Energy: A recent report by an energy consultancy suggests that the U.S. now has oil reserves bigger than Saudi Arabia’s. Believe it or not, that might be a huge understatement. 

The Rystad Energy consultancy’s latest estimates for U.S. oil reserves says the U.S. may have as many as 264 billion barrels of the crude stuff, compared to Saudi Arabia’s 212 billion barrels and the world’s total of 2 trillion barrels.

“At current production rates,” notes Reason’s Ronald Bailey, “this is enough oil to supply the world for 70 years.”

He’s right. And that’s great news. But it’s even better than that, in fact.

As we have noted on these pages many times before, the amount of oil and gas reserves in the U.S. just keeps growing, thanks to huge advances in technology. Bailey quotes from ExxonMobil’s “The Outlook for Energy” for 2016: “Technology is not just expanding our daily oil production; it also continues to increase the amount of oil and liquid fuels we can count on for the future.”

John L. Casey, founder of Veritence Corporation and author of Dark Winter, on April 11, 2016 made two major climate predictions.

Prediction 1.  We can now add this new event and date to our memories – February 2016. This is the month when global temperatures began a final long term decline into a deep and potentially dangerous abyss of record cold that will last for thirty years. Read more.

Prediction 2. Like the past 200 years of relatively continuous growth in global temperatures, the 2015-2016 warm temperatures were caused by the Sun. Unfortunately, the last two decades of solar heating, which have simultaneously permitted bumper crops for the world’s hungry masses, is in my opinion, the last of its kind for at least the next 400 years. The warmth we have enjoyed and that of generations to come is over.

The AAAS and affiliated professional societies just shot themselves in the foot with the letter to U.S. policy makers.

Last week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) issued a press release entitled Thirty-One Top Scientific Societies Speak With One Voice on Global Climate Change.  Punchline:

In a consensus letter to U.S. policymakers, a partnership of 31 leading nonpartisan scientific societies today reaffirmed the reality of human-caused climate change, noting that greenhouse gas emissions “must be substantially reduced” to minimize negative impacts on the global economy, natural resources, and human health.

Climate fraudsters at Yale University show plumes of runoff from the Greenland ice sheet, and claim that the ice sheet is melting fast and will raise sea levels 23 feet.

This is utter nonsense. About 500 billion tons of snow falls on Greenland every year. This lowers sea level slightly during the winter. During the summer, the snow melts and returns to the sea – raising sea level slightly. It has nothing to do with climate. It is called summer.

Analysis of the satellite global temperature and known atmospheric carbon dioxide levels indicate that it is the temperature of the atmosphere that controls CO2 levels, not the reverse. The findings discredit the UN IPCC narrative that carbon emissions drive global warming.  

The graph (shown right) displays the time relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, from the Scripps Institute, compared to the satellite lower tropospheric Tropics-Land temperature provide by the University of Alabama, Huntsville, for the major 1997-‘98 El Nino event. The maximum in the annual increment of the temperature, at October 1997, preceded the maximum in the annual increment in the CO2 concentration, at March 1998, by 5 months revealing that the CO2 change could not possibly have caused the temperature change.

Statistical analysis of the complete data set extending from December 1978, when satellite measurements began, until the present determined that the 5 month delay was the average throughout the 38 year period.

Can you chemically “grow” a military drone?

It sounds like an idea for a science fiction film, but here in the UK scientists and engineers are spending time and money to see if they can do exactly that.

British warplanes are already flying with parts made from a 3D printer.

Researchers are already using that same technology to build drones.

“The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.” –  Thomas Huxley

This comment describes the career of John L. Daly (March 1943-January 2004). John lived on the beautiful island of Tasmania, where he became a climate devil gaining global attention in 1995 when he started the most successful early skeptics webpage “Still Waiting for Greenhouse.” He was an innovator in the climate area of using the internet to establish himself.

This afternoon’s top climate fraud is a claim that warming temperatures and disappearing sea ice threatens penguins.

Global warming threatens penguin population | khou.com

Had the author actually done any research, she would have known that Antarctic sea ice is increasing, not decreasing.

Scientists have long been puzzled by comets. Retired science writer, Edsel Chromie, who has studied the subject in a long career, shares his unique insight on this tantalizing mystery of outer space.

Edsel writes:

In 1985 I wrote to NASA explaining my unique concept of comets. I received a reply dated Nov. 21, 1985 from Stephen Maran, Senior Staff Scientist. He wrote: “Thank you for your letter of Nov. 7^th concerning your concept for explaining the nature of comets. Along with most other astronomers who have investigated the subject, I favor the dirty ice ball model. However, rather than debate the subject with those such as yourself who are proposing other theories, I’m just planning to wait for the results of the space probe visits to Halley’s Comet, which will show us whether there is an ice ball or not.” 

Over 30 years later NASA is still sending probes to comets trying to determine what is causing the bizarre activity. Now, they say they will examine the interior of comets to see if something in the interior is creating these effects.

In 1985 the International Cometary Explorer flew right through the tail of the Giacobini-Zinner Comet and Flight Director Robert Farquhar said: “With the ship well into the tail, we haven’t seen any dust at all. I’m very surprised.” In 1986 the scientists on the Imaging Team in Darmstadt, Germany reviewing the data from Halley’s Comet said: “Vega 1 showed that Halley’s Comet was cleaner than the clean rooms manufacturers use to assemble spacecraft. The surface is blacker than black coal. The blackest, least reflective paint we manufacture on Earth reflects more light.” Then NASA reported that the Vega 1 spacecraft was “zapped by an electrical charge” which destroyed the camera.

Around 1250 A.D., historical records show, ice packs began showing up farther south in the North Atlantic. Glaciers also began expanding on Greenland, soon to threaten Norse settlements on the island. From 1275 to 1300 A.D., glaciers began expanding more broadly, according to radiocarbon dating of plants killed by the glacier growth. The period known today as the Little Ice Age was just starting to poke through.

Summers began cooling in Northern Europe after 1300 A.D., negatively impacting growing seasons, as reflected in the Great Famine of 1315 to 1317. Expanding glaciers and ice cover spreading across Greenland began driving the Norse settlers out. The last, surviving, written records of the Norse Greenland settlements, which had persisted for centuries, concern a marriage in 1408 A.D. in the church of Hvalsey, today the best preserved Norse ruin.

Colder winters began regularly freezing rivers and canals in Great Britain, the Netherlands and Northern France, with both the Thames in London and the Seine in Paris frozen solid annually. The first River Thames Frost Fair was held in 1607. In 1607-1608, early European settlers in North America reported ice persisting on Lake Superior until June. In January, 1658, a Swedish army marched across the ice to invade Copenhagen. By the end of the 17th century, famines had spread from northern France, across Norway and Sweden, to Finland and Estonia.

Must come down. Of course, we’re referring to lower atmospheric temperatures measured by satellites.

For months we have been saying that, once they started dropping, the satellite temperatures—our only truly global measure—were going to go down with a vengeance, which is what usually happens after a strong El Niño event spikes a fever. El Niño is a dramatic slowdown (or even a reversal) in the trade winds that diverge surface water away from the South American coast, “upwelling” much colder subsurface waters. When that stops, global temperatures rocket upwards, but that also builds up more and more cold water to be unleashed when the trade winds resume.

Second largest 2-month drop in global average satellite temperatures– Largest 2-month drop in tropical average satellite temperatures.

The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for June, 2016 is +0.34 deg. C, down 0.21 deg. C from the May value of +0.55 deg. C (click for full size version):

This gives a 2-month temperature fall of -0.37 deg. C, which is the second largest in the 37+ year satellite record…the largest was -0.43 deg. C in Feb. 1988.

On Earth they produce mesmerizing riots of color that light up the night sky around the poles.

But our planet is not the only world to enjoy stunning aurora – better known as the northern and southern lights.

Now scientists are hoping to unravel the secrets of the biggest such polar light show in our solar system by focusing their attention on Jupiter’s aurora.

They are using the Hubble Space Telescope to study the giant planet’s atmospheric light shows, which cover an area larger than the entire Earth.

New images captured by the telescope reveal the flickers and flashes produced as high energy particles in the solar wind collide with gases over Jupiter’s poles.

As I pointed out recently, the ozone levels at Mauna Loa seem to be just oscillating across an an unchanging range, indicating no trend.  And ozone is well mixed so at least that non-trend (if not absolute levels) should also apply over the Antarctic.  And that does seem to be so.  The “hole” too just oscillates, expanding and contracting in a random way. And in October 2015 the Antarctic ozone hole reached a record size.  No shrinking there!  Which is very frustrating to Greenies.

But they were determined to find something to support their thinking so pulled together all the data they could find on the hole and tortured it with statistics.  They did something that is totally illegitimate in statistics:  Data dredging.    If you look hard enough at any set if statistics you can generally find SOME trend or correlation somewhere.  The problem is that  extending the data base in some way usually wipes out the trend or correlation.  There is a classic example of that here in a study of lynching in the American South.

So what did the authors dredge out?  It would be funny if it were not so pathetic.  They found a trend line going through the data for September only.  In Septembers since 2000, the ozone has been behaving itself, too bad about the other months of the year. How you can draw any inferences from that — let alone the sweeping inferences they do draw — I do not know.

Scientists at two of the world’s leading climate centres – NASA and NOAA – have been caught out manipulating temperature data to overstate the extent of the 20th century “global warming”.

The evidence of their tinkering can clearly be seen at Real Science, where blogger Steven Goddard has posted a series of graphs which show “climate change” before and after the adjustments.

When the raw data is used, there is little if any evidence of global warming and some evidence of global cooling. However, once the data has been adjusted – ie fabricated by computer models –  20th century ‘global warming’ suddenly looks much more dramatic.