Wes Vernon
The "running out of oil" myth, and the inside story on illegal immigration
By Wes Vernon
Next time you stop at the pump and pay through-the-stratosphere prices to fill your car's tank, just ponder this: We are not — repeat, we are not running out of oil. There is no good reason you should be paying through the nose. There are only bad reasons for it.
If you are also angry about illegal aliens pouring over the border, you should know that illegal immigration is the price we are paying to keep to keep gas prices from going even higher, maybe two or three times higher. More on that later. First, let's knock down the "oil is scarce" myth.
We in the U.S. have lots of oil available. We are not destined to rely on evil terrorist states to keep our cars on the road and our economy humming. Not if we have a (currently lacking) sensible oil policy in place. The long gas lines of the seventies led many Americans to believe the oil spigot is running dry. Even since then, we have been inundated by an ever-flowing propaganda spigot.
The term "propaganda" is not used here in a flip manner. There is plenty of oil, say the authors of Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and The Politics of Oil. Authors Craig Smith and Jerome Corsi debunk the so-called "scientific study" that led to U.S. policies based on the prediction that the U.S. would soon exhaust its oil reserves. Since that seventies "study" reported that our oil would be gone by 2003, this book had already been partially vindicated by the time it went to print in late 2005.
The authors, document their case that the U.S. is currently sitting on "more proven petroleum reserves than ever before despite the increasing rate at which we are consuming petroleum products."
Smith and Corsi undertake a massive untangling project. They convincingly show that we are not anywhere near "running out of oil." But there is more. It is a case of one myth relying on an even bigger myth: i.e., where oil came from in the first place.
Your science teacher may have told you that oil was formed from the remains of plant and animal life that died millions of years ago. That was always a theory, never a proven fact.
The textbooks that base their lessons on that "conventional wisdom" can be tossed into the ash heap, as far as Smith and Corsi are concerned. They have studied the late Professor Thomas Gold's finding that oil is "a primordial material that the earth forms and exudes on a continual basis," and is "pushed upward toward the earth's surface by the intense pressures of the earth's core and the influence of centrifugal force that the earth [exerts] upon the specific gravity of oil as a fluid substance."
And guess what. As a result, "new and gigantic oil fields are being discovered at an increasing rate in places the fossil fuel theory would never have been predicted as possible," say Smith and Corsi.
The authors quote from Professor Gold's book The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels. They explore Gold's own background and career and find that he has come up with other scientific theories which at first were rejected by the scientific community, but later were found to be valid.
Oil conservation? Government regulation forcing more conservation (presumably based on the assumption that we are too stupid to know or do what is good for us)? Well, as Ronald Reagan said back in Jimmy Carter's freeze-in-the-dark days of the late seventies, "It is not a program to say, 'Use less energy.'"
Wind power? Solar power? Hydrogen cars? Black Gold Stranglehold shows that none of those alternative fuels has worked to date. Yet that doesn't stop "the environmental crowd," whose "underlying agenda is a political agenda. No true-believing fossil-fuel theorist or global-warming alarmist is going to be dissuaded from the cause by scientific or behavior evidence to the contrary."
Smith and Corsi include an entire 33-page chapter aptly headlined "The Global Warming Hoax." The junk science behind the "global warming" fear-mongering "is one of the major political themes of the anti-oil forces that are gaining strength on the political left," which has joined the fringe environmentalist movement to push a "radical agenda." That agenda, the authors warn, "is also not only anti-oil, it is anti-industry, judging from what the radical environmentalists do, not just what they say."
The global warming alarmists, with Al Gore as their de facto spokesman, want to implement policies — written in the infamous and flawed Kyoto Treaty — that would force the United States and "wealthy" nations to reduce their industrial emissions. But not Third World nations where industrial pollution is far worse than anything in the United States.
And not China either. Never mind that Communist China is on a carrot and stick policy to weaken or threaten the U.S. (1) economically, through lopsided trade policies and (2) militarily, through a Chinese arms buildup aimed ultimately at confronting America.
Kyoto is an anti-American document. Americans have used the ethic of free enterprise and hard work to achieve prosperity, and there are those in the world, seething with envy, who want to pull us down. Several economists have shown that the Kyoto Treaty would shut down major industries here and throw millions of Americans out of work. You can complain all you want about "big oil," but make no mistake: Destroy the energy industry in this country, and you will see a poverty epidemic that will make the Great Depression of the Thirties look like good times. The radical environmentalist groups whose Washington reps draw down six figure salaries don't let you in on those little details.
Now as to the illegal aliens connection: More and more illegal immigrants are streaming over the border — encouraged by those politicians who see them as future voters, and by businesses happy to use them as cheap labor. The end result is bound to be demographics that portend a turn to the political left. But there are implications even more damaging than that.
That very phenomenon is one of the more disturbing parts of Black Gold Stranglehold.
It is not just that a disproportionate share of the illegals have criminal records and end up committing murders, assaults, robberies, and other serious crimes. Even more alarming is that mixed in with the new lawbreaking arrivals from Mexico is "an increasing number" from "Middle Eastern countries with terrorist connections. U.S. Border patrol officers are overwhelmed, they lack sufficient resources and do not have the determined support of the federal government."
And why is "determined support" from Washington not forthcoming? Smith and Corsi pinpoint oil as a major factor.
Mexico has the third-largest proven reservoirs of crude oil in the Western Hemisphere — behind Venezuela (dominated by the America-hating pro-communist Hugo Chavez) and the United States. Any crackdown on illegal immigrants, according to authors Smith and Corsi, "would have an immediate [negative] impact on Mexico."
Illegal immigrants send about $17 billion a year back home to families in Mexico. The result: "As a hedge against instability in the Middle East, the U.S. government has to calculate our oil needs when considering any steps we take regarding Mexico or illegal immigrants." What if one of the Middle East cutthroats or a so-called "ally" over there cuts off its exports of oil to us when the chips are down? That is the frightening story behind government inaction on illegal immigration. It dwarfs the other considerations (i.e. cheap labor and future voters). The oil factor is conspicuous by its absence in the public dialogue over our porous borders. (Mexico's threatened instability and/or insurrection following its recent presidential election adds even more urgency to the problem.)
Smith and Corsi have performed a great service by including the Mexico factor in their book. It is not new. The oil connection has been known for sometime, but you will usually search in vain for any prominent mention of it in the media. If you've been scratching your head and wondering about the puzzling bipartisan inaction or wrong actions by smart politicians on border security, this could be your answer. It really gets to the Stranglehold part of this book. Third World nations and terrorists appear to have us by the throat.
Black Gold Stranglehold is no handwringing book. The authors offer seven steps toward oil independence:
Craig Smith is president/CEO of Swiss America Trading Corp. He is also an author, commentator, and economic analyst. Smith is often interviewed on the major television networks, and in fact hosted two nationally syndicated radio shows in the nineties. His guests have included Paul Weyrich (Free Congress), Frank Gaffney (Center for Security Policy), Roger Robinson (National Security Council in the Reagan White House) and entertainer Bert Stratton, whose works were included in Pat Boone's album celebrating his 50th year in showbiz.
Jerome Corsi received a PHD from Harvard in Political Science. Over twenty years, he has developed financial services companies with expertise in the sale of insurance and securities products and services in the bank marketplace worldwide. Books he has authored include the New York Times bestseller Unfit for Command. Previously he wrote also Atomic Iran, where his warnings were all too prophetic.
Black Gold Stranglehold offers solutions. But the book does more than that. It could change the entire debate about oil. It offers a way out of the terrible dilemma of dependence on foreign oil and its effects on your future and your family's well being, even safety.
© Wes Vernon
Next time you stop at the pump and pay through-the-stratosphere prices to fill your car's tank, just ponder this: We are not — repeat, we are not running out of oil. There is no good reason you should be paying through the nose. There are only bad reasons for it.
If you are also angry about illegal aliens pouring over the border, you should know that illegal immigration is the price we are paying to keep to keep gas prices from going even higher, maybe two or three times higher. More on that later. First, let's knock down the "oil is scarce" myth.
We in the U.S. have lots of oil available. We are not destined to rely on evil terrorist states to keep our cars on the road and our economy humming. Not if we have a (currently lacking) sensible oil policy in place. The long gas lines of the seventies led many Americans to believe the oil spigot is running dry. Even since then, we have been inundated by an ever-flowing propaganda spigot.
The term "propaganda" is not used here in a flip manner. There is plenty of oil, say the authors of Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and The Politics of Oil. Authors Craig Smith and Jerome Corsi debunk the so-called "scientific study" that led to U.S. policies based on the prediction that the U.S. would soon exhaust its oil reserves. Since that seventies "study" reported that our oil would be gone by 2003, this book had already been partially vindicated by the time it went to print in late 2005.
The authors, document their case that the U.S. is currently sitting on "more proven petroleum reserves than ever before despite the increasing rate at which we are consuming petroleum products."
Smith and Corsi undertake a massive untangling project. They convincingly show that we are not anywhere near "running out of oil." But there is more. It is a case of one myth relying on an even bigger myth: i.e., where oil came from in the first place.
Your science teacher may have told you that oil was formed from the remains of plant and animal life that died millions of years ago. That was always a theory, never a proven fact.The textbooks that base their lessons on that "conventional wisdom" can be tossed into the ash heap, as far as Smith and Corsi are concerned. They have studied the late Professor Thomas Gold's finding that oil is "a primordial material that the earth forms and exudes on a continual basis," and is "pushed upward toward the earth's surface by the intense pressures of the earth's core and the influence of centrifugal force that the earth [exerts] upon the specific gravity of oil as a fluid substance."
And guess what. As a result, "new and gigantic oil fields are being discovered at an increasing rate in places the fossil fuel theory would never have been predicted as possible," say Smith and Corsi.
The authors quote from Professor Gold's book The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels. They explore Gold's own background and career and find that he has come up with other scientific theories which at first were rejected by the scientific community, but later were found to be valid.
Oil conservation? Government regulation forcing more conservation (presumably based on the assumption that we are too stupid to know or do what is good for us)? Well, as Ronald Reagan said back in Jimmy Carter's freeze-in-the-dark days of the late seventies, "It is not a program to say, 'Use less energy.'"
Wind power? Solar power? Hydrogen cars? Black Gold Stranglehold shows that none of those alternative fuels has worked to date. Yet that doesn't stop "the environmental crowd," whose "underlying agenda is a political agenda. No true-believing fossil-fuel theorist or global-warming alarmist is going to be dissuaded from the cause by scientific or behavior evidence to the contrary."
Smith and Corsi include an entire 33-page chapter aptly headlined "The Global Warming Hoax." The junk science behind the "global warming" fear-mongering "is one of the major political themes of the anti-oil forces that are gaining strength on the political left," which has joined the fringe environmentalist movement to push a "radical agenda." That agenda, the authors warn, "is also not only anti-oil, it is anti-industry, judging from what the radical environmentalists do, not just what they say."
The global warming alarmists, with Al Gore as their de facto spokesman, want to implement policies — written in the infamous and flawed Kyoto Treaty — that would force the United States and "wealthy" nations to reduce their industrial emissions. But not Third World nations where industrial pollution is far worse than anything in the United States.And not China either. Never mind that Communist China is on a carrot and stick policy to weaken or threaten the U.S. (1) economically, through lopsided trade policies and (2) militarily, through a Chinese arms buildup aimed ultimately at confronting America.
Kyoto is an anti-American document. Americans have used the ethic of free enterprise and hard work to achieve prosperity, and there are those in the world, seething with envy, who want to pull us down. Several economists have shown that the Kyoto Treaty would shut down major industries here and throw millions of Americans out of work. You can complain all you want about "big oil," but make no mistake: Destroy the energy industry in this country, and you will see a poverty epidemic that will make the Great Depression of the Thirties look like good times. The radical environmentalist groups whose Washington reps draw down six figure salaries don't let you in on those little details.
Now as to the illegal aliens connection: More and more illegal immigrants are streaming over the border — encouraged by those politicians who see them as future voters, and by businesses happy to use them as cheap labor. The end result is bound to be demographics that portend a turn to the political left. But there are implications even more damaging than that.
That very phenomenon is one of the more disturbing parts of Black Gold Stranglehold.
It is not just that a disproportionate share of the illegals have criminal records and end up committing murders, assaults, robberies, and other serious crimes. Even more alarming is that mixed in with the new lawbreaking arrivals from Mexico is "an increasing number" from "Middle Eastern countries with terrorist connections. U.S. Border patrol officers are overwhelmed, they lack sufficient resources and do not have the determined support of the federal government."
And why is "determined support" from Washington not forthcoming? Smith and Corsi pinpoint oil as a major factor.
Mexico has the third-largest proven reservoirs of crude oil in the Western Hemisphere — behind Venezuela (dominated by the America-hating pro-communist Hugo Chavez) and the United States. Any crackdown on illegal immigrants, according to authors Smith and Corsi, "would have an immediate [negative] impact on Mexico."
Illegal immigrants send about $17 billion a year back home to families in Mexico. The result: "As a hedge against instability in the Middle East, the U.S. government has to calculate our oil needs when considering any steps we take regarding Mexico or illegal immigrants." What if one of the Middle East cutthroats or a so-called "ally" over there cuts off its exports of oil to us when the chips are down? That is the frightening story behind government inaction on illegal immigration. It dwarfs the other considerations (i.e. cheap labor and future voters). The oil factor is conspicuous by its absence in the public dialogue over our porous borders. (Mexico's threatened instability and/or insurrection following its recent presidential election adds even more urgency to the problem.)
Smith and Corsi have performed a great service by including the Mexico factor in their book. It is not new. The oil connection has been known for sometime, but you will usually search in vain for any prominent mention of it in the media. If you've been scratching your head and wondering about the puzzling bipartisan inaction or wrong actions by smart politicians on border security, this could be your answer. It really gets to the Stranglehold part of this book. Third World nations and terrorists appear to have us by the throat.
Black Gold Stranglehold is no handwringing book. The authors offer seven steps toward oil independence:- Promote scientific research to investigate alternative theories. (Comment: No junk science allowed. Facts only.)
- Expedite leases offshore and in Alaska to encourage oil exploration. (Comment: Sorry, Sierra Club. America's bumper sticker is "Save the Humans." Be thankful we're not advocating a Caribou hunt near ANWR.)
- Provide tax credits for deep-drilling oil exploration.
- Create an oil research institute as a clearinghouse of oil industry information.
- Provide a public broadcasting television series devoted to the oil industry. (Comment — Good idea, but a word of caution: be certain the programming is factual and objective, with no anti-oil agenda.)
- Re-establish a gold-backed international trade dollar.
- Establish tax incentives for opening new refineries in the U.S. (Comment: It is long past time. The same politicians who have done the bidding of the environmental left in blocking new refineries for decades are the same politicians who blame "big oil" for high gas prices. Let's give them a golden opportunity to put up or shut up).
Craig Smith is president/CEO of Swiss America Trading Corp. He is also an author, commentator, and economic analyst. Smith is often interviewed on the major television networks, and in fact hosted two nationally syndicated radio shows in the nineties. His guests have included Paul Weyrich (Free Congress), Frank Gaffney (Center for Security Policy), Roger Robinson (National Security Council in the Reagan White House) and entertainer Bert Stratton, whose works were included in Pat Boone's album celebrating his 50th year in showbiz.
Jerome Corsi received a PHD from Harvard in Political Science. Over twenty years, he has developed financial services companies with expertise in the sale of insurance and securities products and services in the bank marketplace worldwide. Books he has authored include the New York Times bestseller Unfit for Command. Previously he wrote also Atomic Iran, where his warnings were all too prophetic.
Black Gold Stranglehold offers solutions. But the book does more than that. It could change the entire debate about oil. It offers a way out of the terrible dilemma of dependence on foreign oil and its effects on your future and your family's well being, even safety.
© Wes Vernon
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
