Global Warming Helps Oil Industry Find More Oil :50 Billion Barrel Bonanza in Greenland

Posted on July 7, 2008 by Rashid Faridi

While Al Gore scared the crap out of us with tales of Greenland’s prodigious ice sheet falling into the sea, turns out the news isn’t all bad if you are in the oil business. According to The Age, Greenland’s oil ministry believes there is a 50 billion barrel bonanza beneath the ice and global warming is going to help them get it.

”If the ice in west Greenland continues to melt as dramatically as it has been doing in the past few years, then the cost of producing a barrel of oil will be closer to $20 than $50,” said Joern Skov Nielsen, deputy director of Greenland’s Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum.

And with oil futures trading at $139 a barrel it seems inevitable that oil companies will soon be drilling. Indeed Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Husky Energy are already testing for the juiciest spots.

The take could be worth more than $5 trillion to Greenland’s 56,000 inhabitants. Time to get dual citizenship.
originally posted by:http://eco-beat.com

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How GPS Works

Posted on July 7, 2008 by Rashid Faridi

Global Positioning System satellites transmit signals to equipment on the ground. GPS receivers passively receive satellite signals; they do not transmit. GPS receivers require an unobstructed view of the sky, so they are used only outdoors and they often do not perform well within forested areas or near tall buildings. GPS operations depend on a very accurate time reference, which is provided by atomic clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Each GPS satellite has atomic clocks on board.

Each GPS satellite transmits data that indicates its location and the current time. All GPS satellites synchronize operations so that these repeating signals are transmitted at the same instant. The signals, moving at the speed of light, arrive at a GPS receiver at slightly different times because some satellites are farther away than others. The distance to the GPS satellites can be determined by estimating the amount of time it takes for their signals to reach the receiver. When the receiver estimates the distance to at least four GPS satellites, it can calculate its position in three dimensions.

There are at least 24 operational GPS satellites at all times. The satellites, operated by the U.S. Air Force, orbit with a period of 12 hours. Ground stations are used to precisely track each satellite’s orbit .

Determining Position
A GPS receiver “knows” the location of the satellites, because that information is included in satellite transmissions. By estimating how far away a satellite is, the receiver also “knows” it is located somewhere on the surface of an imaginary sphere centered at the satellite. It then determines the sizes of several spheres, one for each satellite. The receiver is located where these spheres intersect.
GPS Accuracy
The accuracy of a position determined with GPS depends on the type of receiver. Most hand-held GPS units have about 10-20 meter accuracy. Other types of receivers use a method called Differential GPS (DGPS) to obtain much higher accuracy. DGPS requires an additional receiver fixed at a known location nearby. Observations made by the stationary receiver are used to correct positions recorded by the roving units, producing an accuracy greater than 1 meter.

When the system was created, timing errors were inserted into GPS transmissions to limit the accuracy of non-military GPS receivers to about 100 meters. This part of GPS operations, called Selective Availability, was eliminated in May 2000.

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Sirocco

Posted on July 7, 2008 by Rashid Faridi

Sirocco, scirocco, jugo or, rarely, siroc is a Mediterranean wind that comes from the Sahara and reaches hurricane speeds in North Africa and Southern Europe. It is known in North Africa by the arabic word qibli (قبلی i.e. “coming from the qibla”.)

A sirocco from Libya blowing dust over the Mediterranean, Malta, Italy, and Greece

Origin of name

Scirocco and Sirocco are Italian names from which its Greek name, “σιρόκος” (sirokos), is derived, while jugo is its name in Croatia, Montenegro and Slovenia, and ghibli in Libya. The sirocco reaching the south of France contains more moisture and is known as the marin. In the Canary Islands this oppressive, hot, dust bearing wind is called La Kalima. The name of sirocco in the southwest of Spain is leveche, and xaloc in Catalan. The leveche usually carries red Sahara dust and is associated with storms and heavy rain, the wind being very strong, lasting about 4 days. In Malta, it is known as xlokk.
Development

It arises from a warm, dry, tropical airmass that is pulled northward by low-pressure cells moving eastward across the Mediterranean Sea, with the wind originating in the Arabian or Sahara deserts. The hotter, drier continental air mixes with the cooler, wetter air of the maritime cyclone, and the counter-clockwise circulation of the low propels the mixed air across the southern coasts of Europe.

Effects

The Sirocco causes dusty, dry conditions along the northern coast of Africa, storms in the Mediterranean Sea, and cold, wet weather in Europe. The Sirocco’s duration may be a half day or many days. Many people attribute health problems to the Sirocco either because of the heat and dust along the African coastal regions or the cool dampness in Europe. The dust within the Sirocco winds can degrade mechanical devices and invade domiciles.

These winds with speeds of almost 100 kilometres per hour are most common during the autumn and the spring. They reach a peak in March and in November, with a maximum speed of about 100 km/h (55 knots).
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Solar Winds

Posted on July 6, 2008 by Rashid Faridi

The solar wind is a stream of charged particles—a plasma—that are ejected from the upper atmosphere of the sun. It consists mostly of electrons and protons with energies of about 1 keV. These particles are able to escape the sun’s gravity, in part because of the high temperature of the corona, but also because of high kinetic energy that particles gain through a process that is not well-understood at this time.

Many phenomena are directly related to the solar wind, including geomagnetic storms that can knock out power grids on Earth, the aurorae such as the Northern Lights, and the plasma tails of comets that always point away from the sun. While early models of the solar wind used primarily thermal energy to accelerate the material, by the 1960s it was clear that thermal acceleration alone cannot account for the high speed of solar wind. An additional unknown acceleration mechanism is required, and likely relates to magnetic fields in the solar atmosphere.

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