The dollar will get “utterly destroyed” and become “virtually worthless”, said Damon Vickers, chief investment officer of Nine Points Capital Partners. Due to the huge wage disparities between the United States and emerging markets like China, Vickers said that may resolve itself in some type of a global currency crisis.
“If the global currency crisis unfolds, then inevitably you get an alignment of a global world government. A new global currency and a new world order, so we may be moving towards that,” he said.
For those who have claimed this is a fake clip I suggest you visit CNBC’s website:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/33709379
Note the inverted pyramid/illuminati triangle with the hypnotic spinning lights of Nine Points Capital Partners in the background. – PJ
“I’ve done a Christian [-based] training program; I have a Muslim training program and a Jewish training program coming up, also a Hindu program coming up. I trained 200 Christian ministers and lay leaders here in Nashville in a version of the slide show that is filled with scriptural references. It’s probably my favourite version, but I don’t use it very often because it can come off as proselytising.”
Nobel winner adapts fact-based message to reach those who believe they have a moral duty to protect the planet in Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis
Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth sequel stresses spiritual argument on climate
by Suzanne Goldenberg
Al’s Gore’s much-anticipated sequel to An Inconvenent Truth is published today, with an admission that facts alone will not persuade Americans to act on global warming and that appealing to their spiritual side is the way forward.
In his latest book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, the man who won a Nobel prize in 2007 for his touring slideshow on disappearing polar ice and other consequences of climate change, concludes: “Simply laying out the facts won’t work.”
Instead, Gore tells Newsweek magazine in a pre-publication interview, that he has been adapting his fact-based message – now put out by hundreds of volunteers – to appeal to those who believe there is a moral or religious duty to protect the planet.
“I’ve done a Christian [-based] training program; I have a Muslim training program and a Jewish training program coming up, also a Hindu program coming up. I trained 200 Christian ministers and lay leaders here in Nashville in a version of the slide show that is filled with scriptural references. It’s probably my favourite version, but I don’t use it very often because it can come off as proselytising,” Gore tells Newsweek.
Gore’s book arrives at a time of intense international scrutiny of America’s moves on the environment ahead of an international meeting on global warming at Copenhagen, now just more than a month away.
It draws on the scholarly approach Gore developed for Inconvenient Truth. Since 2007, the former vice-president has been calling experts together from fields ranging from agriculture to neuroscience to discuss possible solutions to climate change.
The book draws on 30 such “solutions summits”, as well as Gore’s countless telephone conversations with scientists at America’s best institutions. According to the book’s press release, “Among the most unique approaches Gore takes in the book is showing readers how our own minds can be an impediment to change.”
New polling last month showed a steep decline in the numbers of Americans who share Gore’s sense of urgency in acting on climate change.
The book aims to reach those Americans by familiarising readers with emerging alternative energy sources, such as geothermal, biomass and wind power, as well as the possibilities of making cleaner coal power plants, and developing a more efficient and responsive “smart” electrical grid.
Gore also explores how deforestation, soil erosion, and the rising world population are multiplying the effects of rising greenhouse gas emissions.
Much of the material was developed through the series of brainstorming sessions organised by Gore. Since 2007, the former vice-president has been calling experts together to discuss possible solutions to climate change. He has also held countless telephone conversations with scientists at America’s best institutions.
“He is one of the only politicians that takes the time to actually talk to scientists who are producing the cutting-edge stuff and he comes in with questions. He doesn’t ask us how our results impinge on a particular policy he actually asks about science,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who spoke to Gore along with colleagues four or five times for the book. “Nobody that we have dealt with has ever taken as much time to understand the subtlety of the science and all the different complications and what it all means as Al Gore.”
Those conversations led Gore to politically inconvenient conclusions in this new book. In his conversations with Schmidt and other colleagues at the beginning of the year, Gore explored new studies – published only last week – that show methane and black carbon or soot had a far greater impact on global warming than previously thought. Carbon dioxide – while the focus of the politics of climate change – produces around 40% of the actual warming.
Gore acknowledged to Newsweek that the findings could complicate efforts to build a political consensus around the need to limit carbon emissions.
“Over the years I have been among those who focused most of all on CO2, and I think that’s still justified,” he told the magazine. “But a comprehensive plan to solve the climate crisis has to widen the focus to encompass strategies for all” of the greenhouse culprits identified in the Nasa study.
The former vice-president has been working behind the scenes to try to nudge the White House and Congress to move forward on a 920-page proposed law to cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions and encourage its use of clean energy sources like solar and wind power.
On Saturday, he told the German newspaper, Der Spiegel, he was “almost certain” Obama would attend the negotiations. The White House has so far refused to make a commitment.
But Gore has also been confronted with almost daily fresh reminders of the difficulties of prodding Americans to action.
The proposed legislation has set off a ferocious debate about the costs of dealing with climate change – with conservative Democrats and Republicans saying reducing America’s use of oil will deepen unemployment and hurt average American families.
Republicans in the Senate have threatened to boycott a session today that had been called to move forward a draft of a 920-page proposed law to deal with climate change.
Progress on the bill is seen as crucial to getting a binding deal at Copenhagen. Barbara Boxer, the chair of the Senate’s environment and public works committee, said yesterday she was ready to move ahead without any Republican participation.
__________ Glenn Beck-Lord Monckton Debate Global Warming
US, November 2, 2009, (Pal Telegraph) – Los Angeles–President Obama’s declared H1N1 emergency cannot be reconciled by either vaccine shortages or flu cases; only by medical “market-building,” vaccination intoxications, and mass murder for population reduction says common sense and mounting evidence. Over the weekend, initial reports from Reuters News Service and Fox News stated that the President’s declaration was intended to prepare the country in case of “a rapid increase in illness that may overburden health care resources.” The media quoted an unidentified administration official saying, “It’s important to note that this is a proactive measure — not a response to a new development.” This action was “similar to disaster declarations issued before hurricanes hit coastal areas,” Reuters reported.
Why would the Obama administration anticipate an H1N1 “hurricane” to hit when Purdue researchers concluded last week the epidemic was expected to peak this week? In fact, too soon for vaccines to be helpful.
Thus, most people getting vaccinated now risk side effects for NOTHING–no benefit what-so-ever!
Furthermore, CBS News determined last week the CDC’s reported H1N1 cases had been overblown up to 97 percent. Only about 1,000 people have died of H1N1 since April’s Mexican outbreak. That is merely 1/18th, or less than 6%, of expected deaths from a normal seasonal flu during the same time period.
It is highly suspicious that David A. Paterson, New York State’s Governor, suddenly suspended “mandatory” H1N1 shots for health professionals citing vaccine shortages, not litigation exposures, as cause for the policy change.
Neglecting notice that more than 60 percent of nurses in New York State refused to take the H1N1 vaccines according to polls, and unions had filed lawsuits against New York and Washington State to gain injunctions against mandated injections, Paterson’s yellow press blamed “limited vaccine supplies” as reason to inject pregnant women and children exclusively. Only two weeks earlier, New York State officials posted their first priority, “as established by the CDC,” to vaccinate health care workers and emergency medical services personnel.
Oddly, all this talk about sudden vaccine shortages being the cause of a federal emergency grossly contradicts what many health officials were saying merely three weeks ago. United Press International (UPI) reported, for instance, Dr. Judy Monroe, Indiana’s state health commissioner, said that an ample supply of the vaccine would be available for everyone by mid-October. Now, suddenly, there is an alleged shortage that compels mixed messages and general confusion.
Revelations of the Swine Flu and Forced Vaccinations
“Shortage Marketing” Disease and Death
“This is called “shortage marketing,” Dr. Leonard Horowitz explains. “It is an increasing trend in the industrial world to get consumers to purchase products that are unappealing, over-inventoried, or scarce.”
For weeks preceding Obama’s declaration of national emergency polls showed the vast majority of Americans, including health care workers, rejecting the seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccines. So with stockpiles high, despite allegations of manufacturing delays, the government’s promotions and policy changes simply reflect “shortage marketing.”
But this is a “superficial concern” according to Dr. Horowitz, who references neurobehavioral and neurocognitive disorders demonstrated in vaccine recipients who were normal before getting vaccinated. He credits the brilliant work of Andrew Moulden, MD, PhD, photographically detailing tremendous physical damage occurring following vaccinations. These previously unknown and unseen subtle changes in nerve function and physical appearance is now demonstrated in pictures by Dr. Moulden that are irrefutable in courts and the scientific world.
Dr. Horowitz, a Harvard-trained expert in behavioral science, media persuasion and public health education, has spent 20 years documenting drug industrialists’ and health officials’ criminal actions.
“The only way to reconcile President Obama’s declaration of emergency, given the increasing risks of vaccine injuries, post-peak diminishing risks of H1N1, and the anticipated public health nightmare caused by live viruses “shedding” from those vaccinated to unvaccinated persons, is to follow the flow of money,” Dr. Horowitz says. “In the process of shedding vaccination H1N1, the highly unstable shed virus is expected to pick up more lethal genes from other circulating viruses, including possibly H5N1 that kills nearly 60 percent of those infected.”
Dr. Horowitz notes that authorities have been mum on the triple recombinant H1N1 produced in labs for use in the “active” vaccine. Experts know this is highly unstable, because it is a man-made laboratory creation that did not evolve naturally over the millennia. This unstable mutant more readily recombines with other circulating viruses when it is shed for up to 3 weeks, thus exposing non-vaccinated people who are infected with other viruses.
This is the best explanation for Obama’s anticipated “hurricane,” explains Dr. Horowitz, who criticizes the mainstream media for completely neglecting this greatest risk while falsely reporting vaccine “shortages.” Something else is obviously happening behind the scenes that only seasoned investigators can discern, he says.
He diagnoses the alleged vaccine shortage as a profitable ploy used by those “who have outrageously obvious connections to the Population Council, the preeminent organization directing global depopulation, as encouraged by Obama’s science czar, John Holdren.
Dr. Holdren is the co-author of the 1977 book, Ecoscience, which calls for massive global depopulation using sterilizing vaccinations.
Dr. Horowitz points to the fact that Nonoxynol-9, a spermicidal drug causing spontaneous abortions in pregnant women, and birth defects in infants, is one of the many new “adjuvants” banned in the United States, but used by the American-based Baxter Company in their H1N1 flu vaccines stockpiled by European nations.
H1N1 Flu A Pharmaceutical Hoax
“Just get yer damn vaccine!”
Outrageous Conflicting Interests
Dr. Horowitz also suggests discerning conflicting interests between vaccine makers and the news sources that break the federal government’s announcements, in this case Reuters and FOX news.
Reuters is directed by Thomas H. Glocer, a Merck & Co. director making money from H1N1 vaccine sales through Merck’s subsidiary, CSL, Inc. Merck also sells Pneumovax, a vaccine suggested for use at the time influenza vaccines are given, yet contraindicated in people with active influenza infections.*
A “live” H1N1 vaccine infects those vaccinated with “active” viruses. Thus, Merck’s suggested Pneumovax usage is contraindicated according to their own package insert!
If that’s not bad enough, CSL, Inc. did its H1N1 vaccine safety testing on pregnant women, infants, and children at facilities financed by Rupert Murdoch and his family–the Royal Victoria Women’s Hospital directed by Elisabeth Murdoch, and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute overseen by Rupert’s daughter-in-law Susan Murdoch. So much for FOX News’s impartiality.
The Wall Street Journal that announced “New York Ends Flu Shot Mandate for Health Care Workers” on October 23rd, is disqualified by way of its links to Merck also. . . . WSJ CEO Councilman, David Brennan, directs the AstraZeneca’s Flumist manufacturer, Medimmune, Inc. AstraZeneca drafted Brennan from Merck & Company, and appointed him CEO in 2006.
This pattern of gross conflicting interests, and coordinated multi-media genocidal counterintelligence, expands with reading Thomas Glocer’s article wherein Reuters plugs “an experimental new drug called peramivir, made by Biocryst Pharmaceuticals Inc.”**
Peramivir is produced by Jon P. Stonehouse’s BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer, Stonehouse recently served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at (surprise, surprise) Merck. At Merck, Stonehouse was responsible for “leading strategic developments . . . [that] significantly changed the company,” according to BioCryst’s website.
The Partnership for New York City and Council for Depopulation
It is obvious that our H1N1 “intelligence” is being gathered and broadcast from the highest levels of the medical-media’s mafia. As previously reported in Dr. Horowitz’s “AFFIDAVIT,” submitted to the FBI earlier this month, and filed last week in a lawsuit against federal officials in Washington State, David Rockefeller, Rupert Murdoch, Thomas Glocer, and other media moguls are partnered in the world’s most powerful drug ring and biotechnology consortium. Its members include the government of New York State as well as the US Federal Government. Proof of these facts are available for inspection online at The Partnership for New York City (PFNYC). The site provides its members list and related pharmaceutical industry activities.
The Founder of PFNYC, David Rockefeller, wields tremendous influence over many of the foundations and institutions that direct the US Federal Government’s policies and practices. American “health care reform” is currently directed, on behalf of the Democratic party, by Sen. Jay Rockefeller.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund granted millions of dollars to the Population Council of the City of New York during its formative years. Rockefeller family members founded this Population Council, according to The Rockefeller Archive Center. The organization currently advances globally as the world’s premier depopulation advocacy group. The US Federal Government and private institutions fund the Population Council at this time.
Doctor Oz Advises Kids To Get H1N1 Shot But Not His Own
Summary and Conclusion
“Biopreparedness” for the 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu is all about mind manipulation and vaccination for population reduction.
In the past week, the swine flu situation went from near ending to causing a “National Emergency.” People, aware of the dangers of H1N1 vaccinations, opted out and gained precedent-setting federal court prohibitions on mandatory vaccinations. CBS declared the numbers of H1N1 cases fraudulently overstated by the CDC, and additional lawsuits were filed exposing State and Federal officials for genocidal malfeasance.
Rather than admitting disgrace, government spin doctors integrated vaccine “shortage marketing” as a distraction for public consumption. New York State Health Commissioner, Richard F. Daines, who said only a week ago that health workers must be vaccinated for the seasonal flu and the H1N1 virus, or risk discipline, said that scarce vaccines would be given exclusively to pregnant women and children.
Ironically, US Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, pledged 10 percent of vaccines would be donated to other countries.
All of this preceded Barack Obama’s declaration of “National Emergency,” thus, exercising Executive power to implement The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act affecting most of the 50 States.
Obviously, none of this makes much sense unless you examine the fundamental and overriding intoxication and depopulation agendas, and what the media moguls know that few commoners learn: the H1N1 vaccines contain “live” viruses that are highly unstable. As laboratory “reverse engineered” genetically spliced germs, they are expected to recombine with more deadly viruses, possibly H5N1, by January, 2010. These new strains, circulating the globe, are projected to kill nearly 3 billion people. This Lex Lutheresque evil is obviously orchestrated by David Rockefeller’s family and friends that control vaccine manufacturing, “health care reform,” mass media persuasion, and global depopulation industries.
Like it or not, you are advised to prepare for the worst.
Artificial scarcity of premium motor spirit, better known as petrol hit Lagos, Abuja and neighbouring areas yesterday leading build ups of long queues at filling stations.
The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) says the cause is that some petroleum marketers are hoarding the product with a motive to profiteer from an unfounded anticipation of the deregulation of the nations petroleum downstream sector.
Billy Agha, the director of DPR warned today that petroleum marketers who were hoarding fuel would have themselves to blame if the continued to hoard the product.
Agha said some marketers and dealers were engaging in black marketpractices for the purpose of making undue and unofficial personal gain from petroleum product sales.
He said any marketer or distributor caught in the act would be severely dealt with.
Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has called on his countrymen to stop singing in the shower to help save water and electricity.
The left-wing leader said they should attempt to wash in less than three minutes and breaking into song distract them.
“Some people sing in the shower, in the shower half an hour. No kids, three minutes is more than enough. I’ve counted, three minutes, and I don’t stink,” he said during a televised Cabinet meeting.
Getting into his stride, he went on to label baths and jacuzzis anti-communist.
“If you are going to lie back, in the bath, with the soap and you turn on the what’s it called, the Jacuzzi… imagine that, what kind of communism is that? We’re not in times of Jacuzzi,” he said, to laughter from his ministers.
Venezuela has suffered several serious blackouts in the past year because of rapidly growing demand and underinvestment.
It has been aggravated by a drop in water levels in hydroelectric dams that provide most of its energy.
Mr Chavez said he would create a ministry to deal with the electricity shortages, which have affected the image of his socialist revolution.
Calling for water conservation, he said low rainfall caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon meant water levels were critically low in the El Guri reservoir, one of the world’s largest dams.
He mentioned using aeroplanes to try to force rain from clouds and said the government would soon publish a decree prohibiting imports of low-efficiency electrical appliances. He called on ministries and state-run companies to cut energy consumption by 20 per cent immediately.
A double push for Britain to grow more genetically modified (GM) crops is to be made today John Beddington, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, is to renew his call for GM crops to ensure global food security.
His support for the controversial technology coincides with a study from the Royal Society, Britain’s most prestigious scientific institution, out tomorrow, which will also endorse the need for Britain to conduct more GM crop trials.
Scientists are determined to change public attitudes to GM crops, which have been condemned by critics as “Frankenstein food”.
Ministers, scientists, farmers and food companies think that the time is right to soften public opinion and to try to win them round to the benefits of GM production.
A new 12-month public consultation exercise on GM food to be undertaken by the Food Standards Agency.
Ministers have asked the watchdog to find out if the public mood has changed towards GM produce.
The move is also in response to concerns by food manufacturers and supermarkets which fear that the growing use of GM technology in overseas food production will make it “impossible” shortly to maintain a non-GM food supply.
A similar exercise took place six years ago which found that most people would not choose to eat or buy GM foods.
The scene has changed dramatically since then with the burgeoning economies in China and India increasing demand for protein.
The impact of climate change with more extreme temperatures leading to increased risk of drought and flooding as well as competition for land use, water scarcity and fuel costs are also likely to cause instability in food production and supply worldwide.
Professor Beddington, addressing a global food summit organised by Cabi, a leading international scientific research body, in London, will highlight GM production as one of the ways the world can guarantee secure food supplies.
GM is not “the silver bullet” but should be used as part of range of solutions to meet the estimated 50 per cent increase in demand for food expected by 2030, he will say.
“A range of solutions will be needed if a world population set to pass 8 billion by 2030 is to be fed equitably and sustainably. Improved protection of crops from pests and diseases in the field and during storage will be critical to reducing crop losses and has a major contribution to make,” he will say.
The 100-page Royal Society report assesses the varous biological approaches that have been proposed to improve crop yield.
Sir David Baulcombe, of the University of Cambridge, who chaired the study, is to outline the steps that governments need to adopt to ensure that in coming decades farmers in the developed and the developing world are fully equipped to feed their growing communities.
Professor Baulcombe said: “If we are to take full advantage of the benefits which science can offer to food production, then we must act now, by identifying valuable science technologies, investing in research, and by laying the regulatory framework to bring these technologies to market.”
A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We have always said that GM might be part of the answer to issues of food security. We are not closed to the technology. But we need the scientific evidence from GM trials to show that growing GM crops will pose no harm to human health or the environment.”
At present there is only one British trial under way at Leeds University where scientists are monitoring a GM potato variety which is resistant to blight, a common pest which can decimate crops.
ROME (CNS) — African farmers should be able to use new biotechnology, including genetically modified organisms, to help lift their continent out of poverty, Vatican officials and agricultural experts said.
Focusing on agricultural development is the key to improving the lives of Africans and their economy, and all tools must be considered to further that goal, according to speakers at a symposium Sept. 24 in Rome on the topic “For a Green Revolution in Africa.”
The participants agreed that one of those tools could be genetically modified products, the use of which is widespread in the United States but controversial in Africa.
Archbishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, former secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said that underdevelopment and hunger in Africa are due in large part to “outdated and inadequate agricultural methods.”
Therefore, he said, new technologies “that can stimulate and sustain African farmers” must be made available, including “seeds that have been improved by techniques that intervene in their genetic makeup.”
Father Gonzalo Miranda, professor of bioethics at the Pontifical Regina Apostolorum University, which sponsored the symposium, said in support of new biotechnology that, “if the data shows that biotechnology can offer great advantages in the development of Africa, it is a moral obligation to permit these countries to do their own experimentation.”
The symposium was held just before the Synod of Bishops for Africa, which was set to begin at the Vatican Oct. 4. The question of genetically modified foods has been a controversial one in the pre-synod discussions.
The synod’s working paper, released by the Vatican in March, called for a commitment to development in Africa but warned against the belief that genetically modifed products were the answer to the continent’s hunger problem.
It said that using modified crops risks “ruining small landholders, abolishing traditional methods of seeding and making farmers dependent on the production companies” selling their seeds.
But speakers at the Rome symposium spoke in favor of the responsible use of new biotechnology methods and emphasized that genetically modified products made up only a part of those new techniques.
Eric Kueneman, deputy director of the Plant Production and Protection Division of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, said that “biotechnology is not an evil empire” but is an element of a group of tools that also includes traditional farming methods.
With regard to genetically modified foods, he said the FAO allows each country to decide and provides guidance to countries that want to use them.
“It’s not that they are good or bad; their use needs to be evaluated in (a) local context and on a case-by-case basis,” he said.
Sylvester Oikeh, a Nigerian who manages an improved corn project for the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, a nonprofit organization that assists farmers, said Europeans tend not to embrace genetically modified products because they have a surplus of food.
But that is not the case in Africa, he said.
“More than 200 million starving people urgently need appropriate technology for survival,” Oikeh said. “There is no choice.”
Farmers from South Africa and Burkina Faso were on hand to testify to the improvements in their farming and their lives when they introduced genetically modified crops on their land.
A controversial cooker that ‘grows’ meat and fish by heating animal cells in your kitchen claimed first prize in the Electrolux design competition tonight.
The invention, called Cocoon, could develop food with the make-up and nutrients of real meat.
Mr Hederstierna, 27, said: ‘This will create 100 per cent pure meat without the need for animals to be killed and with no risk of contamination. It will change everything.’
A food generator is a popular concept in science fiction programmes such as Star Trek.
Swedish industrial design student Rickard Hederstierna, 27, said it could tackle food shortages as the world’s population spirals.
And the glass cooker, which would heat pre-mixed food packets containing muscle cells, oxygen and nutrients, would put an end to messy and time-consuming preparation.
Competition panelist David Fisher, design director of consultants Seymourpowell, described the invention as ‘controversial’.
He said: ‘Dealing with controversial issues and managing them sensitively is very important. Real insight fed this idea. It deals with a problem (of food shortages) that won’t go away and we are going to have to deal with it in future.’
“Cocoon” is a sustainable response to the world’s growing population and its desire to consume meat and fish. Similar to heating popcorn in a microwave, Cocoon prepares genetically engineered and prepackaged meat and fish dishes by heating muscle cells identified by radio frequency identification (RFID) signals. The signals detect the specific dish and then suggest the required cooking time.
Do dead dinosaurs fuel our cars? The assumption that they do, along with other dead matter thought to have formed what are known as fossil fuels, has been an article of faith for centuries. Our geologists are taught fossil fuel theory in our schools; our energy companies search for fossil fuels by divining where the dinosaurs lay down and died. Sooner or later, we will run out of liquefied dinosaurs and be forced to turn to either nuclear or renewable fuels, virtually everyone believes.
Except in Russia and Ukraine.
What is to us a matter of scientific certainty is by no means accepted there. Many Russians and Ukrainians — no slouches in the hard sciences — have since the 1950s held that oil does not come exclusively, or even partly, from dinosaurs but is formed below the Earth’s 25-mile deep crust. This theory — first espoused in 1877 by Dmitri Mendeleev, who also developed the periodic table — was rejected by geologists of the day because he postulated that the Earth’s crust had deep faults, an idea then considered absurd. Mendeleev wouldn’t be vindicated by his countrymen until after the Second World War when the then-Soviet Union, shut out of the Middle East and with scant petroleum reserves of its own, embarked on a crash program to develop a petroleum industry that would allow it to fend off the military and economic challenges posed by the West.
Today, Russians laugh at our peak oil theories as they explore, and find, the bounty in the bowels of the Earth. Russia’s reserves have been climbing steadily — according to BP’s annual survey, they stood at 45 billion barrels in 2001, 69 billion barrels in 2004, and 80 billion barrels of late, making Russia an oil superpower that this year produced more oil than Saudi Arabia. Some oil auditing firms estimate Russia’s reserves at up to 200 billion barrels. Despite Russia’s success in exploration, most of those in the west who have known about the Russian-Ukrainian theories have dismissed them as beyond the Pale. This week, the Russian Pale can be found awfully close to home.
In a study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden and the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington joined colleagues at the Lomonosov Moscow State Academy of Fine Chemical Technology in publishing evidence that hydrocarbons can be produced 40 to 95 miles beneath the surface of the Earth. At these depths — in what’s known as Earth’s Upper Mantle — high temperatures and intense pressures combine to generate hydrocarbons. The hydrocarbons then migrate toward the surface of the Earth through fissures in the Earth’s crust, sometimes feeding existing pools of oil, sometimes creating entirely new ones. According to Sweden’s Royal Institute, “fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world.”
The Institute’s lead author, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology, is even more brash at the implications of his findings: “With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!” he delights. Kutcherov’s technique involves dividing the world into a fine-meshed grid that maps cracks (or migration channels) under the Earth’s crust, through which the hydrocarbons can bubble up to the surface. His advice: Drill where the cracks meet. Doing this, he predicts, will dramatically reduce the likelihood of dry wells. Kutcherov expects the success rate of drillers to more than triple, from 20% to 70%, saving billions in exploration costs while opening up vast new areas of the planet — most of which has never been deemed to have promise — to exploration.
The Nature study follows Kutcherov’s previous work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that created hydrocarbons out of water, calcium carbonate and iron — products in the Earth’s mantle. By superheating his ingredients in a pressure chamber at 30,000 times atmospheric pressure, simulating the conditions in the Earth’s mantle, Kutcherov’s alchemy converted 1.5% of his concoction into hydrocarbons — gases such as methane as well as components of heavier oils. The implication of this research, which suggests that hydrocarbons are continuously generated through natural processes? Petroleum is a sustainable resource that will last as long as Planet Earth.
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.
ENVIRONMENTALLY conscious consumers already fret about how to cut their carbon emissions. Now Whitehall officials plan to urge the public to reduce the amount of water they use because of worries about the West sucking up supplies from some of the world’s driest countries.
The government has commissioned research to audit everyday items from a morning cup of coffee to a bag of carrots according to the volume of water used in their production.
Eventually products could be labelled with this number.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which has set up a water footprint steering group, wants to broaden public awareness of climate change to include water supplies.
Defra believes consumption could be cut if shoppers were aware of how much is used to produce common items. A takeaway latte, according to figures already gathered by officials, requires 200 litres (44 gallons) to grow the coffee beans, transport them and serve the coffee in the cup. It takes another 2.5 litres to make the plastic lid for a takeaway latte.
A cotton T-shirt with a slogan on the front uses an estimated 4,000 litres.
The new research will assess items both for how much water they use and for the impact on the country where they are produced. This could mean, for example, that a product imported from a dry country would be rated worse than one from a place where water was plentiful.
In Morocco, for example, irrigation for exported products has lowered the water table so much it could reduce future supplies.
Beans grown in Kenya, where supplies are short, take up water that could otherwise have been used for local food production.
An internal Defra report says world water security is a big concern for the future and could one day affect Britain’s food supplies.
“There is already sufficient evidence for water-scarce regions (Spain, North Africa, South Africa, Australia) to suggest current production levels for export of many commodities are unsustainable,” says the report.
Rob Lillywhite, an environmental scientist at Warwick University who has been commissioned by the government to conduct the two-year study, said: “Labelling products would be a useful way of informing consumers of the water used in production. Defra are taking this issue very seriously.”
The government is also looking at water security in Britain. Southeast England is so densely populated that it has less water per person than Morocco, Sudan or Syria.
Al Gore. Photograph by Graeme Robertson
