© Global Research - By Stephen Lendman

The arguments are so one-sided, it's practically a given that "peak oil" is real and threatening. Or is it? This article examines both sides. It lets readers decide and deals only with supply issues, not crucial environmental ones and the need to develop alternative energy sources. First some background. The name most associated with "peak oil" is M. King Hubbert. He became the world's best known geologist when he worked for Houston-based Shell Oil Company from 1943 to 1964. His theory goes something like this. Oil is a finite resource. Peak oil, or Hubbert's peak, is the point at which maximum world production is reached, after which its rate terminally declines.

Hubbert first presented his theory in a February 4, 1949 Science magazine article called "Energy from Fossil Fuels." He gained prominence, however, from his 1956 American Petroleum Institute presentation titled "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels." In it, he predicted that US production would peak between the mid-1960s and early 1970s, and he was largely right (for the wrong reasons at the time) about cheap or what's called light sweet oil.

Most analysts believe US output peaked in 1970 and has since declined. Others, like economist and author F. William Engdahl, disagree. He's been researching oil issues since the early 1970s and believes US output peaked at the time but not because of resource depletion. It's "because Shell, Mobil, Texaco and the other partners of Saudi Aramco were flooding the US market with dirt cheap Middle East imports, tariff free, (and) at prices so low (that) many Texas domestic producers could not compete and" had to shutter their operations. But Hubbert went further as well. He predicted a worldwide peak in "about half a century" that would progress in bell-shaped curve fashion, now called "Hubbert's curve." Here's how it works for all fossil fuels. Hubbert theorized that after discovery, production increases exponentially, but at some point peak output is reached...

©1997-2006 Morgana's Observatory.

Sumerian : In the eleventh tablet of the Semitic Babylonian epic of Gilagamesh is a flood story that is the source for the Noah story. The Gods resolved to cleanse the earth of an overpopulated humanity, but Utnapishtim was warned by the God Ea in a dream. He and some craftsmen built a huge (seven decks encompassing one acre in area) ark. Utnapishtim then loaded it with his family, the craftsmen, and "the seed of all living creatures." The waters rose up, and a storm continued for six days and six nights. The Gods repented and wept upon seeing the global destruction of living beings and stilled the flood on the seventh day. The waters covered everything but the top of the mountain Nisur, where the boat landed. A dove was loosed, but it returned, having found no place to rest. A swallow was sent, but it too returned. Seven days later, after having loosed a raven that did not return to the ark, the people began to emerge. Utnapishtim made a sacrifice to the Gods. He and his wife were given immortality and lived at the end of the earth.

Greco-Roman : Zeus decided to punish humanity for its evil ways. Other Gods grieved at the destruction because there would be no beings to worship them. Zeus promised a new stock, a race of miraculous origin. He was going to use thunderbolts when he remembered one of Fate's decrees: that a time would come when sea and earth and dome of the sky would blaze up, and the massive structure of the universe would collapse in ruins. With Poseidon's help, he caused storm and earthquake to flood every part of the land except the summit of Mount Parnassus. When Zeus crushed the hanging clouds in his hand, there was a loud crash, and sheets of rain fell from heaven. The rivers began rushing to the sea. When Neptune struck the earth with his trident, the rivers raced across the plains. Sea and earth could no longer be distinguished; all was sea without any shores, covering every living being except for one fortunate couple, Deucalion and Pyrrha. Earlier, Deucalion and Pyrrha had consulted Themis at her oracular shrine...

Copyright © 2000 CarpeNoctem

The end may be near, but exactly how near is the sticky question. As millennium fever swept the globe, party planners and doomsdayers alike were fixated on the year 2000. Meanwhile, Judgment Day sticklers have been obsessing over the fact that there never was a "year zero," and therefore A.D. 1 plus two millennia equals 2001. But pinpointing Armageddon isn't quite that simple. When it comes to end times, there are as many proposed dates as there are fates (Rapture or Tribulation? Fire or Flood? Demons or Pleiadeans?). However, in the wake of past doomsday embarrassments (the world didn't end in the year 1000, and the hoopla over the 1987 Harmonic Convergence turned out to be the spiritual equivalent of 8-track tape), few latter-day prophets are willing to stick their necks out and name a drop deadline. "What the prophets try to do is make predictions and leave the fulfillment vague," explains Stephen D. O'Leary, a millennial scholar at the University of Southern California. The most successful millennial prophets remain "strategically ambiguous," he says. He prophets who do get specific tend to be the more marginal ones."

It's no surprise that the Internet, a haven for marginal oracles of all strips, is home to millenarians who are bold enough to set a date. In fact, the Internet has assumed an important role on the end-times stage. "The Internet will be to the twenty-first century what the printing press was to the sixteenth," says medieval historian Richard Landes of Boston University, who, with O'Leary, cofounded the Center for Millennial Studies. Just as the printing press made apocalyptic tracts available to the public five hundred years ago, the Internet disgorges a vast literature of alternative doomsday scenarios. "The Internet has increased the amount and the kind of information people have at their disposal to construct millenial scenarios," says O'Leary. "It also gives people a chance to try out different interpretations and prophecies in electronic discussion groups." In effect, he says, "the Internet provides a kind of social reinforcement," a public-address system for "people who might otherwise be relegated to the fringes as crackpots." Well, in the lottery of multiple Armageddons, today's crackpot may turn out to be tomorrow's messianic seer...

© Matthew J. Slick, 1996 - 2006

Among most Westerners, the term "Jihad" ("struggle" in Arabic) often brings up images of Muslim terrorists killing people who disagree with them.  Jihad is an emotionally charged word that is heralded by the Western news media in descriptions of Middle East activities.  People need not wait long to hear the term used during nightly news and see the affects of present day Islamic struggles in vivid pictures of destruction beamed to our televisions.  But is this a fair assessment of the Muslim community as a whole? Jihad has been interpreted by Muslims in different ways.  The Muslim sect of the Kharijites has elevated Jihad to one of the Five Pillars of Islam -- making it Six Pillars.  This kind of belief is seen in the extremist Muslim groups we call terrorists.  They use the concept of Jihad as a justification for killing anyone who isn't a Muslim.  However, most Muslims disagree with this extremist position of some Muslims and advocate peace.

These Muslims view Jihad as a spiritual struggle against evil in a metaphorical sense.¹ For the most part, there is the Greater and Lesser Jihad.  The Greater Jihad is the internal spiritual struggle of the Muslim toward submission to Allah.  The Lesser Jihad is Holy War against non-Muslims based on principle of belief.  It is this latter that has caused the most concern among Westerners.  Is that concern warranted?  Many think so. Islamic scholar Jamal Badawi, chairman of the Islamic Information Foundation in Halifax, insists that a jihad is `permitted only in self-defense or against tyranny and oppression--not as a tool to promote Islam.'' But, experts added, the ancient Islamic empires were built as much by force as by persuasion. Islam's founder, Mohammed, frequently used force, or the threat of it, to unify the nomadic tribes of the Arabian peninsula. The caliphs, who succeeded Mohammed as leaders of the Arab world, successfully took up arms against the Christian Byzantine Empire in Egypt and the Holy Land. By the end of the ninth century, Arabian armies had extended Islamic power from Spain to the borders of India.² ...

Copyright © 2005 by Leon Kilkenny

The Pentagon has more than 10,000 deadly nukes in its arsenal. Each hydrogen bomb is 50 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. One such bomb strategically placed could devastate a country the size of England. Hitler had the H-bomb in 1945 and the Pentagon took Hitler's H-bomb to the U.S. and tested it in Alaska on April 1, 1946.Theoretically, the Pentagon 9 megaton W-53 thermonuclear warhead shown on the left, could easily be encased in a small 'lookalike' saturation diving chamber similar to that on the right, to protect it from the massive 10,000 pounds per square inch pressures at the bottom of the Sumatran Trench. The whole armored package would weigh less than five tons, allowing it to be slipped over the stern of any oil rig supply vessel, of which there are more than 300 in Asia alone. Who would even notice?

Deadly hydrogen bomb is a nuke within a nuke: The hydrogen or thermonuclear bomb is just a nuke within a nuke. In other words, it uses fission and billions of degrees in a conventional atomic bomb (primary) to trigger a chain reaction (fusion) in another bomb (secondary) in order to create a nuclear explosion. A third or tertiary stage can be added yielding up to 20 million tons of TNT!! Dr. Edward Teller said that the limit on these monsters was 100 million tons of TNT!! The first H-bombs produced in Nazi Germany were huge devices and needed special refrigeration devices (cryogenics) to keep the liquid deuterium below 400 degrees Fahrenheit. A submarine was the ideal delivery method at that time but the sub would be blown up in the explosion too. First test of an atomic bomb took place at Port Chicago on July 17, 1944! The world's first atomic explosion took place at Port Chicago just north of San Francisco on July 17, 1944. This was a test of the gun-assembly uranium bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on July 6, 1945. The atomic test was carried out using the smokescreen of conventional explosives...

Copyright ©2003 Regents of the University of California
By Heather Henter

Is the R.E.M. song too apocalyptic? Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography bring us face to face with the bleak realities of global warming and the consequences of our present-day energy consumption. Global warming is here. That is immediately clear when you talk to climate scientists at Scripps. Denying global warming is the scientific equivalent of denying that the earth is round, according to Richard Somerville, meteorologist at Scripps. The average global temperature has risen 0.6° C. in the last century. During that time, Northern Hemisphere temperatures rose more than at any time in the last 1,000 years. The 1990s were the warmest decade on record, and the year 1998 was the hottest.

Switzerland is wrapping the upper Gurschen glacier with reflecting foil to try and forestall its melting. Houses in the Arctic sink and sag because the permafrost is melting. Arctic sea ice is breaking up earlier in the season, harming polar bears by shortening their hunting season. Virtually all the world’s glaciers are melting and those in Glacier National Park will likely be gone in 30 years. Antarctica is shrinking. Sea levels are rising and low-lying countries are feeling the threat. The tiny country of Tuvalu in the southwest Pacific Ocean already has a plan to evacuate to New Zealand. Any one of these problems alone could be a scientific anomaly but these changes, and more, are not isolated events. They are part of a consistent pattern all in the same direction... a warming planet. “ This is the granddaddy of all environmental problems,” says Charles Kennel, director of Scripps, an institute that has been a leader in the climate-change game for the last half-century. “It is the one environmental issue that affects every human being, every living creature . . . on the surface of the earth.” What will happen if global warming continues, unchecked? Tim Barnett, marine geophysicist at Scripps, predicts serious calamities in our near future, and thinks current debates in Washington will seem inconsequential compared to future disasters due to global warming...