Carbon emissions fall by steepest in 40 years

The IEA is to announce a decrease in anthropogenic emissions by 2.6% in the last 12 months in early October,the announcement has been brought forward for the UNFCC meeting in Thailand.

Reuters report

Global emissions of the commonest man-made greenhouse gas carbon dioxide will fall by the sharpest rate in 40 years in 2009 following tumbling factory output, the International Energy Agency said on Monday.

The world must use the drop of about 2.6 percent to drive a global fight against climate change, rather than allow emissions to rise again as after previous recessions, Fatih Birol, IEA chief economist, told Reuters in an interview.

"The biggest fall (in about 40 years) was in 1981, at 1.3 percent, after oil price shocks and economic troubles," Birol said. "We estimate this year the fall will be around twice that."

As these are significant numbers(and the IPCC) tell us they can calculate the manmade proportion in the observations to 4 significant muners to the right of the decimal point,one would expect the "signal" will be observable in the Mauna loa record,singularities which as in essence a velocity inversion are a good test of the accuracy of measurements.

Evidence of Abiogenic Hydrocarbons

One of the paradoxes of hydrocarbons is they are ubiquitous in the universe,eg Titan.The mechanism of their production has been a matter of some robust debate(in the west,)it is important to also note that this is an additional source.

An interesting paper on this has been released in nature.

Researchers at KTH have been able to prove that the fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world.

“With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!” says Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology in Stockholm.

Together with two research colleagues, Professor Kutcherov has simulated the process of pressure and heat that occurs naturally in the inner strata of the earth’s crust. This process generates hydrocarbons, the primary elements of oil and natural gas.

According to Vladimir Kutcherov, these results are a clear indication that oil supplies are not drying up, which has long been feared by researchers and experts in the field.

He adds that there is no chance that fossil oils, with the help of gravity or other forces, would have been able to seep down to a depth of 10.5 kilometres in, for example the US state of Texas, which is rich in oil deposits. This is, according to Vladimir Kutcherov, in addition to his own research results, further evidence that this energy sources can occur other than via fossils - something which will cause a lively discussion among researchers for a considerable period of time.

“There is no doubt that our research has shown that raw oil and natural gas occur without the inclusion of fossils. All types of rock formations can act as hosts for oil deposits,” asserts Vladimir and adds that this applies to areas of land that have previously remained unexplored as possible sources of this type of energy.

This discovery has several positive aspects. Rate of success as concerns finding oil increases dramatically – from 20 till 70 percent. As drilling for oil and natural gas is an extremely expensive process, costs levels will be radically changed for the petroleum companies and eventually also for the end user.

“This means savings of many billions of kronor,” says Vladimir.

Nikolai Kudryavtsev formulated the discussions in the early 1950's,and the Russian oil company has around 350 deep wells in production after first drilling in 1970 (a wildcat well)

The nature paper is here

Methane-derived hydrocarbons produced under upper-mantle conditions

Anton Kolesnikov1,2, Vladimir G. Kutcherov2,3 & Alexander F. Goncharov1

Abstract

There is widespread evidence that petroleum originates from biological processes1, 2, 3. Whether hydrocarbons can also be produced from abiogenic precursor molecules under the high-pressure, high-temperature conditions characteristic of the upper mantle remains an open question. It has been proposed that hydrocarbons generated in the upper mantle could be transported through deep faults to shallower regions in the Earth's crust, and contribute to petroleum reserves4, 5. Here we use in situ Raman spectroscopy in laser-heated diamond anvil cells to monitor the chemical reactivity of methane and ethane under upper-mantle conditions. We show that when methane is exposed to pressures higher than 2 GPa, and to temperatures in the range of 1,000–1,500 K, it partially reacts to form saturated hydrocarbons containing 2–4 carbons (ethane, propane and butane) and molecular hydrogen and graphite. Conversely, exposure of ethane to similar conditions results in the production of methane, suggesting that the synthesis of saturated hydrocarbons is reversible. Our results support the suggestion that hydrocarbons heavier than methane can be produced by abiogenic processes in the upper mantle.

Temperature trends in the South Pacific, some ordinary observations of interest..

“Fear feeds ignorance” said James Lovelock in the Ages of Gaia,*and a great niche was opened for fear when science became incomprehensible to those who were not its practitioners”

Mathematical theory tells us there is am infinite way of describing the average statistic of temperature in a set of observations. Peterson and Vose.(1997) An Overview of the Global Historical Climatology Network Temperature Database found over 100 different averages of temperatures have been used in meteorology and climate studies.

The standard or arbitrary axiom is to use the anomalies (variation) from some arbitrary set of observations (a temporal set of usually around 30 years) and “picture” the variations from today’s weather (usually on a monthly basis) with the moving averages. and explain that this is proof of forthcoming cataclysm.

In reality this is not proof in a mathematical sense, as the mathematical theory of climate (and its variations) is yet to be published

The complexity of both the science and the mathematical description is often perplexing to the “ordinary person” so the graphs pictured are more readily comprehensible we used the set of observations for the New Zealand Airports, stations Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Invercargill. Data is from the WMO reported series.

This covers a geographic slice of increasing latitudes of around 1200 kilometers and the trends (station specific) get progressively cooler towards the higher(polar) latitudes.

Auckland 0.0086c/yr (extrapolating to 120 yrs + 1c)
Wellington 0.0016c/yr (extrapolating to 610 yrs+ 1c)
Christchurch -0.00649c/yr (extrapolating to 160 yrs- 1c)
Invercargill -0.076c/yr (extrapolating to 13 yrs -1c)

Climate Cooling natural variability outweighs AGW

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
Of the Two Worlds so wisely — they are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

In an interesting reversal of projections since the IPCC AR4 report was released,9and how natural variation was significantly downplayed0 as the trend or flat lining of the positive anomalies is now apparent,we see a remarkable "hedging of positions" ny authors of the IPCC,

New Scientist reports

Forecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter. One of the world's top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter "one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.

"People will say this is global warming disappearing," he told more than 1500 of the world's top climate scientists gathering in Geneva at the UN's World Climate Conference.

"I am not one of the skeptics," insisted Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany. "However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it."

Few climate scientists go as far as Latif, an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But more and more agree that the short-term prognosis for climate change is much less certain than once thought.

Latif predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over warming caused by humans. The cooling would be down to cyclical changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

Another is from lEAN AND RIND 2009

How will Earth's surface temperature change in future decades?

Abstract

Reliable forecasts of climate change in the immediate future are difficult, especially on regional scales, where natural climate variations may amplify or mitigate anthropogenic warming in ways that numerical models capture poorly. By decomposing recent observed surface temperatures into components associated with ENSO, volcanic and solar activity, and anthropogenic influences, we anticipate global and regional changes in the next two decades. From 2009 to 2014, projected rises in anthropogenic influences and solar irradiance will increase global surface temperature 0.15 ± 0.03°C, at a rate 50% greater than predicted by IPCC. But as a result of declining solar activity in the subsequent five years, average temperature in 2019 is only 0.03 ± 0.01°C warmer than in 2014. This lack of overall warming is analogous to the period from 2002 to 2008 when decreasing solar irradiance also countered much of the anthropogenic warming. We further illustrate how a major volcanic eruption and a super ENSO would modify our global and regional temperature projections.

This suggests that we have entered into a period or transformation from solar maxima to solar minima,there is some evidence that the transformation is yet to occur ie a greater decrease lies ahead .

eg Lockwood et al

ABSTRACT. We use geomagnetic activity data to study the rise and fall over the past century of the solar wind flow speed V SW, the interplanetary magnetic field strength B, and the open solar flux F S. Our estimates include allowance for the kinematic effect of longitudinal structure in the solar wind flow speed. As well as solar cycle variations, all three parameters show a long-term rise during the first half of the 20th century followed by peaks around 1955 and 1986 and then a recent decline. Cosmogenic isotope data reveal that this constitutes a grand maximum of solar activity which began in 1920, using the definition that such grand maxima are when 25-year averages of the heliospheric modulation potential exceeds 600 MV. Extrapolating the linear declines seen in all three parameters since 1985, yields predictions that the grand maximum will end in the years 2013, 2014, or 2027 using V SW, F S, or B, respectively. These estimates are consistent with predictions based on the probability distribution of the durations of past grand solar maxima seen in cosmogenic isotope data. The data contradict any suggestions of a floor to the open solar flux: we show that the solar minimum open solar flux, kinematically corrected to allow for the excess flux effect, has halved over the past two solar cycles.