Let's ignore the fact that the Alberta tar sands are an environmental catastrophe (according to wikipedia, "for every barrel of synthetic oil produced in Alberta, more than 80 kg of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere and between 2 and 4 barrels of waste water are dumped into tailing ponds that have flooded about 50 km² of forest and bogs").

But let's just focus on their oil deposits. Reports usually focus on their estimated capacity, something like 1.7 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. But these reports ignore just how much of that recoverable oil is mined every day. By 2010, the oil sands will produce only 2 million barrels per day. Optimistically, in 20 years this number will be 5 million barrels per day. The world uses 84 million barrels per day at the moment, and in 20 years it may use as much as 120 million barrels per day.

In other words, there may be oil under dem dar sands for what seems like an eternity, but the amount extracted per day, even being optimistic about future technological advances, is miniscule relative to world demand.

I'm tired of hearing from places like 60 Minutes that the Alberta tar sands will save us all from peak oil. The tar sands won't even make a dent, if current new oil discoveries continue along their decline.

And, as I said, that doesn't address the pollution, environmental degradation, and runaway greenhouse gas emissions produced by tar sands mining.

I think 24 has returned to its Canuck roots, as much as that is possible for a show whose premise is President Bush's bogus war on terror. The last couple of seasons, especially the shows with William Devane as a gun-toting secretary of defense, seemed to abandon any critique of the Bush worldview on Fox. But by criminalizing the President, the 24 people have added a twist that may satisfy liberals (and most Canadians, who think Bush is the real terrorist) as well as regular Fox patrons.

The creative team of 24 seemed to include an inordinate number of Canadians, including Sutherland and formerly Elisha Cuthbert, and I have often wondered how this figured into the show's politics. I know it sounds absurd, but consider the subtle ways 24 plays against the expectations of its Fox TV provenance.

For the most part, 24 sticks to the Rupert Murdoch/George W. Bush script, which requires that we in the audience (a) anticipate a terrorist around every corner, and (b) anticipate that almost every terrorist is either European or Arab, and (c) accept that Jack almost never tortures the wrong person. This creates a world that mirrors the Bushist fiction of the War on Terror, and the proper way to deal with it.

On the other hand, 24 also inserts the occasional corrupt US agent or government official. In fact, CTU seems to have a mole almost every season (which makes one wonder about their security measures). This season, of course, 24 was more specific in its identification of the real criminal, the President, who facilitated a flase flag operation on US soil to pacify the military-industrial complex. Sounds like what most liberals (and Canadians) think of 9/11, and I wouldn't be surprised if growing skepticism over the 9/11 official story was their inspiration. After all, Loose Change is the most popular film on Google Video.

One could argue that scenarios of US government corruption on 24 feed into right wing paranoia (and not left wing paranoia), but I have to believe that a gaggle of Canucks and American liberals working on an LA-based TV show would do their best to insert some criticism of the War on Terror, on a show that is otherwise a weekly advertisement for the Bush White House.

Sorry, Philip, but you're still not making sense.

"Lindsey, let me address the "well researched physical limit" of oil: last year Venezuela had 80 billion barrels of proved reserves, now it has 315 billion barrels (and that is just that which is owned by the state oil company). That represents simply the effect of current higher prices with today's technology. Factor in newer technology or higher prices and those reserves can double or triple."

You seem to be saying, as some of the right wing economists do, that by some magic formula we can infinitely increase oil supplies simply by making it economically feasible to do so. "Newer technology and higher prices" can not create oil that isn't there. That's the point the geologists have been making about peak oil.

So, it may be the case that we don't see the peak for 20 or 30 years, because, as you say, new technologies and higher prices will increase the amount of recoverable oil. But at some point the peak must arrive. It is inevitable. The supply of oil is finite.

There is a book for 9/11. It is called The New Pearl Harbor, by Prof. David Ray Griffin.

Honor the dead by catching the culprits, some of whom still govern the United States of America.