Dear Pete

Yes, we will have to agree to disagree about 9-11. I will never know as much as you about the inner workings of the secret team or the defence forces. But I can tell you from my lifetime experience that those towers could never have "dissolved" in the way they did without further assistance. It's just not physically possible.

Maybe you could slough off a big chunk, or even topple off the top few floors down into the street. But the structure below was designed to support all the weight of the structure above - no matter what - as it faithfully did until that surreal day.

That's basic structural engineering, the laws of which were magically violated three times in one day - never before nor since. What are the odds?

*

I remembered something about the unlikely "escape" of Bin Laden as reported by Seymour Hersch in the New Yorker, and found a snippet here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_BS83BmTIQ

This is a chunk from a documentary called "9-11 Press For Truth" in which the relatives of those killed that day are the principle narrators. It's worth watching because they never once stoop to the use of innuendo or any sort of theorising. It's out there as a download or as a torrent. Recommended vewing for level headed inquisitive truth-seekers.

That's my word count just about used up for tonight. Before I go, I thought you might like this rant from Wesley Clark back in 2006:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8aOiMmekGk

OK - time for me to catch up on my beauty sleep - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Goodnight Pete and All....

Will, you seem to have ommitted a few facts and succumbed to a few misperceptions of your own:

1. Peak oil is not about "running out of oil", rather it is the point at which oil production reaches its maximum rate then begins to decline. That's why it's called "peak oil" not "running out oil."

2. Yes, world reserves are estimated at almost 1.2 trillion barrels, but we have already used more than 1 trillion barrels. On this basis alone we are at about the half-way point upon which Hubbert based his thesis.

3. World oil discoveries peaked in the 1960s and have been trending downwards ever since. The rate of production has exceeded the rate of discovery since the 1980s. The current discovery rate is approximately one quarter of the production rate, i.e. we are burning oil at about four times the rate that we are discovering new reserves.

4. Production in at least 60 of the world’s 100 oil producing countries has already peaked, including the United States (1970), the United Kingdom (1999) and Australia (2000). Production in many of the world’s ‘super-giant’ oilfields has already peaked, including Prudhoe Bay (Alaska), the North Sea (UK/Norway), Cantarell (Mexico) and Burghan (Kuwait).

5. Official data from agencies such as the IEA and the US Department of Energy indicates that world oil production has been essentially flat since mid-2005. The combination of flat production with increasing demand is the underlying cause of rising prices.

6. 'Big oil' ain't so big any more. Their reserves account for only about 10-15% of world reserves.

7. There are almost 100 countries (generally 'third-world' countries) now reporting continuing energy shortages. Mostly this is in the form of electricity supplies, but in a growing number of cases there are liquid fuels shortages, because they have literally been priced out of the market.

You need to debunk these facts, and more, in order to debunk peak oil. Good luck.

Thank you Stuart for you voice of reason.

It's very unfortunate that peak oil is seen by most to be about "running out" of oil. That is not the case at all. As you stated, there's approximately half of the worlds original quota of oil still underneath her surface, however, she hides it well and it's becoming increasingly difficult to find and even harder to extract. The "low hanging fruit" has already been taken.

Those who show some concern for the oil situation are often easily placated by stories told of "massive oil fields" found in Brazil or some other place. What they don't understand is the difficulty of extracting that oil and oil that is increasingly of lower grades . Only a fraction of the oil in such fields may be recoverable anyway. Do these people even consider that it costs approx. $650,000 a day to hire an oil rig? Or the fact that it costs literally billions of dollars to develop an oil Field? Commodity prices are through the roof and it's becoming increasingly difficult to find the funding to develop these fields.

Too much of the peak oil equation has been weighed towards "running out" of oil. This is not the case. Oil will never "run out." What the peak oil educators need to do urgently is spread the word that PO is not about running out of oil, but rather that extraction rates, for various reasons, cannot possibly keep up to the demands of a world in which the population continues to spiral out of control.

"Peak Oil",if the present level of dependence continues,will involve escalating competition. Which is why the undeclared war over Central Asian oil and gas is potentially catastrophic. Leslie

Chris

Thanks for the youtube strings - especially the first one which was compelling.

About 9/11 - while I don't think Bush and Co actually did the deed they were criminally negligent in diregarding clear CIA presentations that al Qaeda was a rising danger and was planning increasingly specific hits in North America.

Bush's effort to fly out bin Laden family members in their private jets when all other airliners were grounded in the US in the days after 9/11 indicated where his priorities lay - bowing to Saudi pressure.

Thank Christ we'll be rid of this Bush - in early 2009. But then there are other Bushes in the litter (eg Jeb) and Cheney/Rumsfeld can still play McCain like a puppet if he gets in.

Pete

Pete

You might find this research tool handy. It started out as the 9-11 Timeline, but has expanded to include life, the universe and everything - all cross referenced and annotated. I'll drop you into the beginnings of CIA and Afghanistan here:

http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=911timeline

- you could spend months in this website and come out threadbare, starving and bedraggled. You have been warned. But it's just the thing when your memory gets a bit intermittent - like mine.

Cheers....