Archive for July 2009

Written by fatih al-farahat in , ,


Boeing Commits Airship Heavy Lift Design

This one snuck up on me. Bringing back the airship to provide heavy lift capability has been almost a no brainer once we entered the world of modern materials and design engineering.

The market niche that it tackles is not unlike the niche filled for the past decades by the de Haviland beaver which was launched back in the late forties with hopes for sales of perhaps a couple of hundred and went on to sell thousands. It became the general’s jeep in pre chopper days.

Heavy lift air ships have a natural market once you need to run a truck load past any road head. This is already thousands of trips supplying the diamond mines in the high Arctic. In fact, such a service can allow shipping there to return to just in time delivery and avoid the use of the ice roads.

Also during the past decade, this world has been massively explored for new mineral wealth and the need for cost effective infrastructure has exploded. This technology allows the necessary movement of heavy equipment.

Setting the obvious aside, moving a truck load of fresh food from California directly to the East coast with no mechanical vibration at a speed of around 70 mile per hour is a huge commercial improvement. You also can achieve point to point delivery rather easily from a parking lot or open field in California at the processor to a field beside the distributer in New York. This technology package makes this all plausible and economically feasible.

That means that if your local market can absorb a truck load of fresh mangos from Belize, it can be delivered as ripe fruit in possibly two days. I can even contemplate shipping raspberries to such markets and that is a product that wants to spoil in twenty four hours and is subject to severe damage from truck vibration. Now it is plausible to pick the fruit all day and pack a refer at the field until sunset, and then it can be lifted and transported almost a thousand miles to arrive fresh and undamaged at six in the morning.

Though we associate heavy lift with unique problems, the real market will be those we just described because they will sustain a huge fleet. In short, I predict that once the economics are shaken out to the levels able to easily move foodstuffs sensitive to spoilage at competitive rates, then Boeing will actually sell thousands. Remember how many trucks are today hauling perishables.

Another major market will be plucking stems out of the forests, possibly cabled together for tonnage. Since the operating costs should be a fraction of those of helicopters which mandates rapid turn around, the option immediately exists to grab a fifty ton log bundle and to carry it a few miles to a good road head. Again, each trip can pull out half a truck load or more out of the woods and your costs may not be particularly different from actual trucking so even a long haul may make sense.

All of a sudden you are not a complete slave to road costs or even having to design around road beds. You can cut a contoured belt and easily leave refuges for seed trees and then extract the wood with no particular sacrifice. You would still have to skid a bundle together on site, but not over any distance at all. Once you have assembled a forty to seventy ton bundle, it becomes more difficult to come back and grab wood on the edges and these naturally provide refuges.

This technology may make best forestry practice actually economically feasible here on the west Coast.



Boeing Completes Major Design Milestone For SkyHook Heavy Lift Vehicle

http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Boeing_Completes_Major_Design_Milestone_For_SkyHook_Heavy_Lift_Vehicle_999.html


SkyHook is designed to carry 80,000-pound (40-ton) sling loads up to 200 nautical miles without refueling - a capability that is not currently available, but is desired by several industries, including oil exploration and mining operations in the Canadian Arctic and Alaska, as well as companies operating in remote locations in South America, Europe and Africa.

by Staff Writers
St Louis MO (SPX) Jul 29, 2009

Boeing and SkyHook International have announced that the design of the SkyHook Heavy Lift Vehicle (HLV) has reached the configuration freeze milestone, meaning the aircraft's overall performance and layout have been established.

Boeing and SkyHook have worked on the SkyHook HLV's structural and systems design and its concept of operations since July 2008, resulting in the following improvements:

+ the addition of a three-piece tail for enhanced maneuverability

+ integration of lifting and thrusting propulsion systems

+ improved aerodynamics for increased payload capacity and range.

"Boeing's Advanced Rotorcraft Systems team and our industry partner, SkyHook International Inc., are extremely pleased with the progress on the engineering of the aircraft," said Kenneth Laubsch, SkyHook program manager for Boeing.

"We all sense that we are part of something revolutionary in the advancement of this extraordinary technology, and the aerospace industry in general."

The next major program milestone will be Detailed Design in 2011, which centers on the design, analysis and specification of all hardware, software and related aircraft and ground support systems interfaces.

"The SkyHook HLV technology is like nothing that has ever existed. We anticipate that the operational capability of this aircraft will allow SkyHook's customers to radically change the way they resupply and operate in remote regions, especially the north," said Rob Mayfield, director of SkyHook.

"In the oil and gas industry, there are significant pressures on cost, speed, safety, and environmental impact, and the SkyHook HLV represents solutions to each of these challenges in various applications."

SkyHook is designed to carry 80,000-pound (40-ton) sling loads up to 200 nautical miles without refueling - a capability that is not currently available, but is desired by several industries, including oil exploration and mining operations in the Canadian Arctic and Alaska, as well as companies operating in remote locations in South America, Europe and Africa.

Boeing is designing and will fabricate a production SkyHook HLV prototype at its Rotorcraft Systems facility in Ridley Park, Pa. The new aircraft will enter commercial service after it is certified by transport Canada and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. The first SkyHook HLV aircraft is scheduled to fly in 2014.

Written by fatih al-farahat in , ,


Targeting Cancer with Nano Package

This is a nifty trick that finally finds a way to send toxins directly to and into the cancer cell. A very small liposome carries the toxin to the target and accommodates the attack.

This makes me recall some work that I was involved with twenty years ago when we discovered that extraordinarily small bits of carbon would form a shell of large organic molecules. This method should be applicable to a wide range of organic molecules. The trick was mainly to produce the form of the carbon we needed and it was derived from Korean War era work on artificial blood.

This makes the production of a range of organic nanoparticles feasible and opens the door to many serum based directed delivery systems

Presentation at AAPM Meeting on Nanoparticles That Package Cancer-killing Isotopes and Deliver Them Into Cancer Cells

Description

A group of researchers at Johns Hopkins University has designed nanoparticles that can carry cancer-treating radioisotopes through the body and deliver them selectively to tumors. Today in Anaheim, CA, they will report the latest results of their research, including studies in animal models, at the 51st meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM).

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/554621/?sc=dwhn

Newswise — A group of researchers at Johns Hopkins University has designed nanoparticles that can carry cancer-treating radioisotopes through the body and deliver them selectively to tumors. Today in Anaheim, CA, they will report the latest results of their research, including studies in animal models, at the 51st meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM).

The nanoparticles are made with a commercially available product known as "liposomes" -- small chemical spheres made of fatty molecules that can package drugs and other chemicals. Liposomes are a powerful emerging tool in medicine because they can be designed to carry many different drugs and manipulated to control how long they stay in the bloodstream. One type of liposome, Doxil, is already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for delivering Doxorubicin, a chemotherapeutic that is toxic to the heart.

The Hopkins scientists are using liposomes that have been modified with antibodies, a class of immune system proteins that recognize and bind to many different microscopic targets -- bacteria, viruses, other proteins, and human cells. Some antibodies specifically bind to cancer cells, and by attaching these cancer-specific antibodies to the liposomes, the scientists have created "immunoliposomes," which will wend their way through the bloodstream and seek out tumors inside the body. When they come into contact with their target cells, they deliver their payload into the cells.

"It's a promising approach to solving the problem of how to deliver more of a therapeutic to cancer cells," says George Sgouros, a radiology professor at Johns Hopkins who led the research.

Similar studies by other groups of researchers have already demonstrated how immunoliposomes could be packaged with tiny radioactive tracers used for imaging tumors. What Sgouros and his colleagues have done is figure out how to reproducibly package much more powerful radioisotopes, called alpha-particle emitters that have the ability to kill cancer cells without damaging nearby normal cells, and they have tested how effectively they can treat mice with a very aggressive type of metastatic breast cancer.
Early results show that they can pack a relatively large dose of radionuclides into the liposomes and substantially extend the life of treated mice.

"This treatment is much less toxic than chemotherapy because it is targeted to tumor cells rather than to all rapidly dividing cells " says Sgouros. "Nanoparticles designed to deliver these powerful isotopes have a great potential in cancer therapy, particularly for metastatic disease."

MORE INFORMATIONThe talk "Immunoliposomes for Targeted Radionuclide Therapy" is at 2:45 p.m. on Tuesday, July 28 in Room 303A. See: http://www.aapm.org/meetings/09AM/PRAbs.asp?mid=42&aid=11894.

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Meat of the Problem



Once in a while someone unloads with a suitcase of shoddy science that is really annoying. There is only one word to describe it and that is rubbish. There are two arguments here, both are cow manure.

The first argument is that we are using grain to feed cattle that could be more efficiently be fed to people. I will give you a hot tip. What people are going to eat what is euphemistically called feed grade grain. There is a good reason it is called feed grain. Our millers do not want it, nor will they pay human grade prices for it. The point is that cattle represent an essential element of the whole agricultural equation by consuming all the stuff that fails to make the cut for human consumption. What cattle cannot consume, the hogs get. And then the cattle only get it for fattening in the last part of their lives. Most of the time they are out consuming grass or perhaps converting grass and some feed grain into milk.

The second argument is even more specious, but I have run into my share of true believers. It is that they produce copious amounts of methane which is magically a green house gas. Well, yes it is, and if it actually accumulated enough, besides killing you it would also warm up the environment. In fact if you lit a match, the environment would become red hot.

The catch is that it is a very light gas that heads for the troposphere above the working atmosphere and neatly removes it self once and for all. Lest we have any doubts a global map of atmospheric content shows its presence disappearing down wind and offshore pretty well confirming a fast rising gas.

Otherwise ammonia production is very welcome as a fertilizer and we need more.

So before anyone jumps on this particular band wagon, please investigate how cattle fit into the big picture. It was the be all and end all of European agriculture for an amazing nine thousand years and in spite of some of our less wise practices is likely to be there for us for another nine thousand.

The Meat of the Problem

By Ezra Klein
Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The debate over climate change has reached a rarefied level of policy abstraction in recent months. Carbon tax or cap-and-trade? Upstream or downstream? Should we auction permits? Head-scratching is, at this point, permitted. But at base, these policies aim to do a simple thing, in a simple way: persuade us to undertake fewer activities that are bad for the atmosphere by making those activities more expensive. Driving an SUV would become pricier. So would heating a giant house with coal and buying electricity from an inefficient power plant. But there's one activity that's not on the list and should be: eating a hamburger.

If it's any consolation, I didn't like writing that sentence any more than you liked reading it. But the evidence is strong. It's not simply that meat is a contributor to global warming; it's that it is a huge contributor. Larger, by a significant margin, than the global transportation sector.

According to a 2006 United Nations report, livestock accounts for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Some of meat's contribution to climate change is intuitive. It's more energy efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults that we then slaughter to feed to people. Some of the contribution is gross. "Manure lagoons," for instance, is the oddly evocative name for the acres of animal excrement that sit in the sun steaming nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. And some of it would make Bart Simpson chuckle. Cow gas -- interestingly, it's mainly burps, not farts -- is a real player.

But the result isn't funny at all: Two researchers at the University of Chicago estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius (PDF). A study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local diet than by going vegetarian one day a week. That prompted Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to recommend that people give up meat one day a week to take pressure off the atmosphere. The response was quick and vicious. "How convenient for him," was the inexplicable reply from a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. "He's a vegetarian."

The visceral reaction against anyone questioning our God-given right to bathe in bacon has been enough to scare many in the environmental movement away from this issue. The National Resources Defense Council has a long page of suggestions for how you, too, can "fight global warming." As you'd expect, "Drive Less" is in bold letters. There's also an endorsement for "high-mileage cars such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids." They advise that you weatherize your home, upgrade to more efficient appliances and even buy carbon offsets. The word "meat" is nowhere to be found.

That's not an oversight. Telling people to give up burgers doesn't poll well. Ben Adler, an urban policy writer, explored that in a December 2008 article for the American Prospect. He called environmental groups and asked them for their policy on meat consumption. "The Sierra Club isn't opposed to eating meat," was the clipped reply from a Sierra Club spokesman. "So that's sort of the long and short of it." And without pressure to address the costs of meat, politicians predictably are whiffing on the issue. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, for instance, does nothing to address the emissions from livestock.

The pity of it is that compared with cars or appliances or heating your house, eating pasta on a night when you'd otherwise have made fajitas is easy. It doesn't require a long commute on the bus or the disposable income to trade up to a Prius. It doesn't mean you have to scrounge for change to buy a carbon offset. In fact, it saves money. It's healthful. And it can be done immediately. A Montanan who drives 40 miles to work might not have the option to take public transportation. But he or she can probably pull off a veggie stew. A cash-strapped family might not be able buy a new dishwasher. But it might be able to replace meatballs with mac-and-cheese. That is the whole point behind the cheery PB&J Campaign, which reminds that "you can fight global warming by having a PB&J for lunch." Given that PB&J is delicious, it's not the world's most onerous commitment.

It's also worth saying that this is not a call for asceticism. It's not a value judgment on anyone's choices. Going vegetarian might not be as effective as going vegan, but it's better than eating meat, and eating meat less is better than eating meat more. It would be a whole lot better for the planet if everyone eliminated one meat meal a week than if a small core of die-hards developed perfectly virtuous diets.

I've not had the willpower to eliminate bacon from my life entirely, and so I eliminated it from breakfast and lunch, and when that grew easier, pulled back further to allow myself five meat-based meals a month. And believe me, I enjoy the hell out of those five meals. But if we're going to take global warming seriously, if we're going to make crude oil more expensive and tank-size cars less practical, there's no reason to ignore the impact of what we put on our plates.

Ezra Klein can be reached at kleine@washpost.com or through his blog at

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F. Barringer, NYT, White roofs catch on as energy cost cutters

White roofs catch on as energy cost cutters

by Felicity Barringer, New York Times, July 29, 2009

Link to Fahrenheit to centrigrade converter: http://www.wbuf.noaa.gov/tempfc.htm

SAN FRANCISCO — Returning to their ranch-style house in Sacramento after a long summer workday, Jon and Kim Waldrep were routinely met by a wall of heat.

A Wal-Mart store in Chino, Calif., has both a cool roof and solar panels to cut its energy use. (J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times) Enlarge This Image

By Degrees

A Cool Shield

This is one in a series of articles about stopgap measures that could limit global warming.


A white roof has helped cool Jon Waldrep’s Sacramento home. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times) Enlarge This Image

“We’d come home in the summer, and the house would be 115 degrees, stifling,” said Mr. Waldrep, a regional manager for a national company.

He or his wife would race to the thermostat and turn on the air-conditioning as their four small children, just picked up from day care, awaited relief.

All that changed last month. “Now we come home on days when it’s over 100 degrees outside, and the house is at 80 degrees,” Mr. Waldrep said.

Their solution was a new roof: a shiny plasticized white covering that experts say is not only an energy saver but also a way to help cool the planet.

Relying on the centuries-old principle that white objects absorb less heat than dark ones, homeowners like the Waldreps are in the vanguard of a movement embracing “cool roofs” as one of the most affordable weapons against climate change.

Studies show that white roofs reduce air-conditioning costs by 20% or more in hot, sunny weather. Lower energy consumption also means fewer of the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.

What is more, a white roof can cost as little as 15% more than its dark counterpart, depending on the materials used, while slashing electricity bills.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, has proselytized for cool roofs at home and abroad. “Make it white,” he advised a television audience on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” last week.

The scientist Mr. Chu calls his hero, Art Rosenfeld, a member of the California Energy Commission who has been campaigning for cool roofs since the 1980s, argues that turning all of the world’s roofs “light” over the next 20 years could save the equivalent of 24 billion metric tons in carbon dioxide emissions.

“That is what the whole world emitted last year,” Mr. Rosenfeld said. “So, in a sense, it’s like turning off the world for a year.”

This month the Waldreps’ three-bedroom house is consuming 10% less electricity than it did a year ago. (The savings would be greater if the family ran its central air during the workday.)

From Dubai to New Delhi to Osaka, Japan, reflective roofs have been embraced by local officials seeking to rein in energy costs. In the United States, they have been standard equipment for a decade at new Wal-Mart stores. More than 75% of the chain’s 4,268 outlets in the United States have them.

California, Florida and Georgia have adopted building codes that encourage white-roof installations for commercial buildings.

Drawing on federal stimulus dollars earmarked for energy-efficiency projects, state energy offices and local utilities often offer financing for cool roofs. The roofs can qualify for tax credits if the roofing materials pass muster with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program.

Still, the ardor of the cool-roof advocates has prompted a bit of a backlash.

Some roofing specialists and architects argue that supporters fail to account for climate differences or the complexities of roof construction. In cooler climates, they say, reflective roofs can mean higher heating bills.

Scientists acknowledge that the extra heating costs may outweigh the air-conditioning savings in cities like Detroit or Minneapolis.

But for most types of construction, they say, light roofs yield significant net benefits as far north as New York or Chicago. Although those cities have cold winters, they are heat islands in the summer, with hundreds of thousands of square feet of roof surface absorbing energy.

The physics behind cool roofs is simple. Solar energy delivers both light and heat, and the heat from sunlight is readily absorbed by dark colors. (An asphalt roof in New York can rise to 180 degrees on a hot summer day.) Lighter colors, however, reflect back a sizable fraction of the radiation, helping to keep a building — and, more broadly, the city and Earth — cooler. They also re-emit some of the heat they absorb.

Unlike high-technology solutions to reducing energy use, like light-emitting diodes in lamp fixtures, white roofs have a long and humble history. Houses in hot climates have been whitewashed for centuries.

Before the advent of central air-conditioning in the mid-20th-century, white- and cream-colored houses with reflective tin roofs were the norm in South Florida, for example. Then central air-conditioning arrived, along with dark roofs whose basic ingredients were often asphalt, tar and bitumen, or asphalt-based shingles. These materials absorb as much as 90% of the sun’s heat energy — often useful in New England, but less so in Texas. By contrast, a white roof can absorb as little as 10% or 15%.

“Relative newcomers to the West and South brought a lot of habits and products from the Northeast,” said Joe Reilly, the president of American Rooftile Coatings, a supplier. “What you see happening now is common sense.”

Around the country, roof makers are racing to develop products in the hope of profiting as the movement spreads from the flat roofs of the country’s malls to the sloped roofs of its suburbs.

Years of detailed work by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory have provided the roof makers with a rainbow of colors — the equivalent of a table of the elements — showing the amount of light that each hue reflects and the amount of heat it re-emits.

White is not always a buyer’s first choice of color. So suppliers like American Rooftile Coatings have used federal color charts to create “cool” but traditional colors, like cream, sienna and gray, that yield savings, though less than dazzling white roofs do.

In an experiment, the National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., had two kinds of terra-cotta-colored cement tiles from American Rooftile installed on four new homes at the Fort Irwin Army base in California. One kind was covered with a special paint and reflected 45% of the sun’s rays — nearly twice as much as the other kind. The two homes with roofs of highly reflective paint used 35% less electricity last summer than the two with less reflective paint.

Still, William Miller of the Oak Ridge laboratory, who organized the experiment, says he distrusts the margin of difference; he wants to figure out whether some of it resulted from different family habits.

Hashem Akbari, Dr. Rosenfeld’s colleague at the Lawrence Berkeley laboratory, says he is unsure how long it will take cool roofs to truly catch on. But he points out that most roofs, whether tile or asphalt-shingle, have a life span of 20-25 years.

If the roughly 5% of all roofs that are replaced each year were given cool colors, he said, the country’s transformation would be complete in two decades.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/science/earth/30degrees.html

Written by fatih al-farahat in ,


Jakobshavn Glacier's floating tongue breaking up, July 29, 2009





http://www-nsidc.colorado.edu/sotc/images/jakobshavn_retreat.jpg
Nick Barnes said...

The southern half of the glacier front looks to have retreated about 4km since the 2006 line.
July 31, 2009 7:43 PM
Tenney said...

Yes, it looks like the 2006 line is the area of retreat -- wonder why that is.

I am still pretty much of a newbie, so I am still wondering if the tongue breaks up every year.
August 1, 2009 12:58 AM
Nick Barnes said...

Let me share some of my (limited) understanding of this glacier.

The main fjord, up to 10 km wide and maybe 50 km long, contains a lot of bergs from the glacier, with some sea ice between the bergs. The glacier is quite thick - 1-2 km - so the larger bergs are enormous and often ground on the fjord floor (a smaller berg will turn onto its side when it calves). This slows the outflow in the fjord - some bergs can spend years in the fjord - which is why the ice-filled fjord has this unusual look on satellite pictures: an ice finger poking out into Disko Bay and the Davis Strait. But it's important not to confuse this ice-filled fjord with the glacier itself.

Of course, the glacier used to occupy the fjord. It retreated out of most of the fjord in the late 19th and early 20th century. Then the front stayed in about the same place for 40 years, before retreating out of the rest of the fjord since 2000. The calving front continues to retreat (looking at these pictures).

It's important to remember that the glacier flows much more quickly than it retreats. Flow at the calving front is about 10 km/year. The current retreat is something like 1 km/year. Flow of the small bergs in the fjord is much quicker than the glacier flow (however, as noted above, the large bergs can get stuck).

Now the retreat has passed the confluence, where multiple ice streams in the interior of the ice sheet join to make the glacier at the head of the fjord. The confluence is roughly fan-shaped, but the ice sheet isn't homogeneous; roughly speaking here there's a northern ice stream and a southern ice stream, and the ice between them doesn't flow as fast as the streams themselves. The ice streams carve channels for themselves in the bedrock. The flow rates upstream from the confluence are lower, of course.
August 1, 2009 6:31 AM

Nick, that was a really helpful explanation. Please feel free to add to it, and I will post it up. Thanks, Tenney

Written by fatih al-farahat in


Greenland Ice Sheet melt -- July 28, 2008, vs. July 30, 2009



July 28, 2008 (left); July 30, 2009 (right).

Be sure to click on the images to enlarge the details.

Written by fatih al-farahat in


Joseph Romm: Climate change expected to sharply increase Western wildfire burn area — as much as 175% by the 2050s

Climate change expected to sharply increase Western wildfire burn area — as much as 175% by the 2050s

Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, posted 30 July 2009, 06:30 a.m. PDT

A major new study, “Impacts of climate change from 2000 to 2050 on wildfire activity and carbonaceous aerosol concentrations in the western United States” finds a staggering increase in “wildfire activity and carbonaceous aerosol concentrations in the western United States” by mid-century under a moderate warming scenario:

We show that increases in temperature cause annual mean area burned in the western United States to increase by 54% by the 2050s relative to the present-day … with the forests of the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains experiencing the greatest increases of 78% and 175% respectively. Increased area burned results in near doubling of wildfire carbonaceous aerosol emissions by mid-century.

“This graph shows the percentage increase in area burned by wildfires, from the present-day to the 2050s, as calculated by the model of Spracklen et al. [2009] for the May-October fire season. The model follows a scenario of moderately increasing emissions of greenhouse gas emissions and leads to average global warming of 1.6 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050. Warmer temperatures can dry out underbrush, leading to more serious conflagrations in the future climate.”

And this is just the mid-century prediction for the IPCC’s “moderate” A1B scenario (CO2 at 522 ppm in 2050), which predicts “mean July temperatures to increase by 1.8 °C from 2000 to 2050.” This is not the worst-case emissions path, which we are currently on (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised” — 1000 ppm). What would happen by 2100 on our current emissions path, when the mean July temperature increase from 2000 is triple (or more) the 1.8 °C that the researchers modeled? Turns out someone did model that a few years ago.

Back in 2004, researchers at the U.S. Forest Services Pacific Wildland Fire Lab looked at past fires in the West to create a statistical model of how future climate change may affect wildfires. Their paper, “Climatic Change, Wildfire, and Conservation,” published in Conservation Biology, found that by century’s end, states like Montana, New Mexico, Washington, Utah, and Wyoming could see burn areas increase five times.

For completeness sake — and because I remain optimistic that someday the media will routinely make the connection between increased forest fires and global warming — let me note that back in 2006 Science magazine published a major article analyzing whether the recent soaring wildfire trend was due to a change in forest management practices or to climate change. The study, led by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, concluded:

Robust statistical associations between wildfire and hydroclimate in western forests indicate that increased wildfire activity over recent decades reflects sub-regional responses to changes in climate. Historical wildfire observations exhibit an abrupt transition in the mid-1980s from a regime of infrequent large wildfires of short (average of 1 week) duration to one with much more frequent and longer burning (5 weeks) fires. This transition was marked by a shift toward unusually warm springs, longer summer dry seasons, drier vegetation (which provoked more and longer burning large wildfires), and longer fire seasons. Reduced winter precipitation and an early spring snowmelt played a role in this shift.

That 2006 study noted global warming (from human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide) will further accelerate all of these trends during this century. Worse still, the increased wildfires will themselves release huge amounts of carbon dioxide, which will serve as a vicious circle, accelerating the very global warming that is helping to cause more wildfires.

For more on the new study, see here.

Related Posts:

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Seattle hits 103 -- Welcome to the hottest day ever!

Seattle hits 103 -- Welcome to the hottest day ever!

Seattle hits 103 -- Welcome to the hottest day ever!

Wearing a bag of ice water on his head, baseball fan Kirk Schlemlein, of Snohomish, Wash., reacts as a friend sprays water in his ear while trying to keep cool during a baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays, Wednesday, July 29, 2009, at Safeco Field in Seattle.

Story Published: Jul 29, 2009 at 5:00 PM PDT

Story Updated: Jul 29, 2009 at 11:33 PM PDT

by Scott Sistek

SEATTLE -- It's a day for the weather history books. For on July 29, 2009, Sea-Tac Airport hit 103 (39.44 °C) degrees just after 3:30 p.m. for the hottest day on record in Seattle, with records stretching back to 1891.

The previous records were 100 (37.78 °C) degrees set July 20, 1994, July 16, 1941, and June 9, 1955*.

Here are the preliminary high temperatures at 5 p.m. (Link to a good Fahrenheit to Celsius converter: http://www.wbuf.noaa.gov/tempfc.htm)

  • Vancouver, WA: 107 (41.67 °C)
  • Kelso: 106 (41.11 °C)
  • Portland: 106 (all-time record: 107)
  • Chehalis: 106
  • Renton: 105 (40.56 °C)
  • Tacoma: 104 (40 °C)
  • Olympia: 104 (ties all-time record)
  • Shelton: 104
  • Seattle (Sea-Tac): 103 (all-time record)
  • Seattle (Boeing Fld): 103
  • Gig Harbor: 103
  • Arlington: 102 (38.89 °C)
  • Bremerton: 102
  • North Bend: 102
  • Everett: 100
  • Friday Harbor: 97
  • Bellingham: 96
  • Port Angeles: 92
  • Forks: 83
  • Hoquiam: 77
It's the second all-time weather record set on Wednesday in Seattle. The lowest temperature recorded so far today was 71 degrees, and it's a safe bet we won't drop below that before midnight tonight. That means we have shattered the record for warmest low temperature which was set... Tuesday. (Well, tied last night at 69. The low was also 69 on Sept. 2, 1974). Put another way, this is the first day ever that the temperature failed to drop below 70 degrees at some point during the day. Miami would be so proud...


Too hot to play outside today!

(Incidentally, if you're wondering about the asterisk by the June 9, 1955 note above, technically speaking, that 100 doesn't count as an official 100 degree high. Why? Just like the 1941 reading, that was taken at the Downtown Federal Building. But in 1945, the official reporting station for Seattle was moved from the Federal Building to Sea-Tac Airport. So the 1955 Federal Building reading doesn't count as an official record.

It's sort of like pitching a no-hitter for 9 innings, then giving up a home run in the 10th. You accomplished the feat by usual standards, but the record books don't recognize it.)

Other all time records are poised to fall as well. Bellingham hit 95 after 1 p.m. breaking their all-time record high of 94 degrees. Others in jeopardy: Olympia's is 104 (they hit 101 Tuesday) and Portland's is 107 (they hit 106 on Tuesday)

Hot Weather News:

The heat is causing a myriad of problems across the Puget Sound area, aside from people scrambling to keep cool.

  • Snohomish PUD says three substations went out near Monroe, knocking out power to about 14,000 people in the Monroe area.

    Officials say the heat caused transmission lines to sag into trees, causing brush fires. It also knocked out three substations.

    They were able to get all but 2,500 back online by 2:15, and then everyone else a short time later, but as power was coming back on, several transformers were reported on fire and torching the power poles, keeping firefighters busy across the city.

    Power outages were an issue in other parts of Western Washington as well. Some 10,000 people in Tacoma were without power for several hours during the record-breaking day, as were 700 others on Vashon Island. In Renton 2,800 residents were also left in the heat for an hour.

    Some 3,300 customers of Seattle City Light spent a few hours in the dark and without the relief of their fans on Wednesday night. And 300 Bellingham residents were forced to turn in for the night without power as crews were repairing an underground cable.

  • A flicked cigarette butt sparked a brush fire in the median of I-5 near Tukwila, the state patrol says.

    Flames were seen shooting up from the trees between the north and southbound lanes near S. 200 Street. The fire was put out a short time later, with the help of a foaming truck from Sea-Tac Airport, but traffic was backed up as far as eight miles through the afternoon as firefighting vehicles were blocking lanes to fight the fire.

  • Firefighters were also busy in West Seattle and Auburn battling house fires. The West Seattle one broke out around 1 p.m. in the 5200 block of 45th Ave. SW. People were inside when the fire started, but all got out safely. Two firefighters reportedly required treatment for heat exhaustion.

    About an hour later, a fire broke out in a home in the 600 block of 24th Street SE in Auburn. A neighbor called 911 after seeing smoke and flames coming from the back of the home.

    Firefighters rescued two dogs from the home, but one didn't survive. No word yet what caused that fire.

    Later in the evening, brush fires kept firefighter busy. A brush fire near the University of Washington's horticulture center scorched several acres. Firefighters had to stretch their hoses to the length of four football fields just to reach the flames.

    And at Lake Ballenger in Snohomish, flames shot more than 10 feet into the air, and a helicopter was called in to douse them.

    Want to buy an air conditioner or fan? Good luck!

    Now that the region has suffered through the warmest night on record, thousands went in search of air conditioning and fans.

    Lines were very long at several hardware and department stores -- including this line at the SoDo Sears store.

    Why over 100 today?

    We have the perfect heat scenario of an incredibly strong ridge of high pressure. That alone has been baking the Northwest into the 90s of late.

    But Wednesday, we finally have the icing on the cake to make this the "perfect storm" of a heat wave -- the hot, east wind.

    It took a while, but a thermal trough has finally developed that is drawing in the hot, dry east wind. Put the two together, and it's like mixing fire and oxygen.

    Locally, the east wind makes it hotter for a few reasons. One, that air is coming from Eastern Washington, where is hot to begin with. Second, as that air crosses over the Cascades and then sinks down, it warms further. For those living along the foothills, this is akin to living at the end of a blow dryer and why your highs are among the hottest.

    Now, as to why it's sticking around so long, the weather pattern over North America has two big features -- a big, big ridge of high pressure anchored along the western third (stretching from Baja to almost the Arctic Circle) and a big, big area of low pressure anchored over Hudson Bay.

    Not only has that ridge baked the West Coast, but on the other end of the scale, that low has made life miserable for the rest of the nation east of Denver. There, summer has gone into hiding, with relentless rain and thunderstorms. New York City is on pace for one of their coldest July's ever.

    With such exaggerated patterns, it's hard for them to budge because they are so strong they get stubborn. Incoming weather systems, typically weaker around here in summer anyway, are no match to move a ridge of this size, and then in turn, this ridge doesn't move to push the eastern low out of the way. It's like having a disabled semi jackknifed on the 520 bridge -- there's just not much room to move.

    That ridge, in turn, keeps the thermal trough over our area. Heat waves usually don't go longer than two or three days because the ridge gets nudged east by the westerly flow of the planet, and once the thermal trough moves east of the Cascades, it opens the door for the cool west wind to kick up. But with the ridge so strong, it's able to hold back the ocean breezes and maintain the thermal trough right over Western Washington.

    The last time we saw this pattern was 1977 and 1981, our two current heat wave champs. 1981 is notable for 5 days in a row over 90, including a 99 and 98, while 1977 had an 18 day period where it was over 79 every day (15 in a row over 80), 13 days over 85 (9 consecutive) and six days over 90 (4 consecutive).

    The east wind should also at least eat away at some of this lingering humidity, but it'll still be a bit muggier than a normal heat wave - not that anything else is much normal about this heat anyway.

    Record Check:

    A quick list of other records that might fall this week:

    • Consecutive days at or over 90: 5 (Aug. 7-11, 1981). Current forecast: 4, Potential: 6
    • Consecutive days at or over 85: 9 (Aug. 5-13, 1977). Current forecast: 9. Potential: 11
    • Consecutive days at or over 80: 15 (July 30-Aug 13, 1977) -- Current forecast: 11, which stretches through the end of the extended forecast. Potential: ??? (Incidentally in the '77 streak, the 14th was 79, there were three more 80s afterward.
    • Number of 90 degree days in a month: 7 (July 1958)
      • . Current forecast: 6. Potential: 7
    • Number of 90 degree days in a year: 9 (1958)
      • . Through Tuesday: 5 with two more a slam dunk, and potential for a few more by next Monday. And there's still August and early Sept. yet.
    • Hottest July on record (high temperature): 81.4 degrees in 1958. (If current 7 day forecast verifies exactly, our avg. this month will be 81.25)
    • Seattle daily records: Wednesday: 95, Thursday: 94. Friday: 93

    When Does It End?!?

    As I mentioned earlier, this pattern has the makings of the 1977 heat wave that stretched 18 days. We should begin some gradual cooling as we get into Friday, and by the weekend, highs should be into the upper 80s as this ridge slowly weakens. But a new area of low pressure developing off the California coast, it will keep pressures lower offshore and could keep the surge of marine air from rolling in until the middle of next week, meaning several more days of above normal temperatures, although not to these extreme levels.

    BUT! Cool weather fans, I present this to you:

    That may seem like squiggles and blobs, but what it represents, is bliss: At face value, that's a mostly cloudy day with a few showers and highs in the upper 60s or so.

    Only one slight problem -- that's not until next Thursday. It's circled on my calendar anyway.

  • Link: http://www.katu.com/news/local/51988007.html

    • Written by fatih al-farahat in , ,


    Scientists Get Annoyed

    This report is rich and worth the read if only for the evident wit of a mob of angry scientists.

    The esteemed editor’s error was in failing to understand that ‘all scientists’ having been so characterized have been succumbing to pangs of guilt and have been actually checking out the relevant science to discover what they all agree with. It is a little like the famous three day scam show laid on by Huck Finn’s fellow travelers. The esteemed editor forgot to be long gone on the third day when the natives show up loaded for bear.

    As anyone who has followed my investigations knows, there are several credible variables effecting climate change and recently we have picked up on an additional one that effectively eliminates any need for CO2 to be x or deus ex machina on the stage of climate change. They are all nicely channeled in the stable climate called the Holocene that ended the ice age Pleistocene.

    And yes, there is more heat presently in the northern hemisphere but it appears to be slowly dissipating after been built up over the eighties and the nineties. It continues to reduce the northern sea ice. In spite of all this the globe did warm up for a couple of decades and we appear to be on the way to producing another pleasant medieval warm period.

    And again what is important is not the warming part of this equation at all. Left to its own devices, the Earth will be naturally at the top end of the Holocene range. We need to be far more interested in what can actually cool the Earth and do it quickly, since all cooling episodes have been abrupt. All evidence that I have been able to scare up so far, points to causation by exceptional volcanic activity in Alaska and environs. A blast there needs to be a lot smaller than those at the equator for equal effect and are thus much more common.

    Right now I would love to have an eruption history of all prospective Alaskan volcanoes in order to discover any linkage. The fact that it was the farthest end of the earth eliminated eye witness reports. It has also been difficult to explore and to get data even today. Also an under water event would leave little evidence. Imagine if Pele had blown up without witnesses. Would anyone recognize a recent event? The answer has been not easily at all.


    http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2213/Climate-Revolt-Major-Science-Group-Startled-By-Outpouring-of-Scientists-Rejecting-ManMade-Climate-Fears-Clamor-for-Editor-to-Be-Removed

    Climate Revolt: Major Science Group 'Startled' By Outpouring of Scientists Rejecting Man-Made Climate Fears! Clamor for Editor to Be Removed!

    Scientists seek to remove climate fear promoting editor and 'trade him to New York Times or Washington Post'

    Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - By     Marc Morano – Climate Depot

    Climate Depot Exclusive

    An outpouring of skeptical scientists who are members of the American Chemical Society (ACS) are revolting against the group's editor-in-chief -- with some demanding he be removed -- after an editorial appeared claiming “the science of anthropogenic climate change is becoming increasingly well established.”

    The editorial claimed the "consensus" view was growing "increasingly difficult to challenge, despite the efforts of diehard climate-change deniers.” The editor now admits he is "startled" by the negative reaction from the group's scientific members.

    The     June 22, 2009 editorial in Chemical and Engineering News by editor in chief Rudy Baum, is facing widespread blowback and condemnation from American Chemical Society member scientists. Baum concluded his editorial by stating that “deniers” are attempting to “derail meaningful efforts to respond to global climate change.”

    Dozens of letters were     published on July 27, 2009 castigating Baum, with some scientists calling for his replacement as editor-in-chief.

    The editorial was met with a swift, passionate and scientific rebuke from Baum's colleagues. Virtually all of the letters published on July 27 in castigated Baum's climate science views. Scientists rebuked Baum's use of the word “deniers” because of the terms “association with Holocaust deniers.” In addition, the scientists called Baum's editorial: “disgusting”; “a disgrace”; “filled with misinformation”; “unworthy of a scientific periodical” and “pap.”

    One outraged ACS member     wrote to Baum: "When all is said and done, and you and your kind are proven wrong (again), you will have moved on to be an unthinking urn for another rat pleading catastrophe. You will be removed. I promise."

    Baum 'startled' by scientists reaction

    Baum     wrote on July 27, that he was "startled" and "surprised" by the "contempt" and "vehemence" of the ACS scientists to his view of the global warming "consensus."

    "Some of the letters I received are not fit to print. Many of the letters we have printed are, I think it is fair to say, outraged by my position on global warming," Baum wrote.

    Selected Excerpts of Skeptical Scientists:

    “I think it's time to find a new editor,” ACS member Thomas E. D'Ambra wrote.
    Geochemist R. Everett Langford wrote: “I am appalled at the condescending attitude of Rudy Baum, Al Gore, President Barack Obama, et al., who essentially tell us that there is no need for further research—that the matter is solved.”

    ACS scientist Dennis Malpass wrote: “Your editorial was a disgrace. It was filled with misinformation, half-truths, and ad hominem attacks on those who dare disagree with you. Shameful!”

    ACS member scientist Dr. Howard Hayden, a Physics Professor Emeritus from the University of Connecticut: “Baum's remarks are particularly disquieting because of his hostility toward skepticism, which is part of every scientist's soul. Let's cut to the chase with some questions for Baum: Which of the 20-odd major climate models has settled the science, such that all of the rest are now discarded? [...] Do you refer to 'climate change' instead of 'global warming' because the claim of anthropogenic global warming has become increasingly contrary to fact?"

    Edward H. Gleason wrote: “Baum's attempt to close out debate goes against all my scientific training, and to hear this from my ACS is certainly alarming to me...his use of 'climate-change deniers' to pillory scientists who do not believe climate change is a crisis is disingenuous and unscientific.”

    Atmospheric Chemist Roger L. Tanner: "I have very little in common with the philosophy of the Heartland Institute and other 'free-market fanatics,' and I consider myself a progressive Democrat. Nevertheless, we scientists should know better than to propound scientific truth by consensus and to excoriate skeptics with purple prose."

    William Tolley: "I take great offense that Baum would use Chemical and Engineering News, for which I pay dearly each year in membership dues, to purvey his personal views and so glibly ignore contrary information and scold those of us who honestly find these views to be a hoax."

    William E. Keller wrote: “However bitter you (Baum) personally may feel about CCDs (climate change deniers), it is not your place as editor to accuse them—falsely—of nonscientific behavior by using insultingly inappropriate language. [...] The growing body of scientists, whom you abuse as sowing doubt, making up statistics, and claiming to be ignored by the media, are, in the main, highly competent professionals, experts in their fields, completely honorable, and highly versed in the scientific method—characteristics that apparently do not apply to you.”

    ACS member Wallace Embry: “I would like to see the American Chemical Society Board 'cap' Baum's political pen and 'trade' him to either the New York Times or Washington Post." [To read the more reactions from scientists to Baum's editorial go     here and see below.]

    Physicists Dr. Lubos Motl, who publishes the Reference Frame website, weighed in on the controversy as well,     calling Baum's editorial an "alarmist screed."

    “Now, the chemists are thinking about replacing this editor who has hijacked the ACS bulletin to promote his idiosyncratic political views," Motl wrote on July 27, 2009.

    Baum cites discredited Obama Administration Climate Report

    To “prove” his assertion that the science was “becoming increasingly well established,” Baum cited the Obama Administration's     U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) study as evidence that the science was settled. [Climate Depot Editor's Note: Baum's grasp of the latest “science” is embarrassing. For Baum to cite the June 2009 Obama Administration report as “evidence” that science is growing stronger exposes him as having very poor research skills. See this comprehensive report on scientists rebuking that report. See: 'Scaremongering': Scientists Pan Obama Climate Report: 'This is not a work of science but an embarrassing episode for the authors and NOAA'...'Misrepresents the science' - July 8, 2009 )

    Baum also touted the Congressional climate bill as “legislation with real teeth to control the emission of greenhouse gases.” [Climate Depot Editor's Note: This is truly laughable that an editor-in-chief at the American Chemical Society could say the climate bill has “real teeth.” This statement should be retracted in full for lack of evidence. The Congressional climate bill has outraged environmental groups for failing to impact global temperatures and failing to even reduce emissions! See:     Climate Depot Editorial: Climate bill offers (costly) non-solutions to problems that don't even exist - No detectable climate impact: 'If we actually faced a man-made 'climate crisis', we would all be doomed' June 20, 2009 ]

    The American Chemical Society's scientific revolt is the latest in a series of recent eruptions against the so-called “consensus” on man-made global warming.

    On May 1 2009, the American Physical Society (APS) Council decided to review its current climate statement via a high-level subcommittee of respected senior scientists. The decision was prompted after a group of 54 prominent physicists petitioned the APS revise its global warming position. The     54 physicists wrote to APS governing board: “Measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th - 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today.”

    The petition signed by the prominent physicists, led by     Princeton University's Dr. Will Happer, who has conducted 200 peer-reviewed scientific studies. The peer-reviewed journal Nature published a July 22, 2009 letter by the physicists persuading the APS to review its statement. In 2008, an American Physical Society editor conceded that a “considerable presence” of scientific skeptics exists.

    In addition, in April 2009, the     Polish National Academy of Science reportedly “published a document that expresses skepticism over the concept of man-made global warming.” An abundance of new peer-reviewed scientific studies continue to be published challenging the UN IPCC climate views. (See: Climate Fears RIP...for 30 years!? - Global Warming could stop 'for up to 30 years! Warming 'On Hold?...'Could go into hiding for decades,' peer-reviewed study finds – Discovery.com – March 2, 2009 & Peer-Reviewed Study Rocks Climate Debate! 'Nature not man responsible for recent global warming...little or none of late 20th century warming and cooling can be attributed to humans' – July 23, 2009 )

    A March 2009 a 255-page U. S. Senate Report detailed     "More Than 700 International Scientists Dissenting Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims." 2009's continued lack of warming, further frustrated the promoters of man-made climate fears. See: Earth's 'Fever' Breaks! Global temperatures 'have plunged .74°F since Gore released An Inconvenient Truth' – July 5, 2009

    In addition, the following developments further in 2008 challenged the “consensus” of global warming.     India Issued a report challenging global warming fears; a canvass of more than 51,000 Canadian scientists revealed 68% disagree that global warming science is “settled”; A Japan Geoscience Union symposium survey in 2008 reportedly “showed 90 per cent of the participants do not believe the IPCC report.” Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. [See: Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' & see full reports here & here - Also see: UN IPCC's William Schlesinger admits in 2009 that only 20% of IPCC scientists deal with climate ]
    Selected Excerpted Highlights of American Chemical Society Scientist's Reaction to Baum's Editorial: (For full letters see     here.)

    Instead of debate, members are constantly subjected to your arrogant self-righteousness and the left-wing practice of stifling debate by personal attacks on anyone who disagrees. I think ACS should make an effort to educate its membership about the science of climate change and let them draw their own conclusions. Although under your editorial leadership, I suspect we would be treated to a biased and skewed version of scientific debate. I think its time to find a new editor. [...] How about using your position as editor to promote a balanced scientific discussion of the theory behind the link of human activity to global warming? I am not happy that you continue to use the pulpit of your editorials to promote your left-wing opinions.

    Thomas E. D'AmbraRexford, N.Y.
    #
    Baum's remarks are particularly disquieting because of his hostility toward skepticism, which is part of every scientist's soul. Let's cut to the chase with some questions for Baum: Which of the 20-odd major climate models has settled the science, such that all of the rest are now discarded?
Do you refer to "climate change" instead of "global warming" because the claim of anthropogenic global warming has become increasingly contrary to fact?

    Howard HaydenPueblo West, Colo.
    #
    I was a geochemist doing research on paleoclimates early in my career. I have tried to follow the papers in the scientific literature. [...] I am appalled at the condescending attitude of Rudy Baum, Al Gore, President Barack Obama, et al., who essentially tell us that there is no need for further research—that the matter is solved.
The peer-reviewed literature is not unequivocal about causes and effects of global warming. We are still learning about properties of water, for goodness' sake. There needs to be more true scientific research without politics on both sides and with all scientists being heard. To insult and denigrate those with whom you disagree is not becoming.

    R. Everett LangfordThe Woodlands, Texas
    #
    Your editorial in the     June 22 issue of C&EN was a disgrace. It was filled with misinformation, half-truths, and ad hominem attacks on those who dare disagree with you. Shameful!

    Are you planning to write an editorial about the Environmental Protection Agency's recent suppression of a global warming report that goes against the gospel according to NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director James Hansen? Or do you only editorialize on matters in keeping with your biased views on global warming?

    Trying to arrest climate change is a feeble, futile endeavor and a manifestation of human arrogance. Humankind's contribution to climate change is minuscule, and trying to eliminate even that minute effect will be enormously expensive, damaging to the poorest people on the planet, and ultimately ineffective.

    Dennis MalpassMagnolia, Texas
    #
    I can't accept as facts the reports of federal agencies, because they have become political and are more likely to support the regime in power than not. Baum's attempt to close out debate goes against all my scientific training, and to hear this from my ACS is certainly alarming to me.

    Edward H. GleasonOoltewah, Tenn.
    #
    Having worked as an atmospheric chemist for many years, I have extensive experience with environmental issues, and I usually agree with Rudy Baum's editorials. But his use of "climate-change deniers" to pillory scientists who do not believe climate change is a crisis is disingenuous and unscientific. [...] Given the climate's complexity and these and other uncertainties, are we justified in legislating major increases in our energy costs unilaterally guided only by a moral imperative to "do our part" for Earth's climate? I am among many environmentally responsible citizen-scientists who think this is stupid, both because our emissions reductions will be dwarfed by increases elsewhere (China and India, for example) and because the models have large uncertainties. [...] I have very little in common with the philosophy of the Heartland Institute and other "free-market fanatics," and I consider myself a progressive Democrat. Nevertheless, we scientists should know better than to propound scientific truth by consensus and to excoriate skeptics with purple prose.
    Roger L. TannerMuscle Shoals, Ala.
    #
    I would like to see the ACS Board cap Baum's political pen and trade him to either the New York Times or Washington Post.
    Wallace EmbryColumbia, Tenn.
    #
    In the interest of brevity, I can limit my response to the diatribe of the editor-in-chief in the     June 22 edition of C&EN to one word: Disgusting.
    Louis H. RombachWilmington, Del.
    #
    I am particularly offended by the false analogy with creationists. It is easy to just dismiss anyone who dares disagree as being "unscientific."
    Daniel B. RegoLas Vegas
    #
    While Baum obviously has strong personal views on the subject, I take great offense that he would use C&EN, for which I pay dearly each year in membership dues, to purvey his personal views and so glibly ignore contrary information and scold those of us who honestly find these views to be a hoax.
    William TolleySan Diego
    #
    I appreciate it when C&EN presents information from qualified supporters of either, and preferably both, sides of an issue to help readers decide what is correct, rather than dispensing your conclusions and ridiculing people who disagree with you.
    P. S. LowellLakeway, Texas
    #
    I am a retired Ph.D. chemical engineer. During my working years, I was involved in many environmental issues concerning products and processes of the companies for which I worked. I am completely disgusted with the June 22 editorial. I do not consider it to be very scientific to castigate skeptics of man-made global warming. [...] [Global warming fears are] not of particular concern because "the ocean is a very large sink for carbon dioxide." [...] The overall problem here is that there is already an abundance of scientific illiteracy in the American public that will not be improved by Baum's stance in what should be a scientific magazine. Theories are not proven by consensus—but by data from repeatable experimentation that leaves no doubt of interpretation.
    Charles M. KrutchenDaphne, Ala.
    #
    Please do not keep writing C&EN editorials according to the liberal religion's credo—"Attack all climate-change deniers, creationists, conservatives, people who voted for George W. Bush, etc." It is a sign of weakness in your argument when you attack those who disagree. [...] Your choice of terminology referring to skeptical scientists who don't toe your line as CCD, climate-change deniers, and putting them in association with Holocaust deniers, is unworthy of an editorial in a scientific periodical. Who don't you go head-to-head with the critics? Please don't keep doing this. Find a scientific writer for the editorial page. We get plenty of this pap from the mainstream media and do not need it in C&EN.
    Heinrich BrinksMonterey, Calif.
    #
    Your utter disdain of CCDs and the accusations of improper tactics you ascribe to them cannot be dismissed. However bitter you personally may feel about CCDs, it is not your place as editor to accuse them—falsely—of nonscientific behavior by using insultingly inappropriate language. The growing body of scientists, whom you abuse as sowing doubt, making up statistics, and claiming to be ignored by the media, are, in the main, highly competent professionals, experts in their fields, completely honorable, and highly versed in the scientific method—characteristics that apparently do not apply to you. The results presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which you call the CCD's "favorite whipping boy," do indeed fall into the category of predictions that fail to match the data, requiring a return to the drawing board. Your flogging of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change is not only infantile but beggars you to contribute facts to back up your disdain. Incidentally, why do we fund climate studies by U.S. Global Change Research Program if the problem is settled?
    William E. KellerSanta Fe, N.M.
    For all of the letters send in repsone to Baum's editorial see     here.

    Marc Morano ClimateDepot.comCFACT1875 Eye Street, NWFifth FloorWashington, D.C. 20006202-536-5052Morano@ClimateDepot.com

    Written by fatih al-farahat in , ,


    Oilsands and Bakken Developments

    The bottom line here is that a revolution in completion technology is changing everything in the oil industry.

    We commonly have drilled through multiple formations bearing hydro carbon content and then completed on what appeared to be best. Suddenly it has become possible to achieve multiple completions in the same well. I am not sure yet what this means. On vertical wells pressure and water issues usually narrowed the options. However on horizontal wells this should be ameliorated.

    The Bakken is all about fracturing and nifty completion technology. The same is true for gas shale. These are indications that the industry is making huge advances over past practice.
    Also note the Bakken is at 10,000 feet and that only a few are been drilled at a time and cannot be compared to the thousands of much shallower shale gas wells been drilled.

    Now if we could find a way to access those bypassed hydrocarbons we might be onto something big. Obviously the big thick zones (over 200 feet here) are the low lying fruit for the industry. However, imagine running a horizontal on the basement of an oil rich Mississippian sand, mapped to maximize gravity feed and enhanced with nitrogen injection. Those reserves are huge but the lack of a gas drive has produced wells able to make a barrel a day. A thousand meters of this oil behind pipe should happily make a thousand barrels for a century or so.
    Recent developments suggest that we may not be too far off.

    Update on the Oilsands, Bakken, Bakken-Three Forks and Oil and Gas Drilling Technolgy

    Oilsand Slower Growth and Lower Costs

    Suncor expects its [oilsand] capital costs to decline by as much as 20 per cent from the peak of 2008 when it resumes oil sands expansion after its merger with Petro-Canada, which is expected to close this fall.

    Oil sands producers faced increasing bottlenecks in accessing pipelines and a lack of refining capacity at the height of the boom last year. A moderate development schedule will allow time for pipeline companies to complete their expansions, and refiners to reconfigure their plants to handle the Alberta bitumen.

    Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers at the height of the boom predicted oil sands production would grow to 3.5 million barrels a day by 2015. It has since revised that forecast to between 1.9 million and 2.2 million barrels a day.

    Bakken - Three Forks : Possible New Oil Formation

    The Bakken formation encompasses some 25,000 square miles within the Williston Basin in North Dakota and Montana. The U.S. Geological Survey has called it the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.

    The Three Forks-Sanish formation is made up of sand and porous rock directly below the Bakken shale. But geologists don't know whether the Three Forks-Sanish is a separate oil-producing formation or if it catches oil that flows from the Bakken shale above.Fort Worth, Texas-based XTO Energy Inc. has reported to the state that one of its Three Forks wells pulled more than 2,100 barrels a day.

    State and industry officials are conducting a study to determine whether the Three Forks is a unique reservoir. The plan is to compare results from closely spaced wells, one aiming for the Three Forks, and the other at the Bakken. Researchers will look at pressure changes in the formations to determine if they are connected.

    Results from the study could be ready later this year, officials say. It already is spurring some speculation that the state has billions of barrels more in oil reserves.

    "Eventually it could equal the Bakken, which is remarkable, and that's an understatement," Helms said.
    "Is it the same or is it a separate formation? I think everybody is hoping for the latter," Harms said. "That could literally double the potential we have — a Bakken 2, if you will."

    Kelso, of Whiting Petroleum, said his company's drilling activity shows that Three Forks likely is a separate formation. He said core samples taken from the Bakken and Three Forks show more hydrocarbons in the latter.
    "From the core samples, Three Forks looks better for us than the Bakken," he said.Promising production results from the Three Forks could mean that companies that come up empty in the Bakken could use existing leases to drill in the same area for Three Forks oil.Geologists say the Three Forks-Sanish is typically about 250 feet thick. Julie LeFever, a geologist with the state Geological Survey in Grand Forks, has studied the Bakken for two decades. She believes oil found in the Three Forks-Sanish has come from the Bakken over millions of years.

    Packers Plus MultiStage Drilling

    Where analysts once warned of looming gas shortages and the need for massive imports from offshore, now they're complaining of a popped gas bubble that has driven prices to decade lows, down more than 75 per cent from last summer. Some say $10 is a distant memory, never to return.

    Three years ago, Packers could insert a half-dozen or so "stages" into a single well. As horizontal wells got longer, that number has grown to 22, and Themig says new advancements will allow virtually "unlimited" stages in a single well. That, in turn, has resulted in an order-of-magnitude higher production for a basic well that costs only about twice as much to drill.

    The average conventional gas well in Western Canada produces about 250,000 cubic feet of gas a day. EnCana Corp. CEO Randy Eresman said in releasing the company's second-quarter results this week that its latest Horn River wells that use the multistage technology are coming on at initial rates of up to 11 million cubic feet per day.
    Note: this is a misleading implied comparison. avg production is long after the well has been stabalized and run for a long time. Initial production is often very high and makes a great press release but is totally misleading as to final production.

    Drilling results from the new shale basins are just starting to trickle in, but reserve replacement south of the border seems to validate the notion that fewer wells are producing more gas, even in the midst of a downturn.

    American gas reserves grew almost 40 per cent last year and production in the Lower 48 states posted the biggest increase since the Eisenhower years, mostly due to new fracture technology. In June, the U. S. Potential Gas Committee issued a report that suggested more than a third of new gas reserves--some 600 trillion cubic feet--are found in shales that need extensive stimulation to be productive. According to Ziff Energy, Canada replaced about 91 per cent of production, even as producers slashed drilling to decade lows.And that could be the tip of the iceberg. Eresman said North America now has enough gas to last a century at current consumption rates.

    One of the earliest converts to Packers was Petrobank Energy, which used the technology to create a dominant position in the Bakken oil play. Like shale gas in northeast B. C., rocks in southeast Saskatchewan require the same drilling techniques to make the oil flow, according to Gregg Smith, the company's chief operating officer. Three years ago, the company was producing 100 barrels a day from the unconventional oil play. Today that number is around 17,000.

    Brigham Exploration in Bakken, Three Forks Using Multistage Drilling

    Brigham Exploration Company reports continuing reductions in drilling and completion costs. The company is now using up to 24 stages in long laterals. The Strobeck 27-34 in Mountrail County, North Dakota flowed 1,788 bbl/day of crude oil and 1.2 million cubic feet/day of natural gas. The well, completed in the Three Forks, had 18 effective fracture stages. The well also confirmed core results from the Anderson 28-33 which showed that both the upper Three Forks and the middle Bakken were oil saturated. Completed well cost was $3.9 million, 33% less than similar wells drilled in 2008.

    The average horizontal well was expected to recover between 600,000 and 800,000 barrels over a 15 year well life. Some time will have to elapse before it will be possible to extrapolate production curves from long lateral wells far enough into the future to make an educated guess about ultimate recovery. Based on experience in the Middle East, ultimate recovery could be in the millions of barrels/well. Bakken basin crude oil sells at a $5/bbl discount to Nymex traded light crude. At $40/bbl (according to a report in the latest Oil & Gas Financial Journal), profit on a well that cost $5.5 million can be $24/bbl. Now, with crude oil trading at $60/bbl, profit should be considerably higher.

    Written by fatih al-farahat in , ,


    Fiona Kobusingye's Africa

    It is about time that someone pointed out the obvious. It is outrageous to suggest that modern methods not be used to produce the wealth for others that it has produced for us. That modern methods are not perfect is irrelevant. They were replacing methods that were even less perfect. I tend to actually get angry about such profoundly ignorant assertions.

    The magic of modern methods is that they begin an optimization process that step by step eliminates new problems as they arise.

    The present emphasis on CO2 production is well met because it forces us to create far better energy regimes. That was simply overdue and required a blanket decision by governments to do it.

    Subsistence farming, which only exists because the farmers do not have access to credit on reasonable terms, is the worst producer of CO2 imaginable. Slash and burn is just that.

    The reason that I have been pushing subsistence biochar using maize culture in emulation of the Amazonians is to end the folly of slash and burn. My initial posts on this now go back two years and the general methodology has made great strides into agricultural consciousness. However, we still do not have the picture show made on the earthen corn kiln method that could be used to get the information to everyone out there. Good progress is been made in applying biochar with zao holes by hugely reducing the need for biochar. Hills are better still in well watered climates.

    Africa’s real climate crisis

    Life in Africa is often nasty, impoverished and short. AIDS kills 2.2 million Africans every year according to WHO (World Health Organization) reports. Lung infections cause 1.4 million deaths, malaria 1 million more, intestinal diseases 700,000. Diseases that could be prevented with simple vaccines kill an additional 600,000 annually, while war, malnutrition and life in filthy slums send countless more parents and children to early graves.

    And yet, day after day, Africans are told the biggest threat we face is – global warming.

    Conferences, news stories, television programs, class lectures and one-sided “dialogues” repeat the claim endlessly. We’re told using oil and petrol, even burning wood and charcoal, will dangerously overheat our planet, melt ice caps, flood coastal cities, and cause storms, droughts, disease and extinctions.

    Over 700 climate scientists and 31,000 other scientists say humans and carbon dioxide have minimal effects on Earth’s temperature and climate, and there is no global warming crisis. But their views and studies are never invited or even tolerated in these “climate crisis” forums, especially at “ministerial dialogues” staged with United Nations money. Al Gore refuses to debate any of these experts, or even permit questions that he hasn’t approved ahead of time.

    Instead, Africans are told climate change “threatens humanity more than HIV/AIDS.” More than 2.2 million dead Africans every year?

    We are warned that it would be “nearly impossible to adapt to the loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet,” which would raise sea levels by “5 to 15 meters.” That certainly would impact our coastal communities. But how likely is it?

    The average annual temperature in Antarctica is minus 50 degrees F! Summer in its Western Peninsula barely lasts two months and gets maybe 10 degrees above freezing for just a few hours a day. Not even Mr. Gore or UN computer models talk about raising Antarctic temperatures by 85 degrees F year-round. So how is that ice supposed to melt?
    Let’s not forget that sea levels have risen 120 meters since the last Ice Age ended. Do the global warming alarmists think cave men fires caused that? Obviously, powerful natural forces caused those ancient glaciers to come and go – and caused the droughts, floods and climate changes that have affected Africa, the Earth and its animals and people for millions of years.

    Just consider northern Africa, where green river valleys, hippopotami and happy villages suddenly got turned into the Sahara Desert 4,000 years ago. Scientists don’t know why, but it probably wasn’t Egyptian pharaohs building pyramids and driving chariots.

    However, the real problem isn’t questionable or fake science, hysterical claims and worthless computer models that predict global warming disasters. It’s that they’re being used to justify telling Africans that we shouldn’t build coal or natural gas electrical power plants. It’s the almost total absence of electricity keeping us from creating jobs and becoming modern societies. It’s that these policies KILL.

    The average African life span is lower than it was in the United States and Europe 100 years ago. But Africans are being told we shouldn’t develop, or have electricity or cars because, now that those countries are rich beyond anything Africans can imagine, they’re worried about global warming.

    Al Gore and UN climate boss Yvo de Boer tell us the world needs to go on an energy diet. Well, I have news for them. Africans are already on an energy diet. We’re starving!

    Al Gore uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year. And those anti-electricity policies are keeping us impoverished.

    Not having electricity means millions of Africans don’t have refrigerators to preserve food and medicine. Outside of wealthy parts of our big cities, people don’t have lights, computers, modern hospitals and schools, air conditioning – or offices, factories and shops to make things and create good jobs.

    Not having electricity also means disease and death. It means millions die from lung infections, because they have to cook and heat with open fires; from intestinal diseases caused by spoiled food and unsafe drinking water; from malaria, TB, cholera, measles and other diseases that we could prevent or treat if we had proper medical facilities.

    Hypothetical global warming a hundred years from now is worse than this?

    Telling Africans they can’t have electricity and economic development – except what can be produced with some wind turbines or little solar panels – is immoral. It is a crime against humanity.

    Meanwhile, China and India are building new coal-fired power plants every week, so that they can lift their people out of poverty. So even if Africa remains impoverished – and the US and Europe switched to windmills and nuclear power – global carbon dioxide levels would continue increasing for decades.

    Even worse, the global warming crusaders don’t stop at telling us we can’t have electricity. They also campaign against biotechnology. As American, Brazilian and South African farmers will tell you, biotech seeds increase crop yields, reduce pesticide use, feed more people and help farmers earn more money. New varieties are being developed that can resist droughts – the kind Africa has always experienced, and the ones some claim will increase due to global warming.

    Environmental radicals even oppose insecticides and the powerful spatial insect repellant DDT, which Uganda’s Health Ministry is using along with bed nets and modern ACT drugs to eliminate malaria. They claim global warming will make malaria worse. That’s ridiculous, because the disease was once found all over Europe, the United States and even Siberia.

    Uganda and Africa need to stop worrying about what the West, the UN and Al Gore say. We need to focus on our own needs, resources and opportunities.

    We don’t need more aid – especially the kind that goes mostly to corrupt officials who put the money in private bank accounts, hold global warming propaganda conferences and keep their own people poor. We don’t need rich countries promising climate change assistance (maybe, sometime, ten years from now), if we promise not to develop.

    We need to stop acting like ignorant savages, who thought solar eclipses meant the gods were angry with them, and asked witch doctors to bring the sun back. We need to stop listening to global warming witch doctors, who get rich telling us to keep living “indigenous,” impoverished lives.