"You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake

in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe."  

"You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland

 and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."

A Fate Worse

Than Global Warming?
By John M. Crisp

              AP Photo

While we temporize about global warming some would say dither its long-term dangers may be overtaken by a related, but more acute, crisis: The depletion of the fuels that power the way we live on the planet, especially hydrocarbons like oil and coal. Eventually they will be exhausted.

This fact should be unsurprisingly obvious, since we're using these fuels at a rate that is much greater than they could possibly be replaced. Still, our reserves are enormous, making it easy to develop a sense of complacency about the future.

But, as a number of writers have pointed out, the depletion crisis will come not when the last barrel of oil or the last bucket of coal is burned, but when the peak of worldwide hydrocarbon production is reached. With regard to oil, this peak is sometimes called Hubbert's peak, after Shell geophysicist M. King Hubbert, who in 1956 predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in the early '70s. He was right; U.S. production has declined every year since 1970.
 

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Other scientists have used Hubbert's methods to predict a peak in worldwide production, as well: the optimists give us 25 or 30 years; the pessimists believe that the peak is occurring right now. (Two good discussions of the prospects for worldwide oil production are Kenneth S. Deffeyes' "Hubbert's Peak" and David Goldstein's "Out of Gas.")

Whether it occurs in two years or five years or 30 years, what happens when we reach the downhill slide on the far side of peak oil production? In his book "Powerdown," Robert Heinberg suggests several possibilities, none very attractive.

One of them Heinberg calls "Waiting for the Magic Elixir." It's based on the hope that as hydrocarbons become less available and more expensive, other energy sources, as yet undiscovered, will emerge. Heinberg doesn't rule out this possibility entirely, but it's unlikely that any fuel with the energy and availability of hydrocarbons is waiting in the wings to save us. Depending on this hope is similar to setting out across the Pacific in a 747 with half-empty fuel tanks, hoping to find mid-air refueling on the way.

A second possibility is what Heinberg calls "Powerdown," which involves a recognition that the end of the hydrocarbon age will eventually arrive and that a rational, organized response is called for, one that brings the size of the earth's population into sync with the renewable energy that's actually available for the long haul. This alternative, however, requires a deep re-conception of the modern attitude toward what it means to be human and civilized. It calls for the reverse of globalization, for shrinking back into self-sustaining renewable communities. In short, it's unlikely to happen.

Far more likely is the alternative that Heinberg calls "Last One Standing." This is the default option, the one that, in lieu of rational action, humankind will choose simply because it requires us only to follow the natural course we've followed whenever resources have become scarce in the past: we fight over them.

World Wars I and II are good examples of conflicts over access to energy, and our current presence in Iraq, our interest in the Middle East, the incipient tensions with China and Iran are hard to explain unless oil is part of the equation. Competition for access to the last inexpensive, accessible deposits of oil and other hydrocarbons will continue to heat up until, as Heinberg puts it, there's only one left standing. Ironically, in spite of our worries about global warming, before the globe has time to heat up to the point of uninhabitability we may self-destruct is a series of chaotic energy wars over the last of the oil.

The Bush administration is unlikely to lead us out of this hydrocarbon wilderness; they're oilmen, locked in psychologically to a hydrocarbon future. So are most Democrats. Unfortunately, finding our way out of this dilemma will take more than innovative thinking and new discoveries. It will require a realization on a global scale that human life is unique in our universe, as far as we know, and that it can be preserved in the long run only within a framework of renewable energy.

APEAKOLYPSE NOW

   Peak Oil is the greatest story never told. Even though Peak Oil is the central fact driving the wars and economic crises of our time, it is seldom mentioned in the mainstream corporate news.

   Peak Oil (also known as the Big Rollover or the Long Emergency) is when demand for oil outstrips supply because the halfway point of the planet’s oil deposits has been passed. ‘Halfway’ is a misleading word in this context. Most of the oil that’s still left in the ground will be staying there, because it takes more oil energy to get it out of the ground than it yields. The oil and natural gas is no longer worth the drilling or pumping. Petroleum geologists reckon that the world oil peak will be sometime between 2005 -2010. The majority of non-OPEC producers such as the United States, Britain, Norway, and Mexico, who satisfy 60 percent of world oil demand, are already in a production plateau or decline. A leading guru, Colin Campbell (ex of Shell and Total Fina Elf) reckons 2007. Are we preparing for it? Are we readying ourselves to radically change our lifestyles and energy consumption? Of course not.

   The bottom line is this: humankind is entering a whole new era. One in which every year from, say, 2007, there will be less and less net energy available to us no matter what we do (Alternative energy sources are nowhere near developed enough, or invested in, to compensate). The last time anything like this happened was the collapse of the ancient civilizations. The Maya, the Romans, the Greeks; these civilisations ended when their strategies for energy capture - be it slaves, coal or topsoil - became subject to the law of diminishing returns.

   Industrial society is the name given to the world that built itself first on coal and then on oil. When oil becomes scarce and then runs out it will be the collapse of industrial society. Massive social change is coming.

   In ‘The Party’s Over - Oil, War and the Fate Of Industrial Societies,’ Richard Heinberg refers to the present epoch as the Petroleum Interval or the Petrol Bubble. The Stone Age lasted for millennia, the Bronze Age nearly a couple of thousand years, but the epoch in which humans discover oil then totally re-shape society around oil, and then run out of the stuff will be about 200 years

   The implications in terms of food are pretty terrifying. Since the 1960s it has been true to say that food equals oil. In 1944 the average US farm produced 2.3 thousand calories of food for every calorie of fossil fuel inputs. In 1974 the ratio became 1:1, in our own time there are no reliable statistics but it may be as much as 1000 calories of oil-energy to produce as each calorie of food energy, given that nitrogen fertilizers are made from natural gas, (itself a by-product of oil); pesticides and insecticides are synthesised from oil, tractors and combines run on diesel, and then there’s plastic packaging, refrigeration and four-figure food miles. As Heinberg says, “in terms of energy return on energy invested, industrial agriculture is the least efficient food distribution system the world has ever known.” Hoe and scythe classes anyone?

   So the days of the out-of-town Tescos and Wal-Marts are numbered. But the bad news is that survival on planet earth could get a lot more difficult for about two-thirds of its inhabitants. The population boom at the beginning of the 20th century, boosting humans from 1.7 billion to 6 billion was the result of cheap abundant energy supplies helping to underpin massive expansion of agricultural production. With oil about to become a rare as arctic carp, the earth’s carrying capacity – ie the total population it can support - will plunge back down to pre-industrial levels... or maybe lower still since we no longer know how to farm, and have thoughtfully covered most of the Grade 1 arable land with UGC multiplex cinemas.

   So why aren’t we hearing more about this story then? On the quiet, Governments and Energy corporations admit the basic truths of the situation - Exxon Mobil’s recent report, “The Outlook for Energy: A 2030 View”, forecasts a peak in just five years - but nobody’s shouting about it. Simply put, it’s because it’s in all the major players’ interests to lie about it. The oil companies (publicly at least) downplay the problem because oil-producing countries will hike the price if they know they have BP and Exxon over a barrel. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) lie about their reserves, claiming they are larger than they really are, because OPEC members agree to produce only a certain percentage of their reserves per year, and each money-hungry member wants to cheat by producing more - thus leading to the over ‘generous’ estimates. Governments of oil-producing countries also want inflated reserves so as to boost investment and help each oligarchy to shore up its power base, not too mention getting US/UK arms and military training for free. Other governments lie about Peak Oil because they don’t want to appear powerless, or provoke public panic.

   There is also the psychology of denial. Protecting the status quo is so much easier for politicians looking ahead all of three or four years. Not wanting to face social change, governments instead want to believe in the ‘techno-fix’. Hydrogen, nuclear and zinc are all hailed as the saviours of industrial capitalism. But there are no hydrogen reservoirs. Hydrogen fuel-cells are made using fossil-fuels. You use as much fossil fuel energy to create each hydrogen fuel cell as you get from it. Hydrogen can be used to store wind and wave energy, but it is a carrier of energy (like electricity) not a source of energy. The nuclear energy cycle not only produces too much carbon in its mining, milling, processing, storage and decommissioning, but needs vast fossil fuel inputs as only 0.7% of natural uranium mined is the fissile U-253 needed. Zinc-air fuel cells have yet to attract enough attention or big-time investment.

   But there’s one other reason for the big Peak Oil omerta*, which unites all of the above liars and the news networks. The potential collapse of the banking system. In the windfall energy years of the Petrol Bubble, more and more energy has been available each and every year. This has led to an economic system built on the assumption of growth. Large scale energy shortages would soon put a stop to that.

   Societies will have to junk the preset debt-and-interest monetary system for a matter-and-energy accounting system, or some other kind of ecological system which acknowledges the finite nature of resources. This may not be a bad thing of course, but you can tell those with power are going to find the most painful route to arrive at that conclusion.

   Any road up, the present financial system cannot survive net-energy decline. Less and less available energy means less economic activity. In the present banking system most money is created by making loans. But if there is less and less economic activity then there are less and less loans and so there’s no tidy wedge to pay interest on the old loans, nor anyone to pay the loan sharks to come round yer house, nor oil to make the resin to stop the baseball bat from cracking on yer skull. And without these two mainstays it’s all over.

Mankind's Planetary

CO2 Emission Experiment

By Darren Owen

CO2 levels have been on the rise since the dawn on the industrial revolution and are now own a course of planetary consequences that could see the end of life as we know it within 30 to 50 years.

The concentration of CO2 , the most important greenhouse gas, has increased by more than 16 percent in the past 40 years and by more than 30 percent since the beginning of the industrial revolution 200 years ago. As CO2 continues to accumulate, doubling and then tripling in concentration, the expected warming will continue to increase. The further this proceeds, the greater the possibility that new chemical or physical processes will be triggered that release still more greenhouse gases.

           Click Image to Enlarge

     Atmospheric Physicists are uniting in calling for major efforts to mitigate certain climate change before any irreversible processes begin in the wake of the Kyoto failures. It is these "efforts" that have been given the name "Geoengineering" by physicists and "Chemtrails" by the casual observer of our skies.

   Colin Powel has stated,  "The US is taking action to meet environmental challenges, including global climate change."

   Add to this the comments from General Motors Executive press statement after quitting the Global Warming lobbying group, "We're eager under our new structure to continue working with Congress, the administration and others to continue advancing technology based solutions to the climate question."

   For those who have looked up and seen for themselves, this new "advanced technical fix" is well under way having begun in earnest in 1998. For others, the idea of a dying planet and geoengineering the planet is too much to grasp. Our government is purposely hiding these facts for political, economic and social reasons. If the public knew how advanced Global Warming has become, there would be widespread panic, economies would collapse, etc.  It's hard to believe, but economic and political considerations are at such conflict with the life of our planet, (Think oil, auto and energy industries -$$$$$$) that political leaders are unwilling to take any actions to reduce CO2 emissions. In fact, it has become apparent that our government is so secure in its belief of their "technical fix" that President Bush has even gone so far as rule that CO2 can no longer be regulated as a pollutant!

   Melissa Carey, a climate policy specialist for Environmental Defense responded by saying, "Refusing to call greenhouse-gas emissions a pollutant is like refusing to say that smoking causes lung cancer,"  "The Earth is round. Elvis is dead. Climate change is happening."

 Jonathan Cannon, the Clinton EPA general counsel who wrote the now-reversed 1998 decision, said: "They're trying to put a stake in the heart for any possible existing avenue for dealing with global climate change either by this administration or any future administration.

  All this when it was recently reported that cars and trucks now out number drivers in the United States.

 The Bush Administration has done everything in its power to place big business ahead of the planet and we see no end in sight to this madness. The Bush Cabal is holding hands with automakers and oil interests.

   The "Technological fix" allowing the multi-national Corporations to carry on unimpeded by Government legislation on pollution from fossil fuel emissions is real, having devastating consequences for human life on earth. The technology base called geoengineering has a multi-prong approach, all of which are unproven technologies. The big Take away here is the grand and secret experimentation on the human populace and the earth is underway with no known human or atmospheric consequence known. Geocrisis will focus mainly on the atmospheric manipulation through aerosol operations conducted through jet aircraft and there affects on an unsuspecting population.

 So please take your time to browse through Geocrisis and see why we are so concerned for our children's future.

      _____________________

Geoengineering

The Technological Band Aide

To Save The Planet 

By Darren Owen

"You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe."

Escape

"You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."

Enter