I’ve been quite busy tending to a biofuel startup these past few months. Little time for blogging. But as I’ve been sitting down here in Southwest Florida watching the gulf oil slick grow to the size of a small state, the doom and gloom has grown with it with very little mention of concrete solutions to pin a hope to. Until now.

There’s nothing like a big, heavy low tech solution to provide a shot of optimism that a mile deep gusher can actually be brought under control. So here it comes. A 125 ton (250,000 pound) reinforced concrete house that you plant over the gusher, connect a 5 mile pipe to its chimney and route all that crude up to surface ships for processing, storage and shipment ashore.

You now what? That might be big enough, heavy enough and low tech enough to actually work. I sure hope so. I really do.

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BP Plans to Deploy Subsea Oil Recovery System in 6-8 Days, Weather Permitting

3 May 2010    (article from Green Car Congress)

Concept of the subsea oil recovery system. Not to scale. Click to enlarge.

BP is working to deploy a subsea oil recovery system over the largest leak source in the Transocean Deepwater Horizon Rig that it hopes will capture up to 85% of the oil rising from the sea floor following the sinking of Deepwater Horizon on 22 April. This will mark the first time such a system will be used at this water depth (5,000 feet / 1,524 m).

The system is designed to collect hydrocarbons from the well and pump them to a tanker at the surface, where they will be stored and shipped ashore. This effort is one of several BP is attempting to mitigate the leakage or the effects of the leakage at the source (including the application of underwater dispersants) prior to being able to shutting off the flow.

The underwater recovery system with “mud flaps” on the sides. Click to enlarge.

Last week, BP identified a third leak in the wreckage of the riser of the deep underwater well, and NOAA pushed the estimates of the leak rate up to 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons US) per day, although the rate could be higher given the uncertainty in ascertaining the actual flow. (Earlier post.) (The Oil Drum has posted a technical backgrounder on oil well pressures, blowout preventers and theDeepwater Horizon spill.)

The subsea oil recovery system will use a 125-ton, 14′ x 24′ x 40′ structure that will be set on top of the largest leak source. This leak is located at the end of the riser, about 600 feet from the wellhead. Equipment at the top of the system is connected to a 5,000 foot riser that will convey the hydrocarbons to the Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) surface ship, the Deepwater Enterprise.

The FPSO will process the captured hydrocarbons and separate oil from water and gas. The oil will then be temporarily stored before being offloaded and shipped to a designated oil terminal onshore.

Approximate oil locations from April 29, 2010 to May 3, 2010 including forecast for May 4 based on trajectories and overflight information. Produced May 3, 2010. Source: NOAA. Click to enlarge.

The Deepwater Enterprise is capable of processing 15,000 barrels of oil per day and storing 139,000 barrels. A support barge will also be deployed with a capacity to store 137,000 barrels of oil.

To develop the system, BP located existing structures that had previously been used as coffer dams in shallow water recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina. These structures had been lowered over damaged wellheads to allow divers to repair wellheads. BP engineers have worked closely with the firm Wild Well Controls, Inc. to convert these structures for use in deep waters.

Because of the weight of the structure and the muddy conditions at the sea bottom, “mud flaps” have been added to the sides of the structure. These flaps enable the structure to settle into the sea bottom and complete the enclosure.

The system is being fabricated in Louisiana and will be transported to theDeepwater Enterprise. Once on site, the system will be lowered to the seabed. ROVs will monitor the installation and will complete connections to the riser.

NOAA has restricted fishing in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico threatened by the BP oil spill from the mouth of the Mississippi to Pensacola Bay. The closure will be in effect for at least 10 days.

The state of Louisiana has already closed vulnerable fisheries in state waters within 3 miles of the coast. NOAA is closing areas directly adjacent to the area closures enacted by Louisiana, and is working with state governors to evaluate the need to declare a fisheries disaster, which would facilitate federal aid to fishermen.

Tags: energy, energy policy, oil

Tags: humor, jibjab

A tap on the current political barometer reminds me of  a favorite saying; “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. Change you can believe in?  Perhaps.  But first you gotta have some.  Change that is. Healthcare ”reform” notwithstanding, Obama’s rapid drift towards the center-right already has many progressives (and even independents) thinking NoBama in 2012. Evert Cilliers offers an irreverant analysis and a recommendation for an alternative progressive candidate.

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By Evert Cilliers in 3quarksdaily

Here’s the story as I see it.

In 2008, after eight years of Bush/Cheney, the horrors and wrongs of this worst-of-all presidencies were plain to see — like Dresden after the fire-bombing, or a maroela tree after an elephant chomped it. The country had been wrecked by the dotty ideology-driven actions of extremist nutters: the false prophets of anti-science, anti-common-sense, anti-democracy, free-market-gone-crazy, conservatism-gone-fundamentalist, male-belligerence-gone-psycho.

Economically we were down the toilet and halfway to the sewer. Internationally we were pariahs. Psychologically we ping-ponged between genuine anxiety and false bravado. Worst of all: morally, we were hollowed out. Wars. Torture. Human rights abuses. Tora Bora. FEMA. Washington corruption. Wall Street fraud. Foreclosures. Unemployment. Deficits. Off-budget accounting. 30% interest charges on credit cards. Debt. Debt. Debt. Had we been ruled by the Kremlin, we couldn’t have done worse. It was as if America had become a nation of 300 million suffering Jobs, struck down by the vengeful hand of an old-testament God.

It was the worst of times, and the best of times only for the nicely rich, dah-links.

But this most horrible of horrorshows opened up a great opportunity. The longing for change ached in every sensible American heart. The time for a progressive moment in our history had arrived.

Enter Barack Obama. Fueled by a compelling story, inspiring oratory, obvious decency, a challenging intellect and seemingly progressive liberal beliefs, he stepped into the moment with dazzling ability. He benefited from the progressive moment and took full advantage of it. After all, he was one of a very few voices who had spoken up against the Iraq War when it was political suicide to do so. He was the dewy rose in the scratchy patch of weeds.

1. HOPES UP THEN DOWN

Obama won the presidency thumpingly. The progressive winds were behind his back. The country was overflowing with hope and enthusiasm. His inauguration was like some godsent event — for us and the world. At the Inaugural Balls, Michele appeared all fluffily snow-white-begowned, the magical princess in a happy-ending fairy tale, haloes descending on us all.

The wreck that was America called for bold action FDR-style. The time had come to bring Wall Street to its senses and concentrate on putting Main Street back on its feet. Instead of having government by the rich of the rich and for the rich, it was time for government by and for the people again. Time to clean out the stables. Time for change we wanted to believe in. A magic wand as big as a sequioa tree was about to be waved.

What happened?

Read the rest of this entry »

In case you missed it, some hackers recently broke into the server at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (THE leading British institute on climate change research) and then posted hundreds of private e-mails, and other papers online. The e-mails date back some 13 years, and afford a rare glimpse into the inner workings of scientific publishing and the peer-review process. Some of it gets quite nasty and personal towards climate skeptics and other researchers, and some of it suggests improper data manipulation to make global warming more convincing.

A recent article in the New York Times discusses the continuing fallout of shining some rough light onto the darker side of climate research.

Skeptics have been making the case for some time that there’s something amiss in the climate change debate. At the heart of it is the failure of a few leading scientists to maintain scientific integrity above all other considerations. There is something peculiar about climate change that makes some of us want/need to believe in something  despite contrary evidence or even lack of evidence.  That’s not science. It’s religion.

And thus certain leading climate scientists are finding themselves the butt of a growing body of climate change humor. So it goes.

Tags: bad science, climate change, global warming, humor, skeptics

I’ve always found politics unsettling. I believe it’s because politics is all too often the deliberate manipulation of peoples’  fears and ignorance within a largely fact free (or factually ambiguous) setting. This is where lesser cable news channels and most demagoging AM talk radio live. And where “death panels” are created out of thin air. Mostly right wing territory, right? Not so fast. Especially not when it comes to left leaning environmental politics.

Environmental politics is ripe with irony. What rational compassionate human being isn’t for a healthy environment? It’s inherently progressive, forward thinking, and imbued with the radiant light of righteous concern for the well being of this little blue ball we call home. So we tend to give environmental politics extra leeway because it’s…..well…..it’s a good thing, right? What self-respecting environmentalist would stoop to manipulating peoples’ fears and ignorance while feeding them one-sided information? Certainly not scientists! Right?

Unfortunately, even those with the most noble of intentions can be undermined by hubris, vanity, ego…..and some darker urgent need to overcome those ignorant non-believers on the right.  Not to mention the promise of a steady paycheck.  How else to explain this odd place we’ve arrived at today regarding man-made global warming where internationally sanctioned panels on climate change declare that “the science is settled” and that it’s time to act……except that the science is most definitely not settled, all claims to the contrary notwithstanding?

What is settled for the moment is that the “environmental politics” of man-made global warming has trumped climate change science itself. At least on the big international stage of the United Nation’s IPCC. The IPCC is set to meet in Copenhagen in December in hopes of hammering out a new international treaty on climate change. Son of Kyoto if you will. The vast majority of these decent, educated, well intended attendees will arrive in Copenhagen having drunk deeply of the cool aid quite confident in their convictions that humans are centrally at fault and that it’s time to create a global governmental body with the authority to impose its environmental will on the world’s governments. For the greater good of us all, of course.

The only antidote I know for this politicized distortion of  climate science is quality information. Lots of it. Quality information is easier said than done but it can be distilled out of the murky mists. Fortunately, our friend Andrew at Popular Technology has done the hard work for us. He’s compiled a list of 450 peer-reviewed papers (including links) that support a skeptical view of man-made global warming.

Do these papers represent the absolute truth on climate change and man’s role in it? I doubt it. And that’s the point isn’t it. Science is all about doubting, questioning, challenging and searching for rational truth. When science become politicized as it has in the climate change debate, science becomes dysfunctional and a false means of manipulation and influencing public policy. We all need to do a little less “believing” and a little more “knowing” before we act and let others act on our behalf. The science of global warming is not settled. Read. Read a lot! Know more. Believe less. Warming or cooling, it makes for a happier, safer and calmer world.

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450 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming

A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-treering proxies (PDF)
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1049-1058, December 2007)
– Craig Loehle

- Reply To: Comments on Loehle, “correction To: A 2000-Year Global Temperature Reconstruction Based on Non-Tree Ring Proxies”
(Energy & Environment, Volume 19, Number 5, pp. 775-776, September 2008)
– Craig Loehle

A Climate of Doubt about Global Warming
(Environmental Geosciences, Volume 7 Issue 4, pp. 213, December 2000)
– Robert C. Balling Jr.

A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions (PDF)
(International Journal of Climatology, Volume 28, Issue 13, pp. 1693-1701, December 2007)
– David H. Douglass, John R. Christy, Benjamin D. Pearson, S. Fred Singer

- The Consistency of Modeled and Observed Temperature Trends in the Tropical Troposphere: A Comment on Santer et al (PDF)
(Submitted to the International Journal of Climatology, 2009)
– Stephen McIntyre, Ross McKitrick

A critical review of the hypothesis that climate change is caused by carbon dioxide
(Energy & Environment, Volume 11, Number 6, pp. 631-638, November 2000)
– Heinz Hug

A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts (PDF)
(Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 34, Issue 13, July 2007)
– Anastasios A. Tsonis, Kyle Swanson, Sergey Kravtsov

A scientific agenda for climate policy? (PDF)
(Nature, Volume 372, Issue 6505, pp. 400-402, December 1994)
– Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen

A test of corrections for extraneous signals in gridded surface temperature data (PDF)
(Climate Research, Volume 26, Number 2, pp. 159-173, May 2004)
– Ross McKitrick, Patrick J. Michaels

- Are temperature trends affected by economic activity? Reply to Benestad (2004) (PDF)
(Climate Research, Volume 27, Number 2, pp. 175–176, October 2004)
– Ross McKitrick, Patrick J. Michaels

- A test of corrections for extraneous signals in gridded surface temperature data: Erratum (PDF)
(Climate Research, Volume 27, Number 3, pp. 265-268, December 2004)
– Ross McKitrick, Patrick J. Michaels

Altitude dependence of atmospheric temperature trends: Climate models versus observation (PDF)
(Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 31, Issue 13, July 2004)
– David H. Douglass, Benjamin D. Pearson, S. Fred Singer

An Alternative Explanation for Differential Temperature Trends at the Surface and in the Lower Troposphere (PDF)
(Submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research, February 2009)
– Philip J. Klotzbach, Roger A. Pielke Sr., Roger A. Pielke Jr., John R. Christy, Richard T. McNider

An assessment of validation experiments conducted on computer models of global climate using the general circulation model of the UK’s Hadley Centre
(Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 491-502, September 1999)
– Richard S. Courtney

Analysis of trends in the variability of daily and monthly historical temperature measurements (PDF)
(Climate Research, Volume 10, Number 1, pp. 27-33, April 1998)
– Patrick J. Michaels, Robert C. Balling Jr, Russell S. Vose, Paul C. Knappenberger

Ancient atmosphere- Validity of ice records
(Environmental Science and Pollution Research, Volume 1, Number 3, September 1994)
– Zbigniew Jaworowski

Are Climate Model Projections Reliable Enough For Climate Policy?
(Energy & Environment, Volume 15, Number 3, pp. 521-525, July 2004)
– Madhav L. Khandekar

Are observed changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere really dangerous? (PDF)
(Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology, Volume 50, Number 2, pp. 297-327, June 2002)
– C. R. de Freitas

Are there connections between the Earth’s magnetic field and climate? (PDF)
(Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 253, Issues 3-4, pp. 328-339, January 2007)
– Vincent Courtillot, Yves Gallet, Jean-Louis Le Mouël, Frédéric Fluteau, Agnès Genevey

- Response to comment on “Are there connections between Earth’s magnetic field and climate?, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 253, 328–339, 2007″ by Bard, E., and Delaygue, M., Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., in press, 2007 (PDF)
(Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 265, Issues 1-2, pp. 308-311, January 2008)
– Vincent Courtillot, Yves Gallet, Jean-Louis Le Mouël, Frédéric Fluteau, Agnès Genevey

Atmospheric CO2 and global warming: a critical review (PDF)
(Norwegian Polar Institute Letters, Volume 119, May 1992)
– Zbigniew Jaworowski, Tom V. Segalstad, V. Hisdal

Can increasing carbon dioxide cause climate change? (PDF)
(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 94, pp. 8335-8342, August 1997)
– Richard S. Lindzen

Carbon dioxide forcing alone insufficient to explain Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum warming
(Nature Geoscience, Volume 2, 576-580, July 2009)
– Richard E. Zeebe, James C. Zachos, Gerald R. Dickens

Climate as a Result of the Earth Heat Reflection (PDF)
(Latvian Journal of Physics and Technical Sciences, Volume 46, Number 2, pp. 29-40, May 2009)
– J. Barkāns, D. Žalostība

Climate Change – A Natural Hazard
(Energy & Environment, Volume 14, Numbers 2-3, pp. 215-232, May 2003)
– William Kininmonth

Climate Change and the Earth’s Magnetic Poles, A Possible Connection
(Energy & Environment, Volume 20, Numbers 1-2, pp. 75-83, January 2009)
– Adrian K. Kerton

Climate change: Conflict of observational science, theory, and politics
(AAPG Bulletin, Volume 88, Number 9, pp. 1211-1220, September 2004)
– Lee C. Gerhard

- Climate change: Conflict of observational science, theory, and politics: Reply
(AAPG Bulletin, Volume 90, Number 3, pp. 409-412, March 2006)
– Lee C. Gerhard

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: bad science, climate change, climate debate, climate science, global warming, human nature, IPCC, scientific debate, skeptics

We love our cars. Driving is as American as apple pie. Collectively, we’ve been steadily driving more each year for the past 25 years. It’s a testament to the significance of the financial crisis of  08-09′ that for the first time in 25 years we drove less in 2008. Noticeably less. It appears that is turning around. A positive sign that perhaps we’ve bottomed out and are driving out of the hole we’ve dug. Four-wheel drive sounds good about now.

Tags: economcs, economic crisis, financial bubble

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise. So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming. They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

Recent research has ruled out solar influences on temperature increases

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists’ main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. “Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity,” said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: climate change, climate debate, climate science, CO2, debunking, global cooling, IPCC, scientific debate, skeptics

If you google the partial phrase “don’t discuss”, there’s a good chance the very first item that pops up is “don’t discuss politics and  religion”.  This is a broadly accepted bit of cultural common sense, at least in the US.

The central wisdom behind this pearl is these topics are highly personal insofar as one’s views on politics or religion are usually based on belief systems. As we all know, belief systems can be touchy subjects when questioned, even gently. Swing a two-by-four upside a belief system and all hell can break loose. Why? Mostly because belief systems are distinctly different from knowledge systems.

In a knowledge system, “knowing” something usually means you can back it up with an abundance of reliable and repeatable emperical data that can be derived by anyone following the scientific method. The mountain of data supporting the premise that all water runs downhill means we all “know” it. The lack of any real data supporting, for instance, reincarnation means we can choose to believe it happens, but only as a matter of faith. Similarly, you can believe that less government is better government. You may be right, but don’t look to hard scientific data to back you up. Thus, by their very nature, belief systems are more fragile and more difficult to defend than knowledge systems. Challenge a belief system and we get defensive because it threatens who we are. For good or for ill, it’s part of what makes us human.

Where all of this goes down the rabbit hole is when you have a topic that is 100% “knowable” through scientifically derived data and yet takes on the characteristics of a political dispute or a religious belief system. That is where we are today with Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), otherwise referred to as man-made climate change.

How can this be?  The answers are more likely to be found in philosophy than  in science. Tom Kow recently wrote an article in his philosophical journal tomkow.com that sheds some light down this rabbit hole.

The following is a portion of Kow’s complete article which recently won the 2009 Prize in Philosophy in 3QuarksDaily.  It’s an interesting trip.

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As everyone will know, in the AGW debate there is broad agreement about at least some of the data: that by some measures the world got warmer from about 1970 to about 1998. The AGW theory explains this as the upshot of human generated CO2.  Competing theories range from the extra-terrestial (orbital precession, sunspots) to the mundane (the thermometers are measuring urban heat pollution.)

Tags: climate change, climate science, CO2, global warming, human nature, politics, science, scientific debate

In my post Is CO2 Causing Climate Change? – No! I mentioned that the road to climate change skepticsm is paved with Global Climate Models (“GCM”s). By that I mean the various GCMs simply aren’t accurate enough to conclude that man-made CO2 is the smoking gun of climate change.

Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with computer models per se. Models of all kinds are commonly used by both engineers and scientists. Like many  models, the GCM’s rely heavily on what is called “first principles” which is another way of saying they use the laws of physics as expressed via mathematical equations. Get the physics right, and the models can provide useful insight into the behavior of complex systems that might not be intuitively obvious. This is especially true for nonlinear systems like climate where reactions are complex and can change behavior depending on what’s going on.

The “trick” with computer models is including all the important components  that can influence the behavior of a system. Each of these must first be understood and then translated into an accurate component model that gets plugged into the bigger system model. Leave out a key component or get it wrong and the system model will likely tell you all kinds of things that, while interesting, may have no resemblance to what really goes on in the real world.

In a nutshell, this is the problem with current GCMs. All the components are either NOT included or are not sufficiently accurate. Not because scientists are stupid, but because they: 1) disagree whether they are important; 2) don’t fully understand yet how they work; 3) don’t know how to model them accurately;  or,  4) simply don’t know about them yet.

In his blog, Rocket Scientist’s Journal, Dr. Jeffrey Glassman writes extensively on the climate change debate and does so with a sharp eye for details.

Glassman’s assessment of the GCMs relied upon by the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is unambiguous:  “Internal modeling mistakes by IPCC are sufficient to reject its anthropogenic warming conjecture”

A dense read through much techspeak, Glassman’s critique is a worthwhile eye opener, especially for those readers grounded in engineering or the sciences. Put it this way, if an engineer relied on models with the same deficiencies as Global Climate Change Models and then advocated his employer bet the farm on the results, he’d be making what’s referred to as a career limiting move.  Despite this, the United Nation’s IPCC has adopted these GCMs as the burning bush of climate change.

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FATAL ERRORS IN IPCC’S GLOBAL CLIMATE MODELS

by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD
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Tags: bad science, climate debate, climate science, global warming, scientific debate