Unthreaded
UK Shale
When government talks about our shale gas reserves they only ever mention Cuadrilla; nothing else exists apparently.
The Bowland Basin shale play contains more than one license area, to the east and south east of Cuadrilla is an area licensed to Igas (Island Gas). To the south is an area licensed to Aurora Petroleum Ltd.
Igas recently speculated that their shale gas deposits could be on a par with Cuadrilla.
Aurora say that of the 2000 foot shale bed running through their area, 700 feet is oil bearing shale and the rest is gas. You have to wonder if this 700 foot oil bearing shale is also present in the Cuadrilla area but so far it has not been commented on.
The shale beds run right out under the Irish Sea and Aurora state that previously successful conventional oil wells drilled both onshore and in the Irish Sea were "supplied" by the oil shale beds below them.
Aurora are calling this oil bed "the mother load". Sounds good to me.
There are of course lots more license areas in the UK about which we know very little however "game changer" sounds a perfect description.
Dung
An article in today's Sunday Times says that the promoters of Hinkley Point 3 will decide at the end of 2012 whether to build the two reactors there. The total build cost is estimated at £14 billion and they say that, unless the Government steps in soon to ensure that the investment can be recouped, the project will not go forward.
It seems that DECC is planning to guarantee a minimum wholesale price for nuclear MWh and discussions are in progress. A London investment bank has estimated that the figure for Hinkley Point 3 could be up to £168/MWh. This is more than 3 times the current nuclear rate. The Greens are probably gearing up to kill-off this scheme already.
Hinkley Point 3 would have a capacity of 3.3 GW, which is about the same as two power stations similar to Staythorpe CCGT (1.6 GW) which would, together, cost say £2.5 billion to build. Doh.
You have to wonder why any rational organisation would put themselves through the agony of dealing with not only the uncertainty that the next government but one will just ban nuclear power stations outright, but also the clearing away of the smelly protesters blocking the site gates, all being shown live on Sky News.
Brownedoff
So, here's an idle speculation which crossed my mind. If this weather were the precursor of another LIA, would the met office be the first to tell us, or the last?
rhoda
Matthu,
Yes, I agree B & W!
And on my Nikon D200 it just takes a few moments to switch to B&W
peterwalsh
SKY news showing the following on screen:
Meteorologists confirm June weather wettest since 1860
I wonder what the Wet Office has to say about that?
peterwalsh
This seems to be most representative of our current weather patterns:
Low pressure or Cyclonic weather systems track along the Polar Front that separates polar and tropical air and is coincident with Rossby Waves. Intensity of the system is determined by the temperature contrast across the Front so that is the location of most severe weather and heavy precipitation. With Meridional Flow and cold air pushing well south the contrast is greater, storms more intense and precipitation heavier. Because the system is stalled wind damage and rainfall levels are higher. They also orient north /south rather than west/east.
Lord Beaverbrook
peterwalsh - B&W. All great moments in history have been recorded in B&W.
matthu
Robin - thanks for that - Booker must have read my comment!
As for the met office codes - yes, they are robust - but robustly biased in assuming a substantial CO2 effect. The last time I corresponded with them they assured me that the chance of a severely cold winter was 1/20 and this probability was independent of anything that had gone on before i.e. one cold year did not affect the probability of the following year also being cold.
How can they defend that position? Only by ignoring all other possible natural factors.
Quoting from the Research Council of Norway report
Furthermore, a good understanding of the climate system cannot be reached without a dedicated effort to understand the contribution to climate change from natural climate processes. The geological history very clearly documents a strong climate forcing associated with solar variability, although the exact mechanism has not been identified. This should call for a coherent international effort, but surprisingly, the worldwide scientific effort to increase our understanding of the natural variations is very limited, and this is most probably related to the limited funding available for basic, not agenda-driven research.Therefore, in addition to implementing the recommendations of Klima21, this committee recommends an increased effort in research on the natural causes of climate change, in particular the activity variations of the sun, the mechanism of cloud formation, and the multi-decadal variations in ocean current systems.
And if the met office are belatedly engaged in any of that research, they certainly aren't incorporating it into any of their models any time soon.
matthu
Their [ The Climate Change Committee's ] latest pronouncements show a mind-boggling degree of ignorance. How can these people, utterly detached from the real world, advise government on anything? And how shall we cope with the economic fall-out from their prescriptions?
matthu
Zed and follow-up comments removed. Please DNFTT.