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Then again, though I guess solar-powered cars will need VINs, too...

Anyone want to guess one of the CIA's main sources of income? This site has ongoing related coverage, a documentary on the subject, and of course Google will tell you more, since the one attempt to cover this in the mainstream media resulted in the journalist being slandered and the paper denouncing its own article (more on that).

Yes, that was a mistake. It's also a mistake to liken an equation attempting to predict human behavior with an equation attempting to predict the physical amount of a substance that is left, namely oil. Human beings can change themselves, oil reserves cannot.

As to www.peakoil.net being a scare-monger site, it's hard to imagine what they're trying to scare us into, unless it's thinking ahead. Or perhaps you might be afraid that Colin Camplbell, the founder of peakoil.net is a liberal. I don't know what his exact politics are, but check out his background, taken from this article:

Colin Campbell is both an academic and a businessman. Educated at Oxford and holding a Masters degree he has served as a geologist for Oxford University, Texaco, British Petroleum and Amoco (prior to the BP Amoco merger). He has served in executive positions with Shenandoah Oil, Amoco, Fina and was Chairman of the Nordic American Oil Company. He has served as a consultant on oil for the Bulgarian government as well as for Statoil, Mobil, Amerada, Total, Shell, Esso and for the firm Petroconsultants in Geneva. He is the Convener and Editor of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and a Trustee of the Oil Depletion Analysis Center in London.

Furthermore, there are a number of prominent scientists that believe cold fusion is viable, so don't dismiss their claims as crackpot. Any hard evidence of a government coverup, if there is one, is securely locked away for years to come. All people can work on for now is anecdotal evidence. This is not a matter of breaking the laws of physics; it is simply discovering new ones.

A victim's widow's website, seeking 9-11 answers

A prior knowledge database and archive

David Schippers, impeachment prosecutor and ex mafia buster/ prosecutor, tries to get Ashcroft's attention to warn of pending imminent attack, gets ignored

Priot knowledge of impending attacks transmitted to US government by other governments, including by Putin: Financial ireregularities in airline stocks up to that day: other indications of government priot knowledge

LetsRoll911 extensive 911 archive and links section, along with logs showing who is interested in the site, worth a look

Fed agents ordered to NOT investigate terrorist ties once they get close to saudi arabi and bush family

More:FBI agent whistleblower tells he was blocked by "orders" from following terrorist money trail

Infowars.com 9-11 archive, the grand daddy of them all

There's lots more, LOTS more,any search engine out there is slap fulla links to news articles and views and dataon this subject. The above is just a small sample of the real info out there and the interest. I can guarantee you neither I, nor all these other people are going to "shut up" over this reichstagg-fire coup d'etat that took place.

But,thanks for the opportunity to reply! And it doesn't bother me a whit to be called names, or be disagreed with! After you have been beat, gassed, threatened with death, been lied about in court, had evidence planted, and various things like that...plus getting to know quite a few insiders in the system who are willing to talk off the record and clue you in to some *quite interesting things*, people who are honest people and true patriots... well ..anything someone on the net can say to you is sorta silly in the way of "hurt", as in "neener neener". It just won't work, but thanks for playing! Everyday, people all over the net are reading similar posts, and going to look for data for themselves. That's how it should be, take a gander at the evidence, see what ya think, it's the american way and stuff. And someone is going to read this, maybe not reply, but go look for themselves, and get hip. It's a good thing.

Our planet now supports 6.3 billion people. To feed them, we industrially generate as much nitrogen (in the form of chemical fertilizers produced from natural gas) as the biosphere produces naturally. Essentially, we use our unrenewable fossil fuel "capital" to make the planet produce approximately twice as much food as it could using the renewable "income" of solar radiation and natural nutrient cycles.

According to a study by David Pimentel and Mario Giampietro found that 10 kcal of exosomatic (non-muscle-power) energy are required to produce 1 kcal of food delivered to the consumer in the U.S. food system. This includes packaging and all delivery expenses, but excludes household cooking). We spend 10 times the fossil-fuel energy that we get back in food energy.

What happens when that fossil fuel "capital" is used up? Suddenly we can't support 6 billion people. Estimates of population size supportable under normal solar input range between 2 and 3 billion.

Further, an increasing number of people believe that we are much further down the slope of oil depletion than is generally acknowledged by goverments and oil companies. Many believe that we have already reached peak supply, while demand continues to soar. For example, it has been over 20 years since more oil was discovered in a year than was consumed that year. In that environment, energy intensive practices (including energy driven food production) will become economically unfeasible. I expect to see the effects of this becoming significant in the next 10 years.

So if one were to check up on these assertions (as I have tried to do) and conclude them credible (as I have), there is a frightening conclusion to be drawn. As the oil runs out over the coming decades, somehow at least 50% of the human population will need to be eliminated.

How this happens is up to us. We can go for a "last man standing" strategy (as I think the Bush Admin necons are trying today) where force is used to ensure that we maintain our industrial power and luxury lifestyle up to the very end, by condemning weaker nations to war and famine. Or we could try to ratchet things down more methodically and fairly and possibly achive a soft landing worldwide. This would mean changes to every aspect of human affairs, to seek solutions that allow us to continue human society using a fraction of the energy we use today, and with every effort made toward humanely lowering birthrates below replacement levels.

I frankly think that the latter option is the least likely of all, given the way things work in our world.

Still, it changes the entire framework of the argument when these assertions are considered--it is not so much about whether one particular option is more economically advantageous in today's market than it is a question of what can we do to preserve any kind of desirable human society as our current system becomes impossible to sustain over the next 10-40 years.

See the article Eating Fossil Fuels for a detailed treatment of this topic, or the book The Party's Over by Richard Heinberg for a more comprehensive analysis.

I think he's that evil.

I don't know how reliable these fromthewilderness.com people are, but this transcription seriously looks legit. Simmons says we're peaking now, here.

It's a very interesting read, and it's like a year old or something.

Every year it drains it aquifier and every year it gets less and less. It isn't refilling. The chance Inida had to avoid it it lost in the 90's.

Have you ever looked at a map of the US aquifer system? More details here. I'd be most worried about the Ogallala Aquifer that serves Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. That's draining quickly. Another generation or two and its Ogallala's remaining water resources will not be economically viable to extract. Bye bye US grain production. Of course, the reduction in Canadian natural gas exports will have shut down the US fertiliser production long before then...

• Any federal law enforcement agency may enter your home or business when you are not there, collect evidence, not tell you about it, and then use that evidence to convict you of a crime; (This nullifies the 4th Amendment to the Constitution). And, says the ACLU, it doesn't even have to be a terrorism investigation, just a criminal investigation. [Section 213 - The Sneak and Peek provision].
• Any federal law enforcement agency may, if they suspect that you are committing a crime, monitor all of you internet traffic and read your emails. They may also intercept all of your cell phone calls as well. No warrant is required. (This violates the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution) [Section 202 and 216] [See FTW on Carnivore, Vol. IV, No.2 - April 30, 2001].
• The FBI or any other federal law enforcement agency may come to your business and seize any of your business records - if they claim it is connected with a terrorist investigation - and they can arrest you if you tell anyone that they were there. (this violates the First and the Fourth Amendments to the Constitution) [Title II, Section 501
• The CIA can now operate inside the U.S. and spy on American citizens. And, as directed by AG Ashcroft on November 13, it is also permitted to share its intelligence files with local law enforcement agencies (and vice versa). The CIA has spied on Americans for decades, but the fruits of that spying have never been admissible in court. Now law enforcement will have the ability rewrite the intelligence as a probable cause statement, conduct an investigation and introduce it as evidence. This, from material that was collected outside the rules of search and seizure. (There goes the Exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment). [Titles 2 & 9].
• The foundation for an international secret political police agency is laid by allowing the CIA to receive wiretap information from any local agency and then share it with the intelligence services of any foreign country. [Section 203]

Weird stuff . . .

-In 1980 UCS predicted that the earth would soon run out of fossil fuels. "It is now abundantly clear," the group wrote, "that the world has entered a period of chronic energy shortages." Oops! Known reserves of oil, coal and natural gas have never been higher, and show every sign of increasing.

Oil reserves show every sign of increasing?

You might want to look
here: http://www.hubbertpeak.com/
here: http://www.peakoil.org/
or here: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/061203_s immons.html

Sorry for the flame, but why the #$% do you guys keep putting stories like this on slashdot's front page? This ethanol-->hydrogen thesis is for crack smokers. As pointed out in posts above, the second law of thermodynamics implies that the production of ethanol will kill any energy plus in the equation. For god's sake, all these discussions make me think I'm watching the matrix again with the human battery concept.

Here's from FTW:

One conclusion generally accepted by almost every attendee was that hydrogen, contrary to popularly accepted comfort promotions by writers like Jeremy Rifkin, was not a solution either in the near or long term because of intensive costs of production, inherent energy inefficiencies, lack of infrastructure and impracticalities. Speaking for Daimler Chrysler, which paid lip service to Peak Oil yet acknowledged that it had done extensive research on hydrogen vehicles, Dr. Jorg Wind told the conference that his company did not see hydrogen as a viable alternative to petroleum-based internal combustion engines.

"We use fossil fuels to make hydrogen. That does not result in a significant CO2 reduction. We predict that by 2020 only 5% of fuel use will be hydrogen and that infrastructure and the political framework is the most important factor. In order of relevance and likelihood from the standpoint of the auto industry Wind stated that we would see improved conventional vehicles, starter hybrid vehicles, electric hybrid vehicles and, finally, fuel cell vehicles as solutions, but he had little optimism that fuel cells would ever amount to a significant market share. In a telling left-handed acknowledgement of Peak Oil, Wind noted that one third of all diesel fuels currently used in Germany were biodiesel relying on recycled waste and or plant feedstock. He was particularly critical of ethanol stating that it was not energy efficient.

French presenters confirmed that ethanol was only viable in France due to a three hundred per cent government subsidy to farmers. Otherwise it was a net energy waster.

fromthewilderness.com has three articles about the death of David Kelly. Interesting reading and more detail than the mainstream news corporations provide.

fromthewilderness.com has three articles about the death of David Kelly. Interesting reading and more detail than the mainstream news corporations provide.

Mike Ruppert/FTW

"The Party's Over

"The PARTY'S OVER Oil, War and the fate of Industrial Societies By Richard Heinberg When Mike Bowlin, Chairman of ARCO, said in 1999 that "We've embarked on the beginning of the last days of the age of oil," he was voicing a truth that many others in the petroleum industry knew but dared not utter. Over the past few years, evidence has mounted that global oil production is nearing its historic peak. Oil has been the cheapest and most convenient energy resource ever discovered by humans. During the past two centuries, people in industrial nations accustomed themselves to a regime in which more fossil-fuel energy was available each year, and the global population grew quickly to take advantage of this energy windfall. Industrial nations also came to rely on an economic system built on the assumption that growth is normal and necessary, and that it can go on forever. When oil production peaks, those assumptions will come crashing down. As we move from a historic interval of energy growth to one of energy decline, we are entering uncharted territory. It takes some effort to adjust one's mental frame of reference to this new reality. Richard Heinberg has distilled complex facts, histories, and events into a readable overview of the energy systems that keep today's mass society running. The result is jarring. The Party's Over is the book we need to reorient ourselves for a realistic future. - Chellis Glendinning, Ph.D., author of Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy"

Mike Ruppert/FTW

"The Party's Over

"The PARTY'S OVER Oil, War and the fate of Industrial Societies By Richard Heinberg When Mike Bowlin, Chairman of ARCO, said in 1999 that "We've embarked on the beginning of the last days of the age of oil," he was voicing a truth that many others in the petroleum industry knew but dared not utter. Over the past few years, evidence has mounted that global oil production is nearing its historic peak. Oil has been the cheapest and most convenient energy resource ever discovered by humans. During the past two centuries, people in industrial nations accustomed themselves to a regime in which more fossil-fuel energy was available each year, and the global population grew quickly to take advantage of this energy windfall. Industrial nations also came to rely on an economic system built on the assumption that growth is normal and necessary, and that it can go on forever. When oil production peaks, those assumptions will come crashing down. As we move from a historic interval of energy growth to one of energy decline, we are entering uncharted territory. It takes some effort to adjust one's mental frame of reference to this new reality. Richard Heinberg has distilled complex facts, histories, and events into a readable overview of the energy systems that keep today's mass society running. The result is jarring. The Party's Over is the book we need to reorient ourselves for a realistic future. - Chellis Glendinning, Ph.D., author of Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy"

This sounds like typical Alex Jones kook material. The best place to keep up on government activities is to watch CNN and FOX news and from the government themselves. Don't read the seditious trash you see on sites like From the Wilderness or Prisonplanet.com. It's all false and none of it is what people should be reading. There is no need to worry about the government since they are honest and caring people. They're making sure that the terrorists are caught, gun owners are burned to death, tax protestors are brutally beaten and jailed, grandmothers are stripped searched at airports, marijuana smokers are imprisoned, etc. It's all good stuff they do to keep America free, so don't be subversive.

I'm sure the kooks out there like Alex Jones and Michael Ruppert will be all over this. Spreading their filth and slander against our government, the Patriot act, gun control, and much needed social programs. They're extremists and LIARS.

You're a fucking KOOK if you're against this project and letting the government have control of it! GROW UP!!!

The DMCA is a good law that needs to stay on the books and be enforced. I know that may not sit well with some folks on this site, but so be it. Those who disagree with the DMCA probably listen to kooks like Michael Ruppert and Alex Jones. Time to grow up and realize that the DMCA, PATRIOT Act, gun control and gun bans, the War on Drugs, asset forfeiture laws, and social programs are good and anyone against them is an extremist.

As usual, the EFF is wrong. The last place this trusted computing mechanism should be placed is in the hands of the computer owner or user. It should be kept in full control by the Department of Homeland Security. The reason I say this, and is is indeed a good reason, is that the department needs to check up on people to see if they are terrorists, to make sure they are paying their taxes appropriately, to make sure they aren't into drugs, to make sure they aren't seditious (see terrorism), and to make sure they don't have drawings of politically inappropriate guns on their computers. It's really for the good of the society that they have this power. I know it's been said before, but I think it needs to be repeated: If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear. In today's society this is certainly true. Drug law violators, tax protesters, gun owners, and other social deviants need to be reigned in and we must give our government the power to do so. Now I know most people here (I hope) don't listen to kooks like Michael Ruppert, Alex Jones, or that sickening V Dare group. Good and patriotic Americans stand behind social programs, are for higher taxes and more deficit spending, more aid to Israel, they're in support of renewing the assault weapons ban and banning all guns, they support outsourcing jobs to foreign countries, they support the influx of undocumented immigrants, and they support and embrace the New World Order.

Folks, quit listening to kooks and accept what your government says needs to be done. It's for your freedom and well being after all.

They need to charge high taxes to pay for the social programs like welfare, to support Israel, and to confiscate your guns. You understand this I'm sure. It's for your own good. If you disagree with the taxes then you're a kook like Alex Jones or Michael Ruppert who spew so much filth that they should be put in prison for it.

The government is here to help you folks. Time to grow up and realize this.

We know powersats can be built (solar cells work well in vacuum, we know how to build microwave energy transfer systems, the rest is detail), which is something we do *NOT* know about hydrogen fusion power plants.

Alternative and renewable energy sources and conservation at best stretch out the time we've got to find a better solution than fossil fuels.

I agree all of your benefits of using natural gas but this resource is currently suffering from an unbalanced supply and demand also and it about to turn into a huge crisis if something is not done in the near future. Some articles I've read already claim it is impossible to ward of sharp price increases because it is too late to make up for the lack or exploration in recent years. Between gas and electric prices getting out of control and no nuclear expansion, it looks like geothermal or solar might finally make some inroads.

Well, they have to maintain the CIA's exclusive operation

False.

Sept. 11, 2001 - The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the federal agency that runs many of the nation's spy satellites, schedules an exercise involving a plane crashing into one of the agency's buildings. "On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001," according to a website advertising a homeland security conference in Chicago run by the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute, CIA official John Fulton and his team "were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way." Fulton is the head of the NRO's strategic gaming division.

""We couldn't possibly have known this."
"We didn't know that airlines are subject to this kind of attack."

It's almost one year after the attack on America and we know that these kinds of statements had been a lie.

The CIA and FBI were warned by at least eight secret services and had thirty to forty indices about a possible attack with planes. The FAA had sent out five warnings to the airports about possible hijacks or similar incidents.

On August 6, 2001 the CIA delivered a memo to George Bush about a terrorist attack. On August 23 the FBI released an "urgent cable".

But the most damning evidence that something was known was the enactment of at least eight to ten bio- or regular terrorist exercises during 2000 and 2001.

The last big one took place in June 2001 and another CIA exercise was confirmed for the day of September 11th!

It is beyond dispute now that Bush lied when he said the government had no idea this could happen. They had plenty of idea. This kind of idea had been speculated about for years.

There aren't any new oil fields left to bring on line, and demand is still increasing.

If there wasn't an oil supply problem, why would the US go to war to take over a nation that supplies oil?

Unless you believe that the US really did go to war to stop Saddam from deploying what now appear to be imaginary weapons of mass destruction, or to save the citizens of Iraq from Saddam's (unfortunately not imaginary) oppression. If you do, go back to your Trekkie fantasies, you have no business in an adult public policy discussion.

IT's OK for US financial institutions to loot hundreds of billions out of Russia's economy (7th paragraph down), but it's not OK for individuals who have been hard hit by the effects of this sort of monstrous greed and evil to try and get some back for themselves?

I check out slashdot, anandtech and other tech and science links. Also news.google.com and csmonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor). These to get an idea of the mainstream. I can't stand CNN and such so I skip those. Then I move on to my far left political links:

From the Wilderness http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
What Really Happened http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
Centre for Research on Globalization http://www.globalresearch.ca/
Center for Cooperative Research http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/home.htm
Independent Media Center http://www.indymedia.org
Emperor's New Clothes http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm
9-11 the people's investigation http://www.911pi.com/
Guerrilla News Network http://www.guerrillanews.com
International A.N.S.W.E.R. http://www.internationalanswer.org/
UK: The Observer (John Pilger) http://www.observer.co.uk/
UK: Independent (Robert Fisk) http://argument.independent.co.uk/

As a side note, I rarely use browser bookmarks; I keep my own index.html that I update daily, putting in references to articles I like and updating the top portion, of which the above are a subset. Then I can keep a copy of this on the internet in case I ever need it from a remote location.

Mike Ruppert of From the Wilderness likes to say that these guys are playing in a rigged game. And when they play in a rigged game they get arrogant and careless because they aren't used to playing on a level playing field. We can beat these guys.

Here's some more info on Patriot II: Center for Public Integrity -- pdfs available there.

Here's a Mike Ruppert Article "Five to Ten Times Worse Than the Patriot Act"

Mike Ruppert of From the Wilderness likes to say that these guys are playing in a rigged game. And when they play in a rigged game they get arrogant and careless because they aren't used to playing on a level playing field. We can beat these guys.

Here's some more info on Patriot II: Center for Public Integrity -- pdfs available there.

Here's a Mike Ruppert Article "Five to Ten Times Worse Than the Patriot Act"

that being complicit in the trafficking of TONS of cocaine which was smuggled into the US and sold to American citizens in order to fund a dirty little covert war should've spelled permanent loss of freedom for Mr Poindexter and co. Instead he gets to play havoc with our freedoms. That's real justice for you.

Very interesting and informative information here: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/

In the wake of the September 11th attacks Mike was among the first to be publicly critical of a number of transparent flaws in the official story presented by the US government. In more than twenty stories since 9-11 he has followed his tested strategy of using only government documents, official statements or verifiable press reports as the basis for his work. As a result he has been openly received by several members of Congress and maintains open lines of communication with congressional and committee staffs.

About Mike Ruppert

It's all pretty X-files, and while quite a few "microbiologists" (defined loosely, as some of the people have not really been true microbiologists) have died under mysterious circumstances lately I can't shake the feeling that the story is being "shaped" into this whole conspiracy dogma format.

Anyway, here's a link to one of the nutball sites (this is Mike Vreeland's "The Government Made 9-11 Happen" site) which has some writeups on it.

Proceed with caution. You're reading heavy spin here...

Hmmm... these guys look like they were setup in order to cover someone else's ass (someone more powerful). If the FBI is engaged in insider trading---and don't believe it was just two "lone nuts", it's never the lone nuts---it's not much of a leap to believe that they were aware of and possibly involved in the well-documented insider trading that took place just before Septemeber 11. This, just on the heels of an official government admission of foreknowledge too! (Although, they're spinning it real hard so that they're incompetent, not complicit)

His name is Mike Ruppert, and his site is here.

well, it's probably fFlamebait because you tend to spend a lot of time bashing clinton's policies. whether he cut spending or not isnt the point. i mean, if he so drastically slashed fFunding, why were there no such attacks during his reign? you see, there are many fFactors at hand. politics is only one of them. so, lambasting a candidate you dont like is indeed fFlamebait.

but i'll talk now on what i really want to comment on: you say if the CIA had proper fFunding, sep 11 wouldnt have happened. on the contrary, there is a lot of evidence which says they DID know a great deal about it, as well as numerous other criminal activities. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ reports regularly on the shifty goings on of the central intelligence agency. (it's very leftist, but a good read)

the point is, the CIA is not automaticaly your fFriend, and it's abjectly daft to think otherwise.