of this abuse that we debate surely???

Edited October 11, 2011 by Gray-Wolf

[Methuselah]

Yes Pete, it has been in doubt. There are many articles claiming that the sun has no effect on climate. It was even discussed on here with many of our regular posters at the time who support the whole AGW idea pointing this out with glee. Then they say that people who don't support the AGW theory are plain wrong.

I don't believe that anyone has ever (seriously) claimed that the Sun has no effect on climate. It's more a matter of not blindly accepting some of the myriad specific effects claimed by some commentators.

After all, the globe gets more than 99.9% of its heat from the Sun. How could that not have any effect on climate?

[laserguy]

I can barely believe that after all this time and everything that's gone down in "climate science" that anyone is clinging on to the ridiculous notion of our truly pitiful CO2 contribution having an effect,any effect whatsoever on our climate. It truly beggars belief that a relatively uneducated,and certainly not possessing any meaningful knowledge of atmospheric dynamics or whatever sort-of-person,could have concluded many years ago and without any doubt that ol sol' was and is behind the alleged anomolous changes that have occurred,in contradiction to the "settled science" (ha ha,that's a good 'un). And now lo and behold in these days of global warming an explanation has to be found for our sudden and dramatic return to proper winters - and the vague promise of more to come. "It's the sun"! Wonder if the run of scorching summers and mild winters pre 2007 will be subsequently explained away by the then highly and unusually active episode the sun went through? Ah but no matter what goes down in the UK it'll always be busting heat records somewhere out of sight (courtesy of CO2,natch),and even when cold records tumble it'll be a by-product of... well,y'know.

The whole phoney circus and the weird bunch of sycophants it attracts makes me very queasy.

[jethro]

Hang on Jethro, I have simply pulled up a member of the forum team who made a baseless comment about other people on this forum which in the process did nothing but polarised the debate and I am suddenly in the wrong by a forum moderator am I not allowed to point out that this has happened ?

What you've said it not my position and is not the position of the IPCC.

Either it's acceptable for people of the forum team to put words in peoples mouths or say things that are not true or it's not, if it's not then it should not be allowed.

All I did was visited a part of the forum I've not been too for quite a while only to find myself and others implied in something that was not true.

Why don't people stop trying to decide what views myself and others have held and actually discuss the science

I've taken a couple of days to think about what you've said, the last thing I want to do is add fuel to the fire. Having thought about it, I think my previous response was valid - let me explain why.

My view on climate change is that the basic theory of AGW and CO2 causing warming is accurate - I agree we have the potential to alter climate with our activities. In the polarised debate that dominates these discussions, this would make me pro AGW. However, I question the degree of warming attributable to humans and dispute that the warming in recent decades can be directly attributed to humans - this should put me in the sceptic camp. The reality is, I'm neither pro nor sceptic, I'm in no man's land in the middle. Having been around on this forum for quite a few years now, I think it's safe to say that the majority view on here is similar to my own.

The problems with these discussions always seem to stem from polarised views which, given that most people are really in the middle ground, seem utterly pointless.

The latest findings regarding the contribution from the Sun to recent climate are IMO a step towards the middle ground - we can no longer have the polarised input of 'TSI is the only thing which changes and so can be the only thing having an impact' and it should damp down the equally polarised view of 'it's all down to the Sun'. Again IMO, this middle ground should be welcomed with open arms.

If this new information is going to be greeted with claims that the pro side of the debate always said the Sun affected climate in ways other than TSI when the official measurement for the Sun in the IPCC reports was limited to only TSI, then the polarised debate will continue. Compromise is the key to all success, acknowledgement that the perceived sceptic side of the debate were right to suggest that the Sun couldn't only be measured in terms of TSI doesn't seem too difficult to me. Progress in scientific studies can only really be made if people work together, an idea can be good or bad, regardless of which side of this debate it comes from.

There is no room in this debate for comments to be taken personally unless someone is personally involved with the research in question, all comments should be taken as generic terms. Taking such a combative tone, especially after many months absence wasn't really conducive to discussion; there's a lot of potential in this new research and as you said, it is science we should be discussing.

[Waterspout]

I'm sure there's more recent material but as jethro outlines, the Sun's effect has previously been relegated as it has been perceived as a constant allowing greenhouse gases to take a more prominent role.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7327393.stm

"Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun's activity."

Brings back memories that article by Richard Black in 2008. At that time I was highly active in this Climate debate, although since then I take more of a back seat now! Mostly because the main Forum site I used to post on (which I will not mention here) decided to stop the debate by basically annexing a whole side of it - but less said about that really as it's in the past, but I would never return to that site.

But as I recall that article by Richard Black was based on a fast respone by Mike Lockwood (and others) hence why the results where published in the "Letters" - it was basically a fast way to rebut a paper without going through the enitre Peer Review process. Within that paper their main set of data came from the PMOD satellite data when montioring the Suns activity for the past 20 years - PMOD was the less reliable data-set showing TSI and such, as it used intruments that had signal degradation issues, the whole rebuttal basically surrounded whether the minimum of Solar Cylcle 22 was Higher or Lower that Solar Cycle 23 - as the other dataset based on ACRIM - showed the opposite - basically this difference in data came about due to a 2 year blank in data due to the Shuttle Challenger disaster which delayed a replacment satellite being used to monitor the Sun.

Anyway, PMOD was always regarded as an inferior splicing of two datasets - but was used in this case to show Solar actvitiy had declined between the cycles and not actually increased as the ACRIM dataset showed.

It's all very complicated actually, but anyway more recently Mike Lockwood now seems to be publishing papers about The Sun being more important that thought, so I guess we are all learning slowly!

Sorry if this bored anyone! The way ACRIM and PMOD differ is shown here anyway,the "ACRIM GAP" is shown on their main graph which is a gap in data. PMOD interpolated this gap in a different way, and used other satellites to piece together a dataset. Unfortuately within Science, producing Datasets in a certain way can be useful to prove/disprove a trend, which is quite crucial in Cimate Science, so this is an important issue and central to the Mike Lockwood rebutal paper.

http://www.acrim.com/