source
By KATHY SHIRLEY
EXPLORER Correspondent
Tax Break Rekindled Interest
Shale Gas Exciting Again
An Atrium Shale outcrop at the Paxton Quarry in northern Michigan.
Photo courtesy of Gas Research Institute
See related story: Lewis Not Overlooked Anymore
Shale gas production is certainly nothing new in the United States. In fact, the first commercial gas shale well was drilled in New York in the late 1820s – nearly 40 years before Colonel Drake drilled his famous oil well in Pennsylvania.
Still, there’s a new - some might say urgent - sense of excitement when it comes to the role of shale gas production in today’s energy mix, as well as its potential for the coming years.
“Over the next decade we expect the gas industry will continue to expand the shale gas play frontiers as new areas are evaluated and we learn more about the geology of shale gas resources,” said David G. Hill, manager, emerging resources, with the Gas Technology Institute.
Gas shales, he said, are classified as continuous type natural gas plays - accumulations that are pervasive throughout large geographic areas and offer long-lived reservoirs with attractive finding costs.
“The major exploration risk in most shale gas plays is generally not the drilling of a truly dry hole, but rather in not obtaining economically viable gas production rates,” Hill said. “Most shales have very low matrix permeabilities and require the presence of extensive natural fracture systems to sustain commercial gas production rates.”
In shale reservoirs, natural gas is stored three ways:
As free gas within the rock pores.
As adsorbed gas on organic material.
As free gas within the system of natural fractures.
These different storage mechanisms, Hill said, affect the speed and efficiency of gas production.
Modern gas shale production was initially spurred by the Section 29 non-conventional fuels production tax credit, but that tax credit expired in 1992, and operators have continued to expand gas shale programs. Today over 28,000 gas shale wells produce nearly 380 billion cubic feet of gas yearly from five U.S. basins:
Appalachian.
Michigan.
Illinois.
Fort Worth.
San Juan.
In 1998 fractured shale gas reservoirs supplied 1.6 percent, or .3 trillion cubic feet of total U.S. dry natural gas production and contained 2.3 percent or 3.9 trillion cubic feet of total U.S. proved natural gas reserves. Over the past decade shale gas production has increased by a factor of 2.5, growing from 148.6 billion cubic feet of gas in 1989 to 380 billion cubic feet in 1999.
The shale gas resource base in the lower 48 states is significant. According to GTI, gas-in-place resource estimates for the five main gas shale plays total 581 trillion cubic feet of gas, and recoverable resource estimates range from 31 to 76 trillion cubic feet.
These figures are considered conservative since estimates for the Barnett Shale in the Fort Worth Basin and the Lewis Shale (see related story, page 26) are not available.
Hill commented that “each new shale gas play has presented technical challenges that operators have to overcome by identifying and solving shale-specific problems.
“But,” he added, “success in these relatively low-cost plays has sparked a resurgence of industry interest in evaluating the production potential of the shale gas resources present in basins throughout the United States.”
A Stimulating Story
The first shale gas production in the United States came from the Appalachian Basin, where by 1926 the Devonian shale gas fields were the world’s largest known occurrence of natural gas. At year-end 1999 the basin contained over 21,000 gas shale wells, producing approximately 120 billion cubic feet of gas a year.
Technically recoverable resource estimates for the Appalachian Basin range from 14.5 to 27.5 trillion cubic feet of gas.
The basin’s Devonian-age shales extend from southwestern New York to eastern Kentucky and central Tennessee. The majority of its shale gas production has been from the Big Sandy and associated fields in Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia, where the primary target is the Huron member of the Upper Devonian Ohio Shale.
Well recoveries vary considerably, ranging from less than 100 million cubic feet of gas to more than one billion cubic feet. The average well produces 250 to 350 million cubic feet over a productive life of 30 years.
“One of the biggest technical challenges in the Ohio Shale has been in the area of stimulation,” Hill said. “While some wells flow gas naturally, over 90 percent require some form of stimulation to achieve commercial production rates.”
Over the years the Appalachian Devonian shales have been a test bed for a variety of stimulation technologies that include:
“Shooting” a well with gelatinated nitroglycerine.
High energy gas fracturing.
Nitrogen- and carbon dioxide-based foam fracturing.
Straight gas fracturing without proppant.
High angle and horizontal completions.
A number of variations on basic fracturing fluids and chemicals.
Two more recent innovations are the use of liquid carbon dioxide and sand, and cryogenic nitrogen.
As with most stimulation applications, Hill said, no single technique or fluid system has worked universally.
“The proximity to large East Coast markets, low transportation costs, long lived reserves and high success rates will continue to make the Ohio Shale an attractive target in the Appalachian Basin,” he said.
“However, considering the maturity of the play, the greatest challenge to continued success will be expanding the productive limits of historic play areas with new stimulation technologies.”
A Tale of Two Basins
The Antrim Shale in the Michigan Basin spurred the current gas shale interest in the United States.
Initially the Section 29 tax credit spurred activity in the Antrim Shale, but new technology, an understanding of the mechanisms controlling production and operational efficiency gains by operators have sustained activity in the play.
The Devonian-age Antrim Shale reaches a depth of about 3,000 feet in the center of the basin. Operators, however, are developing the shale along the shallow northern and western rim of the basin, where well depths range from 400 to 2,500 feet and wells cost about $240,000 to $280,000 to drill and complete.
The primary targets are the Lachine and Paxton members of the Lower Antrim.
Resources estimates range from 35 trillion to 76 trillion cubic feet of gas, with technically recoverable gas reserves estimated at 11 to 18.9 trillion cubic feet. The average well in the Antrim Shale produces around 116 thousand cubic feet of gas a day, and production has grown from 12 billion cubic feet from 154 wells in 1988 to over 190 billion cubic feet of gas from 6,500 wells in 1999.
In fact, the 221 Antrim Shale wells drilled in 1999 accounted for three-quarters of the drilling activity in the Michigan Basin.
“The Antrim play will continue to develop,” Hill said, “as operators evaluate new completion technologies, recomplete wells in the upper Antrim Shale, conduct restimulation programs and test new areas for production potential.”
The New Albany Shale in the Illinois Basin has a long producing history, too, but activity in this region has not progressed at the same rate as the Ohio Shale or the Antrim Shale.
In the 1990s activity in this play was driven by success in the Antrim. Many of the players in Michigan considered the New Albany a viable target and approached it using the Antrim model for development.
Activity in the New Albany Shale peaked in 1996 with 90 wells, but has since declined to just 16 wells in 1999.
Operators are currently experimenting with various drilling and completion techniques in an attempt to improve well performance and reduce costs. Well costs have ranged from $100,000 to $150,000, depending on water lifting requirements and the type, number and size of stimulation treatments needed.
Efforts also are under way to better identify the mechanisms controlling gas occurrence and productivity.
Gas resource estimates for the New Albany Shale range from 86 to 160 trillion cubic feet of gas with estimates of technically recoverable reserves ranging from 1.9 to 19.2 trillion cubic feet.
The Barnett - and Beyond
Mitchell Energy & Development Co. has been developing the Barnett Shale in the Fort Worth Basin in the northeast sector of central Texas since 1981.
The Mississippian-age Barnett Shale is one of the most uniform statigraphic units in the basin, outcropping along the flanks of the Llano uplift in central Texas, where it is about 30 to 50 feet thick.
The shale dips gently and thickens to the north, reaching a maximum depth of around 8,500 feet and a maximum thickness of almost 1,000 feet near the Texas-Oklahoma border.
Barnett Shale production was first established in the Newark East Field in Wise and Denton counties, where it grew from less than one billion cubic feet of gas from 25 wells in 1985 to 19.2 billion cubic feet from 306 wells in 1995. During the past five years, production has more than doubled to 40.6 billion cubic feet from over 500 wells.
The Barnett is found at 6,500 to 8,000 feet in the Wise and Denton counties area and is about 500 feet thick. It is divided into lower and upper intervals by the Forestburg Limestone.
AFE Oil and Gas Consultants expanded the Barnett Shale play area in 1997 with a discovery in Dallas County, approximately 12 miles southeast of the Newark East Field. The firm continued to expand its play area with three wells in northeastern Tarrent County.
“Initially, Mitchell Energy completed only the lower Barnett interval, using massive hydraulic fracturing treatments,” Hill said. “Well costs typically ranged from $600,000 to $800,000, including $200,000 to $300,000 in stimulation costs.”
In 1998 the firm experimented with a new stimulation technique that employed water as the fracturing fluid, required significantly less proppant and was about 60 percent less expensive than the conventional stimulation treatments.
“The technique proved successful,” Hill said, “and has since been implemented field wide.”
Last September Mitchell Energy demonstrated a technique for economically completing the upper Barnett Shale interval, increasing reserves in their core area by 25 percent, or 250 million cubic feet per well, and expanding the play to previously marginal areas.
This new completion technique in combination with a 50-acre spacing infill well drilling program is expected to allow Mitchell Energy to increase its Barnett Shale gas production and open up new areas for exploitation.
Hill said while the bulk of gas shale production has come from these reservoirs in the San Juan, Appalachian, Michigan, Illinois and Fort Worth basins, there are a multitude of opportunities to expand shale gas activity in other regions of the country.
“Three key advantages of shale gas plays are moderate exploration costs, high success rates and slow production decline rates,” he said. “The rapid growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the Antrim Shale, which is being repeated today in the Fort Worth and San Juan basins, is driven by the powerful economic incentives of low risks and low reserve finding costs.
“Each of these plays has presented new technical challenges for operators to overcome,” he added, but “their success has sparked a resurgence of industry interest in evaluating the production potential of shale gas resources in basins throughout the United States.”
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Many Consensus Environmental Predictions Have Come And Gone
Are there any examples of past environmental predictions being wrong? Yes, many, and they have been outrageously, grossly, dangerously wrong. Just so no one thinks that man-caused global warming "must be true" because there is a "consensus", and the United Nation's IPCC says so, and a failed Presidential candidate is spending $300 Million in an advertising (propaganda) effort to convince us it is true. Beware, look at the historical record of environmental and "scientific" predictions.
Peter
source
Environmentalists' Wild Predictions
By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."
C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."
In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources and "by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."
Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.
Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity? When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?
Here are a few facts: Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.
Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.
Peter
source
Environmentalists' Wild Predictions
By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."
C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."
In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources and "by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."
Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.
Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity? When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?
Here are a few facts: Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.
Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.
Friday, October 5, 2007
The Real History of Carbon Dioxide Levels
GeoPete
Message #1 - 10/04/07 02:20 AM
This is important information I have not seen before. It seems CO2 levels varied considerably in the recent past, and are the result of the rising and falling of temperature, not the cause of temperature changes. This is in direct contradiction to the assumptions of those believing in man-caused global warming. Take note!
Peter
THE REAL HISTORY OF CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS"
Prof. Beck's paper "180 YEARS OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GAS ANALYSIS BY CHEMICAL METHODS" has now been published in the journal Energy and EnvironmentClick to view image. A PDF copy of the full paper can be obtained from the author: egbeck@biokurs.de. Excerpt below. It shows that actual past measurements of atmospheric CO2 have undergone great variation in levels from time to time in the period surveyed. Levels were not "flat" before the 20th century, as is usually asserted. There is a discussion of the paper hereClick to view image. I mentioned this matter previously on March 9th. -- where there is also a link to an early version of the full paper.Click to view imageABSTRACT More than 90,000 accurate chemical analyses of CO2 in air since 1812 are summarized. The historic chemical data reveal that changes in CO2 track changes in temperature, and therefore climate in contrast to the simple, monotonically increasing CO2 trend depicted in the post-1990 literature on climate-change. Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm. Between 1857 and 1958, the Pettenkofer process was the standard analytical method for determining atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and usually achieved an accuracy better than 3%. These determinations were made by several scientists of Nobel Prize level distinction. Following Callendar (1938), modern climatologists have generally ignored the historic determinations of CO2, despite the techniques being standard text book procedures in several different disciplines. Chemical methods were discredited as unreliable, choosing only a few which fit the assumption of a climate CO2 connection."(continued here)
Message #1 - 10/04/07 02:20 AM
This is important information I have not seen before. It seems CO2 levels varied considerably in the recent past, and are the result of the rising and falling of temperature, not the cause of temperature changes. This is in direct contradiction to the assumptions of those believing in man-caused global warming. Take note!
Peter
THE REAL HISTORY OF CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS"
Prof. Beck's paper "180 YEARS OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GAS ANALYSIS BY CHEMICAL METHODS" has now been published in the journal Energy and EnvironmentClick to view image. A PDF copy of the full paper can be obtained from the author: egbeck@biokurs.de. Excerpt below. It shows that actual past measurements of atmospheric CO2 have undergone great variation in levels from time to time in the period surveyed. Levels were not "flat" before the 20th century, as is usually asserted. There is a discussion of the paper hereClick to view image. I mentioned this matter previously on March 9th. -- where there is also a link to an early version of the full paper.Click to view imageABSTRACT More than 90,000 accurate chemical analyses of CO2 in air since 1812 are summarized. The historic chemical data reveal that changes in CO2 track changes in temperature, and therefore climate in contrast to the simple, monotonically increasing CO2 trend depicted in the post-1990 literature on climate-change. Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm. Between 1857 and 1958, the Pettenkofer process was the standard analytical method for determining atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and usually achieved an accuracy better than 3%. These determinations were made by several scientists of Nobel Prize level distinction. Following Callendar (1938), modern climatologists have generally ignored the historic determinations of CO2, despite the techniques being standard text book procedures in several different disciplines. Chemical methods were discredited as unreliable, choosing only a few which fit the assumption of a climate CO2 connection."(continued here)
Friday, September 21, 2007
Lake Lahonton, Nevada: Climate Change
The Black Rock Desert and ancient Lake Lahontan in northwestern Nevada bring back fond memories for me. To those who know and remember, this is a tribute to "Bruno's Country Club", in Gerlach, Nevada, to days gone by.
Peter
Searching for Lake Lahontan
Evidence of the giant, ancient lake can be seen throughout northern Nevada.
Mark Vanderhoff RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL Posted: 5/17/2003
There was a time when a giant lake covered much of northwestern Nevada. Between 9,000 and 20,000 years ago, the same mountains that exist today dipped into its deep, dark blue waters. Junipers or limber pine carpeted the slopes from the snowcapped peaks to its shores. Nearby, prehistoric camels, mammoths, bison and horses grazed. Cheetahs chased antelope. Huge sloths and the giant short-faced bear, larger than a Kodiak bear and fast on its long legs, roamed.
Fingers of the lake reached into mountain valleys and the tops of large hills poked out of the water, forming little islands. What is now the high country beginning in the Truckee Range north of Fernley to the Jackson and Kamma Mountains forming the eastern border of the Black Rock Desert once was a large island in the middle of the ancient lake.
Lake Lahontan, as the giant lake was called, reached its high point 15,000 years ago.
The climate then was much different than it is today because a massive glacier of the last ice age stretched down to the Canadian border, deflecting polar jet streams toward the southwestern United States. An abundance of rain and snow filled the Great Basin with hundreds of feet of water. During its highest years, the lake was almost 900 feet deep at present-day Pyramid Lake.
Lake Lahontan at its highest stretched from the Oregon border to Walker Lake, as far east as Winnemucca and as far west as Honey Lake up U.S. 395 in California. Although Reno and Carson City were high and dry, the Black Rock Desert, Lovelock and Fallon were under water.
Climate changes eventually dried up the lake, but today, clues about Lake Lahontan remain all across its former domain.
“You can see a world that was different from today,” said Pat Barker, the Bureau of Land Management’s Nevada archaeologist.
The beach
The playa of the Black Rock Desert may be the most famous remnant of Lake Lahontan.
“I think one of the coolest things is it’s one of the biggest, flattest surfaces on the planet,” said Ken Adams, a Desert Research Institute geologist who studies Lake Lahontan.
Playa means beach or shore in Spanish, but in the days of Lake Lahontan, the playa was at the bottom of the lake. The fine silt and clay that compose the playa was light enough to be carried in by the rivers and streams that flowed into Lake Lahontan. That sediment eventually settled to the bottom.
Today, the playa owes its flat surface to the water table, Adams said.
A water table, standing water that sits underground, has a flat upper surface, just like a lake.
The winds that blow over the playa only blow off the loose items — they can’t pick up the cohesive, moist sediment wetted by the upper surface of the water table. Essentially, the playa surface has been “planed off by the wind,” Adams said.
Part of Adams’ research consists of finding remnants of the ancient shorelines and measuring their heights in the hills that once surrounded Lake Lahontan.
He has found the highest shorelines in the hills surrounding the Black Rock Desert and the Carson Sink. Those areas may have been under as much as 450 feet of water at one point, he said.
Shorelines and seashells
The highest shorelines may have been around the Black Rock Desert and Carson Sink, but the deepest waters stood at what is now Pyramid Lake.
Today, it is easy to see where the waves of Lake Lahontan also lapped at the hills surrounding Pyramid Lake.
“They’re very obvious if you know what to look for,” Adams said. “There’s a lot of places I could bring my mother and she’d understand what she was looking at.”
Look at the mountainsides that surround the lake, and white or light tan splotches will begin to appear among the brown dirt. Those spots consist of very fine silts that were deposited by Lake Lahontan on these hills thousands of years ago.
Next, search the slopes of the mountains for horizontal lines. Look closer and notice the terraces cut into the mountains like giant steps. Those terraces formed as crashing waves eroded soil from the hillsides. As the lake level dropped, the waves tore at successively lower spots on the slopes.
Pyramid Lake yields other clues about Lake Lahontan.
Walk to the beach and examine the sediment in the escarpments cut by the waves. Pick up a handful of sediment and look closely, and some white shells will appear among the sand and pebbles. “They look like snail shells, but there are no aquatic snails in the lake today,” Adams said. Those snail shells, called gastropods, have been dated to as far back as 25,000 years ago, suggesting they lived in Lake Lahontan. While the snails no longer live in Pyramid Lake, one species that swam Lake Lahontan does still call Pyramid Lake home. The qui-ui, a bottom-feeding fish that is now endangered because its spawning habitat on the Truckee River has been altered, thrived for thousands of years in Lake Lahontan and now only lives in Pyramid Lake.
“That’s one reason why we know Pyramid has never dried up since Lake Lahontan,” Adams said.
Pyramid Lake is, in fact, the real heir to Lake Lahontan. Walker Lake is also a remnant of Lahontan, but it has dried up numerous times over the years because of climate change and the diversion of the Walker River.
Surf’s up
If humans existed during Lake Lahontan’s prime, they could have stood on a sandy finger reaching into the lake now called the Russell Spit. Russell Spit looks like a long, wide pile of sand sticking out of the hills south of Fallon like an earthen finger. It was formed when Lake Lahontan’s waves crashed on nearby slopes at a slight angle, tearing away soil and then redepositing it down the shoreline. “You can stand on this beach and look north and go ‘Wow, there must have been huge waves here,’” Adams said. The waves here got so big because they had a large fetch, Adams said. Fetch is the area of open water where waves are built by the wind.
From the Russell Spit, it’s more than 50 miles as the wave rolls to the north end of the Carson sink. Back then, the Desert Mountains, on the edge of which Russell Spit stands, rose out of the water. Today, someone standing on Russell Spit can see where that giant expanse of water stood, clear beyond Fallon.
The human element
Throughout its long life, Lake Lahontan grew and shrank as the climate of the Great Basin gradually changed. After its high point, the lake dried up as the ice sheets retreated. A long drought ensued, followed by a very cold period that probably froze any water left.
Then the lake returned one final time. Scientists believe humans lived at the lake during this last incarnation, and the proof lies in sites like the Grimes Point-Hidden Cave Archaeological Area.
This site, south of Fallon, consists of caves hidden among hills and large boulders and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. “Those boulders would have been on the shore lines,” said Amy Dansie, a retired Nevada State Museum anthropologist. The Spirit Cave Man might have lived on this shore and caught giant Lahontan cutthroat trout from its waters. This mummified human was found in nearby Spirit Cave in 1940 by two archaeologists who thought the remains were only 2,000 years old.
The remains were boxed and forgotten for six decades until the Nevada State Museum tested them as part of a program to return the remains to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe, who claim the Spirit Cave Man as their ancestor. The tests showed the mummy was about 10,630 years old. That places him at the Spirit Cave around the time Lake Lahontan was a dying lake.
But Dansie and other archaeologists believe humans may have seen Lake Lahontan in its prime.
Their theories are based on artifacts believed to have come from a period before this marshy time.
Some artifacts found at high elevations appeared to be “water tumbled,” Dansie said, suggesting they existed around the time of Lake Lahontan’s high stand. Dated bones belong to horses that appear to have been butchered using tools that predate the Spirit Cave Man’s culture. One spearhead called the McGee point is believed to be more than 13,000 years old, putting humans at Lake Lahontan no later than its high stand.
Any people that lived around Lake Lahontan through its varied life would have had to put up with — or perhaps retreated from — the changing climate. “They may have existed here but gone south and come back up multiple times,” Dansie said. Dansie is searching for a smoking gun, some artifacts that can be positively dated using the most modern technology. Those artifacts might be buried deep in layers of lake silt.
She believes such artifacts might prove humans appeared about 1,000 years before the Clovis Man, a member of a culture that lived 11,000 years ago — the earliest accepted date of a human presence in the New World. “It’s only another 1,000 years,” she said. “It’s not like we’re proposing 30,000 years.”
Peter
Searching for Lake Lahontan
Evidence of the giant, ancient lake can be seen throughout northern Nevada.
Mark Vanderhoff RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL Posted: 5/17/2003
There was a time when a giant lake covered much of northwestern Nevada. Between 9,000 and 20,000 years ago, the same mountains that exist today dipped into its deep, dark blue waters. Junipers or limber pine carpeted the slopes from the snowcapped peaks to its shores. Nearby, prehistoric camels, mammoths, bison and horses grazed. Cheetahs chased antelope. Huge sloths and the giant short-faced bear, larger than a Kodiak bear and fast on its long legs, roamed.
Fingers of the lake reached into mountain valleys and the tops of large hills poked out of the water, forming little islands. What is now the high country beginning in the Truckee Range north of Fernley to the Jackson and Kamma Mountains forming the eastern border of the Black Rock Desert once was a large island in the middle of the ancient lake.
Lake Lahontan, as the giant lake was called, reached its high point 15,000 years ago.
The climate then was much different than it is today because a massive glacier of the last ice age stretched down to the Canadian border, deflecting polar jet streams toward the southwestern United States. An abundance of rain and snow filled the Great Basin with hundreds of feet of water. During its highest years, the lake was almost 900 feet deep at present-day Pyramid Lake.
Lake Lahontan at its highest stretched from the Oregon border to Walker Lake, as far east as Winnemucca and as far west as Honey Lake up U.S. 395 in California. Although Reno and Carson City were high and dry, the Black Rock Desert, Lovelock and Fallon were under water.
Climate changes eventually dried up the lake, but today, clues about Lake Lahontan remain all across its former domain.
“You can see a world that was different from today,” said Pat Barker, the Bureau of Land Management’s Nevada archaeologist.
The beach
The playa of the Black Rock Desert may be the most famous remnant of Lake Lahontan.
“I think one of the coolest things is it’s one of the biggest, flattest surfaces on the planet,” said Ken Adams, a Desert Research Institute geologist who studies Lake Lahontan.
Playa means beach or shore in Spanish, but in the days of Lake Lahontan, the playa was at the bottom of the lake. The fine silt and clay that compose the playa was light enough to be carried in by the rivers and streams that flowed into Lake Lahontan. That sediment eventually settled to the bottom.
Today, the playa owes its flat surface to the water table, Adams said.
A water table, standing water that sits underground, has a flat upper surface, just like a lake.
The winds that blow over the playa only blow off the loose items — they can’t pick up the cohesive, moist sediment wetted by the upper surface of the water table. Essentially, the playa surface has been “planed off by the wind,” Adams said.
Part of Adams’ research consists of finding remnants of the ancient shorelines and measuring their heights in the hills that once surrounded Lake Lahontan.
He has found the highest shorelines in the hills surrounding the Black Rock Desert and the Carson Sink. Those areas may have been under as much as 450 feet of water at one point, he said.
Shorelines and seashells
The highest shorelines may have been around the Black Rock Desert and Carson Sink, but the deepest waters stood at what is now Pyramid Lake.
Today, it is easy to see where the waves of Lake Lahontan also lapped at the hills surrounding Pyramid Lake.
“They’re very obvious if you know what to look for,” Adams said. “There’s a lot of places I could bring my mother and she’d understand what she was looking at.”
Look at the mountainsides that surround the lake, and white or light tan splotches will begin to appear among the brown dirt. Those spots consist of very fine silts that were deposited by Lake Lahontan on these hills thousands of years ago.
Next, search the slopes of the mountains for horizontal lines. Look closer and notice the terraces cut into the mountains like giant steps. Those terraces formed as crashing waves eroded soil from the hillsides. As the lake level dropped, the waves tore at successively lower spots on the slopes.
Pyramid Lake yields other clues about Lake Lahontan.
Walk to the beach and examine the sediment in the escarpments cut by the waves. Pick up a handful of sediment and look closely, and some white shells will appear among the sand and pebbles. “They look like snail shells, but there are no aquatic snails in the lake today,” Adams said. Those snail shells, called gastropods, have been dated to as far back as 25,000 years ago, suggesting they lived in Lake Lahontan. While the snails no longer live in Pyramid Lake, one species that swam Lake Lahontan does still call Pyramid Lake home. The qui-ui, a bottom-feeding fish that is now endangered because its spawning habitat on the Truckee River has been altered, thrived for thousands of years in Lake Lahontan and now only lives in Pyramid Lake.
“That’s one reason why we know Pyramid has never dried up since Lake Lahontan,” Adams said.
Pyramid Lake is, in fact, the real heir to Lake Lahontan. Walker Lake is also a remnant of Lahontan, but it has dried up numerous times over the years because of climate change and the diversion of the Walker River.
Surf’s up
If humans existed during Lake Lahontan’s prime, they could have stood on a sandy finger reaching into the lake now called the Russell Spit. Russell Spit looks like a long, wide pile of sand sticking out of the hills south of Fallon like an earthen finger. It was formed when Lake Lahontan’s waves crashed on nearby slopes at a slight angle, tearing away soil and then redepositing it down the shoreline. “You can stand on this beach and look north and go ‘Wow, there must have been huge waves here,’” Adams said. The waves here got so big because they had a large fetch, Adams said. Fetch is the area of open water where waves are built by the wind.
From the Russell Spit, it’s more than 50 miles as the wave rolls to the north end of the Carson sink. Back then, the Desert Mountains, on the edge of which Russell Spit stands, rose out of the water. Today, someone standing on Russell Spit can see where that giant expanse of water stood, clear beyond Fallon.
The human element
Throughout its long life, Lake Lahontan grew and shrank as the climate of the Great Basin gradually changed. After its high point, the lake dried up as the ice sheets retreated. A long drought ensued, followed by a very cold period that probably froze any water left.
Then the lake returned one final time. Scientists believe humans lived at the lake during this last incarnation, and the proof lies in sites like the Grimes Point-Hidden Cave Archaeological Area.
This site, south of Fallon, consists of caves hidden among hills and large boulders and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. “Those boulders would have been on the shore lines,” said Amy Dansie, a retired Nevada State Museum anthropologist. The Spirit Cave Man might have lived on this shore and caught giant Lahontan cutthroat trout from its waters. This mummified human was found in nearby Spirit Cave in 1940 by two archaeologists who thought the remains were only 2,000 years old.
The remains were boxed and forgotten for six decades until the Nevada State Museum tested them as part of a program to return the remains to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe, who claim the Spirit Cave Man as their ancestor. The tests showed the mummy was about 10,630 years old. That places him at the Spirit Cave around the time Lake Lahontan was a dying lake.
But Dansie and other archaeologists believe humans may have seen Lake Lahontan in its prime.
Their theories are based on artifacts believed to have come from a period before this marshy time.
Some artifacts found at high elevations appeared to be “water tumbled,” Dansie said, suggesting they existed around the time of Lake Lahontan’s high stand. Dated bones belong to horses that appear to have been butchered using tools that predate the Spirit Cave Man’s culture. One spearhead called the McGee point is believed to be more than 13,000 years old, putting humans at Lake Lahontan no later than its high stand.
Any people that lived around Lake Lahontan through its varied life would have had to put up with — or perhaps retreated from — the changing climate. “They may have existed here but gone south and come back up multiple times,” Dansie said. Dansie is searching for a smoking gun, some artifacts that can be positively dated using the most modern technology. Those artifacts might be buried deep in layers of lake silt.
She believes such artifacts might prove humans appeared about 1,000 years before the Clovis Man, a member of a culture that lived 11,000 years ago — the earliest accepted date of a human presence in the New World. “It’s only another 1,000 years,” she said. “It’s not like we’re proposing 30,000 years.”
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Michael Crichton: Our Environmental Future
I wish I could post this entire speech, but I can only quote parts of it and encourage you to read it all here: http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/npc-speech.html
In the speech given January 25, 2005 before The Press Club, in Washington, D.C., Mr. Crichton talks about our environmental history, our perception of the present state of the climate, global warming, and the future. His insight, understanding, and interpretation are profound. It is unfortunate he is dismissed in some sectors as a "just" a fiction writer.
Peter
After his introduction, he says this about global warming:
"Okay. With this as a preparation, let’s turn to the evidence, both graphic and verbal, for global warming. As most of you have heard many times, the consensus of climate scientists believes in global warming. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. "
"Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. "
"So we must remember the immortal words of Mark Twain, who said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
He summarizes by saying:
"The idea of spending trillions on the future is only sensible if you totally lack any historical sense, and any imagination about the future. "
"If we should not spend our money on Kyoto, what should we do instead?"
and........
"Second, and most important—we can’t predict the future, but we can understand the present. In the time we have been talking, 2,000 people have died in the Third World. A child is orphaned by AIDS every 7 seconds. Fifty people die of waterborne disease every minute. This does not have to happen. We allow it. "
and finally,
"What is wrong with us that we ignore this human misery and focus on events a hundred years from now? What must we do to awaken our phenomenally rich, spoiled and self-centered society to the issues of the wider world? The global crisis is not 100 years from now—it is right now. We should be addressing it. But we are not. Instead, we cling to the reactionary and anti-human doctrines of outdated environmentalism and turn our backs to the cries of the dying and the starving and the diseased of our shared world."
"And if we are going to remain too self-involved to care about the third world, can we at least care about our own? We live in a country where 40% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. Where schoolchildren pass through metal detectors on the way to class. Where one child in four says they have seen a murdered person. Where millions of our fellow citizens have no health care, no decent education, no prospects for the future. If we really have trillions of dollars to spend, let us spend it on our fellow human beings. And let us spend it now. And not on our impossible fantasies of what may happen one hundred years from now."
In the speech given January 25, 2005 before The Press Club, in Washington, D.C., Mr. Crichton talks about our environmental history, our perception of the present state of the climate, global warming, and the future. His insight, understanding, and interpretation are profound. It is unfortunate he is dismissed in some sectors as a "just" a fiction writer.
Peter
After his introduction, he says this about global warming:
"Okay. With this as a preparation, let’s turn to the evidence, both graphic and verbal, for global warming. As most of you have heard many times, the consensus of climate scientists believes in global warming. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. "
"Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. "
"So we must remember the immortal words of Mark Twain, who said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
He summarizes by saying:
"The idea of spending trillions on the future is only sensible if you totally lack any historical sense, and any imagination about the future. "
"If we should not spend our money on Kyoto, what should we do instead?"
and........
"Second, and most important—we can’t predict the future, but we can understand the present. In the time we have been talking, 2,000 people have died in the Third World. A child is orphaned by AIDS every 7 seconds. Fifty people die of waterborne disease every minute. This does not have to happen. We allow it. "
and finally,
"What is wrong with us that we ignore this human misery and focus on events a hundred years from now? What must we do to awaken our phenomenally rich, spoiled and self-centered society to the issues of the wider world? The global crisis is not 100 years from now—it is right now. We should be addressing it. But we are not. Instead, we cling to the reactionary and anti-human doctrines of outdated environmentalism and turn our backs to the cries of the dying and the starving and the diseased of our shared world."
"And if we are going to remain too self-involved to care about the third world, can we at least care about our own? We live in a country where 40% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. Where schoolchildren pass through metal detectors on the way to class. Where one child in four says they have seen a murdered person. Where millions of our fellow citizens have no health care, no decent education, no prospects for the future. If we really have trillions of dollars to spend, let us spend it on our fellow human beings. And let us spend it now. And not on our impossible fantasies of what may happen one hundred years from now."
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Global Cooling? It has happened before
The Earth has obviously gone through countless, remarkable periods of both warming and cooling. What should give us pause for thought is these occurred long before man began burning lots of fossil fuels and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. We're not even really sure warming is even occuring and there are obviously factors at work other than man and our pathetically minor input of carbon dioxide.
From a friend, here is a summary from a presentation on the television History Channel about the affects of what is now known as "The Little Ice Age".
From a friend, here is a summary from a presentation on the television History Channel about the affects of what is now known as "The Little Ice Age".
A gem off the History Channel this morning.
Consequences of the
Little Ice Age.
It began in the 1300s, wiped out the Vikings in Greenland,
defeated the Spanish Armada, keeping England English, spread potatoes across
Europe, won our Independence, defeated Napoleon, started our westward migration, and created Frankenstein.
It was believed triggered by an increased incidence of Krakatoa-scale volcanic eruptions: 5 per century as compared to the usual 1 per century. And on top of
this: 5.April 1815 came the explosion of Mt Tambora
on Sumbawa, Indonesia. 36 cubic miles of debris were sent up to 15 miles
into the stratosphere. This is 100x the ash of St Helens.
A dusty fog hung all summer over N. Europe. It snowed. In Hungary the snow was brown. Agricultural resources already devastated by Napolean's march into Russia were ruined by the cold. People starved.
As the "year without summer" began in 1816, Percy Shelley, his 19yr old wife Mary, and their friend Lord Byron, went on vacation to Lake Geneva. But it was too cold and grim to go outside. So the three decided to amuse themselves indoors w/ a
contest to see who could write the scariest story.
Mary won.
The potato was brought to Europe from the new world by early Spanish
explorers. But it was culturally out of whack with traditional staples and
was quickly opposed by the clergy who called potatoes the "devil's crop". People starved when crops failed but potatoes were still avoided.
Then came the 30 Years War. A traditional strategy of warfare in
those days was the burning of crops. This destroyed surface crops like the
grains. But potatoes live underground out of touch of burning, and
freezing. Hence, thanks to the 30 Years War, potatoes
finally became accepted as a staple in Europe.
One consequence of global warming is global cooling, considered the bigger threat to survival since it wipes out food supply. The warming causes the cooling owing to glacial snow melt changing ocean salinity which interrupts temperature conveyor currents that currently keep the northern latitudes warm.
Pentagon commissioned a study of the coming ice age scenario. This is raising concern about threats to world order. It is based upon an actual catastrophic temperature change of 802 yrs ago that created anarchy worldwide and changed history. Temp dropped 9 degrees in one year. Rivers froze, crops failed, people starved, nations were drained of resources. Breakdown of societies resulted.
Skirmishes, civil wars, and invasions broke out over resources and water.
This time around it will be worse.
Pentagon is interested to determine how the destabilization will play out and what role the U.S. will have in maintaining world order during the chaos. Likely the U.S. will be soley responsible and plans need be on the shelf.
China a volatile flashpoint. By the scenario, civil war erupts. Chinese Army threatens to invade Russia for it's gas. There will be virtual full scale civil invasion of the U.S. from Latin America. U.S. Navy heads for Gulf to protect Saudi oil resources.
It is not yet clear whether we are going into hyperwarming or hyper cooling. Arguments still out. Behooves to be more cautious w/ possible human influences on global environment
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