I have been blogging at The Dalton Minimum Returns about the return of the next grand minimum since 2006. I have written about climate change and it’s implications at NC Media Watch for seven years. I have decided it is time to terminate both of these blogs and focus just on The Next Grand Minimum.
This blog will examine issues which I believe are related to preparing for and surviving the next Grand Minimum:
- Knowledge of past Grand Minimums. (Dalton and Maunder)
- Solar activity and it’s influence on climate change. (Solar)
- Weather and ocean dynamics and their impact on agriculture (Weather)
- Vulcanism and it’s connection to climate change. (Vulcanism)
- Cosmic rays and climate impact. (Cosmic Rays)
- Legislation and regulations that can inhibit survival preparation. (Politics)
- Surviving social unrest created by climate change. (Survival)
- Political action needed to enhance survival on a cooling planet. (Political Action)
- Economic indicators, including energy and grain prices. (Economics)
- Harbingers of a cooling world (Analysis)
Russ,
I like the new format and the illustrations are much better.
We all need to have the debate and you are pushing it into the public discourse.
Russ, great idea and am glad you left a forwarding message from NCWatch.
Russ,
I know what you will think but debunk this if you can. Robert Kennedy has a very good track record for being forthright.
http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/271-38/7998-the-fracking-industrys-war-on-the-truth
Ben,
I read the whole article and there was a lot of was-was not much hard evidence. I was intrigued by this statement, after hearing the EPA testify they had no recored of fracking contaminating a domestic water supply. Yet we get this from the article:
The Times investigation also explodes the industry’s decade-old mantra that a “there is not a single documented case of drinking water being contaminated by fracking.” The Times investigation of EPA archives exposes this claim as demonstrably false.
Where were the facts. How many case, what were the circumstances. We know of some well casing failures, but they were not the result of the fracking, only sloppy capping of the well.
Here is an article in the Investory Business Daily
Green groups have a major new concern: fracking, the process of extracting natural gas from shale deposits far underground. . .
But is there evidence of this? In testimony prepared for a Senate Energy and Water Committee panel hearing Thursday, Tom Beauduy, deputy executive director of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, says no.
That’s key because one of America’s largest shale depositories is the Marcellus deposit, which lies mainly underneath the basin. Both sprawl across New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
The deposit has been widely explored. More than 1,000 fracking sites have been permitted.
Since 2008, the basin commission created an elaborate 50-station monitoring system.
“We are not aware of any water quality impacts on systems,” Beauduy told IBD. “There have been incidents related to individual wells, but not to public water supply systems.”
That is in line with other surveys. A 2008 study by the Groundwater Protection Council, a coalition of state environmental agencies, found the “potential for impacts to surface water and groundwater … are expected to be minimal.”
A 2010 study by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection admitted the “theoretical possibility” of contamination, but concluded: “no groundwater pollution or disruption of underground sources of drinking water have been attributed to hydraulic fracturing of deep gas formations.”
Most criticism of fracking cites Dimock, Pa., where leakage from wells did seep into local groundwater. The drilling company was fined and required to provide the town with drinking water. The state environmental agency determined that the leakage was caused by faulty well casings, not by the fracking itself.
Thanks Russ,
My instinct is not to trust the oil and gas industry but I don’t take stands on issues I don’t understand. I get the basic idea but know there seem to be unintended consequences with all this and it is usually the people who end up holding the bag to clean it up the mess when all is said and done, except for the profits of course those stay with the companies.
I find it really ironic that Robert Kennedy is busy chastising the unconventional natural gas industry. Which Kennedy was it that that made a name for himself allying himself with Citgo and Hugo Chavez to supply cheap heating oil to the poor in New England? Now Robert Kennedy is doing all he can to vilify an emerging industry that will likely provide clean, cheap energy to the entire American economy.
I’ll watch out for any new stuff, Russ.
Thanks
Paul
Russ,
As a principled blogger in the climate debate you will be fully aware of the growing public debate over the greenhouse gas ‘theory.’ Lately Fred Singer, Roy Spencer and Dick Lindzen have come out to make vituperative but ‘science-free’ responses to the growing body of new work refuting the GHE and the role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. My colleagues and I sincerely want a full public debate on this issue conducted in an agreeable and dignified fashion befitting a truly ‘skeptic’ approach as I’ve sought to present in my latest article:
http://www.webcommentary.com/docs/jo120310.pdf
Is there anything you feel you could do to contribute to this endeavor?
Many thanks,
John
Principia Scientific International
John,
I agree, we need to have an open debate on all scientific issues. That is how science is done. I will continues to follow this issues and post the results.
Russ,
Please email me. I have lost your email address.
David Archibald