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When I was in the 3rd grade, I remember in a geography text book that all oil reserves would be depleted by 1971.

There's not much I can do about energy shortages - my car is very good on gas and I'm on a motorcycle most of the time, so not a conspicuous user (i.e. driving a 19-foot SUV solo to pick up a breakfast burrito).

I'm still on the fence with regard to climactic change. I read recently that the 1 degree celsius warming over the last ten years has essentially been wiped out by this year's cooling.

Another thing that has me skeptical on the subject is the media. There was a convention in Chicago recently on climactic change - over 400 scientists were on record for stating the man-made (or woman-made) impact on global warmning was negligible if at all. This position does not sell newspapers or stories on TV news magazines. It's safe to assume that scientists on both sides are smarter than myself.

Methane, per unit, is 20 times more impactful to climate change than CO2. Yet I do not see anyone trying to stop the cows from farting or the tundra from decomposing.

Again, I'm on the fence. True, rounding up all the scientists that agree is a consensus - but consensus is not science, it's politics. I'm just sayin'...

I agree with you completely! I am not speaking as an enviromentalist but as a person who likes to drive to get where she is going, and some one who likes to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
We need to find other ways of getting energy! to be so dependant on one thing, only gives power to the people who control it, we are at there mercy or greed how ever you want to look at it. I say have more options and if oil had to compete we would all be better off.

I totally agree there

So who's big enough to compete with oil???

The truth is no-one in particular, oil has too much of a monopoly at the moment! But on an individual level people can start using their own initiative and find ways to cut their dependance on oil and slowly start turning the screws on the market...

I agree about the 19 ft SUV. If nothing else, it's a ineffienct method of picking up that burrito in light of a finite resource. Usually it's a 110 lb female in that Ford Expedition I've noticed.

Boortz did a 30 minute segment a few months back on who's pushing "climate change". One of the biggies is NBC, in part, because GE owns them. GE is big into manufacturing "eco-friendly" energy; windmills, etc. It sounds like a conspiracy, but I think there could be a thread of truth in it.

Regardless, the world is only so big and we do need to utilize energy wisely.

Now, I'm off to get my burrito. I'll have to bundle up as it's cold outside and my bicycle doesn't have a heater.

I agree! every little thing we do may not cure the situation but it helps it. It will take us one step closer to being free from the control of the oil tycoons!

Careful, if you've got any type of retirement plan, you may be benefiting from those oil companies.
I think I'm probably a small tycoon. My retirement plan has some oil stocks, I'm sure. 41% of Americans are stockholders.

(just food for thought)

Well ..... when the earth is empty of all the oil - just imagine the huge inside craters ...... then if these two guys in Hawaais fears come to pass .... no-one will have any more worries ...... WE GONNA BE SWALLOWED BY A HUGE BLACK HOLE .....!


Fears of an Earth-gobbling black hole have prompted two men to take legal action against the Geneva-based European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern).
Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho say the organisation's new particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), threatens the existence of the planet.

They have filed a lawsuit literally half a world away – in Hawaii.

Wagner and Sancho believe that the mammoth 27-kilometre particle accelerator could create a microscopic black hole capable of swallowing up Earth or possibly turn it into a lump of ultra-dense matter called a "strangelet".

Apart from Cern, court documents also name three US organisations – the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and Fermilab, a similar laboratory and supplier to the LHC.

The suit seeks to delay the opening of the particle accelerator pending further environmental and safety reports. They also say that Cern has not complied with a United States law, the National Environmental Policy Act.

This claim is being made despite the US government not being a partner in the 20-nation intergovernmental research institution.

No black hole
Cern has dismissed the argument that the LHC – set to open in late June or early July – could lead to the end of the world.

"There is no risk that the LHC will destroy the universe," James Gillies, the laboratory's head of communications, told swissinfo.

"Some physicists suggest that microscopic black holes could be produced in the collisions at the LHC," the organisation says in a statement on its website.

But it added that the collider, which was built at a cost of $8 billion (SFr7.95 billion) and is nestled some 100 metres under the ground, will produce what is "equivalent to the energies of mosquitoes".

It also stated that it has carried out different studies on the matter, all of which indicate that the LHC will be safe.

"There is nothing new to suggest that the LHC is unsafe," Gillies, the laboratory's head of communications, said of the lawsuit, filed 12 time zones away. He added that the organisation has published information for concerned citizens in non-technical language.

"They've got a lot of propaganda saying it's safe," Wagner told the New York Times. "But basically it's propaganda."

He called the latest safety review "fundamentally flawed".

Wagner, a US citizen and a botanist, is also a lawyer and a one-time nuclear safety officer. Sancho, a Spanish citizen, is a self-described "author and researcher on time theory", according to the Times.

Double-checking
To be on the safe side, Cern had commissioned an additional internal study, this one anonymous, which was concluded in January.

"The possibility that a black hole eats up the Earth is too serious a threat to leave it as a matter of argument among crackpots," physicist Michelangelo Mangano, a member of the Safety Assessment Group, said.

The LHC is set to begin smashing its first protons together later in 2008. Travelling at close to the speed of light, scientists say it will create conditions resembling those at the beginnings of the universe.

Cern finds the link between its work and a US court tenuous.

"It's hard to see how a district court in Hawaii has jurisdiction over an intergovernmental organisation in Europe," Gillies pointed out.

At least one defendant – the US government – has said that it will be in court.

It will dispatch lawyers from the Department of Justice around the middle of June for an initial conference.

But barring a dramatic reversal of fortune, Wagner will not have the opportunity to face down Cern – ostensibly the suit's main target – in court.

Now is this guy related to "our" Gilly?

Oh Lordy lordy........ is this what he is busy studying and doing his homework over?!

Well, its a HUGE construction there, the underground "ring" runs under part of France, and part of Switzerland - and this tunnel is real humungous, and full of intricate electronic stuff. I read the refrigeration unit in there is the largest fridge in the world, and has the coldness of deep outer space!

... It`s no secret .... details are in one of the latest copies of National Geographic magazine.

I personally can't afford a retirement plan I am paying out $900 plus for my heating bill each month compiled to my rent elctric and other cost of living expences there is nothing left! I guess I will be working the rest of my life. And I certainlly would like to have a cheaper way of getting there. then maybe I could retire.

Yeah I've read about this before - but paid little attention to it because anyone with a little understanding of Black Holes would realise that you could never get enough mass into a particle accelerator to make one big enough to last long enough to be of any significant danger. Small black holes would literally "evaporate" before they had enough time to consume enough matter to grow...

Anyway - why don't these geniuses who are so clever that they know how to make these "small Black Holes" come up with an alternative to Oil as the World's primary energy source???

Thats why I have this philosophy of Dont Worry. That is why we elect these Genius guys to run the world .... they got everything under control ... their control ..... Just relax, before you know it yourè dead anyway.........

Well that's why I'm gonna get back to the point of this thread - why are we so worried about climate change? Why are the goverments of the world trying to get us to save energy so badly? Surely if I've earned my money I can spend it as I please? If I want to spend every cent I've earned on heating my outdoor swimming pool to a delightfull temperature in the middle of winter why can't I???

Surely these geniuses will make sure the world stays ok no matter what I do...

In the Emirates they are convinced that the climates are changing and that one day the desert will be green again - they just hurrying along the process, believing that more greenery will enhance and boost the earth energy enough..... something along the lines of having a garden inside a glass bubble where it causes its own climate?

Here in CH, last year certain fruit trees pushed out their buds too soon, with the erratic weather, and got frozen and destroyed in turn. If this happens enough times, with various crops, we (generalising, meaning world wide) gonna have a food shortage problem. Money cant buy food that is not available.

Energy will most probably just get SO expensive - that those who cant afford it anymore will surely just die off - if they living in conditions that require heating ...... much to the earths relief(?) ....

I dont know who is aware of the energy crisis in South Africa? ... they having rolling black-outs most days lasting 4 to 6hrs - and now their electrcity has been increased by 60%. If you dont have the money, you dont get electricity.

Yeah I know all about the problem with Eskom in South Africa - been reading the news regularly. Problem there is corruption! Eskom warned the goverment 10 years ago that they would need to invest electricity generating capacity to meet economic growth forcasts, but the goverment concluded there was enough capacity at the time and brushed it to one side...

Anyway South Africans have always enjoyed the cheapest electricity in the world - even with a 60% increase it will still be the cheapest in the world! Electricity is so cheap there that no-one bothers conserving it - hot water cylinders are on 24hours a day and most of them are big enough to provide hot water for 3-4 full baths in an average sized house!!!

Ireland (a developed country) has a grid capacity of 4,500MW for a population of 5million people.
South Africa (a developing country) has a grid capacity of 40,000MW for a polution of 45million people, of which half don't even know what it's like to have electricity!!!

Sorry for typo...

oh, it was a typo?....... .......

Like their petrol price? at R9.85 p ltr compared to Cfr1.75, with conversion, it IS very cheap. The only difference being that with the base costs of living in SA, even if fuel/electricity is "cheap" - not many can afford it. It is not a Consumer society like Europe - more like a Second-Hand Continuous Recycle Society. Their problem is that their politicians keep citing world prices and telling them how lucky they should consider themselves. I would like to see an average American/Australian/European try and live on the "average" SA workers monthly pay packet and try and have some home comforts! .. Should he/she be amongst the fortunate few who have a pay packet....... Think: Zimbabwe, here we come.

I am guessing that in Ireland you do not have folk electrocuting themselves by unexpected switch-ons during black-outs, by stealing the electricity cables to sell the cores to buy food?

If one should ever travel thru the rural areas - one would note that the majority of the 45m are enjoying electricity - in an illegal sort of way. One guy has the eBox, and he drapes extension cables to all surrounding homes and "sells" his electricity. So on paper not all the citizens actually have "connections", but they all mostly got electricity usage........hence the overloads.

Lol, South Africa certainly isn't a consumer society - it's more like a "take what you can get and then get the hell out of there" society!!!

Well as for consumers, it will always be a "winner takes all world"

When Oil finally does run down to a trickle it will only be the very rich who can afford it - those same people who have been driving Hummers, flying all over the world in their private jets, heating those mansions etc. The very people who've been using all the oil will be the last to finish it off...