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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Makani Airborne Wind Turbine Inspired by a Googler Hobby



Photograph courtesy Makani Power

Resembling a drone aircraft on a string, the Makani Airborne Wind Turbine takes flight at its test site, the decommissioned U.S. Navy air station at  Alameda on San Francisco Bay.

By eliminating 90 percent of the material associated with a conventional wind turbine-largely by getting rid of the tower—the designers say they hope to reduce cost while accessing stronger winds.

The winged device is tethered to the ground and flies in large vertical circles at altitudes between 800 and 1,950 feet (250 and 600 meters). Its four wind turbines rotate as the craft moves. According to Makani Power, the speed of the craft increases along with wind speed.

Makani Power's website says the company is developing a 600-kilowatt (kW) prototype. That's considered the size of a medium commercial wind turbine; for comparison, a 600 kW land-based turbine installed in 2009 at University of Maine at Presque Isle generated 680,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in its first year, enough to power about 60 average U.S. homes. But an airborne wind turbine might deliver more or less power, depending on the boost of stronger, more consistent winds or the cost of trickier operation.

Makani was founded in 2006 and received $10 million in initial start-up capital from Google's foundation, plus support from the U.S. Department of Energy.

One of Makani's three co-founders, Corwin Hardham, has told reporters he was inspired by his hobby of kite-surfing. It's not a coincidence that Alameda has a beach that is popular with Bay Area kite-surfers. It also isn't far from Google headquarters; the company's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, are known to be avid kite-surfers.

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