Fire Ice–Biggest Source Of Natural Gas On The Planet

Posted on August 12, 2017 | Leave a comment

The US Geological Survey (USGS) cited estimates of the methane (CH4) trapped in global methane hydrate (aka methane clathrate, Fire Ice, etc.) deposits are 3600 times more than the 2016 US consumption of natural gas. The 2016 US   consumption of natural gas (natural gas is mostly methane), according to Donn Dears, was 27.5×10^12 cubic feet.

The estimate of trapped gas in the deposits ranges from 10^17 to 5×10^18 cubic feet*.  Those are estimates and further those estimates probably include some amount of methane hydrate that will never be economical to produce. Even so, oil reserves that were supposed to have peaked many years ago, keep growing because of new technology. eg. Fracking.  So, who knows?

*(For the non-engineer or scientist that might not know how much that is, it can be restated as 1 followed by 17 zeros to 5 followed by 18 zeros cubic feet of natural gas.)

Where are the hydrate deposits found?

Methane hydrate deposits are found (or predicted) to be associated with continental margins and onshore permafrost areas. The chart below global areas where deposits are to be found.

First, let’s discuss where the methane originates. Methane is largely produced by micro-organisms that act on the plankton that has accumulated deep in the ocean floor sediments.  In the upper layers of the sediment where the temperature and pressure are suitable, the rising CH4 bubbles are captured in very cold water and the hydrate is formed. While methane produced biogenically is considered the most widespread source, there is another source.  Thermogenic methane is produced where high pressures and high temperatures cook organic matter.

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Posted in China, fossil fuels, Fracking/Shale Gas, methane hydrate, Off Shore Resources, Oil and Gas Exploration, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy, Sea Ice

Global Weather Disasters Are Down Despite The Increase In Atmospheric CO2

Posted on August 6, 2017 | Leave a comment

“The world is presently in an era of unusually low weather disasters. This holds for the weather phenomena that have historically caused the most damage: tropical cyclones, floods, tornadoes and drought. Given how weather events have become politicized in debates over climate change, some find this hard to believe. Fortunately, government and IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) analyses allow such claims to be adjudicated based on science, and not politics.”      

The above is a statement by Roger Pielke, jr.  It is important to note that he cites the IPCC’s  bible of catastrophic man-made global warming. Their bible says there is no proven connection between severe weather events and global warming.  Pielke, jr. is not a skeptic—he is a warmer.

Pielke, Jr. points out the gap between facts and what the alarmists tell the public.

As a skeptic, I am continually frustrated by how successful the alarmist and their cohort, the media, have been in selling the public with bombast.  The media, because they know crisis sells newspapers or because they are, by and large pro big government, have done wonders squelching the actual data.

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An Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore’s Nashville House Electric Use Per Year Is 21 Times The Average American’s Use.

Posted on August 5, 2017 | 1 comment

Over the years, Al Gore’s Nashville house has been a topic of discussion because of the enormous amount of electricity it uses. Frequently it is mentioned as evidence when calling Mr. Gore a hypocrite. According to a posting on TheLid.com titled “How Al Gore Fooled The World Into Paying For His Giant Carbon Footprint” new data shows little has changed over the years.

The new data about his Nashville house includes:

  • The past year, Gore’s home energy use averaged 19,241 kilowatt hours (kWh) every month, compared to the U.S. household average of 901 kWh per month.
  • Gore guzzles more electricity in one year than the average American family uses in 21 years.
  • In September of 2016, Gore’s home consumed 30,993 kWh in just one month – as much energy as a typical American family burns in 34 months.
  • During the last 12 months, Gore devoured 66,159 kWh of electricity just heating his pool. That is enough energy to power six average U.S. households for a year.
  • From August 2016 through July 2017, Gore spent almost $22,000 on electricity bills.

For appearance’s sake, the former VP with an unreleased chakra paid an estimated $60,000 to install 33 solar panels. Those solar panels produce an average of 1,092 kWh per month, only 5.7% of Gore’s typical monthly energy consumption. So, Gore is using tons of fossil fuels–by himself.

 Al Gore owned 4 homes but since his divorce, one of them may now belong to his ex-wife. 

The posting on TheLid.com goes on to discuss how much money Gore has amassed since his term as the Veep was over. 

Gore and all the Hollywood types that tell us how to live in order to save the planet, have a motto, “do as I say, not as I do”.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Al Gore, Climate Alarmism, Electricity, Environment

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REBLOG: 4,300 Days Since Last U.S. Major Hurricane Strike–By Dr. Spencer.

Posted on August 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

 

Rebloging Dr. Roy Spencer’s posting which can be reached by clicking here.

The season is starting slowly; however,  it may surprise us.   I was in Tampa, Florida on 24 October 2005.  For a day or so, it looked like Tampa might be the landfall.  In the end,  it made landfall south of Tampa, fortunately for my son whose house we were fixing up to sell.

cbdakota

July 31st, 2017 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

Wednesday of this week will mark 4,300 days since the last major hurricane (Category 3 or stronger, 111-129 mph maximum sustained winds) made landfall in the U.S.

That’s almost 12 years.

The last major hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. was Wilma striking Florida on October 24, 2005, one of several strong hurricanes to hit the U.S. that year. The unusual hurricane activity in 2005 was a central focus of Al Gore’s 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth, in which Mr. Gore suggested 2005 was going to be the new normal. As you might recall, Gore went on to receive a Nobel Peace Prize for helping to raise awareness of the severe weather dangers from global warming.

Instead, the bottom dropped out of Atlantic hurricane activity after 2005. The “drought” of landfalling U.S. major hurricanes continues, and as seen in this graphic from WeatherStreet.com, no hurricanes have yet formed anywhere in the Atlantic basin in 2017, despite the forecast for an above-normal hurricane season:

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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, Environment, Global Temperatures, Hurricanes, Storms/hurricanes

July 2017 Gobal Average Temperature –UAH Satellite

Posted on August 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

The Global Average Temperature (GAT) anomaly rose 0.07°C  in July. The  GAT anomaly now stands at +0.28°C.

The table below shows that the Southern Hemisphere and the Tropics rose from their readings in June.   NOAA says:

“The most recent model forecasts indicate a high probability that the sea surface temperature in the Niño3.4 region will remain at least slightly above average through winter of 2017-18. “

The above is a model prediction, after all.    I note a slight  drop in the ENSO Meter so I suspect that the GAT will continue its downward trend, though maybe not as fast as I had anticipated

YEAR MO GLOBE NHEM. SHEM. TROPICS
2016 01 +0.55 +0.73 +0.38 +0.84
2016 02 +0.86 +1.19 +0.52 +0.99
2016 03 +0.76 +0.99 +0.54 +1.10
2016 04 +0.72 +0.86 +0.58 +0.93
2016 05 +0.53 +0.61 +0.45 +0.71
2016 06 +0.32 +0.47 +0.17 +0.38
2016 07 +0.37 +0.43 +0.30 +0.48
2016 08 +0.43 +0.53 +0.32 +0.50
2016 09 +0.45 +0.50 +0.39 +0.38
2016 10 +0.42 +0.42 +0.41 +0.46
2016 11 +0.46 +0.43 +0.49 +0.36
2016 12 +0.26 +0.26 +0.27 +0.23
2017 01 +0.33 +0.32 +0.33 +0.09
2017 02 +0.39 +0.58 +0.19 +0.07
2017 03 +0.23 +0.37 +0.09 +0.06
2017 04 +0.27 +0.29 +0.26 +0.22
2017 05 +0.44 +0.39 +0.49 +0.41
2017 06 +0.21 +0.32 +0.09 +0.39
2017 07 +0.28 +0.29 +0.27 +0.51

Chart and Tables are from Dr, Roy Spencer’s blog  which you can access by clicking here.

cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, ENSO, Global Temperatures

The Myth of Man-made Ozone Depletion

Posted on August 3, 2017 | 6 comments

Guest Post by Richard F. Cronin

August 3, 2017

After 31 years working for E.I. DuPont de Nemours here is my understanding about “ozone depletion” — the warm-up act for anthropogenic CO2-induced “global warming”.  Even the proponents of human-induced “ozone depletion” are starting to realize that the thinning of the ozone layer is a natural phenomenon that just waxes and wanes.

http://www.theozonehole.com/2017ozonehole.htm

Ozone (O3) is produced in the stratosphere by the intense solar radiation causing photo-dissociation of the di-atomic oxygen molecule (O2). The oxygen singlet (- O) is a powerful oxidizing agent and readily reacts with another O2 molecule to yield ozone.   Ozone is not produced during the dark polar winters and its lowest point is in the early spring. The ozone layer is renewed by the sunlit polar summers.

Molina and Rowland published in 1974 and their core premise is that heavier-than-air chloro-fluoro carbons (CFCs) convect upwards using a “one dimensional diffusion model”, where they photo-dissociate due to ultraviolet radiation in the band of 2000 Angstroms to yield ozone -destroying chlorine and bromine. Molina and Rowland also stated that CFCs do not dissolve in water, so they are not scrubbed out by rain at lower elevations. However, it is known that organo-halogens adsorb on dust particles and aerosols which are scrubbed out by rain in the troposphere.  Finally, volcanoes emit CFCs as well as copious amounts of hydrofluoric acid (HF), hydrochloric acid (HCl) and hydrodrobromic acid (HBr) which carry up to the stratosphere. (Ian Plimer, et al).  See “Heaven and Earth” by Ian Plimer, University of Adelaide.  There is always some equilibrium presence of these molecules, in trace quantities.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/RG013i001p00001/full

Click here for Atmospheric aerosols in the Earth System

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Posted in CFC, chemistry, Climate Alarmism, Environment, EPA, Government Regulations, Montreal Protocol, Ozone, volcanoes

An Iceberg As Big As Delaware–Should We Be Worrying?

Posted on August 1, 2017 | 6 comments

An iceberg as big as Delaware!   For those of you that are saying, “what’s a Delaware,?” — it is the second smallest State of the USA’s 50 States.   Even so, an iceberg that big is really impressive.  If it ran into the Titanic, the ship’s orchestra would probably not have had time to play for the people before the ship sank. (That’s from the movie– I am not sure the orchestra really played while the ship sank.)

Around 12 July this year, this huge piece of ice broke off from the Larson C ice shelf in Antarctica. The iceberg, named A68, has an area of 5800 km² (2239 miles²).  The authorities say it is the 5th largest berg in history. Because the continent of Antarctica is so inhospitable, it wasn’t till 1821 when an American seal hunter became the first person to actually put foot on this continent. History, in this instance, is very short.

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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, glaciers, Ice Melt, Sea Ice, Sea Level

If you are trying to decide if you should go to Al Gore’s new documentary,  read this first.

Posted on July 30, 2017 | 6 comments

Al Gore’s new documentary titled “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” opened on July 28 with a limited engagement. Beginning in August, the documentary will be opening in many theaters.  I don’t know how many, as it has not been getting great reviews, but it will be in many more than the initial 4 theaters.

The critics being mostly being quite liberal tend to give this kind of movie a big “thumbs up”. Science has little to do with their ratings of a movie like this, because they are sure if Al Gore produced it, it must all be true. However, the liberal website, VOX said, “Even An Inconvenient Sequel seems a little light on facts at times.” Many of the movie reviewers said it was, in effect, boring.  Maybe that was reflected in the boxofficemojo data published on Sunday, 30 July.  That they said ticket sales for the first day were $61,000, the second day were $43,000 and today (the third day) were $26,000 might reflect the boring viewpoint. 

But Gore did receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his first film, didn’t he?  Yes, he did. However, it was the same Nobel Peace Prize Committee that presented the award to the newly elected Barrack Obama before he got into office. They awarded the Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat of the PLO, too.  That Committee has a very transparent political agenda. It has very little to do with peace.

But never fear gentle reader, Al Gore will not let you down.

Bjorn Lomborg’s comments on just a few of Al Gore’s many prediction misses in his posting “Al Gore’s Climate Sequel Misses A Few Inconvenient Facts”:

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Posted in AGW, Al Gore, CO2, glaciers, Global Temperatures, Ice Melt, IPCC, Paris Agreement, President Trump, radical environmentalists, Sea Ice, Sea Level

$535 Trillion To Remove CO2 From The Atmosphere

Posted on July 23, 2017 | Leave a comment

James Hansen, et al have issued a study titled “Young people’s burden: requirement of negative CO2 emissions.  The authors say that unless CO2 reduction begins right away and aggressively the next generation and the one after that will have to spend a $535 trillion to make Earth habitable.  This $535 trillion is not the $trillions that the warmers want to spend to bring CO2 emissions to a net zero by 2050 or 2100 (depending on which warmer group is talking).  The $535 trillion is for removing atmospheric CO2.

The Hansen et al study says the global temperature will melt glaciers and consequently sea level will rise 6 to 9 meters (approximately 20 to 30 feet). Using models, the study determined a temperature rise due to a rise in atmospheric CO2 and then determined that the glaciers will melt which is the big threat. The authors conclude that the current interglacial period would match the Eemian interglacial period which occurred about 125,000 years ago.   That period is believed to have experienced a 6 to 9-meter sea level rise.  The chart below, from Wikipedia shows the current interglacial period, the Holocene and the Eemian and other interglacial periods. Note that the scale is more or less logarithmic and not linear.

A tangential observation—this chart shows that the Globe’s temperature has been much hotter than at present. Also, the Pleistocene running from about 1 million years ago to about 20 thousand years ago shows glacial and interglacial periods.  The peak temperatures are the time of the interglacial and the rest are the times when some part of Earth was covered by advancing glaciers.  Were there SUVs and fossil fuel powered plants putting out CO2 that caused the glaciers to melt?

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Posted in AGW, Antartica, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, CO2, CO2 positive feedback, fossil fuels, Global Temperatures, Ice Melt, Interglacial periods, Paris Agreement, Sea Level

Realtime Maps of Global Pollutant Sources

Posted on July 16, 2017 | Leave a comment

The picture below shows in color the concentration of air pollution in North America.  The  lower US  seems to have three  notable pollution sources according to the color scale shown in the lower left of the photo. Roughly locating these three sources would be in California in the Western US, Chicago area in the Great  Lakes region, and Baltimore to Boston along the I 95 corridor. 

 Now for a look at Asia and the middle East.

According to these maps, the above one shows where most of the air pollution originates.

The following from the Science website is some information about these pictures.  While the text is from November last year, the picture map shows the situation in real time.  These are for July 16, 2017.

By Dennis NormileNov. 28, 2016 , 3:15 PM

China’s air is notoriously toxic: Each year, it contributes to the premature deaths of some 1.6 million people. Concerned about how such pollution was affecting his family, Beijing-based data scientist Yann Boquillod founded AirVisual Earth, an online air pollution map that uses data from satellites and more than 8000 monitoring stations to display global air pollution in real time. The AirVisual Earth interactive maps prevailing wind patterns and shows color-coded concentrations of PM2.5—airborne particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter that can penetrate deep into the lungs. Users can zoom in, tilt, and spin the globe for better viewing. The air pollution visualization was crafted “so people really understand how bad it is,” says Boquillod, who hopes an informed citizenry will pressure governments and communities to clear the air. AirVisual also delivers 3-day air pollution forecasts for 6000 cities to smartphones, and it recently began selling low-cost monitors people can use to track indoor and outdoor air pollution. “People want to share that data,” Boquillod says.

 

The pictures are screen captures. You will have to go to the Science site link here to move around the globe.

I am not a fan of the 2.5micron particles stuff.  Another study suggest that there is no evidence for it being considered a vehicle for killing massive numbers of people.  See Junk Science links to see why I say that.  This is a good map for chasing black carbon and other aerosols.

cbdakota

 

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Posted in AGW, China, Earth from Space, Environment, Health