Forget all you've heard about unprecedented global warming; global warming so rapid it can't be natural but must be anthropogenic; global warming threatening to devastate economies, ecosystems, and perhaps even human civilization itself; global warming on which "the science is settled" and "the debate is over."

Forget it all.

Proponents of global warming in the U.K. can't seem to decide whether or not global warming is real.

From the Telegraph.co.uk

Prof Peter Liss, acting director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), said sceptics were endangering the lives of generations to come by making unsupported claims.

"The evidence is hugely for there being substantial climate change due to man's activities and if you want to argue against that case you have to produce some evidence."

The Barnett shale is globally famous for having transformed the natural gas E&P business in North America and potentially in Europe and Asia as well. It is now emerging as an oil play as well. American independents active and experienced in shale natural gas are beginning to see (or rather hope, since it is too early to see clearly) the Barnett as a major new onshore oil play . It is premature to even guess at how large the oil endowment of the Barnett is but it merits close watching.

The companies best positioned to benefit are those that have a substantial resource position in the Barnett and important operating experience drilling for and producing oil in a shale basin.

Wednesday afternoon, the sky over New York City was a falling sheet of white. Temperatures had dropped sharply and the blizzard was underway. But nowhere in the city was the blizzard more pronounced than in Central Park, which had been designed in the 19th century to create a miniature forest in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world. The trees were layered with coats of snow and visibility had vanished into a cloud of  whiteness. And walking along a path in the Ramble, I heard a woman lecturing her children on the dangers of what else, but Global Warming.