Exxon Mobil conference calls
Posted by Stuart Staniford on February 3, 2007 - 9:04am
As part of a public relations outreach effort to improve their image on climate change, Exxon Mobil invited a half-dozen or so green-shaded bloggers to a conference call with Ken Cohen, their Vice President of Public Affairs. The Oil Drum editors were invited, and I ended up being the one to do it. Here are a few thoughts.
First of all, I should say that I went in deeply dubious about Exxon Mobil, based on their past history of funding Astroturf campaigns to increase the FUD around climate change, not to mention their editorial page peak oil denial ad in the New York Times. However, I think it's good to talk with people one disagrees with, so I thought I'd at least listen to what they have to say. I'm still fairly dubious, but I also appreciate that they have been courteous and willing to sit through a couple of very frank exchanges of views with I and the other bloggers on the call.
We had a first session last Friday, where they went through their message and we got to ask questions. In essence, they are saying that they now agree that climate change is really happening, the debate on the science is over, and the right question now is what is the proper policy response. They didn't propose a specific policy response, even when invited in questions, but said that the "devil is in the details" and discussed in generalities some of the trade-offs with carbon taxes, downstream cap-and-trade, upstream cap-and-trade, etc.
I wasn't too impressed: the debate on global warming policy responses has been going on for over 15 years now, so there has been ample time for a large and sophisticated company to decide what its position should be. Being cynical about PR campaigns, my best guess was that they had simply decided that straightforward obstructionism denying the science was no longer viable, and they were now moving to a new phase of delay and obstructionism about the difficulty of deciding on the best possible policy option.
Still, at least Exxon is saying that there was no real debate on the science that climate change was happening, humans were responsible in significant part, and something ought to be done. That's definitely a good thing. There was considerable discussion about their past funding of climate-change denying groups. Ken was very careful in his wording, but indicated that they had stopped funding at least some of the groups in question, and in particular had stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute (purveyors of the ludicrous "Some call it carbon dioxide, we call it life" ads).
All in all, I wasn't moved enough to want to write about it, and I didn't. You can get a more detailed discussion here or from Environmental Law Prof Blog here.
However, things got a lot more interesting today, following the release of the IPCC 4th Assessment Summary for Policymakers and the breaking of the Guardian story that alleged:
Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
and
The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.
Jesse at Watthead wrote a great note to the ExxonMobil PR people essentially asking them what the ??!*!! was up since they just told us they'd stopped funding groups like that. They promptly scheduled another call with us, and supplied us with two statements: a long one welcoming the IPCC report, and a short one responding to the Guardian allegations. The long statement said lots of reasonable sounding stuff like:
The release of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of Climate Science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an important contribution to the informed debate on the issue of climate change. The IPCC report process is valuable in that it facilitates the sharing of global scientific knowledge and encourages further inquiry on the important issue of climate change.
The Fourth Assessment Report of Climate Science provides a extensive update of scientific understanding regarding Earth's climate. It describes the scientific basis for concern regarding the risk of climate change and attempts for the first time to characterize the probabilities for change.
We look forward to the publication later in the year of reports on Impacts and Adaptation and on Mitigation by IPCC’s other two working groups. As in past IPCC assessments, scientists from ExxonMobil have participated directly as lead authors, as well as in the review process and workshops contributing to the development of AR4.
Climate remains an extraordinarily complex area of scientific study. We are constantly learning and reassessing the science and policy aspects of this important issue, and the company’s views and actions will consider the best information available at the time.
There is increasing evidence that the earth's climate has warmed on average about 0.6 C in the last century. Many global ecosystems, especially the polar areas, are showing signs of warming. CO2 emissions have increased during this same time period - and emissions from fossil fuels and land use changes are one source of these emissions.
Because the risks to society and ecosystems could prove to be significant, it is prudent now to develop and implement strategies that address the risks, keeping in mind the central importance of energy to the economies of the world. This includes putting policies in place that start us on a path to reduce emissions, while understanding the context of managing carbon emissions among other important world priorities, such as economic development, poverty eradication and public health.
But are they saying one thing out of the front of their mouth, and a different thing out of the side? That is, are they funding independent groups to cast doubt on the IPCC report, while claiming themselves to welcome it? They say not:
ExxonMobil has no knowledge regarding the allegations made in the February 2 article by Ian Sample. ExxonMobil does fund AEI for the purpose of promoting active policy debate along with many others including Microsoft, Dell, State Farm, International Paper, Dow Chemical, American Express and others. The AEI is an independent tax exempt organization and questions related to this matter should be directed to them.
I more specifically asked Ken on the call whether in planning for ExxonMobil's public affairs response to the release of the IPCC report, he had had any discussions with any of his PR staff and agencies about using any independent organizations to help manage the news. He said "The answer is no." I asked it a couple of different ways, and he was pretty clear that they hadn't done so. So you have to decide if you believe the word of the VP of Public Affairs at ExxonMobil.
However, they do fund the AEI. He said they fund an array of think-tanks including both right leaning ones like the AEI, and more liberal ones like the Brookings Institute, but weren't, at this point, using them to get out a particular message.
One thing I will say: I don't think Ken was having a good day at all. I think Exxon was somewhat in public-affairs crisis mode - at least minor crisis. They didn't want to be in the news in this way and although he's a polished presenter and handler of the media, I got the distinct feeling he was finding it a herculean job turning around ExxonMobil's public image on climate change, and he was bummed that it was going so badly on this particular Friday.
Despite my doubts, I find that encouraging. Maybe they've already figured it out, but if they haven't, there seems hope that from these painful experiences they will learn this: they cannot have it both ways in this increasingly transparent world. Either they are responsible corporate citizens trying to move the world forward to a better climate policy regime, while protecting the legitimate interests of their shareholders, or they are sneakily sowing dishonesty and doubt via funded proxies.
But not both. Trying to do both is not going to work. A few years of consistent climate good citizenry and vigorously distancing themselves from the likes of the CEI is going to be required to clean up their image. I wish Ken Cohen the best of luck in that task.
Finally, it was off-topic, but I squeezed in a peak-oil question. Specifically I asked, since Exxon was reassuring everyone that peak oil was not a near term problem, what was their rationale for believing OPEC's proved reserve numbers? He said that "We have no basis for doubting the published numbers." I followed up by asking how it could be possible that their reserves could all roughly double in one year with no new discoveries. He said he couldn't answer that. Since I was asking a question somewhat unrelated to the conference call topic I followed up by email with a graph of the reserve data and a repeat of the query to see if I could get a more studied response. I'll let you know if I hear anything.
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
the road to hell is paved with reciprocal altruism. =) Exxon knows this, hence the invitation(s).
Congrats to TOD and Stuart for being recognized as "players" by the big boys at Exxon.
My take; for Exxon the ROI of open climate change denial has become negative, so they won't do it that way anymore. However they still perceive peak oil denial as having a positive ROI and plan to keep it up for awhile longer.
Congratulations on your invite. TOD must be getting noticed by somebody.
They would probably much rather give in on climate than po. Climate means, first, long discussions and hand wringing on what to do, as has barely begun. This will work for avg joe for quite a while, probably years, joe is sensitive about not blowing jobs or taking away suv's. Eventually the move will be to blame somebody else, eg coal, even better chinese coal, etc. A decade at least before something has to happen, certainly before something happens that affects xom's bottom line.
Po, on the other hand, is categorically different. Acknowledging this would roil the markets, not least the large dinsoaurs with declining reserves, seriously affecting the value of executive options. (XOM claims rising reserves, I think alarming SEC because the new bo(e)'s are qatar ng, not very liquid and far from markets, so not particularly transportable or equivalent.) We will see opec in general and sa in particular standing shoulder to shoulder with most of the majors denying peak some time after peak has come and gone. Actually, its more serious for opec; reduced options are not life threatening whereas peak arrival may be the trigger that moves princes and presidents for life into retirement, dead or alive.
Considering the latter, it is easy to understand why sa finds it easy to say what importers want to hear.
Looking at the big picture, we should give credit to those majors who have hinted that maybe oil won't last forever. Majors with ethics! Imagine that.
In the same way the US companies can increase their reserves year over year with little new discoveries and year over year consumption. I've asked this question before: would anyone care about the revisions if they were done over a decade?
Dude. You know that the accounting practices for oil reserves in the US are completely different than those used in OPEC. You also know that the revisions in OPEC numbers were made by individual countries in one year. How much does Exxon pay you to post nonsense? AEI? Conference Board? Business Roundtable? Hoover Institute? API? Seriously.
Conspiracy theories aside, I feel compelled to point out the obvious.
You are absolutely right...
...about accounting practices for oil reserves being different in the US then they are in OPEC countries. In the US, oil firms routinely UNDERESTIMATE the size of a field, as it allows them to defer taxes from the present into the future. Not only this, but having your reserves 'grow' in the future ensures a certain ammount of shareholder confidence in your firm. Not only that, but fields discovered and exploited from the 50s and 60s used very crude tools to estimate field sizes. As we learn more about a field using 4d seismic data and other advanced techniques the reserves in a given field usually increase, but do sometimes decrease.
Now, in OPEC countries, they HAVE no taxes to worry about deferring into the future. They have no shareholders to soothe, and they produce their oil on a production quota. So imagine for a minute that your an OPEC Oil CEO. You know that your field has a lot more oil in it then the American estimate initially stated. You know that your oil production is limited by a quota system based on reserves. You also have past history on thousands of other fields, big and small, that were discovered around the same time and through that data you have a known expected reserve growth ratio.
What do you do?
You immediately inflate the publicly stated reserves of your oil fields to a reasonable level based on similar fields in other regions.
Now your sitting pretty. You have a much larger share of OPEC proven reserves and as such you can pump more oil, sell more oil, and reap more benefits then your competitors. Unfortunately, every OPEC country jumped on this bandwagon within a years time.
Now you may not know this, but US fields today are STILL showing reserve growth. So is the rest of the world. Every year that goes by, we consume 31+ Gb of oil. If our discoveries only total 15 Gb, but our total reserve estimate grew by 30 Gb, that means we had a net increase of 46 Gb. Essentially, you 'discovered' the oil that you consumed that year, then some more based on new knowledge about a field, and then some more again based on discoveries. Even if oil reserves remain flat year over year, and you discovered 15 Gb, you still 'found' another 16 Gb in your old fields.
So once again, I will ask the question that needs to be asked: would we be in uproar about the OPEC figures if they had spread out their growth over a decade?
I highly doubt it.
Proven reserves in Western countries typically grow at a gentle pace until around the time that production peaks, and then they decline along with production. They represent effectively a kind of inventory - the oil that is close enough to being producible that it can be booked as reserves. Thus they are very roughly proportional to production. There's a bunch of graphs here. Since the OPEC country graphs look completely unnatural, we basically have no idea what is going on. We cannot say for sure how much oil is there or not. The issue is that it goes to the integrity of the reporting process; clearly it doesn't have integrity.
However, in answer to your question, there is no other country that I'm aware of where reserves have grown like that without significant ongoing discovery. So I think it would still look odd, though perhaps less odd, if they had spread it out.
Well it must look 'odd' in the US then, because that is exactly what happened here, but over several decades instead of just one.
The total proved reserves in the US have been declining for decades.
Yes, but not as fast as we have been depleting our reserves on a yearly basis. Its roughly half as much.
Sure, but they have not jumped up by 110gb, or jumped up in any way shape or form. Had they done so, it would seem very odd, as it does in Saudi Arabia.
hothgor, a company can defer reserves ( and taxes) into the future but really probably only for a year or so.
you state that techniques for estimating field size , and reserves, have vastly improved from the 60's. well maybe somewhat, but if that is true then can we count on the same reserve growth in the future ? much of reserve estimation is based on decline curve analysis so that hasn't changed since the 60's (although i dont have first hand knowledge of the 60's since i have only been doing this since the '70's)
The only reason for reserves to NOT increase in size as they have in the past is for us to discount all possible technological innovations. Not only that, but a good junk of the oil we find today is still by these same oil companies who routinely under-estimate the size of a field for the above mentioned reasons.
well, inovations may happen and they may not but you are talking about two different things here, technical innovations and political/tax/investor relations .
i can agree with you that most of the reservoir engineers of the 50's and 60's were crew cut and pocket protector wearing, slide rule wielding conservative who didnt want to ever over estimate reserves. they werent worried about being wrong by being too conservative. and i suppose exxon, chevron and bp are still in that mode to some extent.
arent ceo's today more worried about the value of their stock options and thus aren't their suv driving suburb living windows operating compliant reservoir engineers more likely to over rather than under estimate reserves ?
that and i think you are way too impressed with this whiz bang technology, with the exception of computers we are doing things largly as the crew cut wearing ones did.
Hothgor.
Reserves and Reserve growth:
The proof of a pudding is in the eating.
Explain how you square reserve growths against year on year reductions in Flows from specific, countries, regional basins and component fields.
And anyway where are the reserve growths of which you speak?
The lower 48, Alaska, UKCS and Norway have pretty good data for you to work on.
All, it would seem, are suffering reduced flows.
We are talking about the good stuff here: Cheap, easily extracted, light sweet crude.
You know. The stuff that has powered the planet for 60 years. Forget the sub-oil shales, tar sands and ethanol as important components in the Liquids flow levels. For sure, count the high sulpher heavy oils and other sludges that are still found in conventional geological formations and traps etc but need more energy to extract.
I cannot understand why this is such a big conceptual problem.
Maybe kids spend too much time playing on computers and not enough time playing at the sink with different sizes of cups and buckets and water.
The largest force towards reserve growth in the present day comes from economic incentives. It simply was not attractive to recover hydrocarbons from certain fields at the price level we averaged from the late 80s to the early 90s. Today, with oil most likely going to hover between $50 and $70, that allows a much larger range of hydrocarbon utilization, both conventional and unconventional. At some point in the future, the unconventional sources will be the new conventional.
Mooooo!
US Population 1970 213 million (1980 239 million)
US Population 2006 300 million
UP @48%
imported oil 1976 @30%
imported oil 2006 @60%
UP 100%
(not including manufactured imports, and the oil needed to build)
...and I should be excited by reserve growth?
Stuart: Thanks for your time and efforts. You will never know how much you are appreciated.
Rick
Stuart Staniford wrote:
Maybe instead of carefully inspecting the reprobates for signs of reformation, it would be better to just keep the heat on them.
The idea is to make their business shrink, after all. I'm not convinced their co-operation is actually needed or desired.
Nail'em up! Nail'em up!
Hello Asebius,
Your Quote: "The idea is to make their business shrink, after all. I'm not convinced their co-operation is actually needed or desired.
Respectfully disagree. It makes no sense killing the goose, that laid the golden eggs, with ill-considered legislation. The goose is dying on its own for lack of food [gas & oilfields]. Obviously, we need to be extremely careful how often we cook the last batch of eggs.
But the ethical behavior of this big bird sure can be bigtime improved--way too much goosecrap for me. We just need to re-arrange a few feathers, not "Nail'em up! Nail'em up!" See my post below-- you may have even better ideas than mine.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Ethical behavior is not in Exxon's charter. They will do everything in their power to maintain their record profits and if that includes sucking up to a few organizations concerned about global warming, they will do that as part of their overall objective. We thought BP was the exception, but look at all the problems they have had in the last several months.
This isn't about opining whether or not the oil companies have a unique purchase on evil, it is about the nature of corporations and their charters in the modern, industrialized world.
I think the supposition that we live in a world of transparency is rather dubiouis. KSA is no more transparent than it has ever been as a large bulk of the words spewed out on this site are devoted to devining what they plan to do or are planning to do. We still have not gained access to exactly what Cheney was doing with the oil companies early on in the Bush administration, despite numerous law suits. The Bush administration continues to stonewall congress and the media about a whole host of issues, including what they have done to deny global warming.
Perhaps we should not be killing the goose, but we should be putting that goose on a controlled diet and firmly controlling it with a very tight leash. Corporations should be serving the people, not the other way around.
Yes, of course the idea is to make their business, at least the oil part, shrink. We need to reduce the use of all fossil fuels, including oil, and especially oil coming from sources like tar sands or oil shale. Exxon, all the oil companies, and the oil rich countries of the middle east, need to be planning and acting on a future that is beyond petroleum, just like the BP slogan.
The required paradign shift is way overdue. Companies like Exxon have the monetary resouces, if not the intellectual bent, to move not only beyond petroleum, but beyond energy to energy services. Because they refuse to do this, and keep their head in the sand, so to speak, we have bills in congress to do that for them.
Another note on transparency. In a truly transparent world, we would know exactly where and for what purpose Exxon's funds are going. If indeed, AEI is offering up $10,000 to all comers who would like to write a paper debunking global warming, and if indeed they are receiving funds from Exxon, then Exxon should quit funding AEI immediately. Exxon doesn't have to tell its benefactors what to fund. If AEI and the like started doing diatribes againsst the oil companies are started touting policies that were not in Exxon's overall interest, they know they would be losing their funding in a heart beat.
Back to the socalled dying goose. Not yet, by golly. Exxon's recent new record profits would indicate there is a lot of life in the goose yet.
$10,000 to a respected scientist for debunking PO or GW is absolutely bargain basement, if they can get it. Certainly within the requirements of the corporate charter -- a very good use of shareholders' money to increase profits.
On the other hand, spending the same amount of money to get papers describing GW or considering real solutions -- well, that is just shareholder money down the drain. At best, no one will read those papers, at worst, they will contribute to declining profits.
What would you do if you were running a corporation?
By the way, "ethics" has to do with following accepted practice (accepted by one's peers, that is.) It has nothing whatever to do with morality or public benefit.
This increasingly depends on the PR costs of being seen making such offers. Sure, there are people who agree with or just could care less about this kind of 'Wanted:' Poster, but with public perception of energy-co shenanigans, price insecurity and record profits, I'm not sure that this $10k is really capable of helping as much as it is capable of hurting them now.
'The distinction between a patriot and a traitor is a matter of timing'..
- forgot who said this.. Oliver North?
Fouche, head of Bourbon /Napoleons / Bourbon secret police and expert political survivalist , i think.
BTW: $10 grand would buy you one of my geological staff for about a 11 days...
That would not include expenses...
...or VAT.
Hello SS,
Yes, Congrats to you and TOD! I don't envy any PR rep at any FF company--tough buck to earn in a PO + GW climate. Thus, I agree with your assessment that XOM needs to do an immediate about-face with their PR, but also make their corporate policy consistent with their new message.
Basically, I think the FF industry should take an active lead in Peakoil Outreach, thus shifting the focus from themselves to the consumer. Basic message is: we looking for oil as hard as we can, but we are running out-- so you and the consuming industries better conserve as hard as you can, and ramp up the alternatives. Time is limited, but we will do our part if you do your part.
Nobody blames a farmer if drought, pests, and/or floods wrecks his crops. Nobody should blame an oil co. if there are no more oilfields to be found--Such is Life.
To make the XOM corporate policy follow the PR message: stockholders ROI will only equal the DOW ROI, thus any excess above this will be auto-reinvested in Exploration, Alternatives, or Production infrastructure enhancement & maintenance. This indexing should be sufficient to satisfy the stockholders, yet also keep the Govt. from nationalizing or imposing a windfall profits tax. It is the idea of XOM stockholders getting rich at the expense of the public that XOM has to guard against as fuel prices rise. I know, I know-- not very capitalistic--but considering the alternatives of nationalization or excessive profit taxation, it maybe the best compromise for XOM to attain. Essentially, it leaves them free to find the last dregs of postPeak oil & gas, but it is up to the now Peak-aware consumer to shape the downslope tail.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Wow, this is spooky. Myself and several members of Seattle Peak Oil Awareness attended a Shell Town hall discussion in Seattle just recently. President of Shell America, Jon Hofmeister, admitted to the audience that Global Warming was an issue. But when one of his executives was confronted about peak oil, the offical claimed peak oil was irrelevant due to Oil Shale, LNG and Tar Sands. To read further reaction, check this out...
http://www.seattleoil.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=4397#4397
I have a feeling that the big oil majors are in a concerted effort to engage environmental, energy awareness and alternative groups. What are their ulterior motives? It seems they want to convince average Americans that even though the era of cheap oil is over, we can maintain sustainable growth into the future. The massive evidence provided by TOD has to me, proven otherwise.
Back on climate change:
Flannery says: "the arctic ice cap will be gone in the next five to 15 years"
Can anybody here explain to me, what the consequences of this "dramatic" development could be???
That Exxon/Mobil will want to start drilling in the Artic :-(.
In terms of sea levels, my understanding is that if the ice cap itself melts it won't raise the level that much, at least directly. But ice is far more reflective than seawater, so if the ice cap melts, there will be increased warming.
It is the Greenland ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheet that hold vast quantities of water that have the real potential for raising the sea levels by more dramatic amounts.
furthermore, the arctic ice cap is floating, while the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are on the land. The weight of the ice causes the land to subside, and melting of the ice sheets will cause the land to rise when the weight is off-- further raising the global sea level.
My brother-in-law, a glaciologist, has quoted something on the order of a 100-meter sea level rise when all the ice is melted, and the land has all risen without the weight of the overlying ice.
This is not going to happen in anyone's lifetime, but even a meter of sea level rise will cause great distress to coastal cities.
Average sea level rise for the B1 climate scenario is only 0.18-0.38 m. B1 is probably the outcome we should be hoping for because it stabilizes CO2 at about 550 ppm by 2100. At the other end of the spectrum, a rise of 0.26-0.59 metres is associated with the A1F1 scenario, which has CO2 rising past 970 ppm by the end of the century due to aggressive fossil fuel use. Another 0.1-0.2 metres could be added if the loss of ice in Greenland and Antarctica accelerates. To put those numbers in perspective, the IPCC says average sea level rise in the 20th century was 0.17 metres.
It bears repeating that some regions will see more rapid sea level rise, so a metre is not completely out of the question in areas where the land is subsiding, such as the Gulf coast. And of course, it's not the average rise that will cause the most damage the soonest but the flood associated with a storm surge on top of a high tide on top of the average rise.
The IPCC figures exclude dynamic ice sheet responses, which recent events in Greenland and Antarctica suggest are important and very possibly dominant. Thus the IPCC sea level rise numbers exclude large unknowns. The situation is much more uncertain than the range you quote suggests (something that is only clear if one has a secret decoder ring for the footnotes). Presumably by the time the next IPCC rolls around, all will be much clearer. I guess this is ok - it's still going to leave ample time to figure out where to build levees and/or give up on property if rises turn out to be large.
Yes, the IPCC sea level projections are conservative. An alternative view is that sea level could rise 0.5-1.4 metres beyond the 1990 level by 2100. There are big uncertainties about ice growth or loss in Antarctica.
As you say, we have lots of time before a rise like this happens. But we can't go on burning oil and coal as we're doing today without "dangerous" environmental change. The uncertainties are just one more reason to reduce emissions sooner rather than later.
It continues to be unfortunate that many if not most posters discussing climate change do not comprehend the use of temp, sea level, co2 as described with "bands".
The level of confidence lies in the center of the band. It is a ludicrous to use the high band and the low end of the band. Those are one in a million possibilities and are inserted only for those eventualities. It is not helpful to serious discussion to let this practice spread.
Perhaps this graph will help me illustrate:
.
Don't forget contamination of ground water wells by seawater. I'd hate to think how many cities have to rely on wells because they've already polluted adjacent rivers.
Exxon Mobil is a psychopathic corporation that values present-day profits (to the tune of nearly $40 billion this year alone) over the future survival of Homo sapiens on the Earth. One of the reasons why ExxonMobil remains profitable is because the corporation is allowed to leave a mess for someone else to clean up.
What is the value of the Earth's entire coastal developments? If sea levels rise three feet our entire species will lose much more than merely the property value of these lands. If sea levels rise over the next millennia there's a pretty good chance that civilization itself will collapse. If the climate changes drastically there is a very real potential for billions of humans to die horrendously -- What happens on a planet with nine billion inhabitants if there is a severe drought and heat wave which substantially destroys America's crops?
Exxon Mobil doesn't want to be held responsible for the damage that it has caused to the Earth. For that reason the psychopathic corporations has engaged in a sophisticated disinformation campaign that would certainly make the Tabacco corporations proud. Exxon Mobil is still engaged in disinformation today. If they say otherwise they certainly are lying.
Exxon Mobil would much rather protect its revenues, profit margin, and stockholders rather than acknowledge that the fossil fuels industries have all damaged the Earth in a fashion which will make life brutal, hellish and short for future generations of humans. These people care more about their own personal wealth than the survival of their own grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They live in the present moment and could care less about tomorrow.
What is the real price of Exxon Mobil's business and propaganda? Billions of humans will die. Civilization will collapse. Ultimately the Homo sapiens -- the miserable ape -- will go extinct ... so, ultimately, everything works out for the better. Homo sapiens are presently practicing a form of self-extermination. It is just as well: The Earth will become a much better place once humankind is gone.
Thank God for Exxon Mobil. Exxon Mobil's pollution and lies serve to destroy the Earth's most violent, destructive and wasteful primate. In the last six hundred million years, no animal has worked so hard to bring about its own extinction.
Despite my doubts, I find that encouraging.
The world will become a better place without us. Humankind's extinction is a blessing both to Nature and also to the tortured soul of the afflicted primate plague. We could have gone out with a bang using our nuclear bombs but it appears now like our species will go out with a whimper as the Earth becomes progressively more inhospitable to human life. Some day soon -- ten thousand or so years from now -- Nature will begin the work of restoring, repairing and reinvigorating the Earth. Nature will erase all memories of humankind's existence from the Earth's surface. All that will remain of humankind will be fossils in the sedimentary rocks of this era.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
In the scheme of things, Exxon Mobil is actually small-fry as an earth-raping oil company. Try screeching at the Nationals.
Er ... your at a computer terminal... Am I right?
So you are not a Khalahari Bushman or an Ingut Reindeer Herdsman or Inuit?
So... that makes you a part of the problem as well...
Welcome, David, to our predicament...
Mind you, no wonder you are so pissed:
You made your life in Florida.
Global Warming: Every Cloud has a Silver Lining :-)
Drown, baby, drown...
Hello Mudlogger,
A psychopath is a psychopath. Exxon Mobil is a company with blood all over its hands. Very profitable, blood, too. $40 billion dollars is a lot of money earned at the work of destroying the planet.
Yes.
No.
Undoubtedly a part of the problem. I am prepared to sacrifice all of these things (the computer, the automobile, the consumer lifestyle) for the sake of solving the problem. What will Exxon Mobil sacrifice?
Needless to say, there is no burden whatsoever in living in Florida. Florida is a beautiful state and a wonderful place to live. Millions of tourists visit Florida every specifically for this very reason.
Losing Florida probably won't have much of a silver lining because the entire world's coastal developments will likewise be lost to the oceans including port facilities, industries and power plants.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Stuart, Congratulations! Looks like TOD is on someone's map, no?
Wasn't it Exxon/Mobil who bought the patent rights to some new EV battery? I think it was them. I think I saw this in the movie "Who killed the electric car".
If the battery deal is correct, I would futher question thier motives, no nevermind, I question thier motives no matter what. I think they are being "forced" on GW. I think they will have to be forced on PO too.
I don't think anything is being "forced" on them. These folks are the smartest guys in the room.
They know perfectly well how to use the facts of PO and GW to increase short term profits by manipulating public anxiety, and then proposing a "solution" that they will of course, sell for a price.
It's an old marketing device, and it works every time with a gullible public -- PROBLEM/ REACTION/ SOLUTION.
Stop reading TOD and just glue to the tube, and you will be much happier!
It was Chevron (Cobasys), not XOM.
Thanks
And the battery was nickel metal hydride. The Cobasys license forced manufacturers like the Japanese to keep the batteries small. (Nothing so obvious as an outright ban from these clever bastards.) It's hard to turn a lot of small batteries into a weight and space-efficient pack, as the Tesla engineers can tell you. In the late '90s several encouraging Ni-MH prototypes were popping up. The Ni-MH energy to weight ratio doesn't impress me, but there was no incentive to improve that ratio when they were already light enough for small applications and none others were allowed.
In case we were still wondering, now we know the BIG BOYS are reading TOD!
IPCC 2007 report
The Sydney Morning Herald had an article today titled "Race against the clock" in which Dr. Clive Hamilton, director of the Australia Institute, said that the IPCC 2007 report is already out of date:
"The science has changed a lot in the past 12 months and it is all very scary and it does not seem to be reflected in the report"
"Sceptics claim the science is an exaggeration but in fact it is the opposite. The science is very conservative"
The SMH article then reports that leading climate researcher Dr. Barrie Pittock (book: Climate Change, turning up the heat) "says the conservative nature of the scientific profession, the requirement for the panel's many scientists to reach consensus on all of the material in the report, plus a cut-off date early last year for research papers considered by the panel, means the report may not reflect the balance of evidence that seems to be swinging toward a more extreme outcome for the climate"
The Australian public has become very concerned about global warming as a prolonged drought with substantial crop losses is now being linked to climate change.
Shame John Howard doesn't seem to make the link. At least from what we are getting over here.
Congratulations Stuart!
My family has owned stock in the companies that became Exxon for at least 56 years, plus royalties in a couple of their Texas fields. I'd resolved to sell my share of the stock because of their behaviour, but their solicting of your opinion is making me reconsider.
Dave Matthews, who I consider a destructive troll, called Exxon pschopathic. They are not insane, but rather run by a bunch of very conservative Type A personalities. I really deplore giving Lee Raymond the huge severance package, it was against my interest as a stock holder, especially seeing how his funding of the anti-global warming pseudo scientists will very likely bring on a windfall profits tax. I also deplore the funding of GWB by the Alkek's and the Farishes (heirs of the founders of the Humble Co.), they've really hurt our country.
Hm, I recommend to watch the recent investigation panel in the House oversight comm. about the Bush admin censorship of the academia in the global climate change debate. Several scientist are testifying. What's striking are the attitutes of the Republican congress people as they are openly and in quite stupid manner lobbying for their paymasters..
The best example is accusation that Union of Concern Scientist has a 'Vietnam War protest' history and thus can not be trusted etc.
C-Span TV, cca 3 1/2 hours, realvideo:
rtsp://video.c-span.org/15days/e013007_climate.rm
PS One can also witness that the guy who leads the witch hunt has the most beautifull Congress assistant at his disposal I've seen in a long time. Well, as always it's sure much rewarding to be on the evil/dark side..
OMB: troll = person with inconvenient and/or unwanted opinions?
It's not the opinions, it's the way they are expressed.
Hi Leanan,
Thanks. Some suggestions:
www.cnvc.org, www.gordontraining.org, www.newconversations.net, www.baynvc.org
Hello oilmanbob,
Conservative Type-A personalities and psychopathology are compatible. Exxon Mobil is a corporation which is in the business of destroying the environment and generating pollution. Needless to say, Exxon Mobil is not especially concerned about the long-term consequences of its crimes. Exxon Mobil is too busy counting its $billions to bother thinking about the horrendous consequences of its behaviors.
If Exxon Mobil and the other oil corporations were required to clean up their messes oil would certainly become prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately, oil is cheap and humankind will pay a price in blood for the global-scale pollution generated by the fossil fuel industries.
You and your family bear some responsibility for the catastrophe which is fast approaching. I suspect that a day will come in which both money & stocks become just worthless paper. Wealth and profits will evaporate away and humankind will face a struggle for existence on a planet which has become inhospitable to human life.
Such is the price that humankind will pay for the sins of the oil industry.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Dave Matthews,
I agree that American "Capitalism" doesn't reward the artificial entities that we call corporations for good behaviour and having a social conscience. Its a real structural flaw. But this is sociopathic behaviour, not psychopathic. The real flaw is allowing the officers of corporations to escape the consequences of their own behaviour by hiding behind a corporate facade, and rewarding them with incredible riches for this behaviour.
I used this forum to address a couple of the issues that really disturb me at Exxon because I think this forum will be read by some corporate officers at Exxon. Its a way of getting my family's voice heard, possibly in an effective manner.
As far as my family bearing some responsibility for the global warming situation, of course we do, as do all Americans. My sisters and I have tried to hold down our energy usage by driving high mileage cars and by supporting enviromental causes. I work in exploration as a contract landman, so I'm also using my work experience and skills to attempt to moderate the US import problem too. But its discouraging to think my personal efforts have a negligable effect. However, if we all do our part the situation isn't insoluable, just difficult.
I have a problem with anyone using personal attacks, slurs and vulgarity in TOD forums that are probably going to be read by influential people. This is a blog on the internet and there is practicially no censorship of comments, hopefully TPTB will ignore some of the vituperative comments and pay attention to the ones that are well thought out. I particularily resent your attacks on Robert Rapier, he's one of the most fair, decent and honest posters on this site. Sure, he has a perspective based on his life experiences as a chemical engineer. But Robert never looses his temper, makes no secret of his ties to the oil patch and is a hell of a lot more patient than I am.
Most people don't have the education to judge the credibility of our perspectives on the energy and climate, so they judge an argument by how its presenters appear. That's why Fox always have a weird lookig guy represent the "Liberal" perspective, while O'Rielly and Hannity look wholesome (and white). Joe Sixpack and Jane Valium judge arguments by how people look and sound, not by the righteousness of their cause. So, watch how you say something if you want others to take you seriously. And, if you continue to trash our site I hope the editors bar you.
Hello oilmanbob,
American-style capitalism is destroying the Earth and driving Homo sapiens to extinction, a crime which is significantly more evil than even Adolf Hitler's Holocaust. The psychological description of this behavior is less important than the acknowledged existence of this suicidally self-destructive behavior.
Is Exxon Mobil reading this blog? That's great. To the Exxon Mobil executives who are reading The Oil Drum: Get your bloody hands off my planet. Now. If you will not sacrifice your planet-polluting planet-destroying business your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren will suffer an apocalypse which will make St. John's Revelation appear like a day at the beach.
Oil people, oil executives, everyone: What are you willing to sacrifice in order to preserve the lives of your grandchildren and great-grandchildren?
There is another way of phrasing this question: How much profits justify the hellishly inhospitable planet which will exterminate humankind from the Earth? Forty billion dollars might as well be thirty pieces of silver. The oil executives all have blood on their own hands. They bear responsibility for the hell which future generations of humans shall inherit.
The little that you do is good and helpful and beneficial. But if you want to save humankind you will have to sacrifice the oil industry and sacrifice Exxon Mobil. If you are not willing to make these sacrifices you are not willing to save humankind from the sorrows which are fast approaching.
I will begin treating the Oil industry kindly when it ceases handling the Earth like humankind's sewer. These influential people don't impress me, nor do they mean anything at all to me. These criminals are destroying my planet and they will receive the respect which their behavior merits -- which is: no respect at all.
Robert Rapier's a good man. But he isn't a saint. He is in the business of destroying the planet and he is well rewarded for his efforts. We are all guilty, and I include myself among the guilty, but those who are employed by the oil industry cannot possibly speak objectively nor guarantee their honesty. So Robert Rapier is a good man but all of his views expressed here are accorded the same skepticism as I would handle anything else said by the oil industry.
I am not the sort of person who particularly cares about the opinions of Joe Sixpack and Jane Valium. I have spent my life in daily contact with these people and these people must rank as the most entitled, self-indulgent, self-involved people of the world. Americans also hate their own self as much as they hate others. The American public is a lost cause. If these people were wise they never would have destroyed the Earth for the sake of their morbid obesity and insatiable appetites.
The world needs to restrain the obscene excesses of the American people. For that reason I encourage all of the oil-exporting countries of the world to cease exporting oil to America immediately. These countries should leave their oil in the ground for the sake of future generations of humans.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Hi. The poster who called XOM psychopathic may be (consistently!) abraisive and unconstructive in his remarks, but I think the point about XOM being psychopathic has a grain of truth in it. This is not to say that the management are literally psychopaths, but that the legal structure of a corporation is such that making money for the shareholders is the only thing a company is set up to do - in it's corporate charter (See the 2003 movie The Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation ) Now, it is supposed to abide by the law and not use its position to criminally interfere in public policy or the democracy, but that has been shown time and again in the history of corporate governence to be a recurring problem. Corporations are made up of many individuals, tasked with the job of serving the corporate charter. They know exactly how to do this and are rewarded in kind by the management and pay structure. But when it comes to limiting such activities in the name of what are within such a framework easily perceived to be murky 'altruistic' ends, many people find it easier to pass the buck. When the senior management is of the same mindset, corporate crimes happen. And with a company as big, powerful and in a business as vital to civilization (or its undoing) as XOM, you can be sure its crimes may resonate on a geologic scale.
This whole thing with XOM wanting a dialoge with its detractors just shows that they're running scared because they're now realizing the possiblity of getting nailed for their crimes in the same way big tobacco was.
Now, to be constructive: the fact that you're a shareholder means you can persue shareholder activism! THE XOM SHAREHOLDERS WHO KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS NEED TO STAND AND BE COUNTED - AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS! Incidentally, pension funds own a lot of oil stocks. Get some of these public funds on board and you're makin' booya.
Congratulations, Stuart!
My family has owned stock in the predecessors of Exxon and Exxon since 1950, plus royalties in a couple of their Texas fields. They've made us a very nice sum of money, but I'd resolved to sell my shares after my father's estate settles because of their stupid political policies and finance of pseudo-scientists on global warming. I'll reconsider now, but still may sell as in my opinion this holds down the stock value because of the threat of a windfall profits tax, plus is extremely damaging to the USA and the world. The top management has also been looting shareholder value, witness Lee Raymond's preposterous severance package.
I thoroughly resent dmathews troll comments calling Exxon psychopathic. The Exxon Company is full of Type A personalities with a conservative outlook. They are wrong to put money into politics at all in the Company name, but they are not crazy or evil.
Not really all that encouraging. The Bush administration has acknowledged global warming, too, but refuses to do very much about it, including placing caps on it, because it will "hurt our economy" and "send jobs overseas". Exxon will play the same cagey game as the Bush administration, putting forth the idea that technology will save us and all we really need to do is decrease the intensity of greenhouses gases not the overall level.
In fact, I would not be surprised if the Bush administration gets many of its talking points from Exxon and others. Sure. We are addicted to oil, but we will mainly take actions that will maintain that addiction or do very little about it.
Exxon has probably done irreperable damage to the fight against global warming all these years. They should not get a free pass or any pass for that matter. Let's start by taxing the hell out of them and using that money for true alternatives to oil, including conservation.
Their PR move is at least a decade too late and several billion dollars short.
Quite clearly the genie is out of the bottle. The first one is free-- that genie did so much work for us for a while, and there didn't seem to be any payback. Now the world is addicted to oil -- even the U.S. president said it, and he would seem to know a thing or two about addiction.
There may be some of us who delude ourselves into believing we are not part of this -- we are so *modest* in our use of energy, and we *deplore* the way the the US Army is used to get us more oil -- but no matter. We are among the addicted, or at least joined at the hip with the addicted.
Every last scrap of recoverable hydrocarbon will be sought. The earth will be scoured and defiled. CH-heads will be wandering the streets in a daze in the post MadMax world, looking for that last fix, like a nicotine addict picking cigarette stubs out of the gutter.
The McCuistion program, on PBS, recorded a Peak Oil Debate in August, 2006, which was broadcast on 9/17/06.
You can watch it at this link, scroll down to Program #1519: http://www.frtv.org/programs.html
Regarding Peak Oil, it was basically me against Michael Lynch and ExxonMobil. Scott Nauman represented ExxonMobil. FYI--In the green room before the debate, I could not even get Scott to admit that Cantarell was in terminal decline.
These guys very closely follow the Peak Oil debate. On the way out, after the taping, I tried to give Scott my card, with the Energy Bulletin link on it. Scott said he didn't need it. He said that they had read every single one of my articles on the Energy Bulletin.
My opinion for some time is that ExxonMobil is a bigger threat to the US Oil & Gas industry than Nancy Pelosi, et al, because ExxonMobil is promising trillions and trillions of barrels of remaining conventional and non-conventional oil reserves.
In a twisted sort of way, American consumers are kind of acting rationally (in going into debt to support their SUV's and large suburban mortgages), because ExxonMobil is promising abundant energy supplies. Why go through the hassle and expense of downsizing when lower food and energy prices are right around the corner? When the oil and gas industry can't deliver abundant energy supplies, American voters (and politicians) are going to be in a vindictive mood.
Jeffrey Brown
I wonder if perhaps big oil should be systematically and officially demonized now with the idea being that the American people need somebody to blame. Making people feel bad about their lifestyles is a noxious business, and in a feel-good society not likely to be productive. So put the blame on the oil companies.
Tobacco companies gave us cancer, food companies made us fat, oil companies made us energy gluttons and mislead us on global warming and peak oil.
This makes taxing and regulating big oil politically easier.
Any action taken against the oil companies -- including possible nationalization -- would likely lead to decreased production which is exactly what we want: premature peak in oil leading to a longer tail on the downslope.
The crimes of the oil companies are global warming, energy gluttony and peak oil. They must be punished.
[I'm framing all this in simplistic terms of good and evil which I find personally ridiculous. But it how the public thinks and it is highly effective.]
Of course, the US peaked long ago, but the idea is to keep as much oil in the ground as possible.
Thanks for the link. At the end of the first video segment M.Lynch is on the phone from Tokio claiming we have 8-12trillion barrels in conventional oil, 3x more than the Exxon guy mentioned (uncoventional) before him?
So, is Lynch playing it as being lunatic to avoid jailtime in few years time? That's the only sane conclusion at the moment..
Lynch in effect pays homage to the late Julian Simon who once claimed that the earth could support 9 trillion human beings.
For those here who don't know him, Michael Lynch has been the Peakist fraternities worst nightmare. Ten years ago, when Peak Date and Peak Rate forecasts abounded in earnest, a bold graph was compiled preserving the predictions of five of the six main players for posterity. Invanhoe was missing. That graph and one i have found for Ivanhoe are at our website.
To make a short story long, Lynch remains the shining star. In 1996 he predicted that 2006 production would be 84-mbd (in actuality it was 85) while others were as low as 64-mbd.
Momentarily, our first 2007 version of the TrendLines Depletion Scenarios will be distributed. Because they have not been invalidated completely, the Lynch and Bakhtiari projections are introduced ... along with the Saudi Aramco Outlook.
Why not discuss the shining star's (SS) NA ng price predictions, made around 2000/1, just as NA ng peaked? In case you have forgotten, SS forecast ng around $2/mcf for years to come... in the event, prices were 3-7x higher, and only two very warm winters in a row have prevented prices at least 10x higher. It was these price predicitons that helped power the surge in ng electrical generation plant construction, and thereby bringing about more demand today than otherwise.
Then, while you're at it, why not also mention SS crude price predictions, say from 05-10? And, why not discuss eia/iea price predictions, made c2000? Most people are far more interested in price than esoteric supply values.
As an aside, far too low price predictions are exactly what xom/opec/sa want to see for all hydrocarbons, meaning that the false predicitons have been serving cera's paymasters very well. TOD posters have consistently warned that prices are likely to be much higher, and that consumers should accordingly plan now to reduce consumption as soon as possible. Where are you on this issue? Are you suggesting all is well, buy that hummer you've always wanted, might as well super size it?
That's actually an easy one, J. When being chased by a grizzly up here in the Yukon, u don't have to be an olympic rated runner. U just have to be faster than the blokes with ya!
Same in the forecast biz: you only have to have better predictions than your competition. Like in many sports, incl the SuperBowl, often it is he who makes the least mistakes that takes the Prize. There will be turnovers today. The team that makes the least of them will likely fare better.
Yes, ML has been wrong. Yes, i was likely wrong once (but i can't remember when!).
But using for example your nat'l gas episode, while he (and i) may have been slightly wrong, the other recognized forecasts were truly bombs. A 450-Bcf trough. No pressure. Massive Subdivision explosions. Sustained prices in the $20 to $45 price band. There were only very few of us that foresaw that spiking would be temporary as substitution and demand destruction worked thru the marketplace.
This is btw an excellent prelude to Peak Oil. The doomsters were very wrong about the catastrophies surrounding nat'l gas shortages. And Californian electricity. They do not understand market adjustments and time spans.
Revisionists are busy at work. Fortunately, the WWWeb and its archives provides us with Reality Checks to ground them...
Hello WT,
Your Quote: "My opinion for some time is that ExxonMobil is a bigger threat to the US Oil & Gas industry than Nancy Pelosi, et al, because ExxonMobil is promising trillions and trillions of barrels of remaining conventional and non-conventional oil reserves."
I profoundly agree. The FF industry really needs to do a 180 degree PR turn, become a leader in Peakoil Outreach, and clearly explain the 'Tragedy of the Commons' to the public. Otherwise, the scapegoating and punitive legislation will whipsaw these businesses preventing efficient safety, maintenance, training, research, E & P, environmetal compliance, accurate auditing... on and on....the IOCs will be worse than PEMEX just when we need them to function as best as possible with FF amounts and EROEI plunging.
In short: we got no choice but to very carefully ride this detritus horse till it finally drops hoping the biosolar alternatives ramp up sufficiently. A properly informed public won't act like the Bangladeshis did recently when they had a prolonged blackout--burning and looting electricity infrastructure. Did they really think that this mob action would bring the juice back sooner and cheaper?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
JB,
Would you mind joining in me wearing your tinfoil hat for a moment? Oh, I know you keep stored away for when need be unlike yours truly who has a double layered version ready at a moment's notice. . . Anyways, once you have it strapped on, join me in contemplating the following:
I wonder if "THEY" have dossiers on "US"? On the one hand I look around my humble apartment here and think the idea of monitoring somebody like me is laughable. I suspect you and the rest of the TOD overlords feel the same way. On the other hand . . . when I get the tinfoil hat in place, I get to thinking . . .
To illustrate I think it's pretty obvious the folks on TOD are interested in debating policy more. So XOM's strategy is to invite them to debate policy, give 'em what they want, and inevitably/slowy you tame your critics. The process is impossible to avoid due to reciprocal altruism which all humans are wired to engage in. So if you comment on oil issues and you have the choice to kick one of the following asses:
Exxon
Shell
Saudi Aramco
Occidental Pet.
Well the nice folks at Exxon have invited you to policy debates so you sort of unconsiously decide to kick the ass of Shell or SA or OP. To illustrate: let's say Exxon invites me to Houston for a weekend of some conference and the thing just happens to be filled with buxom Texas vixens, free-flowing booze, and lots of sports gambling. (hey let me have my fantasy) Now when I get back here to Santa Rosa, I'm probably going to still criticize XOM but not with quite the same virulence or frequency as I would have before. Heck the entire XOM board of directors could be caught up in some wild Republican sex scandal and would I be posting about it on LATOC? Hell no! After all, I do want to get invited to the next big event myself.
I posit their strategy is to tempt TOD editors with opportunities to engage in policy debates in the way they would have to tempt me with the above described scenario. Naturally energy bloggers want to get invited to the next high-minded, top-level policy debate in much the same way I want to get invited to the big party with the high class hookers and top-shelf booze and if the folks handing out the invitations are from Exxon it only makes sense that folks are going to throttle back or temper their criticism a bit. (Actually, it's inevitable due to reciprocal altruism. In fact, only a sociopath would not throttle the criticism back a bit - even if unconscous and not intentional - after being treated nice. It's just the way we are)
All right, tinfoil hat off.
I did find it slightly disquieting that pretty senior guys with ExxonMobil had read every single article that I wrote and cowrote on the Energy Bulletin.
The story line that we are seeing, and that we will continue to see, is that ExxonMobil needs all of its cash flow to convert trillions and trillions of barrels of reserves to production.
Since I am in the industry, I actually have some sympathy for ExxonMobil's position regarding cash flow, but the critical mistake I think that they are making is in vastly overpromising how much oil can be produced.
Imagine that you are an above average income Joe with $50,000 in credit card debt, three SUV payments and a five bedroom $500,000 suburban mortgage, with three teenagers, all of whom want their own SUV's.
You wonder if you should downsize, but you decide to keep up with the other prospective bankruptcy cases up and down the street, because ExxonMobil says we have plenty of oil.
Do you think that our above average Joe is going to be a happy camper when his lenders force him to downsize by foreclosing on the mortgage and repossessing the SUV's?
Today they're reading your articles and monitoring your postings, tomorrow comes the RFID tracking chip jammed up your ass after they slip a mickey into your drink! Then before you know you'll bet getting an electric shock every time you start to say something bad about XOM and then come the voices beamed into your head. Watch your back Jeff!
It's about time for our buddy Hothgor to jump in.
Speaking of Hothgor, I did find it interesting that he appeared on the scene, apparently with yours truly in his crosshairs, about one week after the McCuistion Peak Oil program was shown in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
To be completely accurate, I think that I was Hothgor's tactical target. I still think that his strategic goal is to drive people away from TOD.
IMO, we might be seeing a similar effort regarding Robert and TOD, because of Robert's position on ethanol.
MOOOOOO
Jeff,
I haven't been keeping up to date with the proxy wars being waged here at TOD. From the context of your post I take it "Hothgar" you suspect to be an oil-industry troll?
He does seem to appear every time WT posts something, and selectively targets his postings for attack. His computer must alert him every time there's a new WT post.
Dear westexas,
I would (possibly) understood You if You would suggest some lack of personal skills on Hothgor side, but this (second AFAIK) thick hint on some conspiracy against this site?
This site is definitely not so important yet.
''This site is definitely not so important yet.''
You are correct, but some contributors ARE
ruffling feathers and are becoming 'Names'.
Paid Troll I strenously disagree. Westexas is now constantly on the defensive rather than posting new data in context of old data and predictions.
TOD has gone from a bunch of people collectively investigating Peak oil using data sets and discussion to something else. The early days of this site were not about winning an argument, having the best comeback, or using any variaty of debating techniques to change the subject.
The goal was (and still is) to look at all available data. Use robust analysis to determine how trustworthy a specific data set is. Compare this to official public statements. Deduce and forecast the impact of this data on liquid fuel supply. Repeat this process over time to determine trend lines of Liquid FF supply and who's data is most accurate.
As part of this process all legitimate scientific questions and concepts were solicited. The goal was to seek the truth about the liquid fuel supply and reserves. All people were welcome, not just oil insiders, so that the problem could be rigorously examined and discussed from all points of view. But always with the point of searching for the truth about oil supply and the impact of Peak oil on humanity. A big part of discussions was what solutions could realistically be put into practice if the peak is sooner rather than later.
I have talked to no PhD scientist (I am a research scientist and live in a college town, so this is a large number) who doesn't believe that oil will peak. The only debate is when. TOD was set up specifically to chase this question and 2 years ago it was an open question.
After 2 years TOD has focused a laser on the data behind the projections of peak oil. The statements that PO is 15,20,25 years away are starting to look a little far fetched at best. The people who make these statements notice that TOD is refuting their position and they don't like it. TOD is a threat to these people. Specifically it is a thread to their jobs and 6 or 7 figure salaries.
I am old enough to have been teaching Global warming in a University class in 1987. That is 20 years ago. Believe me no one outside the scientific community gave GW any credibility outside of Universities or scientific community. The Reagan administration actively attacked the researchers in that field, and made stupid propaganda statements like trees polluting more than cars. (Look it up, Reagan said it in a speech).
I am seeing the same kind of non scientific statements posted on TOD lately. They aren't just wrong statements. They are purposefully misinterpreted or misconstrued scientific concepts in an attempt to muddy the debate or confuse people. This is not a pusuit of the science of energy extraction and delivery. It is an attempt to convince people of a point of view without clearcut data to support that position. It is not a search for truth. It is a desire to convince others a specific reality.
I don't post much anymore because the substance of the data hasn't changes much in 2 years. The core problems of Mexico, SA, Russia, and Africa are unfolding as posters on TOD predicted months, now years ago. I have better things to do than get in written shouting matches with people who will not adhere to the KISS method of scientific conclusions. KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid and should always be used to choose between competing Hypotheses. The simplest hypothesis is usually the more accurate.
The most outspoken and least respectful posters don't adhere to this concept on this site now. It doesn't matter if these posters are paid trolls or faithful followers of non-scientific belief systems. They undermine scientific debate with their statements. TOD can be diminished in its impact if these methods are allowed to predominate and drown out the good science discussions.
I am convinced that is in the interest of the entrenched oil industry and conservative money interests that rely on them for income. It is hard for new readers (and posters) that come to TOD to determine who has credibity anymore. It is all just he said she said. And that's to bad because Prof G had a geat idea when he set this thing up.
NC,
You raise an issue that has plagued me about many posts for the last month or so - and that is the morality of intentional obfuscation or simply trolling to stir the pot.
We aren't discussing childish issues. Rather, we are discussing matters that could result in people's death or the loss of all that they have.
When TOD was sort of a technorati blog, these excursions probably didn't matter. That is no longer the case as TOD has gained credibility. Today, anyone unfamiliar with previous debates/discussions and posters who views the posts here is likely to leave with the impression that most issues are still in debate when that really isn't the case. Call it the global heating syndrome of disinformation.
I would note that there is a difference between honestly debating a topic and simply googling to post some references. No one has time to reveiw every reference much less dig into the qualifications of the writer of the article. It comes down to the veracity of the poster, that is, can you trust the poster to be honest. That is no longer the case.
TPTB here, Guys and Gals, you have to come to grips with this.
Todd
I agree especially with reference to Hothgor. From him I see alot of "smoke and mirrors". Pointing back at the original poster(ussually in an ill-mannered fashion) and changing the topic like his first post above.
At first I thought he should be banned, then I thought he was comic relief, now I'm back to banning him.
IMO he is not a benifit to this site. There are a few people who do not completely agree with WT and have better knowedge and manners- so to me he could be removed and we would still get a rounded debate.
To the free speach folks- This isn't a public forumn. I, we and you get to post as guests to the owners of this site. Hothgor would still have "freedom of speech" on some other site. No one is stopping him from starting his own.
The time and effort to respond to him must be a distraction to the main posters. Time that might be better spent doing research for us to read???
I was planting trees today thinking about Freddy and his posts from the last few days where he was talking about oil production in 2107 and 2070. I started to wonder WTF? We are looking at declines in the UK and now mexico NOW and that is a hell of a lot closer than 2070 and why would you even bring it up? Trying to distract people? Just like Hothgor's increasing reserves - imo.
If tptb believe the story about $10,000.00 for rebuttals to GW then why think there aren't a few of "them" here as well? I think you can send Hothgor(+2) to the ash heap and have a better site. IMO he is abrasive, inflamitory, and I have watched RR(?) have to call him an outright liar. How much is enough?
my .02 worth.
NC...excellent essay on the state of TOD. It is sad, but I would have to say to some degree, this "influence" has succeeded in befuddling an otherwise content community for so many years.
This site really needs an ignore button like what yahoo has on its message boards. What could be better? Nobody is expelled or shouted down... if most want to hear what somebody says, they hear it, and if most don't, they don't. Those mostly ignored will have just a few similar types to talk to... minimal response will probably bore them, and they will leave. In theory, you don't really need a button, I ignore a few posters -no doubt some ignore me - but others find it difficult and get involved.
I agree totally with NC.
I have only been around 25 or so weeks as a member. I was lurking long before that. I have seen the quality of this site steeply diminish.
There are three primes posters on this site now who appear to be here for the express purpose of reducing said quality. They each have a different venue. One(IP) claiming degrees in Physics tries it via a murky scientific based debate. Another(dm)uses halfbaked religious/metaphysical means to destroy viable threads. The last(hothgar) uses a kiddie,sarcastic technique.
Together they have been sucessful. Each sometimes feeds and reinforces the other but are careful to not give away the deal by not making it too obvious.
They are winning.
I have been intent upon diminishing the posts I make and have gone back and even deleted some because they have been sucessful it creating disgust and contempt in my outlook.
I have no scientific background but only give my views on the past, farming and political issues. I do not jump into the middle of the technical details of PO or GW. They have no qualms themselves however.
I hope that the owners clearly see the how well the disruption tactics have been. I hope that the members will not allow it to continue.
airdale
:counts his troll money:
Nope, definitely not so important yet.
:laughs:
BTW WT, I plan on driving down to Houston sometime this month. There is apparently going to be an energy conference talking about production data, peak oil, alternatives and the electrification of the auto fleet. I plan on meeting up with a friend who very rarely posts here.
If you have the time, I would absolutely love to have you tag along, as I'm sure you could provide some excellent counterpoints to the various points they address. Specifically, from what I have heard, its a conference on why Peak Oil wont happen in the next 10-15 years. I'm a firm believer in a balanced debate, and I think I'd have some fun picking away at some of their theories with you. Afterwards, we can go out and grab a beer before parting ways.
You all can consider this an open invitation. If you are interested, I'll try to find the specifics of whats going on and when its going to happen. Perhaps that way, I can address all the 'paid troll' comments directed at me :) Drop me an email if your interested:
Brandon_Stringer [at ] baylor [dot] edu.
Jeffery,
Like I said, watch your back! This guy invites you out for a drink and you being the accomodating gentleman you are agree and next thing you know you've been slipped a mickey and find yourself awakening on Lee Raymond's Island of Doom.
Your kidding me right?
Wacko.
You want to dance with The Chimp Who Can Drive formerly known as The Alpha Male Prophet of Doom?
Are you honestly suggesting that I was inviting WT to meet up at an energy conference because I wanted to off him, or were you just be silly?
I received an invitation also. It had no indication that anyone I knew (from TOD or otherwise) was being invited, and I found this rather suspicious. It also came from one "Wescott, David" rather than an XOM address. Had I known that others from TOD had received similar invitations, I would have felt better about it.
We are most certainly being watched. This means two things:
It's times like this that I am happy I'm just a pseudonym on the 'net.
XOM's problem is that their real capital is in expertise, not numbers in a bank. Their capital is very specific to oil. If they want to get into a general energy business, they have to start behind many of the other players out there (though they may be able to buy some of the IP and hire its creators). The first oil company to cannibalize the oil business may come out on top in the end, but it's going to be a losing proposition for years.
XOM's problem is that their real capital is in expertise, not numbers in a bank. Their capital is very specific to oil
You hit in on the head. They have amassed massive assets in terms of extracting oil. They need as much access to oil as possible in order to capitalize on those assets.
The game has 2 prongs:
1) Tell people there is concern over energy supplies
2) Tell people that there is no need to panic because if 'the people' gives XOM access to all the oil, then energy problems will be solved.
They have built a system for turning oil into profit. They want to maximize profit, therefor they want to maximize the amount of oil they extract.
They fear global warming because they think it may interfere with getting authorization to extract oil.
I think you are undoubtedly correct, but I think it goes both ways. If senior execs at Exxon are talking to green-tinged bloggers, it is changing the contents of their minds as well as changing the contents of ours. Not necessarily quickly, in either case....
That's kind of the point of dialogue, really....
SS: "That's kind of the point of dialogue, really...."
There is much truth in these words, Stuart. I have little patience for those with little knowledge but lots to say at TOD (and other venues). Because discussion with blowhards is based on rhetoric and anecdotal tales rather than facts, the debate deteriorated into emotional and subjective substance.
As part of playing dirty, i have found myself ridiculing certain modelers as an attempt to debase the credibility of an opponent. The higher the inflammatory sniping, the higher degree of rude and abusive comments i would fling back about their idols.
This has had blowback over the years as eventually i come into contact with the modelers. It is quite awkward. On the WWWeb it is easy to throw stones as one rarely fears consequences due to the anonymity and/or lack of likelihood of meeting.
My postings and website are not anonymous and hence my comments possess some "trickle down". Recently i have taken glee in publicly ripping apart Bakhtiari and his WOCAP-2003 model. Because this Model represents the last vestige of hope for the Peakist fraternity now that the other Peak Oil Modelers have upward revised their Declines to post 2010, it was enjoyable to watch them attempt to defend the Model with the weakest methodology and professionalism.
Then i got an email from Samsam. No doubt he was aware of my vicious attack, but he was courteous and cordial. We traded many emails and while he provided nothing of substance that affected my opinion of his work, his gentlemanly manner caused me to pause and reflect about my own methodology and practices.
To his utter shock i'm sure, i advised him that i was including WOCAP in my next version update. He had not asked for this. And he knows that i think WOCAP is a piece of sh*t. But i realized that in my bias towards a later and higher Peak, i had dismissed his Model prematurely.
It is out 4-mbd as an All Liquids forecast in his first (2004) and succeeding years. But it occured to me that should concensus be in error or should geopolitical events bring about a pre 2010 Peak, the only Model representing that view was absent. Looking back upon that eventuality from a post peak perspective, it would be evident that WOCAP's failings of accuracy wrt Peak Rate are far outweighed in retrospect by its call of an early Peak. Thus it is really not invalidated at this point in time.
My point is that civil discourse and minimum tolerance of subjective material is more likely to lead to a "meeting of the minds" that is so very fundamental to contract law. On Meet the Press today, Edwards discussed the need for collaboration with Iran and Syria in assisting with the ME conflict. In Canada we have a socialist Party that wishes to engage dialoque with the Taliban in Afghanistan as our body bag tally rises.
It is far easier to dismiss such outreach and continue the polarized debates on most topics. The other side is always deemed the Enemy with Darth Vader qualities. I am not an Edwards fan, but he suggested that we need "better Leadership and less Politicians". I agree. On many issues this could have amazing ramifications.
Many here at TOD are American bashers. Most are american. Most hate George Bush. Most hate ExxomMobil. But who is the Gov't? And who is ExxonMobil. In Canada we came to a realization a decade ago that big Gov't and the big Banks are "US". Thru our pension funds and other investments, we own the Banks. We are the shareholders. And as shareholders we can affect Change. And re-elect different politicians.
But getting back to your conference call, Stuart. From my recent experiences, this type of outreach is a good thing and can only lead to good will and sharing of perspective. The nuances will be subtle and i am confident that over time u will find that u your greatest frustration will not in fact be your dealing with ExxonMobil or other "enemies", it will be in the difficult task of passing on newly learned enlightenments on the TOD masses that will hail you with hostility for joining "the dark side".
"cuz in the end, many here just want to throw crunched up popcans from the cheapie seats. Their glee seems to be the delight in having a soapbox for their hate, jealousies and desire to "reform" our consumption society ... and not at all in sharing ideas and promoting some of our "do-able" solutions. It is time for many of the idealists to reconcile the realities of passing good legislation and the means to getting there.
I applaud your efforts.
Hello Freddy,
Here is a fundamental difference between Americans and the subservient Canadians:
ExxonMobil is not "us" nor is this corrupt government "us". Americans still possess freedom and democracy and free speech. We can loudly proclaim our opposition to & disgust for George W. Bush and his militaristic pro-consumer pro-pollution pro-corporation policies.
Americans have a responsibility to look at the Earth from a perspective which is not strictly nationalistic. The problems which are impacting the globe involve 6.5 billion humans. If the United States of America bears some responsibility the American people have every right to criticize the morbidly obese culture which threatens the future of all life on this globe.
Americans have a responsibility to look at warfare from the perspective of those who are suffering horrendous losses because of the bombs & bullets which our tax dollars purchase. The Iraqi people are just as worthy of life as American citizens. Killing the children of Iraq is not a patriotic act. Nor is it an act of self-defense. It is just murder on behalf of America's addiction.
Americans have a responsibility to change the government when necessary. Unfortunately, the Republicans and the Democrats are almost identical in their support of corporations that profit from pollution and violence. They are also universally in support for the American culture which makes a god out of consumerism and considers an insatiable appetite for consumer products a patriotic duty.
Given that this is the case, it is evident that "changing the government" involves more than merely electing Democrats into office (which I have already done with my votes in the most recent election, and will do so again in the next election). Americans who realize that there is a major problem in this world (and that this problem is The United States of America) must speak out against the culture of greed & gluttony which is destroying the world and engaged in a futile, bloody war.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Thank you for this admission of your lies, ad hominem attacks, and other underhanded, unprofessional, and generally rude behavior.
Everything you ever say from this point forward needs to be taken in context with the above admission as food for thought. Anyone who deals with you needs to remember this admission as well each time you say anything at all. And you need to remember that this is precisely why so many of us find you to be a disgusting subhuman thug.
Note 70% of Americans at the last opinion poll think George Bush is a bad president (unfavourable rating of him).
As low as any president in modern polling history (Richard Nixon was at 68% when he resigned).
So these Bush-bashing ferreners are in good company with the American people.
It will be interesting to see his rating after he bombs Iran.
WT, I've heard you mention this show many times in the past, but I actually watched it for the first time. My first impression is that that you were somewhat ganged up by the panel, however, you held up your points admirably nevertheless.
My jaws just about dropped when I heard Michael Lynch mention 8-10 trillion barrels of in place reserves. The man has zero credibility in my mind and I guess he still believes in the tooth fairy and Santa Clause.
Given, recent events with Cantrelle and lower production numbers from sa you may have the last laugh after all.
Keep up the good work pounding your very valid points about declining production from the 4 supergiant fields and ELP. Time is bearing out the truth and you're looking better every day.
I can just about hear ML and CERA's sphincters shut tight with Friday's crude closing prices.
One of the really ironic things about the debate was that Lynch used the example of a region in terminal decline--the UK--to refute the Peak Oil argument. He was using the UK as an example of a region where HL didn't work. I tried to rebut this point, but the host wanted to move on (the early UK data produced a P/Q intercept of about 30%, which is wildly improbable).
WT, there appears to be a collective denial about the fact that over and over again HL has worked as relatively accurate model to predict declines once hitting the ~50% Qt of URR (ie, North Sea,lower 48,Cantrelle, Russia,etc.) Agreed, accuracy may be plus minus a few years or even a decade, but the point is that fields do peak regardless of region and whether old or recent technology has been applied. And the fact that declines are well exceeding new discovery.
This is rather a simple concept which does not seem to compute in the minds of these so called experts. Their cock sure confidence in unconventional oil and technology is wholly misplaced and will bite them in their collective asses when the realization sets in that we're in permanent declines in total global production.
It was also ironic that the Exxon Mobile guy cited specific examples of advances in deep sea, and horizontal drilling technology which only confirmed in my mind of how desperate and how far we're willing to go to get that precious crude. This was not comforting revelation to anyone which was his intent in mentioning this.
If and when SA recent production declines are confirmed to be not voluntary GW will look like a minor inconvenience when peak oil arrives in earnest.
Again, keep up the good work in spreading the word!
Scott Nauman, with ExxonMobil, pointed out that they could hit targets, with a drillbit, that are more or less the size of the television studio. An interesting question is why they have to hit geological objectives that small. . .
In regard to the HL point, what is a little mystifying to me are the constant attacks on the Hubbert/HL methods, even as the crude oil production data in various areas are supporting various predictions, to-wit:
Hubbert predicted that the Lower 48 would peak between 1966 and 1971, and the Lower 48 peaked in 1970.
Deffeyes predicted a world crude oil production peak between 2004-2008, most likely for 2005, and world crude oil production is down in 2006 (EIA).
I predicted that 2006 was the most likely year for Saudi crude production to start falling, and Saudi crude production is down.
Khebab predicted a decline in Mexican crude production in the 2006/2007 time frame, and he is certainly correct.
So, I just wonder why all the constant attacks on the HL method, even as the latest production data support the method? I have suggested that the HL critics get back to me when they have evidence of the world, Saudi Arabia and/or Mexico showing crude + condensate production higher than their 2005 peaks.
W: "Hubbert predicted that the Lower 48 would peak between 1966 and 1971, and the Lower 48 peaked in 1970."
Why do u keep bringing this up as substantiation for your scammy proposal? As mentioned in another thread, in a '71 Scientific Amercian article, M King Hubbert admitted he was in a fog. He proposed that the Lower48 Peak occured on Jan 1st 1967.
In retrospect it was a year after the Peak, yet he clearly did not know it and thought it had happened in four years earlier.
Your references are just plain silly and every one of Hubbert's efforts has a high margin of error. Please don't use Hubbert's work as verification of your chance for success. He has never claimed that Linearization has any degree of accuracy. It is plainly a very rough guide. Please stop misleading the members and visitors to our forum.
************************************
From yesterday's thread (http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2246#comment-156401):
As i have pointed out to u over the last ten days with precise references, M King Hubbert's miscalculations (from 1956 to 1976 include:
a) a three-fold error in global URR
b) a ten year error in Texas Peak Date
c) a four year error in Lower 48 Peak Date
d) a three-fold error in global Peak Rate
e) an eleven year error in global Peak Date (thus far & counting)
But we still have a chance to see his 1974 forecast of a "110-mbd Peak Rate for global supply" come to fruition for some partial redemption!
And last but not least, Colin Campbell found in 2003 that only 8 of 51 nations have a normalized linearization.
Jeffrey Brown (aka WestTexas), please tell me that all your cards are not riding on this record and methodology ...
Freddy,
As I said, get back to me when you have evidence that either the world, Saudi Arabia or Mexico have exceeded their May, 2005 crude + condensate production numbers (EIA).
So far, Deffeyes is right. So far, I am right. And so far, Khebab is right. I'm sorry if that upsets your world view, but some times you--and I if I am later proven wrong--have to deal with reality.
Until we are proven wrong, what's the point of continuing to argue?
You are not right. I doubt very seriously that peak oil has simply slipped by the entire planet unnoticed by all except a few academics out to make a buck. And if it really has passed 2 years ago, it just shows the entire thing to be a non-issue. Yet you continue to state that is has happened, when I have routinely pointed out that there were 7 other of these 'peaks' in the past 25+ years.
Until you are proved right, what's the point of continuing to argue?
I know I said I would not reply but WTF?
"it just shows the entire thing to be a non-issue."
a non-issue?
Editors- If this is a non-issue then you should have a non-site. Does it really serve your interests having Hothgor here? I think he is too abrasive and drives people away. Could you ban this guy? Your call.
You know, I think that is like your 15th time you've publicly stated that you were not going to reply to my posts any more, yet you did. :laughs: You and Ron are really quite the pair in that regard.
My amusement aside, I do not think that PO is going to be a big issue in world events. I firmly believe that we have the resourcefulness, the ability, and the will to develop viable alternatives and sufficiently modify our lifestyles to make it a non-issue. In every other energy switch, we came through virtually unscratched. There is no evidence thus far to suggest that this will be any different. When you look at the bigger picture and realize that 75% of our FF usage is just for transportation, that really helps put things into context.
Tell me DelusionaL, how long do you think it would take us to 'peak' if we were using only 22 mbd instead of 86?
Its strange that the ones making things out to be all doom and gloom also make this the largest issue, while those who are optimist usually take a wait and see approach.
Growing any new gray hairs there, DelusionaL?
"You know, I think that is like your 15th time you've publicly stated that you were not going to reply to my posts any more"
That is an outright lie.
"In every other energy switch, we came through virtually unscratched. There is no evidence thus far to suggest that this will be any different."
LAUGHTER Wow! Thanks for the slow pitch. GET REAL!. Wood to coal, coal to oil. Up the ladder always! Higher quality and highest convience. Of course the reverse will be easier with the population we have today. Good grief, I actually feel stupid replying to your stupid rationalizations...
The saying "My father road a camel, I drive a car, my son flys a jet, his son will ride a camel" Let me guess your father owns a stable, so you can ride a horse.
"Tell me DelusionaL, how long do you think it would take us to 'peak' if we were using only 22 mbd instead of 86?"
Make that happen before 2010 and I would kiss your ass in public. More smoke and mirrors Hothgor? Lawyer tactics when you realize that you don't have the best case(smoke and mirrors). More lawyer tactics in trying to wear someone down by going off topic. Nice try.
"Its strange that the ones making things out to be all doom and gloom also make this the largest issue, while those who are optimist usually take a wait and see approach."
Are you impling that you take the wait and see appoach? IMO that is delusional as far as the debates go here. You jump right in there.
As far as doom and gloom, you try to frame debates that way. Too hard to trash people unless you can paint them into a corner first. Lawyer tactics again. I see it as a tactic, nice try.
"Growing any new gray hairs there, DelusionaL?" Kid you haven't a clue if you think you give me gray hairs. WT, Kehbab, maybe you no.
Good grief! Hothgor, you get slapped down so many times why don't you pay attention. I think you are a waste of precious time to everyone here and should be banned to improve the content of this site. Your mannerisms remind me of a street punk from the Bronx (not a compliment). Thats why I don't like to respond to you but everyone gets a chance to grow up. Goodluck kid.
D
16...
Is that the best you can do?
17...(not)
Peak oil slipped by the US and was not noticed by most scientists or the mainstream media for almost a decade afterwards. Your assumption that it will somehow be universally acknowledged when peak hits for the world is in direct contradiction to history.
And the usa gov't! Hubbert appeared in at a senate committee in '74 trying to convince them Peak had passed on July 1st 1965. See the graph he used at our website: http://trendlines.ca/peakoilcomment.htm#misses
In twenty years of forecasting with linearization, before and after the actual Lower48 Peak, the closest he came was "two years". And that was his first try in '56.
jeffrey brown's feeble attempts at proving high resolution with linearization are bogus and misleading. MK Hubbert was mistaken by an incredible (1970 minus 1965) five years in this final attempt in '74.
To be clear, i have used linearization for many years. It is an awesome tool; the best in fact. But for the last 11 days we have watched Jeffrey Brown post in a myriad of threads that his educated guess that Peaks have occurred in Saudi Arabia and globally via linearization modeling is supported by the historic successes of MK Hubbert. He proceeded over the 11 days to point to MK Hubbert's 1956 attempts.
Unfortunately, like russian roulette, it's a whole new ball game when it's your next turn! While Hubbert did well in '56, each next attempt over the next 20 years got worse. Much worse. By the end, he was five years out for the USA Peak (1965) and he was predicting a 110-Mbd Peak rate globally in 1995. The closer he got to Peak, the worse his resolution got. It's inherent in the methodology.
I have no problem with Jeffrey Brown using linearization 'cuz i use it myself. But i do have a problem with anyone who says it is accurate to within one, two or three years. And i have a huge problem with anyone who posts for 11 days in a row stating "my accuracy is backed up by the fine predictions for TEXAS, the USA Lower48 & the GLOBE by Marion King Hubbert." This misrepresents Hubbert's body of work and is being done only to falsely bolster a weak position.
Sorry to bust your bubble, jeffrey, but nobody uses eia figures but a few of u usa-centric dinosaurs.
Several weeks ago RR, Hothgar and myself agreed to leave this alone 'til the autumn figures come in. nothing is likely to happen with a Feb 1st quota cut at hand.
Instead, your posts have gone up exponentially. And worse, for the last ten days u have spread untold lies to mislead our forum members and visitors. U continually espouse that MK Hubbert predicted this and MK Hubbert projected that ... about Texas ... about Lower48 ... about the Globe. And it has all been lies. I have given direct quotes or reference for each of those predictions and it is clear that there is a five year margin of error.
Yet u continue to repeat those falsehoods each and every of the last nine days. I am confident that i can speak for the other two that we have no wish to continue this ad nauseum debate. Yet u continue to bring it up. And now we see u'v added a ton of lies to provide credit to your baseless musings.
I can only assume that u wish notoriety. Because these postings are presently not shielded from the WWWeb search engines, i will do my part to discredit your false statements. m king Hubbert predicted nothing of the sort that u are claiming these past ten days and using his record to back up your guesses ain't gonna work. count on it...
Hi Freddy,
Like J, I'm also wondering...
1) Do you have a criteria you personally subscribe to for predicting "peak" in advance? If so, what is it?
2) In other words, if you believe HL is not useful, what, if anything, do you think *is* useful?
3) What is your criteria, if any, for announcing "peak" has passed?
Also, I'm wondering...I'd appreciate it, if, instead of the word "lies", above, you might be specific, with
1) the words someone said
2) what it is you disagree with, exactly.
This is ridiculous. Yet again Freddy and Hothgor have completely derailed a conversation.
Its like a Jr Highschool locker room in here. Can we please do something about these children so the rest of us can discuss like adults?
The only one derailing anything, calling people names, and acting like children with these stupid little comments are you, Ron and DelusionaL. We all know you don't like Freddy or myself. There is no reason for you to continue spamming the threads with these comments, as it adds nothing to the value of this site. No matter how bad you think our comments, you tooting your horn with these is worse. I think that no matter what we say or do, you will want us gone. Its sad that you are so close minded.
Really sad.
You have the gall to accuse DelusionaL of spamming threads with comments?
This "big lie" technique is practically a fingerprint for trolling. If the staff was going to judge your bona fides based on one comment, that would be sufficient for a ban.
No. What I have the 'gall' of accusing DelusionaL of is his constant niping at the heel comments directed towards me. Half the time he simply calls me a liar, the other half he makes some ridiculously long post, with a quip on the end of how hes never going to respond to me again, yet does so anyway usually in the same thread or a few days later on some off the wall issue he has with the sentence structure I used.
As for the 'big lie' technique, I take it thats probably one of the points on the 'hear no dissenting, see no dissenting, speak no dissenting' list to throw at people you disagree with. Honestly, I have been 100% truthful and forthcoming on everything that I have typed, all my opinions, my job, my name and location, my facts and even my mistakes. Yet I am constantly called a troll, some corporate PO debunking lackey, a hired gun of Dick Cheney or worse yet, a hit man out to ambush WT. Thats right, someone actually suggested on this thread that I was out to ambush WT and silence him once and for all!
Its those kind of comments that are spam. Its those kind of comments that diminish the value and credibility of this entire site, and its those kind of comments that any newbie reads and taints their perception of this place. I am accused of being a divisive troll, yet I get far more flake then I ever dish out on any occasion.
Your a contributor, if you want me banned then why don't you do so? I once directly asked Dave if he wanted me gone, and if he did I would be happy to leave.
I got no response.
Instead, I'm flamed with constant posts about how everything I say, read or do is a lie, and I am not to be believed. Yet I have very rarely been proven wrong on any issue. I think you simply do not want to hear a dissenting opinion. I think you have simply made up your mind about me and about PO and our options. I think you are close minded and a band-wagoner basher. I think I haven't been banned because that would simply strengthen my case.
And I think you are wrong in this instance.
Don't threaten to ban me for having the 'gall' to accuse anyone spamming. Ban me, or leave me the hell alone. Either way I wont lose any sleep over it.
If i can give u (and others) some advice, it would be to put your email address in your profile. U probably think right now that it's only about a half dozen of us that are voices in the wilderness, but i can assure from several years of this (PO & GW & the Economy) that your writings represent many good folks out there on the WWWeb and they appreciate your efforts.
While hate mail is frequent on the boards, my encouragement comes from a ton of pvt email voicing support and those too gun shy to ask questions online in fear of being flamed. Over 500 websites from 88 countries have linked to mine since i started being active in '95. There is nothing nicer than starting a morining with a kind letter ... from a concerned soul to an inquisitive embassy completing due diligence. Stay strong, eh!
"Half the time he simply calls me a liar"
half is 50% - prove it kid or STFU.
Your dissent isn't the problem although you try and frame it that way, and this should be obvious. It is your ill manners toward myself and others and your misrepresentation of our comments.
You are a waste of time.
D
So far I'm spot on.
...18
You're quite critical regarding hubbert and his calls. Can you name somebody, eg xom, bp, cera, etc, who has done a better job of predicting peak for any country or region?
On the contrary, i have said many times in this forum and others that linearization is an excellent tool. It was the work of Jean Laherrere that intriqued me wrt PO analysis. He has the best math. Colin Campbell has the best numbers.
I know the work of all three intimately. Stuart, Euan and others have given us good tutorials. But it is only khebab and Jeffrey that are claiming it possesses fine resolution. That is absurd. I am not critical of mk hubbert or his calls. I am very critical of those who use linearization and claim that mk hubbert was successful at using the same methodology to predict the Peak Year Dates.
In reality, use of linearization suggests a ten year range. And this is best case scenario when the jurisdiction is near Peak. If a jurisdiction or region is a decade or two from Peak, it has even less resolution. The best example is Laherrere's global linearization. It is presently on its fifth paradigm. This means the first four have been invalidated.
RR has related that his quest in seeking predictability with using linearization shows similar variation and this backtesting has shown him that the Peak Date moves to and fro. Lotsa false positives and false negatives.
Once the region being analysed has Peaked, the slope seems to homes in. But this is looking in the rear view mirror...
To answer your question: Nobody anywhere has even a fair documented record of predicting Peak Year or Peak Date. Not Laherrere. Not Campbell. Not Hubbert. Not Ivanhoe. Not the URR Estimate providers.
Like the New Years Day fortune tellers, everyone gets a hit once in a while. My favourite is that the Pope is going to die this year. Every fifteen years they get it right. Just like CNN's ad nauseum Recession calls. Just like a broken clock.
Well, HL guessers have done better than the cornies, who as far as I know have never thought any peak was on the horizon.
Personally, I see HL as just another clue, albeit a strong one. Naturally the world is tougher than any region or country, and the former is clouded with ngl. For SA, swing producer status may, or may not, make the country more difficult for HL than others. However, I see what sa is doing as a better indication of peak than HL... 3x rigs in 2 years, planning for 7x, imo will want 10x before long; stated intent to revitalize fields long abandoned; no new fields even found, much less under development; reduced production as price surges to all time record and as russia grabs the #1 mantle; and, per their announcement, they are now down to <8.5Mb/d, substantially less than their agreed share of opec cuts.
The billions they are throwing at their problems have, so far, been insufficient to maintain production at year ago levels. I don't quite subscribe to the often quoted maxim that when sa peaks, the world peaks... but it would at least indicate we are getting pretty close, and anyway acceptance that sa is now part of the problem would likely affect markets.
SImmons makes the point that all of sa fields are very old, have been producing at max (or higher) rate for over half a century. And, this characterization is true for much of the world's largest fields, eg iran, mexico and china, probably russian fields, too. It cannot be surprising that these fields are approaching the end. IMO your punters have good numbers for new projects, which may or may not come on time given the rig shortage, but all are guessing decline rates that are too low.
As an aside, tanker rates are crashing as rig rates are soaring, exactly what you would expect as world production peaks (or passes peak).
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/3/1/3402/63420
Why peak oil is probably about now
Posted by Stuart Staniford on March 1, 2006 - 4:12am
BTW, Freddy, it is obvious that any mathematical tool for estimating URR is not perfect. But what we can do is predict the most likely year for a decline, within a predicted range.
Deffeyes predicted that 2006 was the most likely year for a world crude decline, within his 2004 to 2008 range. Stuart predicted that 2006/2007 was the most likely time frame for a world decline, within his predicted range.
Khebab has always addressed the uncertainties in the method, but he picked the 2006/2007 time frame as the most likely for a start of the Mexican decline.
My prediction for Saudi Arabia, based on Khebab's work and the historical analogue was that 2006 was the most likely year for a Saudi decline.
So, we have production data that are matching the most likely predictions for the world, Mexico and Saudi Arabia (crude + condensate, EIA).
Again, I'm sorry if this upsets your world view, but, irrespective of whether the predictions are ultimately proven to be right or wrong, it is the current reality. So, why the constant attacks?
Westexas,
I have no beef in this little spat but I would suggest that the reason that some folks target you is because of the seeming arrogance with which you've made many of your predictions. By that I mean that you seemed to state the matter as if there was no room for error, a "fait accompli" so to speak.
The above post is the first post of yours that I can remember that takes a more reasoned approach, admitting that there is a wide error range but that you feel the data says that 2006 is the "most likely" to be a decline.
I humbly predict that if you continue to take a more balanced tone with your posts and acknowledge the wide error range of your predictions that you will get far fewer strenuous objectors.
My personal experience in chemical industry disasters was that what companies want most is to buy time until the emotional outburst has run its course. The usual response is to admit that, yes indeed, something bad happened and that a through investigation will be made but let's not jump to conclusions until all the reports are in. In the mean time it's business as usual.
The people at XOM aren't dumb and as SS says they have had plenty of time to come up with a course of action. My guess is that countless hours have been spent in meetings detailing a course of action including fallback positions. Deep in their hearts, they want BAU and will do whatever is necessary to prolong that.
Wow...first Simmons hailing that Peak Oil is upon us on Bloomberg and now Exxon talking with Stuart. Interesting turn of the screw going on here.
I made a prediction that 2007-2008 time frame will be the era of Global Peak Oil Awareness.
The two developments above do NOT signal that PO has definitely arrived, but it does raise two extra hairs on the back of my neck.
There is a time and place for TOD's attributes to be a contribution to the world. The last few years have been practice. Is TOD ready for the spotlight?
Judging by everyone's reaction to me, the 8 ball is telling me:
DEFINITELY NO
Sorry Dragonfly, but the topic of Peak Oil was the talk of the town in all the papers and magazines from 1974-76. It would be cool to think that your introduction to the subject was on the cusp of some mass awareness but actually u and many here are late to the Party.
M King Hubbert brought Peak Oil, Peak Nat'l Gas and Peak Coal to public discourse starting in 1949 in an effort to promote the Nuclear industry and hydro elec projects. His foresight of long term american and global energy demands (50-100years) was the basis of his studies to prove that fossil fuels would take us all the way...
He was aware of Alaska. And tar sands. And shale. And Venezuela. He was aware of Conv oil and non-conv resources. His adopted and later his own URR estimates showed him that a start on alternative sourced elec generation was necessary for economic stability 'cuz the other reliance on hydrocarbons wasn't going to take us there.
With the work of Campbell, Leherrere and Ivanhoe there was a second wind in the mid-90's. This led to major addresses to the subject of Peak Oil by IEA in '98 and the EIA in Y2k. Since then many of the oilco's have addressed URR. And URR is fundamental to the topic. Peak Oil is a function of how much is down there. At one time, the all the graphs just went up&up&up. Very few reconciled long term production volumes to the actual volumes available.
Exxon-Mobil is acting like an "ethical" corporation; remember ethics for a corporation is increasing shareholder value; that is their "prime directive". Expecting anything else is from any corporation, even Ben and Jerry, is looking for "unethical" behavior.
So Exxon-Mobil's problem now is how to preserve shareholder value in the current situation. The behavior Stuart describes is perfectly rational.
As a VP in a large petrochemical concern in the '70s and '80's I dealt with both Exxon and Mobil, and was under no illusions that they had my or my companies interests at heart. To think otherwise about any corporation is a dangerous illusion.
Corporations (not just Exxon-Mobil) are in about the same position with reference to global warming today as they were with reference to gross pollution in the '70s. They would obey the law, but it was hard for my older co-workers to see why they just couldn't keep dumping it all in the Mississippi or the Houston Ship Channel. The lesson from that is that prohibitive laws are needed, even for the good of the corporations.
Today they tout their "environmental" awareness. Give them a few years and they'll build their marketing campaigns around their fight against global warming.
The corporations need the laws in order to survive -- blindly following shareholder maximum is to jump blindly off the cliff-- but that is their legal mandate as I understand it.
The failure is NOT with the CORPORATIONS, it is the POLITICAL WILL of the democracy that is failing to look after its own interests.
The corporations can not and by law, must not do our work for us.
Tobacco, asbestos, dioxins.
The corps in damage control reach out to opposition. Some they can subvert, some they can buy out, others they try to marginalize.
This case is a maybe different in magnitude. Everyone's prosperity in energy sucking countries depends on the oil corpos doing well. That wasn't true of tobacco, asbestos and dioxin. Then it was only the shareholders.
cfm in Gray, ME
I advise folks to take a visit over to the CEI website (linked in by Stuart).
ExxonMobil has funded CEI in the past. In particular, they have funded the efforts of Myron Ebell.
This is from the bio —
Myron is just one of numerous "experts" listed at CEI, whose motto is "Advancing Liberty - From the Economy to Ecology". The word "liberty" here has the meaning "freeing to despoil the Earth" for private gain and against the public good. They have a 3 million dollar budget to promote this popular agenda.I am happy to hear that ExxonMobil has stopped funding CEI. This is progress of a sort. I will remind everyone that each year that passes without putting a cost on carbon is one less year we have left to solve climate or peak oil problems which may spiral out of control. So, just as with the climate, much damage has already been done.
I would suggest that XOM stockholders authorize that they take some of their record profits and make reparations of some sort. I also suggest that XOM quit promulgating the idea to the public that these profits will lead to more oil production — which, so far, is demonstrably false. They need to clean up their act pronto on both climate and peak oil.
These would be small, but necessary, steps toward cleaning up their image.
From the Feb 2 Christian Science Monitor, (my emphasis):
IMO contributing to the image of 'big oil' being a part of an 'axis of evil' of their own.
There is a very strange op-ed piece in today's WSJ suggesting that climate change is 75% caused by cosmic rays! Has anyone ever heard of this effect? I paste the article here because of firewall.
February 3, 2007
COMMENTARY
DOW JONES REPRINTS
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit:
www.djreprints.com.
• See a sample reprint in PDF format.
• Order a reprint of this article now.
Political Science
By PHILIP STOTT
February 3, 2007; Page A11
I confess I was afflicted by a profound world-weariness following the release yesterday of the latest gloomy machinations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The U.N.'s global-warming caravanserai, founded in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, had this time pitched camp in Paris, in order to issue the "Summary for Policy Makers" relating to Working Group One of its "Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007." This is the group that focuses on "The Physical Science Basis" of climate change, and its summary was greeted with the usual razzmatazz, the Eiffel Tower's 20,000 flashing bulbs being symbolically blacked out on the evening before. Further IPCC reports are due this year, one in April from Working Group Two, on the impacts of, and adaptation to, climate change, and another in May, from Working Group Three on climate-change mitigation.
[Illustration]
But it is the science summary that always gives rise to the jamboree -- with journalists, politicians and eager environmentalists desperate to claim that this particular report is the last word on climate change, that it represents a true consensus, that the world is doomed, and that we must recant our fossil-fuel ways. Moreover, as in 2001 with the Third Assessment Report, Friday's release was preceded by speculative leaks, the political shenanigans and spinning beginning even before the final text had been haggled over and agreed upon.
Unfortunately, the IPCC represents science by supercommittee, as rule 10 of its procedures states: "In taking decisions, and approving, adopting and accepting reports, the Panel, its Working Groups and any Task Forces shall use all best endeavors to reach consensus." I bet Galileo would have had a rough time with that.
In this context, it is vital to remember that science progresses by skepticism and by paradigm shifts: A consensus early last century would have given us eugenics. Moreover, the IPCC does no original research, nor does it monitor climate-related data; its evidence is instead from selected secondary sources. But, above all, this supercommittee is more political than is often recognized, rule three firmly reminding delegates that: "documents should involve both peer review by experts and review by governments."
Friday's summary and "best estimates" of temperature-rise by 2100 (as compared to preindustrial times) are thus little more than a committee compromise chewed over by governments with different agendas: an average potential rise of three degrees Celsius (up from 2.5 degrees in 2001); a probable rise of between 1.8 to 4 degrees; a possible rise of between 1.1 to 6.4 degrees. So you can take your pick, also bearing in mind that there are groups outside the IPCC predicting cooling by one or two degrees Celsius. Moreover, the conclusion that climate changes seen around the world are "very likely" to have a human cause is wonderful Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass talk.
Unsurprisingly, the report will please neither a Humeian skeptic nor a rabid apocalyptic. Indeed, even before it appeared, environmentalists were incensed that predictions for the rise in sea levels this century have been lowered to between 28 and 43 cm (11 to 17 inches). They want the polar bears to be drowning now!
For the skeptic, however, the problem remains, as ever, water vapor and clouds. Enormous uncertainties persist with respect to the role of clouds in climate change. Moreover, models that strive to incorporate everything, from aerosols to vegetation and volcanoes to ocean currents, may look convincing, but the error range associated with each additional factor results in near-total uncertainty. Yet, there is a greater concern. Throughout the history of science, monocausal explanations that overemphasize the dominance of one factor in immensely complex processes (in this case, the human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases) have been inevitably replaced by more powerful theories.
Worryingly for the IPCC's "consensus," there is a counterparadigm, relating to the serious uncertainties of water vapor and clouds, now waiting in the wings. In the words of Dr. Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Center: "The greenhouse effect must play some role. But those who are absolutely certain that the rise in temperatures is due solely to carbon dioxide have no scientific justification. It's pure guesswork." A key piece of research in this emerging new paradigm was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A (October 2006): "Do electrons help to make the clouds?"
Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists managed to trace the growth of clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei. These are specks of sulfuric acid on which cloud droplets form. High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded stars far away in the galaxy -- cosmic rays -- liberated electrons in the air, which helped the molecular clusters to form much faster than atmospheric scientists have predicted. This process could well explain a long-touted link between cosmic rays, cloudiness and climate change.
The implications for climate physics, solar-terrestrial physics and terrestrial-galactic physics are enormous. This experiment ties in elegantly with the work of certain geochemists and astronomers, who for some time have been implicating cosmic rays and water vapor, rather than carbon dioxide, as the main drivers of climate change. Indeed, they have put down up to 75% of all change to these drivers.
Cosmic rays are known to boost cloud formation -- and, in turn, reduce earth temperatures -- by creating ions that cause water droplets to condense. Calculating temperature changes at the earth's surface -- by studying oxygen isotopes trapped in rocks formed by ancient marine fossils -- scientists then compared these with variations in cosmic-ray activity, determined by looking at how cosmic rays have affected iron isotopes in meteorites. Their results suggest that temperature fluctuations are more likely to relate to cosmic-ray activity than to carbon dioxide. By contrast, they found no correlation between temperature variation and the changing patterns of CO2 in the atmosphere. But the mechanism remained far from understood -- until last October, that is, when the team in the Copenhagen lab may have discovered it.
Who knows where this exciting research will lead? What it unquestionably shows, however, is that the science of climate change is far from settled, and most certainly not by a government-vetted committee policy "summary" from a U.N. supercommittee.
The inconvenient truth remains that climate is the most complex, coupled, nonlinear, chaotic system known. In such a system, both "doing something" (emitting human-induced gases) and "not doing something" (not emitting) at the margins are equally unpredictable. What climate will we produce? Will it be better? And, if we get there, won't it, too, change?
This is the fatal flaw at the heart of the whole global-warming debacle. Climate change must be accepted as the norm, not as an exception, and it must be seen primarily as a political and economic issue, focusing on how best humanity can continue to adapt to constant change, hot, wet, cold or dry. The concept of achieving a "stable climate" is a dangerous oxymoron.
We must hope that IPCC Working Group Two on adaptation will set a wiser agenda in their April report.
Mr. Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London, is co-editor of "Political Ecology: Science, Myth and Power" (Oxford University Press, 2000).
URL for this article:
Hello Conrad,
What I suspect is that the editorialists of the Wall Street Journal are driven insane by all of the intoxicating drugs of capitalism, hyperconsumerism, morbid obesity, ADHD-culture, and rabid neocon militarism.
Let's see, how does this sound: Cosmic rays cause global warming. I guess that means that pouring millions of tons of pollution into the atmosphere is harmless, doesn't it?
The WSJ editorial page is about as reliable as the Weekly World News (http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/) but far less entertaining.
The Earth is suffering from an illness. The Earth is suffering from a plague of primates which are consuming, destroying and polluting everything. The end of this tragedy is certain: The Earth will survive, Nature will endure, but the primate plague will go extinct.
The Earth will recover from this illness but humankind will not.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
One more point regarding the above editorial:
Those who are opposed to pollution, destruction of the environment, climate change, etc. are not in the business of establishing a "stable climate" (whatever that means). Natural climate change is just the sort of catastrophe which could easily demonish all of human civilization. Everyone should know: Regarding death, it is entirely possible to die from either natural or unnatural causes. Which would you prefer? Most people prefer to die from natural causes, but you can make your own choice.
Now, back to the subject of climate change: While it is altogether possible that natural climate change would eventually, ultimately demolish civilization and drive humankind to extinction, the behavior of humans on the Earth threatens to generate a sudden & dramatically unnatural climate change which would generate a catastrophe which is properly identified as an "apocalypse".
Which is to say: Humankind's reckless behavior on the Earth might constitute a form of species-level suicide. Humankind is playing a game which would result in the species' sudden extermination.
Opponents of climate change are not in the business of providing the Earth with a "stable climate". Those opposed to humankind's destruction of the Earth are fighting to prevent Homo sapiens from committing suicide by pollution-provoked extinction.
****
One more point: Some argue that Peak Oil is worse than Climate Change. Such arguments are absurd: Is terminal cancer a worse illness than AIDS?
Nor does it really make a difference. Humankind doesn't have a choice: Our species will confront the catastrophes of Peak Oil and Climate Change concurrently. These two catastrophes are sufficient, by their own self, to send Homo sapiens down the path which terminates in extinction. Together they virtually guarantee that homo sapiens will go extinct.
You might wonder: Why virtually? Well, Homo sapiens are actually afflicted by a half dozen other illnesses which will combine together to seal the fate of our species. All of humankind's self-destructive tendencies will serve to exterminate Homo sapiens from the Universe.
Humankind's future is bleak. If anyone is planning to leave the Earth and travel to the stars they probably should leave soon. Hell is coming to the Earth and it will stay here until the human fire is extinguished.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
D Mathews.
Let's stipulate for the moment that you are correct about the coming extinction. I also gather that you don't think there is anything we can or will do to prevent same. From your comments, I gather that it all hopeless and there is no point in pursuing any so called "solutions" like solar energy, wind energy, conservation, lower overall consumption, nuclear power, et al. You appear to be a voice crying in the wilderness that really isn't seeking any kind of response because that voice has already made up its mind.
Having said all that, what is the point of your presence here and why do you post? Do you just take a particular joy in pointing out hopelessness. Keep posting, if you wish, but, frankly, I don't know why you bother to get up in the morning; nor do I understand why you bother to exist.
Yes, many of use here are pessimistic, but we still strive to find some way out of this mess. Admittedly, one can argue that the search is fruitless, but if one does, why bother to visit this site or any other site which offers a modicum of hope.
Hello tstreet,
That's a wise and correct stipulation.
Humankind's extinction is as inevitable as any individual's human's death. There's nothing that you or I or the entire species could do to avoid extinction. There's plenty that we can (and are) doing in order to accelerate humankind's extinction.
Humankind can do all these things and at most only buy a century or so longer lifespan for technological civilization. None of these things would serve to avoid humankind's extinction. There's a pretty good chance that these technology-saving technologies would serve to accelerate humankind's demise.
My best advice to humankind is to stop. Stop everything. Sacrifice technology & luxury on behalf of preserving our species from an untimely apocalyptic fate.
There is a need to people to speak honestly about humankind's hopeless situation for the purpose of alleviating potential future suffering. Maybe the cause is hopeless. Maybe humankind has already bought the Apocalypse and Nature is already prepared to deliver humankind's knockout punch. If that is the case it is still wise to face humankind's extinction in an honest and bold fashion rather than dream of technological salvation in the service of the techno-god.
I bother to wake up in the morning and exist for God's sake and not my own. I wake up in order to see the sun rise, I live in order to see the sun set, and in between I devote my attention to this world which is passing away.
I am in favor of hope when hope leads to beneficial outcomes. But the hope which is offered here appears to serve the interests of consuming the world and burning everything for the sake of preservation technology's survival at the expense of destroying the only living planet in the Universe.
My hope is in Nature and Nature's God. The technogod can, should and shall die. Humankind must decide whether it will return to Nature's God or sacrifice its own existence on behalf of the technogod.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Of course, your prescription would immediately lead to a die-off. No more than about 500 million people can be supported on earth without agricultural technology. Tell you what, here's a bottle of chloral hydrate sleeping pills and a fifth of Jim Beam, you first.
What you in the die-off camp fail to realize is that your criterion, ecological footprint, has two variables and not just one. Footprint is net consumption divided by efficiency. This leads to three options to achieve balance:
Productivity and efficiency can be high enough to support everyone now on Earth, on less land than we use now. Algae ponds and the likes of shrimp and tilapia can produce enough protein and calories on an acre to put hand-cultivated rice to shame. And our technology can let us retain our comforts in the bargain. We can never grow enough biofuels to feed a world-full of internal combustion vehicles at US levels, but bio-charcoal to batteries to wheels is 5 to 10 times as efficient and PV to batteries to wheels multiplies the per-acre "yield" of vehicle-miles by another factor of about 50. When the footprint of all the vehicles shrinks by a factor of 5, they are on the edge of sustainability even now. Reduce it to 2% of the shrunken figure and they become a footnote.
We are part of nature. The direct-carbon fuel cell is just a human evolutionary advance on the mitochondrion. The PV panel is an advance on the bacteriorhodopsin proton pump. We shouldn't sacrifice anything; we are another step in evolution, and cannot decide to return to nature because we never had the capacity to leave it.
Hello Engineer Poet,
500 million appears like an ideal number of Homo sapiens inhabitants for a planet such as the Earth. Humankind will reach this number whether it wants to or not. Nature is ready to impose limits upon humankind. If we choose to not stop Nature will impose these limits upon humankind in the harshest manner possible.
I see that you worship the techno-god, Engineer Poet. You are a man of faith. I admire your faith but I reject your religion. Humans have already transformed the Earth into humankind's sewer. We've already destroyed too much of the Earth. There's an apocalypse coming to the Earth and these technologies won't prevent it from happening.
Human evolutionary advance on the mitochondrion? Are you serious, Engineer Poet? The mitochondrion has functioned successfully for billions of years. Humans are not advancing that technology.
Humankind has abandoned Nature. Humankind will not return to Nature. Hence humankind's extinction is inevitable and approaching fast.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Hi David,
Thanks and I'm curious about something you say here:
Up above, t street said:
"From your comments, I gather that it all hopeless and there is no point in pursuing any so called "solutions" like solar energy, wind energy, conservation, lower overall consumption, nuclear power, et al. You appear to be a voice crying in the wilderness that really isn't seeking any kind of response because that voice has already made up its mind."
And you replied as follows:
"Humankind can do all these things and at most only buy a century or so longer lifespan for technological civilization. None of these things would serve to avoid humankind's extinction. There's a pretty good chance that these technology-saving technologies would serve to accelerate humankind's demise."
I'm wondering if you might provide me with a little more explanation here, if possible?
1) When you say "technological civilization" - what do you mean?
2) Do you rule out the possibility of any kind of technology at all?
3) It seems that there are many kinds of technology, including hand tools. Do you make any distinction between different kinds of technologies?
4) Do you rule out any kind of civilization at all? Do you believe that all technology only destroys Nature? And so, it is not possible for humans to make use of parts of Nature, for example, using trees, without destroying the forest or all trees?
5) Does technology *necessarily* accelerate the "demise", in your view?
Hello Aniya,
1) When you say "technological civilization" - what do you mean?
This present civilization. The civilization of the cell phone, automobile, shopping mall, television, satellites, aircraft carriers, nuclear bombs, etc.
2) Do you rule out the possibility of any kind of technology at all?
Yes. All technology is passing away. Humans must choose whether to go extinct with technology or learn how to live without technology.
3) It seems that there are many kinds of technology, including hand tools. Do you make any distinction between different kinds of technologies?
What sort of hand tools are you talking about, Aniya? If you are thinking back to the Stone Age, I am willing to compromise enough to allow a return to that technology.
) Do you rule out any kind of civilization at all? Do you believe that all technology only destroys Nature? And so, it is not possible for humans to make use of parts of Nature, for example, using trees, without destroying the forest or all trees?
1. Civilization is a lie and a delusion. Civilization cannot possibly endure.
2. Yes, technology only serves to destroy and pollute Nature. Humans do use trees and destroy forests in such a fashion as to not leave any trees for future use. This is a well-established behavior of humankind throughout time.
5) Does technology *necessarily* accelerate the "demise", in your view?
Absolutely, inevitably, inescapably. Technology is always a trade off between present-day prosperity & luxury againt the future survival of our species. Humankind has already destroyed at least 75% of its future survival potential for this world that we live in today. By working really hard we can push that number even higher and drive our extinction ever-closer.
I don't imagine that there is any hope whatsoever for the Homo sapiens now. The species has already inflicted the mortal blow to itself in the form of climate change + resource depletion. Over the next several millennia humans will discover exactly how hellish life on Earth can become.
Certainly technology will go extinct when humankind goes extinct. Such is the fate of both humankind and technology. Too bad for humankind, but Nature will survive and prosper.
David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1
Hi David,
Thanks for responding. If you might want to reply, I have a couple of follow-up questions:
1) I notice up above that the examples you list for "present civilization", are pretty much things that came into existence post- WWII. And, my rough guess is the population curves really took off w. the discovery of oil and it's increasing use (a relatively recent phenomenon, in a way). Certainly, there were certain aspects of what we might call "civilization" prior to the automobile.
So, this brings me to: When you say "Humans must choose whether to go extinct with technology or learn how to live without technology."
Can you envision what living without technology might consist of?
2) You see no possibility, for example, when you say "Humans do use trees and destroy forests in such a fashion as to not leave any trees for future use." Yes, this is true.
However, it seems people now have the *concept*, if not the practice of renewing trees and forests. http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/forests/our_solutions/restorat...
3) And, when you say "Humankind has already destroyed at least 75% of its future survival potential for this world that we live in today. By working really hard we can push that number even higher and drive our extinction ever-closer."
I wonder...might there be some little teeny way to make use of that 25% and manage to forestall extinction?
This theory and Svensmark's work has been around for several years. My take on it is that there is some credibility to it as far as making a connection between cosmic rays and cloud formation. However, for as long as Svensmark has been pounding this drum, as far as I can tell, he has few supporters that think that the effect is the main driver of climate change, or even a significant effect at all. I'm sure some googling around on the RealClimate site would reveal lots of verbiage on the subject.
When I was in electronic technicians school in the Navy we were told that a good response for when you don't know why the radio doesn't work is to blame it on sunspots. Blaming cosmic rays means they are getting desparate in support of their major advertisers.
Thank you, Stuart,
When you say, "Finally, it was off-topic, but I squeezed in a peak-oil question."
I'm wondering...do you see an overlap? To me, global climate change and PO are critically intertwined, especially in view of any possibility of mitigation scenarios. For example, PO effects on regional economies (and/or the global economy) means less energy/money, hence fewer financial resources to deal with any problem, esp. one of CC magnitude. Similarly, the issue of using coal (and/or other fuel sources) as replacements...(I'm sure you know much more about all this than I do). Just wondering if perhaps you might want to give some thought to what seems to be actually to be a (if not "the") central role of PO in relation to GW. For future discussions.
Also, how oil cos react, and who (if anyone) takes the lead also seems critical.
FUCK EXXON
excuse my french
Did the topic of ExxonMobil's recent record profits come up? Did they try to explain those financial results in terms of being able to apply the profits towards research, development and investment?
"The devil is in the details" is code for "we can't sweep the entire issue under the rug, so we're going to put on green lipstick and fight this one legislative/regulatory line item at a time." It's a change in strategy/tactics, not a change in goals.
Their obligation as a publicly traded company is to protect the interests of their shareholders. They have likely concluded that the best way to protect their interests is to get in front of this issue--or at least catch up with it. If they simply deny the issue they will further damage their credibility with both friends and foes, and therefore their ability to influence legislation and regulations to address climate change.
Yes, they would never have come to this recent position if the Democrats had not taken power. They realize that active resistance will just result in more pain and punitive legislation. They want to maintain their place at the table as their primary mouthpieces in congress are no longer in power. They realize that the like of Senator Boxer can do some serious damage to their bottom line if she wishes to pursue that course of action. Their idiot mouthpiece, Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, is no longer in power.
I can't imagine Exxon changing their ways and can't see why it should get the opportunity. Deregister it now, seize & sell its assets, and give the other oil (and coal) majors 3 months to show by their actions why they shouldn't suffer the same. For the 10+ years of pretty active denialism, every involved XOM flack and executive should do jail time. Shareholders? They are holding a radically immoral investment and should get nix. Really they should have to pay back last 10yrs of dividends, but i understand we need to be moderate ;)
I see a Clash of the Titans coming in the next few years. In one corner are the fossil fuel interests. In the other corner is the insurance industry. With Katrina and and other severe weather events becoming more common and in the least expected places (tornadoes in London and Los Angeles} the insurance industry is taking some hard hits. I see the insurance lobbyists working in Congressional offices to create the carbon cutbacks which big oil and old king coal fear. The insurance industry's biggest nightmare is the eye of a Cat 5 hurricane running up the east coast and straight up the Hudson valley. Say goodbye to Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island too. Insurance corporations may turn out to be the biggest allies environmentalists could have.
Insurance companies are already trying to drive people away from coastal areas from Texas to Florida and up the east coast. But that's the free market at work in response to a threat. Unfortunately, while the market is trying to work in this instance governments (state and federal) are interfering and diluting the market driven response by offering state insurance to buildings in the affected areas, including new construction.
It's not feasible to just abandon the coastal areas overnight. We have too much invested in them as they currently are. But a combination of market pressure regulated by government with a goal to retreat back from the coasts somewhat could be achieved over a time frame consistent with scenarios involving global warming. Right now though, government is in the way, and not helping at all.
On abandoning the coasts, it will happen as soon as the storm damage just gets too severe, whether we can afford it or not. At some point, governments will stop trying to shore up the defences, and the sea will come in. This is as old a story as human history.
We're already starting to lose parts of the Norfolk coastline (east coast of England).
Agree the government shouldn't insure coastline where the private market will not.
That scenario is not possible any time soon. A cat 5 hurricane is dependent on very high surface water temp for susteneance, at least 85F+. Atlantic coastal waters will not get this high any time soon. In fact, there is some evidence that the gulf stream is weakening, which would warm the gulf while cooling the atlantic seaboard.
I'm not a hurricane expert but I recall reading the threat to NYC is actually not a hurricane per se, but simply a colossal downpour, which would flood out all the flood control systems. *that* has occurred in the past, and is more likely to in the future.
Hurricane Hazel did enormous damage in Toronto, and killed dozens of people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Hazel
so in 1954, we managed a category 4 on the Atlantic seaboard.
I wouldn't bet a Category 5 is impossible. The world weather is changing much more rapidly than we anticipated.
I'm impressed. Obviously an impressive storm. Still, this was cat 4 hitting the carolinas, and I responded to a post speculating on a cat 5 much further north, in the hudson valley.
Most deaths from hurricanes are from the surge (usually 3 metres or 10').
This from NASA:
"a category three hurricane on a worst-case track could create a surge of up to 25 feet at JFK Airport, 21 feet at the Lincoln Tunnel entrance, 24 feet at the Battery, and 16 feet at La Guardia Airport. These figures do not include the effects of tides nor the additional heights of waves on top of the surge."
"Hurricanes have hit New York City in the past. The strongest hurricane was a category four storm at its peak in the Caribbean, which made landfall at Jamaica Bay on Sept. 3, 1821 with a 13-foot storm surge. It caused widespread flooding in lower Manhattan. The "Long Island Express" or "Great Hurricane of 1938," a category three, tracked across central Long Island and ripped into southern New England on Sept. 21, 1938, killing nearly 700 people. The storm pushed a 25-35 foot high wall of water ahead of it, sweeping away protective barrier dunes and buildings."
From what I have been reading *unless* we are way wrong on the sea level, the threat to lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens in particular is likely towards the end of the century or even the 22nd century.
However the storm threat is more serious and sooner than that. In London we will be building the next Thames Barrier (the current one was built after the Houses of Parliament nearly flooded in 1952-- it is a series of steel islands that pivot 90 degrees to block the storm surge at high tide), for something like £20-30bn, completion date c. 2030.
The original Thames Barrier was meant to serve for over 100 years, but will only suffice for 50. It cost about 1/10th of what the next one will.
The problem in NYC is that you can't build an equivalent barrier, that protects virtually *all* of the City. If you build one across the Hudson and the East River, you protect most (not all) of Manhattan, the Bronx and Jersey Shore.
Brighton Beach and Rockaway and that are toast, in those scenarios.