While oil from Siberia is nothing new the vast shale resources in the Bazhenov – containing oil and gas – have yet to be exploited. But fracking technology to extract these is now available. The West Siberian basin is the largest petroleum basin in the world.
Bazhenov basin Western Siberia
The shale in Western Siberia also contains large amounts of gas. Shale gas and oil are already flowing in the US, the shale gas potential in China and India is being explored and developed and now vast reserves of oil and gas are available from shale deposits in Russia. Europe also has large deposits of shale gas but are dithering under the influence of alarmist environmentalism. They will have little choice but to join the brave new world of shale – or be left far behind.
Perhaps it is commercial – and private – enterprises which will truly open up the new frontier. After SpaceX and its Dragon and Virgin Galactic yet to come, Mars One plans for the colonisation of Mars. In 2022, a crew of four will embark on a seven-month flight to the Red Planet–and stay there for the rest of their lives. A new team will make the trip every two years, enabling the colony to grow. Whether the concept of making it a media event to finance the adventure will work remains to be seen. I suspect the financing challenge rather than the technical challenges will be paramount.
Mars One plans to establish the first human settlement on Mars by April 2023. The first crew of four astronauts emigrate to their new planet from Earth, a journey that takes seven months. A new team will join the settlement every two years. By 2033 there will be over twenty people living, working and flourishing on Mars, their new home.
The vision of Mars One
A manned mission to Mars is one of the most exciting, inspiring and ambitious adventures that mankind can take on. We see this as a journey that belongs to us all, and it is for this reason that we will make every step one that we take together. This will also be our way to finance the mission: the mission to Mars will be the biggest media event ever! The entire world will be able to watch and help with decisions as the teams of settlers are selected, follow their extensive training and preparation for the mission and of course observe their settling on Mars once arrived. The emigrated astronauts will share their experiences with us as they build their new home, conduct experiments and explore Mars. The mission itself will provide us with invaluable scientific and social knowledge that will be accessible to everyone, not just an elite select few. Join us in this adventure. Put it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or whatever platforms are available to you, and spread the word!
A realistic plan
The Mars One team has worked on this plan since early 2011. That first year saw us research the feasibility of the idea extensively and exhaustively, scrutinizing every detail with countless specialists and expert organizations. In this analysis we not only included the technical elements, but also comprehensively discussed the financial, psychological and ethical aspects. We have met with several established, international aerospace companies who can design and deliver the essential hardware components for the Mars mission. These have written letters of interest that support our plan. We have an impressive list of people who support the mission to Mars, our ambassadors. One of them is professor dr. Gerard ‘t Hooft, Physics Nobel Prize winner of 1999. We were this thorough in our preparations for a reason. A project as ambitious as sending a manned mission to Mars can only be presented credibly when it can stand on its own two feet. We have a feasible plan and a way to finance it.
Direct viewing of the Sun with the naked eye or through open telescopes or binoculars should be avoided. Indirect observation of a projected image is advised.
Venus transit 5th-6th June 2012: image BBC
BBC:Venus transits occur four times in approximately 243 years; more precisely, they appear in pairs of events separated by about eight years and these pairs are separated by about 105 or 121 years. The reason for the long intervals lies in the fact that the orbits of Venus and Earth do not lie in the same plane and a transit can only occur if both planets and the Sun are situated exactly on one line.
This has happened only seven times in the telescopic age: in 1631, 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874, 1882 and 2004. Once the latest transit has passed, the next pair will not occur until 2117 and 2125. Most people alive today will probably be dead by then.
But is it Global warming? or is it Global cooling? or just normal changes of climate which no so-called “climate scientist” understands or is capable of predicting.
Friday, 01 June 2012 On the calendar, today is the first of June which is supposed to be a real summer day. This means that we were supposed to have great sunshine and would be outside in our gardens basking – if not at work though.
But such is not the reality if you live in the Swedish town of Långsjöby a couple miles from Storuman in Västerbotten. Here it has been snowing enough that a few centimetres of snow is visibly gathering on the ground now. Visitors to the town from places such as Stockholm were surprised to find snow and some thought that they had been travelling in a time machine.
image SvT
And yesterday on 2nd June the participants in the Stockholm marathon were met by a rainy, windy and cold day – the coldest in 84 years.
I’ve been away for a couple of weeks and have been struck by the way in which the false deity of global warming (part of the unholy trinity made up by the “God of the Greater Good”, his son the “God of I know what’s good for you” and the underlying spirit of “Benevolent Fascism” which infuses this religious movement) is used by different people in a different ways to further their own aims. “Global warming” like “excess population” is merely a fashionable deity which will be worshipped for as long as it serves as a convenient label to suspend rational thought and justify the unjustifiable.
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) made history when its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle in history to successfully attach to the International Space Station. Previously only four governments – the United States, Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency – had achieved this challenging technical feat.
May 22/Launch Day: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched the Dragon spacecraft into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
May 23: Dragon orbited Earth as it traveled toward the International Space Station.
May 24: Dragon’s sensors and flight systems were subjected to a series of complicated tests to determine if the vehicle was ready to berth with the space station; these tests included maneuvers and systems checks in which the vehicle came within 1.5 miles of the station.
May 25: NASA gave Dragon the GO to attempt berthing with the station. Dragon approached. It was captured by station’s robotic arm and attached to the station
The next steps:
May 25 – 31: Astronauts open Dragon’s hatch, unload supplies and fill Dragon with return cargo.
May 31: Dragon is detached from the station and returns to Earth, landing in the Pacific, hundreds of miles west of Southern California.
Live coverage of the hatch opening, including some of the first video from inside Dragon, will begin Saturday at approximately 3:00 AM PT/ 6:00 AM ET on www.spacex.com .
The Hockey Shtick reports on a recent paperby Aldert J. van Beelen and Aarnout J. van Delden of the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University, The Netherlands which shows that the hours of sunshine decreased somewhat from 1958-1983 and then increased sharply between 1985 and 2010 at a number of places. The authors postulate that the reduction of cloud cover since 1985 was possibly due to the cleaner air with reduced aerosols during this period.
If we assume that the reduction in sunshine hours between 1958 and 1983 was due to man-made pollution and that this was reversed in the period after 1985, it still needs Svensmark’s solar effects or some other mechanism to explain the very sharp reduction in cloud cover and increase in sunshine hours after 1985. It seems patently obvious from every day observations that cloud cover is far more important to weather and climate than any far-fetched notions of man-made carbon dioxide having any significant influence.
The Hockey Shtick: A paper recently published in the journal Weather finds that global summer average sunshine [solar short-wave radiation that reaches Earth’s surface] dimmed during the period 1958-1983 [prompting an ice age scare], but markedly increased from 1985-2010. The increase in summer average sunshine between those two periods is 6 Watts per square meter, which dwarfs the alleged effects of CO2 by more than 5 times. [Alleged CO2 effect from 1958-2010 was calculated using the IPCC formula 5.35*ln(389.78/315) = 1.14 Watts per square meter]. At one measurement site [De Bilt], summer sunshine increased from 1985-2010 by 15 Watts per square meter, more than 23 times the IPCC alleged forcing from CO2 during the same timeframe [5.35*ln(389.78/346.04) = 0.64 Watts per square meter].
The paper states the increase in sunshine reaching the Earth’s surface is due to a decrease in aerosols including clouds, which are influenced by both anthropogenic and natural factors, and possibly changes in solar activity.
from van Beelen and van Delden “Weather” Vol.67 No. 1, January 2012
Since this blog will now focus on energy, electricity, environment and climate, I shall now post my comments /views on archaeology, pre-history, anthropology, biology and matters related to the development and evolution of humans in 6,000 Generations instead:
Though fossil evidence of domesticated dogs is very sparse and the earliest is from around 30,000 years ago, there is no certainty about when domestication actually occurred. For it to have been a critical advantage over Neanderthalensis it would have to have started with some form of regular human-canine co-operation – eventually leading to domestication – perhaps some 50,000 years ago.
SARAJEVO — The Bosnian capital and its surroundings were covered by snow on Monday, the first time in half a century snow has settled in Sarajevo at this time of year, as temperatures plunged to just above freezing.
“The snow was nine centimetres (over three inches) high at 0500 GMT. It is the first time in the past 50 years that we have snow that remained in Sarajevo in May,” Dzenan Zulum of the national meteorological institute told AFP.
Zulum said snow had previously covered the capital in May in 1962 and 1953, adding that it also fell in Sarajevo in May 2005, but immediately melted.
Temperatures have plummeted in the past two days from 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday to 0.3 degrees Celsius on Monday. ….
Fifteen days after the “supermoon” of May 5th when the moon was at perigee, the moon will be at apogee and will be too small to obscure the entire disc of the sun when their paths intersect (as viewed from earth). This will give an “annular” eclipse of the sun on May 20th which will be visible from China across the Pacific to North America.
This excellent map by Michael Zoeller of eclipse-maps.com gives a comprehensive picture of where the eclipse will be visible and the magnitude of the eclipse visible:
The k2p blog 