An action thriller by Jock Miller


Fossil fuel has an ageless affinity with dinosaurs. To create oil, dinosaurs died.


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The perfect energy storm is sweeping over the United States: Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown has paralyzed nuclear expansion globally, BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill has stalled deep water drilling, Arab oil countries are in turmoil causing doubt about access to future oil, the intensity of hurricanes hitting the Gulf’s oil rigs and refineries has intensified due to global warming, and the nation’s Strategic Oil Supply is riding on empty.

As the energy storm intensifies, the nation’s access to Arab oil, once supplying over sixty percent of our fossil fuel, is being threatened causing people to panic for lack of gas at the pumps, stranding cars across the country and inciting riots.

The U.S. Military is forced to cut back air, land, and sea operations sucking up 58% of every barrel of oil to protect the nation; U.S. commercial airlines are forced to limit flights for lack of jet fuel; and businesses are challenged to power up their factories, and offices as the U.S. Department of Energy desperately tries to provide a balance of electric power from the network of aged power plants and transmission lines that power up the nation.

The United States must find new sources of domestic fossil fuel urgently or face an energy crisis that will plunge the nation into a deep depression worse than 1929.

The energy storm is very real and happening this very moment. But, at the last moment of desperation, the United States discovers the world’s largest fossil fuel deposit found in a remote inaccessible mountain range within Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve surrounding six and a half million acres.

Preventing access to the oil is a colony of living fossil dinosaurs that will protect its territory to the death.

Nobody gets out alive; nobody can identify the predator--until Dr. Kimberly Fulton, Curator of Paleontology at New York’s Museum of Natural History, is flown into the inaccessible area by Scott Chandler, the Marine veteran helicopter pilot who’s the Park’s Manager of Wildlife. All hell breaks loose when Fulton’s teenage son and his girlfriend vanish into the Park.

Will the nation’s military be paralyzed for lack of mobility fuel, and will people across America run out of gas and be stranded, or will the U.S. Military succeed in penetrating this remote mountain range in northwestern Alaska to restore fossil fuel supplies in time to save the nation from the worst energy driven catastrophe in recorded history?

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Antarctica Was Once Home To Rainforest, Say Scientists

Rainforest
The study of sediment cores drilled from the ocean floor off Antarctica's east coast revealed fossil pollens (AFP/File, Antarctic Ocean Alliance) 
 

Scientists drilling off the coast of Antarctica made a startling discovery recently that could hold clues to the Earth's future -- especially if climate change keeps warming the planet.

According to a study published in the journal Nature, the frozen continent was home to a "near-tropical" rainforest 52 million years ago, when temperatures measured about 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

The sediment found in the Antarctic seabed may be more relevant during a summer when drought, record heat and violent storms are being connected to climate change trends.

"It shows that if we go through periods of higher CO2 in the atmosphere it's very likely that there will be dramatic changes on these very important areas of the globe where ice currently exists," study participant Kevin Welsh told AFP. The Australian scientist was on the 2010 expedition that brought up fossil-rich sediment from Wilkes Land on the east coast of Antarctica. "If we were to lose a lot of ice from Antarctica then we're going to see a dramatic change in sea level all around the planet," he said.

Even a small rise in sea levels could swamp major coastal cities from New York to Hong Kong.

University of Glasgow scientist James Bendle said in the London Evening Standard that the sediment samples "are the first detailed evidence we have of what was happening on the Antarctic during this vitally important time."

Noting that the drilling expedition worked through "freezing temperatures, huge ocean swells, calving glaciers, snow-covered mountains and icebergs," Bendle said, "It's amazing to imagine a time-traveler, arriving at the same coastline in the early Eocene, could paddle in pleasantly warm waters lapping at a lush forest."

The study found that sediment cores were studded with pollen from two different environments much warmer than present-day Antarctica. There was evidence of palms, ferns and other trees typical of warm, lowland rainforests like that of Madagascar. There were also samples from beech trees and conifers of the kind found in mountain forest regions.

Scientists involved in the study warned that Antarctica could become ice-free again. Already, rising levels of carbon dioxide, or greenhouse gases, and other environmental factors have led to reports of melting ice and regional warming.
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