The Genesis Flood - A Biblical/Scientific Explanation of Its Cause

Most of us are familiar with the story of Noah's Flood in the Bible and I suspect many think it is just a myth with no historic or scientific basis but still makes a good picture story book for little children. The concept of a flood that supposedly completely submerged the entire land surface of the Earth for over a year is certainly a very difficult one to understand and accept. But for those who believe that the Bible is the word of God, Noah's Flood is a historic truth that gives an account of a major catastrophe that occurred some 4400 years ago which killed, by drowning, millions of people and all land based animal and bird life. Some believers think it was an extremely violet catastrophe that not only killed off all life on land but also resurfaced the earth's land mass with new layers of sediments hundreds of metres thick. Other believers are more cautious in their interpretation and accept that the flood did take place but it was a local affair that affected only a small region of the land in Noah's neighbourhood leaving only very minor flood deposits.

There is clearly a big difference in opinion on this subject so can the real truth be known? I believe it can and what I have set out to do in this article is to give an explanation for the cause of the Flood which is based not only on what we know about our planet but also on a careful analysis of what the Bible actually tells us about the flood.. First we need to look at some important features of the Earth we live on.

The 'flexible' foundations of the Earth

Our planet is in some respects like a huge ball with a highly pressurized interior that is constrained by a relatively thin spherical shell made from hard basaltic rock. The scientific term for this shell is lithosphere (3) (meaning a sphere of rock) and the Bible calls this the 'foundations of the Earth' (Job 38:4) (1). The reason why the Bible uses the term 'foundations' is because it supports not only the oceans but also the continents which are both late additions to our planet.(2) Another function of the foundations is to protect the continents and the ocean from the heat and radiation which is continuously being generated by the decay of radioactive elements in the earth's interior. The Bible warns us about this heat (Deut.32:22) which at some time in the near future will result in another global disaster which will be far worse than Noah's Flood.

The foundations were originally continuous when first laid (2) but have now cracked under pressure into what are called plates (Ps.82:5). They have therefore become fairly flexible now and capable of being stretched out if the pressure acting underneath them increases.

If this pressure increase was globally uniform the foundations would stretch out uniformly and form a very slightly larger sphere. If this happened the result would be a shallower ocean worldwide. However if the pressure was not uniformly applied the foundations would become very slightly egg shaped. So one extremely important and relevant feature of our planet is that it can change shape (Job38:14) from being reasonably spherical to slightly ellipsoidal and this can make a vast difference to the depth of the overlying ocean in any given area. Hence shallow oceans can become very much deeper and the reverse is also true if the Earth changes shape. Evidence for several major sea level changes in the past is plentiful as all professional geologists know.

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are both manifestations of the heat and pressure that is being constantly generated deep below the ground we walk upon and we are reminded of this fairly frequently by news reports from round the world.

The supercontinent Pangaea

The next thing we need to consider is how the continents of the globe were distributed in Noah's time. Scientists are now generally agreed that all of our present continents were once joined up in a roughly G shaped supercontinent called Pangaea (5) which covered about a third of the Earth's surface area. The Bible agrees with this and calls the supercontinent 'Earth'(Gen.1:10). The Bible also tells us (Ps.24:1-3) about the spectacular manner in which the supercontinent was formed on top of the foundations in the long distant past.

While we now know that Pangaea eventually broke up to form the present continents the Bible tells us that this happened much more recently and rather more quickly than most scientists believe. According to the Bible the division of the supercontinent was only four generations after Noah's Flood (Gen.10:25). What this means is that Pangaea was the land area affected by Noah's Flood. This would make sense from a biblical viewpoint because Pangaea had been totally submerged only about 1600 years before Noah's time. (Gen.1:10) and this submergence is recognized by some bible scholars as Lucifer's Flood.

So the important point is that the Flood in Noah's time was not the first submergence of the supercontinent. In fact the geological evidence suggests that there have been several submergence and re-emergence episodes of Pangaea in the long distant past.(3)

Having been dipped in and out of water several times in the past (2Pet.3:5) Pangaea consisted of mainly flat land barely above sea level with some 'high hills' (Gen.7:19) but no high mountains such as Mt Everest.

The Firmament

Next we come to a former very major feature of our planet that most readers will probably not have heard about before and may have some difficulty in believing it because it no longer exists. This was a remnant of the last ice age and was gigantic dome of ice that spanned over Pangaea. It is referred to in the Bible as the Firmament (Gen.1:6-8) and all of the second day of the Genesis creation account was devoted to its creation. We also know about it from many legendary accounts recorded by peoples from throughout the world who lived in the few centuries after the flood when it was still in place (4). A very detailed account of the formation of this stupendous structure is given in my book (2)

The Firmament is of some relevance to understanding Noah's Flood because it was in place before, during, and for some time after, the flood and actually controlled the flood waters. In the biblical account of the flood the Firmament is referred to as 'heaven' and this name change from Firmament to Heaven took place in (Gen.1:8)

The cause of Noah's Flood

With a description of the main features of the Earth in Noah's time we can now go on to explain the cause of the flood which fully submerged the supercontinent and partly submerged the dome of the Firmament. Briefly Noah's Flood was caused when the shape of our planet changed from being near spherical to slightly ellipsoidal. This change was due to a non uniform increase in the pressure under the foundations and. the foundations became very slightly egg shaped. This resulted in the ocean bed being raised in a wide band round the Earth which caused a division of the worlds single ocean into two smaller but much deeper oceans separated from each other by the wide band of very shallow sea or even dry ocean floor. On this band the foundations rose above sea level thus allowing sea water to drain into off into one or other of the two areas on both sides of the band where the foundations had become depressed into huge and deep circular basins. Water is obliged to form a sphere round the Earth but the solid foundations can become ellipsoidal for a short while.

During the flood Pangaea became submerged under one of the two deepened oceans and it this submergence that we call Noah's Flood.

Biblical verses in support of the proposed hypothesis for Noah's Flood

As explained above the flood was caused when the foundations of the Earth lost its near spherical shape for a while. This mechanism for the Flood has strong biblical support which can best be understood by considering the verses that relate to the Flood in the order given in Genesis

(Gen.6:5-7) God decides to destroy all living land forms 'from the face of the earth meaning all land life on Pangaea is condemned.

(Gen.6:15) God instructs Noah to construct a huge four deck Ark some 120 years before the start of the Flood. This implies the Flood covered the whole of Pangaea otherwise God would simply have asked Noah to move on to a safe area.

(Gen.7:7)

Noah enters the ark as sea levels begin to rise and floods the neighbourhood. Actually it was the ocean bed that began to subside.

(Gen.7.10)

Most of the land surface is now covered with shallow water which gradually increases in depth.

(Gen.7:11)

The water depth in both oceans increases as it receives water from areas where the foundations are still rising The exposed raised ocean bed begins to crack up. Water enters the cracks and turns quickly into steam. This results in the formation of thousands of geysers called 'fountains of the great deep' (Gen.7:11).

(Gen.7:12)

The steam from the geysers disperses throughout the planet and condenses into water on top of the Firmament which has also become cracked by being stretched. Rain water thus flows through the windows of heaven and falls over the entire supercontinent continuously for forty days..

(Gen.7:19)

Sea levels still continue to increase. All the land that was under the whole heaven (the Firmament) is now underwater.

(Gen.7:24)

Pangaea remains totally submerged for five months.

( Gen.8.3)

As pressure under the foundations is released the geysers are shut off and the Earth returns slowly to its normal shape.

(Gen.8:3)

The depth of water over Pangaea begins to decrease slowly and continues to do so for the next three months.

(Gen.8:4)

The Ark runs aground on the newly formed Mt Ararat (alt.5165m) and the family see the tops of other mountains for the first time..

(Gen.8:13)

After spending one year and ten days in the ark Noah and his family leave the Ark to make a new life. It takes over a year for the foundations of the Earth to change shape from spherical to ellipsoidal and back again.

From the above verses it is clear that all of the flood water came from the ocean at the start and returned to the ocean at the end.. The rain that fell was ocean water that had first turned into steam in the sea floor geysers and then condensed into pure water. The contribution of this water to the Flood waters was quite negligible.

The consequences of the Flood

The flood was indeed global in that it submerged a large part of the supercontinent which was under the Firmament. It is however possible that there were animals and birds and human beings on volcanic islands and parts of Pangaea that was outside the Firmament which escaped being flooded. Before the flood the supercontinent had only some high hills but during the flood some mountains could have been formed as a result of upheavals of the Earth's foundations. All the very high mountains like the Andes and Himalayas were formed as a result of continental drift which took place at least four generations after the flood according to the Bible. Apart from the above, the geological consequences of the flood alone may be regarded as minimal. The sea level rose slowly and fell slowly. All living forms that lived under the Firmament would have been killed by drowning and their remains would have rotted away in the ocean or been scavenged by aquatic life. The presence of the Firmament dome would have slowed down the rise and fall of sea level and would also have prevented the then land surface from being covered with new sediments. Hence Noah's Flood did not allow any fossils to be formed. All fossils found on the Earth today were formed during previous submergence episodes during a very long period of time known by serious Bible scholars as the First Earth Age (5)

Some problems with the Flood

Sceptics of the Genesis Flood story question other aspects of the flood and so to finish this article a few comments on these.

Building the Ark

Noah had 120 years to do the job using locally grown timber which was in great abundance in the subtropical climate under the Firmament. Adam's first Son built a city, and his great grandchildren made musical instruments like flutes and harps and there were craftsmen in bronze and iron (Gen.4:17-22) even at that time. Hence the people who lived many centuries before and after Noah were technologically very advanced. Noah had the expertise to build a very large buoyant structure that only had to stay afloat for about a year without going anywhere.

Food for the family and animals

Noah was instructed to take on board food for the family and the animals (Gen.6:21)

By this time the art of preservation of food by drying would have been well established so huge stocks of low volume dehydrated food could have been taken on board and hydrated to feed the family and animals as required. The food was required by the animals only to stay alive while not using much energy in their confinement. Fish and other sea food including edible sea weeds would have always been in plentiful supply anyway.

Animal numbers

The climate under the Firmament was uniform everywhere so samples of all the species alive at the time were readily available close to where the Ark was built. Noah was instructed to take male and female of each kind to 'keep the species alive on the face of all the earth' (Gen7:3) Species have no doubt changed on the Earth since Noah's time and hence today we probably have a much richer variety of species than in Noah's time. Hence the task of collecting live specimens for the Ark would not have been too difficult. After their release from the Ark the animals spread out throughout the still intact supercontinent and adapted to new environmental conditions when the Firmament eventually disintegrated and Pangaea broke up into the continents we have today.

References

1. All scripture verses mentioned are taken from the New King James Version of the Bible. Thomas Nelson Publishers 1991
2. Pimenta L.R. 'The Firmament of the sky dome' Matatdor Publishers Kibworth Beauchamp 2012 ISBN 9781780882017
3. Duff D Holmes' Principles of Physical Geology Chapman & Hall 4^th Ed 1993
4. Seeley P 'The Firmament and the water above' The Westminster Theological Journal 53(1991) p.227-40 (available on the internet in 2012)
5. There are now several hundred sites on the Internet which deal with the First Earth Age

A fuller background to this article is given in my book 'The Firmament of the Sky Dome'.
Website http://www.Thefirmamentinthesky.com

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The Great Flood - A Universal Myth Or a Common Historical Memory?

The supporters of the Bible take the Great Flood to account for the present state of Earth as the waters caused, in their opinion, the formation of deep valleys and canyons and the rise in the range of mountains. Then the waters drained in the hollows resulted from the elevation of the mountainous platforms. Opposed to this theory of immediate alterations in Earth's relief, scientists adopt the perspective of gradual processes that stretched across millions if not billions of years in order to produce today's planet state. Nevertheless, they don't exclude the fact there was indeed a flood, but not a global one.

What is intriguing is that the Bible is not the only ancient text speaking of such natural disasters. There are other cultures around the world that have legends related to big floods. Some of these civilizations are even in the same geographical region, namely the Middle East. In 1872, this area was the site of an astounding discovery: an ancient text that related a story very similar to that from Genesis. Written on a clay tablet that was excavated from the site of Kuyunjik (Mesopotamia), the text is a part of a greater document called the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In this saga, an immortal man called Utnapishtim narrates to Gilgamesh a story which is strikingly similar to that of Noah. According to this narrative, Utnapishtim replaces Noah and follows the instructions of the gods to build a boat that will save him and his family from a great flood that will be inflicted upon earth and humans because of their vicious lifestyle. The rain lasts only seven days, the boat comes to rest on a mountain and, upon disembarkation, Utnapishtim brings an offering to the gods on an altar. The similarity is baffling, making researchers ask themselves whether this is a confirmation of the biblical text or it is just a distorted version. On the other hand, there is the possibility of the author of the Genesis to have borrowed from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Or are the two texts just separate illustrations of a wider regional myth, legend or historical memory?

Ed is an experienced internet marketer and he is writing for http://www.sunlesstanning.ws. You can find additional info about Ed by accessing Airbrush Tanning Systems website.

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Is it Smart to Invest in Alternative Energy

Are you looking for places to invest your money that will be profitable for you? Why not take some of your money and put it into alternative energy? A lot of people predict that production of green energy will be in the multi-billion dollar range by 2013. For example, wind turbine technology has become more widespread as a result of advancement in technology and decrease in cost. This has resulted in wind technology being very competitive against more conventional forms of energy producing products. Not even birds get killed anymore using the new wind-powered technology.

Your investment might be spent in a lot of worse places than in companies that are engaged in wind energy production. Another area to look into are solar cell investments, or solar cell technology. These little solar-powered cells are powering things like hand calculators, flashlights, and other devices. They are being used on a growing number of roofs of commercial buildings, as well as housing developments and building complexes. With the decreasing prices, their energy efficiency is constantly increasing. This is figured out by the amount of work required for energy production, compared to the energy made.

Back in 1982, the energy conversion efficiency of silicon cells was about 4 percent but nowadays, it is above 20 percent. When generating electrical power, photovoltaic cells do not create any pollution, but presently they are not cost-effective with regular electricity. Because large amounts of cells are needed to generate large amounts of electricity, they are not ready for producing electricity on a larger scale. But as areas are converted to implement these solar cells, the price and efficiency will get better. As the research and development of alternative energy continue to grow, advisers who manage investments are recommending their clients to invest in it.

There are new areas for new energy that are appearing like utilizing currents, tidal movements and temperature. The use of hydro-power is going well in France and being researched in Scotland and America. Hydro-power has had issues in the past with salt water causing metal deterioration but the materials used these days are more efficient. Violent storms and marine growth have also been disruptions to the production of energy in the past. Since the timing of ocean waves and currents is so reliable, as well as understood, there is a huge advantage to ocean-produced energy.

In the last couple of decades, investments have increased in hydro-electric technology. It is very clean power, but hydro-electric power is evidently limited by geography. Older dams, for example, have had problems with marine life disruption. In order to protect the marine life, those dams were improved and the improvements have been expensive. As a result of this, low-impact hydro-energy generators with no ecological problems, have been given more attention. The reality of all of this information is that investing in the future of Eco-friendly energy is sound advice.

Learn more about alternative energy specially solar technology and how you can build your own solar panels at home as a D.I.Y. project. You'll learn how to harness that unlimited power from the sun and convert it usable electricity at home. Possibility to convert your home into green home and experience green living while saving money up to 80% of your electricity bills and at the same time helping the environment recover to its natural condition. If you build your own solar panels for homes, you will save a significant amount of money compare to buying a ready-made commercial panels. Of course, if you're doing it yourself, start small and when you're accustomed to it, you can scale it to larger production.

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The Politics of Alternative Energy

When we think of alternative energy we automatically imagine solar, wind and bio fuels. These technologies will eventually save the environment because they will help to greatly reduce, and in some cases entirely eliminate, the emissions that come from energy production and consumption.

This obviously means that they are such beneficial technologies that they should be at the forefront of government, corporate and business investment and research. Interestingly, they really aren't being explored and examined with the kind of passion that might be expected.

Why is that? Well, there is a lot of money at stake where alternative energies are concerned and hundreds of billions of dollars in profits that will quickly and inevitably evaporate when those technologies are readily available to most people. Consider the record-breaking profits posted by the leading oil companies since the end of 2001. As the cries for more alternative energies reach a fever-pitch, they are charging higher and higher prices for auto and home heating supplies. To many it would appear that these massive corporations are "cashing in" while there is still time to do so, and the politics of alternative energy demonstrate that the oil companies and their affiliates are being allowed to do that.

Of course it isn't all about oil either. There are also the energy producers who pour unbelievable amounts of pollutants into the air - this is from such locations as coal burning power plants. The politics of alternative energy have helped to create systems in which these corporations are permitted to operate their shoddy factories in exchange for the purchase of energy credits. They purchase credits from cleaner suppliers, such as nuclear plants, and use them to "balance" their pollution.

Clearly, this is totally illogical, but that is the system that now stands in the United States. Luckily there is an ever-increasing awareness on the part of the general public, and now millions of consumers have become aware of their own "carbon footprint". They understand the need to do more than just conserve energy, and are investing in alternative energies themselves.

Millions of homeowners install solar lighting, solar panels and wind turbines on their property. Millions more are purchasing "carbon offsets" which provide them with a tax deduction, but also with the knowledge that their contribution will fund a solar energy program, a wind farm or some other alternative energy effort. Finally, millions are purchasing vehicles that operate on bio fuels or are "hybrids" that use little to no gasoline.

Jonathan Gal is a solar lighting expert and owner of YCA Solar Lights, an organization dedicated to promoting clean, energy efficient solar lighting technology. To find out more about how solar technology is changing the way we live, especially with respect to lighting, you are invited to visit: http://www.ycasolarlightstore.com

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Alternative Energy - Why do we need it?

Why Do We Need Alternatives?

To answer that question, we need to start by discussing fossil fuels-what they are, where they come from, how they are used and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Within this context, the pressing need for alternatives becomes quite clear.

What are fossil fuels?

Most fossil fuels are formed from the remains of long-dead creatures and plants. Buried over the course of hundreds of millions of years, these carbon-based deposits have been converted by heat and pressure over time into such combustible substances as crude oil, coal, natural gas, oil shales and tar sands. A smaller portion of fossil fuels is the handful of other naturally occurring substances that contain carbon but do not come from organic sources.

To make more fossil fuels would require both the creation of new topsoil filled with hydrocarbons, and time-lots of time. Given estimates of current fossil fuel reserves worldwide, it's not possible we can wait out the problem, and continue our dependence on fossil fuels until new reserves are built. At current consumption rates, the reserves of oil and coal and other fossil fuels won't last hundreds of years, let alone hundreds of millions of years.

As for creating more, experts have pointed out that it can take close to five centuries to replace a single inch of topsoil as plants decay and rocks weather. Yet in the United States, at least, much of the topsoil has been disturbed by farming, leading still more experts to the disturbing conclusion that in areas once covered by prairie, the past hundred years of agriculture have caused America's "bread basket' to lose half of its topsoil as it erodes thirty times faster than it can form.

The Advantages of Fossil Fuels in Energy Production

There are many reasons why the world became dependent on fossil fuels, and continues to rely on them. For example, it has so far been relatively cost-effective in the short run to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity at strategic centralized parts of the grid and to deliver the electricity in bulk to nearby substations; these in turn deliver electricity directly to consumers. These big power plants burn gas or, less efficiently, coal. Since so much electricity can be lost over long-distance transmission, when power needs to be concentrated more in one region than another, the fuels are generally transported instead to distant power plants and burned there. Liquid fuels are particularly easy to transport.

Thus far, fossil fuels have been abundant and easily procured. Petroleum reserves worldwide are estimated at somewhere between 1 and 3.5 trillion barrels. Proven coal reserves at the end of 2005, as estimated by British, were 909,064 million tons worldwide. Coal, furthermore, is relatively cheap.

Perhaps the simplest reason why the world continues to depend on fossil fuels is that to do anything else requires change: physical, economical, and-perhaps the most difficult-psychological. The basic technology for extracting and burning fossil fuels is already in place, not only in the large power plants but at the consumer level, too. Retrofitting factories would be cost-prohibitive, but perhaps even more daunting would be replacing heating systems in every home, factory and building. Ultimately, however, the true resistance may be our nature. We humans tend to resist change in general, and in particular those changes that require us to give up longstanding traditions, alter our ways of thinking and living, and learn new information and practices after generations of being assured that everything was "fine" with the old ways.

Why Do We Need Alternatives?

If there are so many reasons to use fossil fuels, why even consider alternatives? Anyone who has paid the least bit of attention to the issue over the past few decades could probably answer that question. If nothing else, most people could come up with the first and most obvious reason: fossil fuels are not, for all practical purposes, renewable. At current rates, the world uses fossil fuels 100,000 times faster than they can form. The demand for them will far outstrip their availability in a matter of centuries-or less.

And although technology has made extracting fossil fuels easier and more cost effective in some cases than ever before, such is not always the case. As we deplete the more easily accessible oil reserves, new ones must be found and tapped into. This means locating oil rigs much farther offshore or in less accessible regions; burrowing deeper and deeper into the earth to reach coal seams or scraping off ever more layers of precious topsoil; and entering into uncertain agreements with countries and cartels with whom it may not be in our best political interests to forge such commitments.

Finally, there are human and environmental costs involved in the reliance on fossil fuels. Drilling for oil, tunneling into coalmines, transporting volatile liquids and explosive gases-all these can and have led to tragic accidents resulting in the destruction of acres of ocean, shoreline and land, killing humans as well as wildlife and plant life. Even when properly extracted and handled, fossil fuels take a toll on the atmosphere, as the combustion processes release many pollutants, including sulfur dioxide-a major component in acid rain. When another common emission, carbon dioxide, is released into the atmosphere, it contributes to the "greenhouse effect," in which the atmosphere captures and reflects back the energy radiating from the earth's surface rather than allowing it to escape back into space. Scientists agree that this has led to global warming, an incremental rise in average temperatures beyond those that could be predicted from patterns of the past. This affects everything from weather patterns to the stability of the polar ice caps.

Conclusion

Clearly, something must change. As with many complex problems, however, the solution to supplying the world's ever-growing hunger for more energy will not be as simple as abandoning all the old methods and beliefs and adopting new ones overnight. Partly this is a matter of practicality-the weaning process would take considerable investments of money, education and, most of all, time. The main reason, however, is that there is no one perfect alternative energy source. Alternative will not mean substitute.

What needs to change?

It seems simplistic to say that what really needs to change is our attitude, but in fact the basis of a sound energy plan does come down to the inescapable fact that we must change our way of thinking about the issue. In the old paradigm, we sought ways to provide massive amounts of power and distribute it to the end users, knowing that while much would be lost in the transmission, the advantages would be great as well: power plants could be located away from residential areas, fuels could be delivered to central locations, and for consumers, the obvious bonus was convenience. For the most part our only personal connection with the process would be calling the providers of heating fuel and electricity, and pulling up to the pumps at the gas station. And the only time we would think about the problem would be when prices rose noticeably, or the power went out.

There are people who have tried to convince us that there is no problem, and that those tree-hugging Chicken Littles who talk about renewable and alternative energy want us all to go back to nature. More often than not these skeptics' motivations for perpetuating this myth falls into one of two categories: one, they fear what they don't understand and are resistant to being told what to do, or two, they have some political or financial stake in enabling our fossil-fuel addiction. (And sometimes both.)

The reality is that except for altering our ways of thinking, there will not be one major change but a great many smaller ones. A comprehensive and successful energy plan will necessarily include these things:

• Supplementing the energy produced at existing power plants with alternative energy means, and converting some of those plants to operate on different "feedstock" (fuels)
• Shifting away from complete reliance on a few concentrated energy production facilities to adding many new and alternative sources, some feeding into the existing "grid" and some of supplying local or even individual needs
• Providing practical, economical and convenient ways for consumers-residences, commercial users, everyone-to adapt and adopt new technologies to provide for some or all of their own energy needs
• Learning ways in which we can use less energy now ("reduce, reuse, recycle"), using advances in technology as well as simple changes in human behavior to reduce consumption without requiring people to make major compromises or sacrifices

Alternative Energy is a crucial link in our energy future if we are to cut the oil cord. We present thoughts, ideas, info and news about alternative energy at Alternative Energy HQ. Get a free copy of our book "Cutting the Oil Cord - Using Alternative Energy in Your Life" at - http://alternativeenergyhq.com

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Love Me I'm A Liberal

Alternative Energy - Is the Future of Energy Green?

President Bush has called for a 22% increase in federal grants for research and development of alternative energy. Unfortunately, the world thirst for oil is growing, not reducing. One of the major problems of transition to alternative energy is that higher oil and gas prices stimulate the economy through increased employment of industry workers and service and supply companies who support the oil industry, and from oil company profits which keep stocks lucrative on Wall Street. So, as prices rise, companies and employees and contractors are not always inclined to look for alternatives. But if oil production starts declining as some scientist and oil executives predict, we may face major supply problems, especially when it comes to transportation--cars, aircraft, trains and boats for which we have no ready alternative to petroleum-based fuels.

Cambridge Energy Research Associates speculate that oil will peak sometime after 2020, but a number of oil geologists and executives predict it will happen much sooner. According to a controversial new model developed by a Swedish physicist, global oil production will peak sometime between next year and 2018 and then decline. While the amount of new technologies and infrastructures that need to be developed and built is staggering, corporation after corporation is springing up around the world, helped by various governments' tax breaks and rebate incentives, to drive forward the alternative energy mission.

Alternative or "green" energy becoming more profitable to investors and would-be employers, and the continued trouble-brewing in the Middle East, Nigeria, and other areas of importance to the oil-driven economy have made it clear to Americans that we are in need of developing new avenues of energy supply and production. Further, allegations that petrochemical processing and usage contribute to global warming are creating a world-populace demand for a switch to alternative forms of energy to decrease damage to the atmosphere.

Viable energy sources currently being developed, that can act as alternatives to mammoth amounts of oil and coal, include biofuels from things like corn, sugar cane, and soybeans, refined hydroelectric technology, natural gas, hydrogen fuel cells, the further building of atomic energy plants, the continued development of solar energy photovoltaic cells, more research into wind-harnessed power.

The most recently developed wind-turbine technologies have brought wind-produced energy which is more cost efficient as well as, typically, more market competitive with conventional energy technologies. Solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, technologies are already implemented in pocket calculators, private property lights, US Coast Guard buoys, and other areas. Because costs are falling, solar cells are becoming more common on the roofs of housing and commercial buildings and building complexes. Their energy efficiency (the ratio of the amount of work needed to cause their energy production versus the actual energy production) is steadily on the rise.

Photovoltaic cells create absolute zero pollution while generating electrical power. However, photovoltaic cells are not presently as cost effective as "utility produced" electricity. "PV" cells are not capable at present of producing industrial-production amounts of electricity.

Alternative energies derived from currents, tidal movement, and temperature differentials are poised to become a new and predominant form of clean energy. Some concerns for such energies have centered around the problems with the deterioration of metals in salt water, marine growth such as barnacles, and violent storms which have been problems in the past. However, these problems, for the most part, have been resolved through the use of different, better materials. Ocean-produced energy has a huge advantage because the timing of ocean currents and waves are well understood and reliable.

Vickie Adair is the senior technical writer at Media A-Team (http://www.mediaateam.com) and also publishes as a freelance writer. She writes for several websites such as http://www.houstonmanufacturers.com, an online directory and news site for the Houston manufacturing community, and http://www.natural-products-directory.com, a directory of online business that sell or manufacture organic and/or natural products.

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