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Friday, Sept. 2, 2005

Dear Readers:

Here's an article called Katrina, the Awakener, the first in the New Orleans series. I am hearing many strange reports from people in the United States and abroad -- the most recent being that news in Canada is reporting that the US federal government has not responded to a substantial offer of aid and mobile hospitals from the Canadian government. A search and rescue team of 45 has been deployed by the province of British Columbia at the request of the state of Louisiana, not the federal government.

Please keep reports of anything you may hear on local news that you think might be relevant to others to me. PLEASE USE YOUR VCR AND TAPE THE NEWS. Buy tapes and tape as much as you can! Please archive newspapers from your local area, and save web pages that look interesting. Remember, versions of stories to the news sites will change by the minute, so what you see now may not be there 10 minutes later.

This will be even more astonishing in a little hindsight than it is today.

Here's the link to today's essay, which is on its way to subscribers:

http://planetwaves.net/astrology/neworleans.html

Stay in touch --

   Eric Francis
   francis@planetwaves.net

------------

Here is an out-take -- an unused portion -- of today's essay. These issues were too complex to get into, as were the minor planets. I will develop those next week.

We are witnessing the 9/11 of the second Bush term, with one exception, one not so small emotional factor missing: this time, there is nobody to blame, nobody to go to war with, just a very big mess, and hundreds of thousands of Americans converted to refugees. Meanwhile, gasoline is selling for more than $3.00 per gallon on the coasts, and $6.00 per gallon in Atlanta. Prices are rising by the day.
 
I keep wondering: who, exactly, is getting this money? Has anybody published a little pie chart?
 
What oil and Katrina have in common is global warming. While some say there is "no proof" of global warming, just what, we may ask, is happening to all the heat and greenhouse gas created by burning billions of gallons of fossil fuel? Essentially, the heat emitted by cars and factories turns to storms.
 
"For all its numbing ferocity, Hurricane Katrina will not be a unique event, say scientists, who say that global warming appears to be pumping up the power of big Atlantic storms," Agence France Press reported earlier this week. "More and more scientists estimate that global warming, while not necessarily making hurricanes more frequent or likelier to make landfall, is making them more vicious," the French press agency reported. Of course, this is coming from France; we may need to go out for some Freedom Toast.
 
Consider this. According to the same article, "Just a tiny increase in [ocean] surface temperature can have an extraordinary effect [on the intensity of storms], says researcher Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In a study published in Nature in July, Emanuel found that the destructive power of North Atlantic storms had doubled over the past 30 years, during which the sea-surface temperature rose by only 0.5 C (0.9 F)."
 
Climate change is not a popular subject in a government whose top officials include as many oil executives as you'd expect to find, well, in an oil company. This article also appeared on August 30, from The Guardian, one of the most respected British newspapers:
 
Republicans Accused of Witch-Hunt
Against Climate Change Scientists

By Paul Brown
 
Some of America's leading scientists have accused Republican politicians of intimidating climate-change experts by placing them under unprecedented scrutiny.
 
A far-reaching inquiry into the careers of three of the US's most senior climate specialists has been launched by Joe Barton, the chairman of the House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce. He has demanded details of all their sources of funding, methods and everything they have ever published.
 
Mr. Barton, a Texan closely associated with the fossil-fuel lobby, has spent his 11 years as chairman opposing every piece of legislation designed to combat climate change.
 
He is using the wide powers of his committee to force the scientists to produce great quantities of material after alleging flaws and lack of transparency in their research. He is working with Ed Whitfield, the chairman of the sub-committee on oversight and investigations.
 
The scientific work they are investigating was important in establishing that man-made carbon emissions were at least partly responsible for global warming, and formed part of the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which convinced most world leaders -- George Bush was a notable exception -- that urgent action was needed to curb greenhouse gases. [*article continued at link below.]

So let's see. One would infer from this that powerful oil business interests who have control of the government are attempting to quash information, and those who discovered it, which proves the use of oil is heating up the planet and causing huge environmental problems.
 
At the same time, oil companies are profiteering from these disasters. We can be sure that the $3.25 per gallon in Fresno or upstate New York is not going to the kid pumping the gas, or the cashier at 7-Eleven.
 
 
Introducing Peak Oil

If you think "global warming" is a kind of taboo, occult subject, at least you've heard of it. There are two words you don't hear uttered in the media, because the story is so large it's like the sky itself. The words are "peak oil." Peak oil is short for peak oil production. Peak oil production is different than saying that a marshmallow factory produces the most bags on a Thursday. Oil is a natural substance, and there is only one world to get it from.
 
We forget quickly that every thing we touch, use, eat, drink, and think about in a consumer society -- and much of the world besides -- involves oil. Everything plastic is made of it; that's a lot of stuff. Petroleum accounts for 90% of our transportation energy.
 
The way I understand it, oil first comes out of the ground like soda when you shake up the bottle: under pressure. It will surge out for a while, maybe a long while, and then when the pressure is lost, you have to draw the oil out. Peak production ends when the soda effect runs out. This both slows down the supply, as well as the quality of the product, meaning that more energy must be put into refining it, very likely with more waste.
 
While there is a global warming-like debate unfolding over when peak oil will happen, it is not a matter of if, and it is most likely happening now -- when the demand is the highest, and getting higher (think: the development of China.)

(end of out take)