Vor kurzem verstarb Dr. Tim Ball. Er wurde bekannt, weil er es mit Dr. Michael Mann, dem Konstrukteur des fragwürdigen „Hockey Stick“ aufnahm. Als Tim Ball dem Mann vorwarf zu lügen, kam es zu einem Gerichtsverfahren. Das Gericht forderte Mann auf, Beweise für seinen Hockey Stick vorzulegen, was dieser jedoch nicht tat. Mann verlor das Verfahren und sollte eigentlich die Gerichtskosten bezahlen, was dieser jedoch offenbar nie tat. WUWT sammelt derzeit Spenden für die Witwe von Ball für dessen Beerdigungskosten. Tim Ball bleibt bleibt für seine Zivilcourage in ewiger Erinnerung.
+++
Texas A&M University:
Geothermal drilling successes offer potential gain for petroleum industry
Texas A&M University researchers Dr. Sam Noynaert and Fred Dupriest recently presented results from a geothermal project that drastically reduced well-completion times and drill bit changeouts to an audience of mostly petroleum drillers. The Department of Energy (DOE) funded the project, which improves geothermal drilling practices with physics-based instruction and oil and gas techniques to lower the high cost of drilling geothermal wells. The time and equipment saved suggests the oil industry should take note.
„How you use a technology is usually more important than what technology you use,“ said Dupriest. „It’s not just the geothermal industry that benefits from this. The petroleum industry could have an enormous opportunity here.“
Dupriest and Noynaert, professors of practice in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering, presented their results in March during the International Association of Drilling Contractors and the Society of Petroleum Engineers conference and exhibition.
Both geothermal and oil industry drillers have access to the same equipment and face similar challenges. The difference is that petroleum wells are drilled in vast numbers compared to geothermal wells, so those companies have more experience cutting costs and drilling times. Yet oil companies often lack time to question unusual bit wear or understand all the fundamentals behind drilling processes, so problems are usually met with quick fixes based on guesswork.
The DOE project proves that basic knowledge of physical principles, when coupled with communication and teamwork to document drilling issues or limiters, reduces costs and improves the ability to address and fix problems with information, not guesses.
Over the course of three geothermal wells completed by different teams over the last two years, Noynaert and Dupriest trained the managers and workers on two of the wells before field operations began. The training created a fundamental, physics-based understanding of exactly what happens downhole, in both the rock cutting process and how the equipment functions. After training, the researchers continued to help the teams identify and redesign performance limiters and dysfunctions each day, as well as implement a more effective workflow to support real-time practices.
All three teams drilled at the DOE Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE), which features a nearly mile-deep formation of hard granite similar to kitchen countertops. Previous wells drilled through that rock at a rate of 15-20 feet per hour, but these three teams started at 250 feet per hour and maintained 100 feet-per-hour speeds while drilling through the stubborn material.
The first well, with a trained team, was a highly angled directional well. It was finished in about half the time expected and under budget.
The second team was not trained but copied what they could from the first team’s efforts while maintaining the same speeds. Their well completion time was less than the first well, mostly because it was vertical rather than directional.
The third team was trained and also drilled vertically. This team cut the untrained team’s completion time in half by drilling much faster and cut costs further by using bits for far longer.
„We had a huge gain with the first well,“ said Dupriest. „But, directional drilling aside, we’ve cut everything in half again with the third well. Plus, we made advances to fundamental drilling science.“
The trained teams changed their work methods to include scientifically documenting equipment changes as drilling progressed. This required taking specific pictures of bit wear from standard angles. The types of damage noted identified the causes of dysfunction, and drilling parameters were quickly adjusted to prevent the same damage on the next run. The photos were immediately shared with the bit vendor, who could improve bit designs based on the evidence.
Since the training instilled better physical knowledge of drilling vertically in hard rock, the third team tested the equipment to its limits. During operations, they safely increased the amount of weight they put on the bit far beyond normal expectations because they understood how to identify and reduce the dysfunction that previously prevented this. The additional weight improved drilling times and surprisingly extended bit longevity.
The third team also used dysfunction evidence to come up with a novel solution to a common but little-understood problem: ductile strengthening of the rock. When the bit didn’t respond to increased weight and failed to move forward even with tremendous energy use, they reasoned that the drilling mud created the limitation and came up with a simple experiment to prove it. A 100-gallon water „pill“ was circulated down through the bit to alter the rock-progress situation. The bit’s energy consumption was reduced by half, and the drill rate doubled.
„Water would not have been used before,“ said Noynaert. „It would have been a ‚that’s just the way granite works, so better change the bit‘ moment. By understanding the physics, they could get the solution to the problem right the first time.“
Geothermal companies initially thought the training was a „petroleum thing,“ but the first team quickly realized its value. After seeing the results, the second team asked for the training, but scheduling conflicts prevented this. The third team fully embraced the project goals and made great strides in improving performance.
Dupriest and Noynaert now say they must prove the education and processes work in all drilling applications to dispel a growing petroleum belief that the successes are a „geothermal thing“ or only work in granite. The future goal of the project will involve finding geothermal drilling teams to learn and test the methods in a variety of geologic regions, ideally common to both energy industries.
Paper: Fred Dupriest et al, Drilling Practices and Workflows for Geothermal Operations. DOI: 10.2118/208798-MS
+++
Nicola Scafetta auf Climate Etc.:
CMIP6 GCMs versus global surface temperatures: ECS discussion
Two publications examining the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) have recently been published in Climate Dynamics:
Scafetta, N. (2022a). CMIP6 GCM ensemble members versus global surface temperatures.
Lewis, N. (2022). Objectively combining climate sensitivity evidence.
These two papers are significant because they take different but complimentary approaches and achieve the same result – ECS <3°C. Scafetta (2022a) extends and confirm Scafetta (2022b) previously published in GRL.
Lewis study was discussed in a previous post, let us here briefly present the main findings of Scafetta (2022).
The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (phase 6) (CMIP6) global circulation (GCM) models project equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) values ranging from 1.8 to 5.7°C. To reduce this range, the 38 GCM were divided into low (1.5<ECS<3.0 °C), medium (3.0<ECS<4.5°C), and high (4.5<ECs<6.0°C) ECS subgroups and their accuracy and precision were evaluated in hindcasting the average global surface warming observed from 1980-1990 to 2011-2021. The study used global surface temperature records are ERA5-T2m, HadCRUT5, GISTEMP v4, NOAAGlobTemp v5, and the satellite-based lower troposphere global temperature UAH-MSU lt v6 record was added as well.
The satellite-based record was added since surface-based records are susceptible to many biases, including urban heat, among others (Connolly et al., 2021; Scafetta, 2021a). The validation tests were conducted using 688 GCM member simulations, 143 average GCM ensemble simulations, and Monte Carlo modeling of internal GCM variability in compliance with three alternative model accuracy requirements.
The period from 1980 to 2021 was chosen because it is when the global temperature records are believed to be affected by the least uncertainty. Moreover, the same time period is also covered by satellite measurements that offer an independent estimate.
The paper’s key finding was that the vast majority of the simulations by the medium and high-ECS GCMs run too hot. From 1980–1990 to 2011–2021, only the simulation of the low ECS GCM group seems to have accurately predicted the warming shown by the surface-based records. For instance, while all temperature data show a warming below 0.6 °C, all GCM averages from the medium and high ECS group forecast a warming over 0.6 °C up to 1.3 °C. These are plainly visible in Figures 1 and 2.
Weiterlesen auf auf Climate Etc.
+++
50 million tons of water vapor from Tonga’s eruption could warm Earth for years
The explosive event increased atmospheric water vapor by 5%.
More than eight months after the underwater volcano near Tonga erupted on Jan. 14, scientists are still analyzing the impacts of the violent blast, and they’re discovering that it could warm the planet.
Recently, researchers calculated that the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apa spewed a staggering 50 million tons (45 million metric tons) of water vapor into the atmosphere, in addition to enormous quantities of ash and volcanic gases. This massive vapor injection increased the amount of moisture in the global stratosphere by about 5%, and could trigger a cycle of stratospheric cooling and surface heating — and these effects may persist for months to come, according to a new study.
Tonga’s eruption, which began on Jan. 13 and peaked two days later, was the most powerful witnessed on Earth in decades. The blast extended for 162 miles (260 kilometers) and sent pillars of ash, steam and gas soaring more than 12 miles (20 km) into the air, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Weiterlesen auf LiveScience
+++
Ilan Kelman auf The Conversation:
Climate change: the IPCC has served its purpose, so do we still need it?
In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its first assessment report on the state of climate change science. The synthesis of the sixth assessment report will be released later this year. But we can guess its messages: we are changing the climate with adverse consequences and we must urgently cut emissions. So after all this time, is the IPCC still useful?
To tackle this question, I recently organised a webinar featuring two long-standing IPCC authors, Lisa Schipper and Mark Pelling, who were joined by Silke Beck who has researched the IPCC since 1994 without, like me, ever directly contributing to it. My UCL colleague, prominent climate change researcher Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson chaired.
What is the IPCC?
The IPCC was created by the United Nations. It synthesises and assesses the science of natural and human-caused climate change, the impacts and risks, and our options for and consequences of action. Member states appoint IPCC scientists and the governments must approve all reports. They are not shy about trying to remove material.
The IPCC publishes many different reports, the most notable of which are the full assessment reports every five to seven years. The latest one, the sixth, has been published over the past year following a COVID-19-related delay. The full technical report across three working groups comprises thousands of pages. It is meant to be policy neutral and policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive.
A headline-grabbing “Summary for Policy Makers” from each working group usually spans dozens of pages. It must be politically acceptable and so tends to diverge from the carefully nuanced science. One analysis called it “the potentially least robust aspect of the Assessment Report process”.
The story is the same
Over the years, the baseline message hasn’t really altered, especially in terms of public perception that, in summary; humans are changing the climate rapidly and substantively. Consider the BBC’s online news reporting, for instance. The first sentence in its coverage of the 2007 IPCC fourth assessment termed human causation of climate change “very likely”.
Its report on the 2013 IPCC fifth assessment began “scientists are 95% certain that humans are the „dominant cause” of global warming since the 1950s“. Last year’s story about the IPCC sixth assessment, written by the same reporter, started “Human activity is changing the climate in unprecedented and sometimes irreversible ways”. From highly confident to entirely confident in 14 years.
Is the IPCC needed?
Though we are certain about the basics, much climate science remains unknown or uncertain. Challenges range from the role of clouds to the application of economic models. These gaps should not impede action based on what we do know about the science.
These days the IPCC contributes little to climate change science. The three webinar speakers all agreed that the IPCC had fulfilled its original purpose. But they raised fundamental concerns regarding who is involved, whose voices are heard, and the effort required to attempt to fulfil the IPCC’s mandate (and not quite get there). The IPCC has made some important strides towards widening representation, although it still has long way to go to fully include, among others, indigenous peoples.
Speakers also suggested the IPCC’s reports are too technocratic and placed too much faith in technology. Also, a conflict of interest sometimes arises when IPCC authors synthesise and assessing their own published science.
Limitations in the IPCC’s process were flagged too. Reaching real consensus and consistency is hard within the mandate. While the IPCC strives for balanced, diverse, and representative authorship, it does not necessarily succeed, even in regional representation. The work is effectively unpaid which favours authors willing to give their time and who work for amenable institutions.
Authors gain networks and perceived prestige, yet the impact on careers might not always be positive. Schipper lamented: “It has taken a huge amount of our time. And, for instance, my contract is expiring in Oxford because I haven’t had time to find research funding because I’ve been so engaged with the IPCC process.” It can be even worse for authors based in unsupportive countries or where the IPCC’s messages do not sit well with their governments.
Those not well-versed in climate change science tend to venerate the IPCC as a beacon of fact and authenticity. Without knowing the mandate, process, power relations, knowledge biases and inconsistencies, many hold up the IPCC as an untouchable icon. They do not see the bureaucracy and strong personalities shaping the reports as much as the science.
Can the IPCC move forward?
The speakers were not willing to abandon the IPCC at this stage, instead they wanted to see constructive reform. They were particularly hoping to enhance science-policy interactions. This means that policy makers must want to engage with science which, everyone agreed, is not always the case.
And while countries edit out mentions that portray themselves negatively, more targeted and specific reports, including at the country level, could be an important direction. Shorter, more focused reports were deemed to be most useful.
These would not only narrow the time gap between reports, but would also help to circumvent the impossibility of reviewing the masses of science being published. Searching a single academic publisher for peer-reviewed papers relevant to climate change in 2022 revealed over 33 published each day.
Rather than adopting their advice, the webinar’s speakers noted how the IPCC continues to move toward longer reports, more complicated rules, and increasingly futile attempts to embrace all the published science. In tandem, substantive action addressing human-caused climate change must succeed before the seventh IPCC assessment report is expected to be completed.
Rather than having galvanised the needed responses, the IPCC might then merely provide confirmation that we could have acted, but now it is too late.
+++
Fighting fire with fire: Controlled burns remain essential as US wildfires intensify
In 2015, the Lake Fire burned 31,000 acres in this popular hiking forest northeast of Los Angeles. It destroyed four buildings, came perilously close to the resort town of Big Bear Lake and took more than 1,900 firefighters five days to contain at a cost of almost $40 million.
This is why it seemed counterintuitive to see some of those same firefighters walking along the forest floor in April with red drip torches, deliberately sparking a blaze.
But the aim of the men and women of the U.S. Forest Service on this day was to prevent a repeat of the 2015 conflagration by reintroducing a natural process stamped out by humans.
„These forests were built to burn,“ said Garth Crow, the burn boss overseeing the 35 workers standing guard to ensure the prescribed burn stayed exactly where he wanted it.
As the United States faces what’s expected to be a bad fire year and an even worse fire decade, such controlled burns—the epitome of fighting fire with fire—have been widely embraced as an essential component of forestland management.
This is why forest ecologists are upset by a Forest Service decision Friday to stop all so-called prescribed burns on its lands for three months while an internal review of the practice is done.
Weiterlesen auf phys.org
+++
Eos:
Chinese-Led Solar Research Is Looking Bright
With new missions underway and planned, China is stepping up to observe our nearest stellar neighbor.
Life on our planet is possible because of the Sun, but the relative proximity of our nearest star comes with risks, too. Intense outpourings of radiation and matter from the Sun, for instance, can cripple electronics and even damage human tissue. A cadre of spacecraft is actively monitoring our nearest stellar neighbor, and now several new Chinese-led missions are joining the hunt to better understand the Sun.
A Payload and Then a Satellite
In July of last year, a red and white rocket rumbled off the launch pad at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northern China.
Its payload—the Fengyun-3E meteorology satellite—included China’s first space-based instrument designed to study the Sun in the X-ray and ultraviolet regimes: the Solar X-ray and Extreme Ultraviolet Imager. The primary scientific objective of this instrument is to improve forecasts of space weather near Earth, said Bo Chen, the engineer at the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in charge of the design and development of the instrument. To that end, the Solar X-ray and Extreme Ultraviolet Imager observes events such as solar flares, which can launch electromagnetic waves toward Earth.
Weiterlesen auf Eos
+++
Julian Kirchherr (2022) in Circular Economy and Sustainability:
Bullshit in the Sustainability and Transitions Literature: a Provocation
Research on sustainability and transitions is burgeoning. Some of this research is helping to solve humankind’s most pressing problems. However, as this provocation argues, up to 50% of the articles that are now being published in many interdisciplinary sustainability and transitions journals may be categorized as “scholarly bullshit.” These are articles that typically engage with the latest sustainability and transitions buzzword (e.g., circular economy), while contributing little to none to the scholarly body of knowledge on the topic. A typology of “scholarly bullshit” is proposed which includes the following archetypes: boring question scholarship, literature review of literature reviews, recycled research, master thesis madness, and activist rants. Since “scholarly bullshit” articles engage with the latest academic buzzwords, they also tend to accumulate significant citations and are thus welcomed by many journal editors. Citations matter most in the metric-driven logic of the academic system, and this type of scholarship, sadly, is thus unlikely to decrease in the coming years.