Peak Oil Media Redux (or "The Course of Our Lives WILL Be Determined by the First Derivative of a Function, Redux)
Posted by Prof. Goose on July 22, 2007 - 5:12pm
It has always seemed to me that one of the keys to the puzzle of why people don't understand the problems that peak oil and other sustainability issues present is a lack of understanding of measurement, pure innumeracy and/or a lack of understanding spatial/change functions--namely the meaning and implications of constant growth.
Here's the best lecture that I can find as a primer (linked over at GPM here) by Dr. Albert Bartlett. Dr. Bartlett professes physics at the University of Colorado. He knows what he's talking about--that much I can vouch for.
If you need me to sell it to you so you'll watch it, that's under the fold, as well as links to the Simmons and Kunstler pieces. (Feel free to link to other peak oil media pieces in the comments.)
The tagline of the Bartlett lecture? "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function (as related to peak oil and sustainability)." Bingo.
Now, I know/use calculus and differential equations and teach econometrics pretty frequently, so this stuff is already in my head. But, because I use it so much, for some reason, I forget some days that most folks do not have exposure to these ideas or the ability to use them in their daily lives.
It can be intimidating stuff. But we've used versions of calculus statements around here all the time by saying phrases like "8% depletion" or "we aren't actually running out of oil and that we're at half of supply."
But what does 8% depletion really mean?
The problem is that people, journalists, even some experts do not know what the functions behind these ideas mean, or more importantly their implications for the future. The numbers hide the meaning. Bartlett's lecture can help you give these numbers the meaning they deserve.
I don't mean to say that these people who don't get this or have never gotten are not intelligent. It's that they haven't connected those wires in their head, that's all. Bartlett is wonderful at making those connections, and that's why I am bringing this to you today.
So, if you're a wannabe geek and you have an hour, I would suggest that everyone in the world watch this lecture by Dr. Bartlett. Please. It's an easy piece to understand. In fact, it's damned near enjoyable for an arithmetic lecture.
One of the main points of Dr. Bartlett's lecture is that "we cannot let other people do our thinking for us." So, so true. But to do that, you have to have the toolbox to actually think for yourself!
Which reminds me, there's another book that I suggest for my students: Joel Best's Damned Lies and Statistics. It's a wonderful primer on how experts, politicians, and the press screw measurement and statistics up on a daily basis. This is another important book I would suggest that everyone reads to pick up the daily fallacies that try to enter our cerebra.
< rant >
I swear, every single person on this earth should have to take a research methods course (understanding measurement, science, modeling, etc., etc.) and a basic calculus or statistics (understanding what to do with those measurements) course, damn it.
< /rant >
Now here's the other two pieces, first Matt Simmons on the GAO Report (7 mins), then JHK (1 hour).
"We are on the verge of replacing the term 'global warming' with the term 'peak oil.'"
"The best new oil basin we will ever find is the one called 'conservation.'"
And then, James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, speaks to the Commonwealth Club of California (.mp3 warning) about the American car culture and our illusions of maintaining it with alternative fuels. (thanks to Global Public Media). (It's about one hour.)
Peak Oil Media Redux (or "The Course of Our Lives WILL Be Determined by the First Derivative of a Function, Redux)
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Peak Oil Media Redux (or "The Course of Our Lives WILL Be Determined by the First Derivative of a Function, Redux)
PDF version
74 comments
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For the foreseeable future, I will be placing a reddit tag here in the first comment for readers to use if they are so inclined. Please use this one instead of the one under the title of the post. Here is that link:
http://science.reddit.com/info/28jqe/comments
Also, we ask that you please do spread our contributors' work around the web if you are so inclined: digg (which seems to be accepting our submissions again), stumbleupon, etc., all of them help--even posts from the past that you have found insightful.
We welcome your efforts to get as many eyes for our posters' work as possible.
I am seeding this to http://peakoil.newsvine.com.
They've blocked this one too over at reddit. It has 4 points in 6 hours, which is usually the top 10 in the science subreddit. It's completely gone off the page.
I just don't get it. Seriously.
PG, A thought to get around the filter.
Create a dummy blog or two. Exert the article you want to draw attention to and make sure it links to TOD. Then submit the dummy blog entry to reddit or digg.
If they blog that dummy blog then just create another.
Another thought would be to create more general interest type articles. These would appeal to the larger digg/reddit audience. An update to "why the peak is probably about now" would be a great start (I loved that article when I was first learning about PO).
It's because TOD is a fanatically devoted to a fringe opinion on a fringe issue, and reacts poorly when its Message isn't treated as a revelation. (If you think TOD doesn't react poorly, you're kidding yourself. Remember when TOD got a Slashdot story? The Message was treated with skepticism, and the next day TOD was full of insults and anger at not being greeted as revelatory heroes. Or just look at the suggestion right below to spam sites via fake blogs to trick people into accepting TOD stories.)
You know how people complain about "special interest groups"? That's you.
If you want to be treated differently, act differently. There's a great deal of lunatic-fringe ranting on TOD that has very little to do with the core idea of "oil is finite" - see the Drumbeat discussion about Kunstler. There's an obsessive focus on bad news, and little or no attempt to present unbiased information. There's a heavy apocalpytic bent. Wild claims are regularly made, infrequently challenged, and almost never backed up, save by a small fraction of the posters. There's a strong sense of entitlement, with frustration at the public that your Truth isn't being accepted, and it boils over into ranting, insults, and a retreat into a "us-vs-them", "we're better than them", and "they're doomed anyway" mentalities - even from some of the more sensible posters and staff.
None of that makes you look good.
You might remember some posters periodically expressing concern that some of the wilder claims and antics on TOD would undermine its credibility, typically followed by rebuffs that credibility doesn't matter?
Well, say hello to the ramifications of lacking credibility.
Whether or not you're right, you're a fringe group expressing a fringe opinion. That means you have a heavier responsibility to be well-behaved than groups whose ideas already have strong traction, since you're in constant danger of someone writing you off as lunatic fringe. While not easy, I suspect you'd be dismissed out of hand by a lot fewer people if you followed a few simple rules when trying to introduce peak oil to nonbelievers:
You want to be listened to? Deserve it.
"It's because TOD is a fanatically devoted to a fringe opinion on a fringe issue"
A fringe issue, eh? I would argue that energy (and oil in particular) is an issue that is about as far from being fringe as you can get. Well, except maybe Paris Hilton...
Fossil fuels (and oil in particular) as a finite resource, our wars over them and our need to find alternatives are not fringe issues. Everyone bar abiotic oilers believe we are burning finite resources. Energy issues are in the news all the time. The issues are not fringe, but there is a strong bent here towards one end of the timescale.
The comments sections, which appear to be where the bulk of your comment is aimed, are secondary. People are free to express whatever they like in comments sections below online articles, and often do. Go to any standard news source and the comments below articles that touch on important issues vary between outright support for the author's view and trashing of his/her opinion. At least here, there are a number of people who actually try to back up their arguments with data/sources (even if you don't always agree with them)...
"As a rule of thumb, anyone using the acronym "MSM" is rarely worth listening to."
One could just as easily argue that, as a rule of thumb, people rarely think for themselves and therefore are rarely worth listening to anyway. A term like MSM has nothing to do with it.
I agree in general with your comments on being careful about how you put forward arguments, but IMHO TOD seems to be ahead of the curve when it comes to online news groups.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
You haven't been paying attention, or you're focusing your ire on the discussions threads instead of the articles.
Each and every one of the criteria above (and they are good ones) has been practiced in dozens, no, hundreds of articles, here and elsewhere. Where have you been? Haven't you read any of them? And yet peak oil cannot hold a candle in the media to what's-her-face, the blonde arrested for drunk driving.
No, there's something else wrong, seriously wrong.
"Pitt the Elder:"
http://www.energybulletin.net/11695.html
Published on 12 Dec 2005 by Fortune. Archived on 13 Dec 2005.
The Rainwater Prophecy
by Oliver Ryan
“Richard Rainwater made billions by knowing how to profit from a crisis. Now he foresees the biggest one yet”
Your comment about slashdot might be right. I submitted the following on Saturday and it climbed faster than anything I've seen to the top of the firehose and stayed there all Sunday. It is still pretty high above other submissions. The firehose is a system whereby users can rank submmitted stories.
Here it is:
Now my stats for getting stories published in slashdot are rejected (23), accepted (4) and pending (10). Five of the articles not accepted were published under another submitter. But, nothing I've submitted has ever been this popular. Now, a reason for not accepting this so far could be that I use provocative language in the submission and the editors don't feel I've represented the report accurately enough (I feel I've cut through some of the BS myself). But, another problem could be citing TOD. Slashdot does cover energy issues from time to time so the submission does seem to me to be on topic. Just to note, I am a renewable energy cornucopian (to adopt a TOD phrase) which may be even more fringy than some other positions.
I love Bartlett's video so much that I bought a copy of his powerpoint lecture through the University of Colorado.
I show this to my writing class every semester as the first source for their final essay.
After the show is over, the silence in the classroom is astonishing.
Boy, that was a lot of words just to call anyone who shows any doubts in the "absolute wisdom" of the insider priesthood ignorant. Man are some folks big on themselves.
RC
Remember, we ar only one cubic mile from from freedom
In reference to which Roger?
A FEW THOUGHTS FROM THE IGNORANT IN A LESS THAN PERFECT WORLD
Reply to Prof. Goose
O.K., Let’s take her from the top.....first, the red flag waved in the face...
“ It has always seemed to me that one of the keys to the puzzle of why people don't understand the problems that peak oil and other sustainability issues present is a lack of understanding of measurement, pure innumeracy and/or a lack of understanding spatial/change functions--namely the meaning and implications of constant growth.”
Now we assume that folks who come here, at least a lot of them, actually must use math as a way to survive...investors and brokers and people who have spent years in the oil and gas industry actually finding and producing oil and gas would come to mind, also various branches of biology would come to mind....they have dealt with the power of exponents on a daily basis....are we to assume that they suffer terribly from “a lack of understanding of measurement, pure innumeracy and/or a lack of understanding spatial/change functions--namely the meaning and implications of constant growth.” I work with people in these professions...try telling even the most modest stock broker that “they can’t count” to their face...you might as well go ahead and slap them in the face.
These folks won’t give up clients easily, but I assure you that is about the fastest way to get off their client list!
“Now, for my sell of the Bartlett lecture, a real mainstay in the peak oil arsenal.”
If that’s actually true (I don’t really think so, or at least, I hope not) the peak arsenal badly needs some restocking.
Dr. Bartlett opens and closes his lecture with pretty much the same “tag line”:
They're all tied together. They're tied together by arithmetic, and the arithmetic isn't very difficult. What I hope to do is, I hope to be able to convince you that the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function
I read the lecture because I do not have broadband or highspeed internet access, meaning the video would take forever to download. That’s interesting in and of itself.
I work in the media measurement industry as my paying profession. We did studies in the 1990’s of the rapid expansion of broadband, which was growing at an “exponential rate”, literally doubling in months, not years. Using the rate of growth as a guide, the U.S would be at 90% broadband internet access by 2002 or so. But it didn’t happen that way. Broadband internet in the U.S. in 2005 was only 19.2%, according to the OECD.
http://www.oecd.org/document/9/0,2340,en_2649_201185_37529673_1_1_1_1,00...
What went wrong? Well, the real world got in the way. Expanding broadband was easy in the high density city. It was cheap, lot’s of subscribers per pile of cable. But in less dense rural areas, the math changed. The capital costs grew. But the borrowing by the broadband companies was based on the early exponential growth numbers. The next time you wonder what happened to WorldCom and Global Crossing (and their investors), you can see the weakness of making projections based on “exponential” growth (I just checked, Global Crossiing is at $20 a share, down from $35 a share in 2004...with no earnings at this time)
You see, Professor Bartlett could have added to his
“greatest shortcoming of the human race the inability to understand the exponential function” the second greatest, the human races penchant for worshiping at the alter of the exponential function. Professor Bartlett, in his rarified environment, seems to discount this human weakness. I guard against it as best I can, and let me tell you why:
I first became aware of the “exponential function” at about 11 years of age. I had an uncle who is a bit of a dreamer, always hoping to break out of the world of manual labor, and have a bit of a future for his later years. He was easy prey for the lure of the “exponential function” a common tool used by get rich quick peddlers.
Have you not heard of the lure, the “miracle” of compound interest? The math is so simple! And astounding! If you put the “The miracle of compound interest” into Google, you will get thousands of hits, so popular is it....and most of the explanations will look about like this:
http://www.fool.co.uk/school/compound.htm
IT’S SO SIMPLE! So, why aren’t more folks rich? The real world gets in the way.
The power of “exponential function” relies absolutely on set amounts of money, set amounts of time. But in the real world, one seldom deals in assured set amounts. Sorry to tell you, but the real world is damm sloppy. My uncle found out. He set up an savings plan, in which X amount of money was deposited every week, and at X percent interest. He assured me he would be set for a comfy, maybe even early retirement. I saw him the other day, and he is still working for a living. What went wrong?
What changed? Everything, of course. The “set interest has since declined multiple times. The set amount of money he deposited....well, he got laid off from his job, so he had to suspend contributions “for a while”. The transmission blew on his truck while he was using it to earn income, so....he had to pull some money out. On and on. The real world got in the way. If we lived in Professor Bartlett's rarified world of set times and set amounts, there is no doubt of the mathematical purity of “exponential function”. But it useful in the real world only in so much as conditions do not change. And conditions do change.
Let’s take population growth rate. We all know it grows everywhere at about the same pace, right, and it’s growing everywhere right now like crazy! Is that really true?
Well...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Population_growth_rate_world.PNG
One will notice that the high side is 3+% while most of the world is running at 1% or so.
But note the time scales that Professor Bartlett uses!
“Now, if this current modest 1.3% per year could continue, the world population would grow to a density of one person per square meter on the dry land surface of the earth in just 780 years, and the mass of people would equal the mass of the earth in just 2400 years.”
I don’t know about you, but I am not in the mood to make any projection on how much the human population growth may move around for 780 years on the short side, and 2400 years on the long side. For now, in the real world, “One factor that may ameliorate this effect is the rapid decline of population growth rate since the 1970s. In 1970, the population growth rate was 2.1%. By 2006, this had declined to 1.1%
Now, use your “exponential function” on that one....and we would see that if this trend continues forward for 780 years, it means the Earth will be essentially empty!
It is always fascinating that the “exponential function” worshipers only see exponents working in one direction. The other day, the U.S. stock market declined some 1.7%. Using the exponential function, I would recommend selling everything, because in less than 100 days, the stock market will be at 0.0.
We could go on and on and on pointing the utter futility of using set tables of “exponential functions” in a world that does not run like a clock on a set timetable in such a fashion. It is a classical “Newtonian” way of thinking, hoping for clockwork precision in a world that we know suffers from chaos, and from relativistic indeterminacy.
But just for fun, let’s look at one dear to our heart, oil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ASPO_2004.png
O course, if we use the exponential function, set time, set increase, the way it should work, on the first half of the chart from 1930 to 1970, we would have went off the top of the chart in about 1982 at some 35 billion barrels a year plus and by now should be at some, what would you say, 100 billion barrels per year...? But there was a hitch in the giddy up there, wasn’t there? And remember, what the “miracle of compound interest” soothsayers will tell you, SMALL differences at the front end mean a lot down the road, right?
All of this is NOT to say there is not a serious resource problem, and it is showing every sign of getting more serious. It IS a warning to be very, very careful about thinking in straight line simplistic models. Historically, things have never been as simple as all that.
Oh, one more thing. If you are going to think in simplistic, Platonic perfection, please be a bit more discreet before you essentially accuse folks of
“a lack of understanding of measurement, pure innumeracy and/or a lack of understanding spatial/change functions”.
The great thing about being a part of the human race is that none of us have a monopoly on ignorance.
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Human nature is so human in its nature.
The biggest failure of Bartlett is to not understand Evolution (as it applies to the human brain and we the improbable freak survivors).
Roger,
You've just made my point.
You're way ahead of the game BECAUSE you understand the exponential function.
You have to understand the straight line functions before you can understand the complex ones.
There are many who do not even understand linear constant growth, who have not considered the implications of said growth, who do not listen when measurements or percentages are thrown around...because they do not understand them.
I see it every day in my teaching. I am trying to educate folks--and this lecture is a very helpful tool in their critical thinking toolbox.
That's my opinion. Is the world more complex than this? Sure. Is this one tool on the road to understanding the world in which we live?
Absolutely.
This set of posts has convinced me that I need to utilize (once again) the "script" promulgated a few months ago...I mean, really, to argue about the merits of Dr. Bartlett's presentation...thanks again, Prof G, for bringing it up for those who are unfamiliar.
O.K., that works for me...and I will take it simply that I was "oversensitive".
And of course, we are all prone to judging things by our own past experiences (i.e., mistakes :-), I will admit openly to having caught myself out on several occasions by underestimating the impact of the "complex functions"....hope triumphs over experience though, I keep telling myself that the next time, I am going to get it exactly right....presto, early retirement! :-)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
I was going to point out the irony in Roger's post, but Prof. Goose beat me to it.
One thing he did not point out was Roger's constant referral to the "real world" interfering. What Roger failed to realize was that Dr. Bartlett's entire statement addressed that fact. In fact that was the ENTIRE POINT!
We cannot have infinite growth because reality impinges.
I would also like to point out that Prof. Goose acknowledges a corollary to the proposal by stating that the world is complex. In other words, everything is interconnected. If it were not, then the laws of physics would not apply and we could indeed have infinite growth. Growth without constraint means infinite growth. What are those constraints? Why that would be what everyone calls "the real world."
It is that concept, the concept that our actions do not exist in a vacuum that is hard for most people to wrap their heads around. The economist wishes dearly that the average investor does not strain themselves to think about ALL the variables. He wants that investor to only think about one possible, very happy, outcome -- his swelling bank account. And it is this ability of humans to tune out the inconvenient truths of physics that enables us to do so many truly stupid and venal things. We are simplicity machines. We take complex situations and render them simple so that we might make the most rapid and most fortuitous decisions for ourselves. Now, this selfishness is great if you are out on the plains of the Serengeti wondering if you should run for the tree, then throw your spear at the lion, or throw the spear first and then run for the tree. But, for today's world where decisions can mean today we run a test on the turbine system in Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station on April 25th, 1986. By the early morning hours, many decisions were made that led to an immense catastrophe. Had this only been the Serengeti, it would have meant one or maybe a few less hunter gatherers.
When the scientist tunes out variables, he or she is taking a calculated risk that their conclusions may not work in the "real world."
When Dr. Bartlett talks about the exponential function, he is stating a mere fact. It is only when people deny the impossibility of infinite growth that decisions are made that lead towards such interesting occasions as Chernobyl.
Yes, it is named after Wormwood. You may want to reference that in the Bible.
You are a smart mofo, but you fail to see that the difference is situational. The scientist making the big call can be (is?) the hunter in the Serengetti. Depends what hat he is wearing when he makes the call. Goes to human nature.
Peak Oil is not difficult to understand. One can teach it to a class of 12 year-olds. (At least, here, in Switzerland.) That is, the core concepts: finite resources, low hanging fruit, EROEI, up and down curves, etc., leaving economic aspects out, using clear vocabulary, no jargon, double-speak, and without the words ‘exponential function.’ etc. Perhaps a good intro. lesson plan would be children in an apple orchard (finite no of apples), picking eating and *selling* the apples in a closed environment. They all die, so that is perhaps not a good idea, as man can live without oil (the analogy isn’t good enough), so we let the children leave the orchard and go on to other things. Formalization and ‘mathematization’, universalist algorithms are not the only path to understanding. Other methods leave more room for complexity, alternatives, problems of measurement, the use of intuition and estimation, etc. Understanding that ‘rate’ can be fast ./. to ./. slow is good enough, really. And any human over 7 can grasp that. ‘Run to zero’ is understood in some terms at 18 months.
The difficulty lies in making people accept not only that ‘peak oil’ is ‘correct’ (an accurate description of a complex, physical reality/system) but that it is ‘true’ - has far reaching truth in the sense that it has applications and that it is ‘pertinent’ - applies to a span of time that includes the present and human action now. Blockage is due to: a) a natural reluctance and disquiet at contemplating such a far-reaching systemic upheaval; b) the fact that powerful interest groups spread disinformation (or are themselves confused), c) the fact that much of the public discourse and 'numbers' are utterly incomprehensible.
Beautiful. Noizette, my hat's off to you.
You misapprehend. This statement
is clearly not a projection. This wording is used to illustrate the absurdity of expecting the exponential increase in some quantity in the real world to continue: exactly what you think he has glossed over. In fact, this is a big theme throughout the lecture. He uses examples of taking the exponential function and running it forward to show that it can't continue.
I agree with Mister Bartlett. The conditions that change are historically revolving around fiat currency, which is head-butting itself against actual worth in an increasingly global cheap-oil/labor environment. Unbacked fiat-free-4-all everything for nothing is hitting it's peak and also those actual resources. It all boils down to the worth of currency beyond a faith based system that has rewrote the books on centralized planning through ongoing dillution. The real fiat string pullers know this, and do their best to divert the attention of us peons accordingly.
Fiat controls interest rates. And thus it rather secretly controls will, worth, wellbeing, and ultimately minds with it's unaccountable falseness...What happened to the reporting of M3? Why is that?
Your uncle is experiencing the wonderful world of centralized fiat planning - which of course, amounts to the same historical outcome in the end game blowoff of all fiat.
Enjoy your thoughts/comments, as well as many others on this long and winding induction of knowledge.
Takecare.
Why doesn't every person of at least normal intelligence grasp and accept the concept of Peak Oil? The fundamentals are stuningly simple:
1. The amount of oil that can be recovered with current (or foreseeable) technology is finite.
2. At some point, half of all the oil that will be recovered will have been produced. In all probability, we are now close to that half-way point.
3. The first half of oil produced was relatively easy to find and develop. The second half will be increasingly expensive and difficult to get at. This point should be intuitively self-evident, but if not it is easy to demonstrate.
4. Each day humans consume a prodigeous humongous amount of oil. Producing this great amount is a remarkable achievement of cumulative investment, science, and technology. Oil that is consumed today cannot ever be consumed again, and the natural processes that make hydrocarbons are exceedingly slow acting. Thus the current high levels of production and consumption are rapidly moving us to/over/past Peak Oil production.
5. Because of the lack of good substitutes, decreasing supply and increasing costliness of oil, Peak Oil will bring exceedingly grave consequences for everybody (or almost everybody).
In my opinion, the "exceedingly grave consequences" is the filter that blocks perception of Peak Oil. Because the consequences are so grave, most people are in the denial stage--and likely to flip into anger when prices soar. In other words, because Peak Oil is too horrible to contemplate, most people just will not and CANNOT contemplate or understand or accept it.
To some extent we can blame the media for not addressing the issue; to some extent we can blame the schools for failing to develop critical thinking abilities in students; to a large extent we can and should blame our elected leaders for ignoring the issue--but I think at the core is the psychological phenomenon of denial, and even the clearest and best expositions will convince few of the reality of what industrial civilization is up against.
Innumeracy helps not at all, but I don't think it is the main villain here. Intelligence does not help much for most people to grasp the idea of Peak Oil, because highly intelligent people just come up with very clever rationalizations for business as usual, or else they blame scapegoats such as oil companies.
("Sophisticated people" know all this talk of shortages is just a coverup by the greedy big oil companies to boost their obscene profits. In other words, to believe in the reality of Peak Oil is to identify yourself as a credulous "hick" who does not understand the power of huge and greedy corporations who contrive shortages to jack up prices.)
Agreed. Intelligence, as an evolutionary force, is a faculty used to outwit your opponent and get something he has, or prevent him from getting something you have. And NOW - not in some hypothetical future.
Peak Oil is meaningless to most of the people I see and speak to on a daily basis. They don't construct their own futures, they barely get through the day as it is.
There are the poets and dreamers -- like most of us on TOD -- who imagine we have some control over the future. But it isn't really so in most cases.
"Who controls the past controls the future
Who controls the present controls the past."
MSM controls the future. And they are owned by?
Grasping the concept of PO isn't a problem at all. The work some at TOD do is very good, and is supported by a significant amount of circumstantial above ground evidence.
But
Applies to everyone.
When specific solutions are flogged like a dead horse, perhaps the proponents of these solutions should invest their own money.
As far as the dialog goes "this is what I am doing" is probably more valuable then "this is what you should do".
I find myself often in the position of attempting to explain to people of "normal intelligence" my fears of Peak Oil, and of our future. They are usually unbelieving, or at best, sceptical.
We may well believe the analyses here on TOD, and believe we know (approximately) when peak oil will occur, but because of the dearth of reliable accounting in important oil deposits around the world, we have to use disclaimers like "in all probability". Doubt is introduced into our arguments.
But by far, the greatest resistance I find to my explanations of Peak Oil, and the (perhaps! maybe!) dire consequences that will follow, is a belief in technology. We are 6.5 billion people, many of them very smart. Surely, before things get too bad, a solution to this problem will be found.
And yes, I have to agree, that possibility exists. It has happened before in grave situations, it could happen again. My belief in the theories of Tainter, in the dangers of increasing complexity in society, in the 'specialness' of fossil fuels in comparison to other forms of energy, boil down to just that: belief.
And my beliefs, insufficiently backed up by hard facts, and ignored by a main-stream media more interested in the status quo being maintained, are not enough to get the people I talk to as concerned about it as I am.
- rick
Well there you go again, proving my point.
In an indirect way.
What does "many of them [are] very smart" imply?
It says, I'm not as smart as those "others".
It says, I model the world as consisting of:
1. super-smart people,
2. average people, and
3. dumb people.
Clearly I'm not one of the dumb people.
But then again, I'm not one of the super-smart people. That puts me in the "average" class, which is OK by me (Old Kinderhook by me) because average is good enough. Why should "I" expend great mental effort to solve the world's problems when those others, the super-smart people, can do so with much less stress.
Besides, by leaving it to the "others," the super-smart people to solve, I in fact am being more clever than them. They do all the work and I reap the rewards.
Of course this model of the world is most interesting when ALL of us are quietly saying the same thing in our minds.
Studies of the human brain indicate that it oft seeks out a solution strategy that consumes the least energy.
Peak Oil is solvable.
You all, I respect. But there is a technology comming that will revolutionise everything you are concerned about. It is beyond your wildest dreams.
Infact the solution to peak oil simultaneously solves global warming. It is indeed beautiful!
Peak Oil is solvable.
You all, I respect. But there is a technology comming that will revolutionise everything you are concerned about. It is beyond your wildest dreams.
Infact the solution to peak oil simultaneously solves global warming. It is indeed beautiful!
I hope you are not studing the same solution as I am :)
BTW, can we start polishing up your nominations for Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry and peace-making?
As soon as you solve the problem of the double post, I will listen.
Why not design a small research study to find out what people think about Peak Oil. Based on the responses you could then design a social marketing campaign to raise public awareness. Perhaps this has been suggested before.
I'd love to help with the campaign through my 2800 or so global climate change conscious friends on MySpace. They've already been primed on Peak Oil and many are ready to be a part of the campaign.
____________________
MySpace.com/ziontherapy
Propaganda should take this kind of formulation into account (advertisers do it.) In my experience, in CH, the *imaginary* thorough survey throws up:
1) refusing the presupposition (finite oil.) The model seems to be close to peak fish, with the renewability of oil being new discoveries. Or, more elaborate, a flat line is maintained thru a combination of conservation, technology, new discoveries. A falling off is simply not accepted. / Abiotic oil / It has been there forever, etc. (Refusniks and dopes.)
2) accepting the presupposition but conceiving actor-substitution (understood at 20 months.) Not enough A, use B. Principally, bio fuels, solar. Naturally adults will mix in other things, war is too costly, conservation is necessary, ppl are too lazy, etc. (Standard socialists, young people)
3) accepting but counting on problems being solved in the future, thru a combination of techno-fixes not yet known and/or nature itself. Partial die off, new inventions, humanity marches on and que sera sera. Again, other elements pop up - for. ex waste, the effects of the ‘market,’ bio fuels, etc. Notable is ‘some will have to do without’..’we live in the present’... (Further right, cadres 30-50, men)
4) accepting and serene. The cycle of life; the non-permanence of everything; we are but grains of sand; higher powers; etc. (minority; some baby boomers; artists of various kinds; the poor)
5) accepting and uncaring or despairing? (mixed but many pensioners, elderly)
6) Get away, my kid is dying of cancer. Or: what are you talking about?
As Don Sailorman points out, the fundamentals of Peak oil are "stunningly simple". Innumeracy is not what is missing in *getting it*, but for a whole array of more mundane reasons.
Don mentioned several key ones having to do with failures of education in our school and MSM systems. Of course there are others too, among them the corruption of our political and social organization -- in fact, our culture as a whole -- by short term economic gain geared to power and greed, that all of us are hog-tied to.
Edward Abbey summed it up simply enough: "We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire -- a crackpot machine -- that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate. We are, most of us, dependent employees."
Precisely because of our utter servitude to this "crackpot machine" of our own making is where the "exceedingly grave consequences" brings into play the 'denial' that is so prevalent around PO. As IndyDoug quite simply and accurately points out: "People are too busy with their own personal lives to even think about peak oil."
Until PO hits home with undeniable repercussions the vast majority, even when forewarned to it by well-meaning folk, will not have some great revelation about it -- they are too damn busy just getting by. This is certainly true among my friends who can comprehend this, along with the fact that they are not in any position to do much about it!
Whatever the coming repercussions, I suspect denial combined with irrational beliefs will still prevail for quite some time. For along with the above mentioned cultural/social failings that hinder us, among the greatest is the widespread unassailable belief that human ingenuity will pull a rabbit (or however many is necessary) out of our hats! Or at least that's the prevailing assumption which a lot of regular folk are counting on.
Well, I do believe that many here are not so assured of this, and by my way of reckoning I fall among that camp. Of course, we'll all just have to wait (while doing what we can or think is right) and see what the future brings, whether miraculous rabbits or miserable monstrosities.
As fine as Dr. Bartlett's presentation is, it's not going to change anything that needs changing. We are stuck within a vast system of destruction and it remains to be seen whether we can outlive its end while inventing its replacement.
I'll believe it when I see it and not a moment beforehand.
Awareness of global warming has preceded the massive effects that it might cause for many people. With the notable exception of the north (where I am from), most people will not have noticed planetary warming, yet many are making some, albeit small, choices to improve their carbon footprints.
One can learn from that. How was this articulated to populations, what steps had to occur before the MSM caught on to the story? These are things the Peak Oil aware community must deal with if the message is to get out and Alan's ideas are to take on more than pipe dream significance.
To collectivize populations as sheeple (which this thread is somewhat leaning towards) is incredibly condescending to their intelligence. I myself am guilty of bemoaning "the green breeder mentality," but I recognize this as a personal bias and am trying to overcome it!
Many of the presenters in this forum have a scientific bent. That's all well and good and make for pretty convincing arguments. However, I think if you want to move beyond the data and get folks to start becoming aware of this important issue, you are going to have to employ some soft skills. Otherwise you will have to deal with the diggit and reddit issues, and be characterized as a "wacko" to boot.
Not fun in my book; and by the time people are characterizing you as prescient and your diggit and reddit scores go through the roof we will all be quite ...
Why doesn't everyone of average intelligence understand peak oil? I think I can explain that by channeling Matt Savinar.
Understanding peak oil makes people lonely, anxious, and sad. It's such a bummer that most people intuitively grasp that it won't make them happy to understand it, so it just bounces off the mental shield that protects their ego.
These people may be right. If we assume that their lifestyle is as oil-dependent as ours, what do they really gain by dealing with the grief a few years early?
Even if they were to use the time to study farming, survival, and defense skills, it's likely that during our lifetimes, social skills are more likely to guarantee survival. Social skills involve making people feel good by not forcing them to raise their mental shields against you. Telling people about bummers like peak oil is about as antisocial as you can get, without physically hurting people.
It seems like the smartest thing to do is to comprehend peak oil, but not to tell anyone what you know unless there is a good reason?
Yup. It would be great if we ALL did that.
Shush.
It's a secret.
Tell no one.
Be proud you are one of the few who "knows" this hush hush stuff.
After all:
1. Knowledge is power,
2. Silence is golden
3. The meek shall inherit
/sarcasm off :-)
I like Don Sailorman's analysis of why most people cannot grasp and accept peak oil. In addition to the "exceedingly grave consequences" block, I think there is another factor. Peak oil marks a discontinuity with the past, and we are not conditioned to accept discontinuities.
From early childhood, we learn to anticipate continuation of a trend. A ball rolled on a level floor continues to move in the same direction; it does not reverse itself. Technology advances, the stock market trends higher, our generation has more material possessions than our parents. Peak oil requires us to recognize that the way things have been, the trend that has existed for hundreds of years, is going to change real soon. That is emotionally hard to believe.
The second law of mental dynamics: A mental model in motion with great social momentum tends to remain in line with its previous trajectory.
No big surprises allowed.
No big changes in course.
The mainstream that happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. What was, will continue to be.
The first law of mental dynamics: For every disruptive thought (i.e. PO) there is an equal or greater opposing thought.
Let's see what PNM employees say about possible peak natural gas and finding fuel for electric generation for the next 25 years.
Energy is not my expertise. But I want to learn.
We're trying to keep out of jail?
regards
OK, you finally talked me into watching the Bartlett video - fantastic! A nice clear explanation of the magnitude of "the problem".
Me and a few of the other bacterium are gonna bust out and go look for another bottle, see ya...
Peakoil simplified:
1. Daddy's car ran out of gas, then we had to walk home.
2. Mommy, I keep flipping the switch, but nothing turns on.
3. I am so cold and hungry, Mommy. What are Daddy and those other angry men going to do with those machetes'?
Yep, Malthus [1798] should have been taught everywhere for over two hundred years. World population would be well under one billion now if this simple concept had been the universal social norm.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I am listening to Dr. Bartlett's video presentation on Arithmetic, Population and Energy and it is very good. Thanks for recommending it.
Hello TODers,
More info for your perusal:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/features/daily-features/article2715156...
------------------------------------
This planet ain't big enough for the 6,500,000,000 of us
As noted by Malthus, who at the end of the 18th century was the first to foresee the problems of population growth, such growth can accelerate rapidly since every individual has the capacity to produce many offspring, each of whom can in turn produce many more, and the process will only cease when something happens to bring birth rate and death rate once more into balance.
----------------------------------
Obviously more info can be found by googling Malthus, but start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malthus
From an old posting:
---------------------------------
I always signoff the same way in any forum: "Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?", it is my self-adopted tagline, if you will-- so always expect it to be there.
I guess it is my way to hopefully make any reader truly consider our ever-growing predicament. Obviously, it encompasses our whole planetary set of problems from Peakoil, global warming, overfishing, topsoil depletion, pollution, overpopulation---yada,yada,yada.
It originated from the example of the every minute population doubling in the petri dish whereby it starts at 11:00.... 11:57 1/8 full, 11:58, 1/4 full, 11:59 1/2 full, 12:00 totally full and Dieoff begins.
Obviously, yeast will run to the bitter end, thus we get beer--this is all good. :)
But for humans and the planet--this is all bad. :(
The difficult part is truly determining exactly what time it is for our planetary petri dish: 11:58, 11:59, 11:59.2, 11:59.5, or 11:59.9999, and the overall effectiveness of our aggregate intentional response.
Try to imagine if yeast were smart enough, so that they would naturally organize themselves, so that it would take a hundred years to make a bottle of beer or wine. This is what humans should be trying to achieve with a Powerdown Plan and voluntary population controls.
Forums such as TOD are key to getting this information out to alert the unwashed masses so we can achieve an adequate 'critical mass' to change course. Jay Hanson of Dieoff.com believes that we will never achieve this critical mass because our genetic design precludes us [in the aggregate] from seeing gradual disaster, thus the Thermo-Gene Collision will run its inevitable course.
------------------------------------------------
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I think your hundred year bottle of wine analogy is a bad one. The yeast should team up with algae to make lichen.
The fructose eventually runs out, but the sunshine will be around forever (till our sun expands and engulfs us anyway).
Hello Oilrig Medic,
Thxs for responding, but I think you missed my Overshoot theme. Innocuous little bacteria succeeded [failed for them] with Overshoot, thereby converting our atmosphere to what we breathe today.
Even if humans mutated into bristlecone pines, who live for 1,000 years: just barely clinging to an rocky outcrop in the parched High Sierra, basking in the sun, and just happily tapping away at a wireless, solar-powered laptop computer with our branches--if we still persisted in Overshoot-- our existence is non-optimized. Blowback, initialized by the Overshoot, would be inevitable [although I have no idea what that would look like!].
Please read the Reg Morrison article, "Hydrogen: Humanity's Maker and Breaker" at his website:
http://www.regmorrison.id.au/
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Bob:
You said:
Allow me to suggest a different take on this which I think is closer to the truth:
In a forest the wind blows a ripe apple from a tree. It lands on the ground, and after some time a yeast spore, carried on the wind, lands on it and germinates. Being no smarter than its fellow yeast in the nearby winery it sets about doing just what they do; consuming the available sugar in the fruit and reproducing. After a time it dies, but one of its offspring becomes stuck to the leg of an ant, who is also feeding on the apple.
On its way back to the ant hill the ant comes across the remains of a half eaten pear pulled down from another tree by a deer. As the ant walks across it the yeast cell falls off its leg into the moist fruit, and so on, for millions of years....
Is the wild yeast "smarter" than its domesticted cousin? No.
Take it off the rotting pear and put it in a glass jug of fruit juice and it and all its offspring will be dead in a week or so.
As far as I know the survival of any species depends on it being but 1 part of a vastly complex community of other creatures.
We were once that, small in numbers and in impact, sometimes preditor, sometimes prey. Then we learned how to be other than that and thus set off down the road to our present predicament.
Hello John Milton,
Thxs for responding. Good explanation, it echoes what I was trying to express to Oilrig Medic in my reply above. Big Thxs for the help!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Interesting analogy, John. And right on the button, as far as I'm concerned.
Learning to use extrasomatic energy and, in a sense, removing ourselves from the normal constraints of the Earth for a time, we have delayed those constraints to a point where they will come back and bite us hard when they are finally met.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
I keep expecting someone to pull out the bioweapon wildcard. The majority of us are going to die anyway, so why not have those deaths be quick and less disruptive than fighting over dwindling resources?
Frank Herbert's
The White Plague
covered a possible scenario ...
No bioweapon can be virulent and lethal enough at the same time to allow for even 99% death of everyone.
So many scattered populations with different disease resistance means that significant populations will survive.
I liken bioweapons to by biggest grip with cancer treatments, i can kill cancer by myself, by stoping on cell cultures. How can I turn that into a usable treatment? which doesn't kill the host?
same with people, everyone knows how to kill, but getting it done effectively is HARD. (the best evidence for bioweapons not being very good is the fact that we lived through the cold war with 2 huge economies pushing for any edge)
There are no diseases which are fatal, easily spreading(airborn), hibernate well(sporulation), last for a long time, take 3-4 months to become deadly, and become deadly with little/no warning! simply none.
most viruses become less lethal within a couple generations of the host, because only the less lethal viruses are sucessful at passing on genes. selective pressure is NEVER for super-lethal genes, because it's suicidal.
What about ice-9?
collateral damage
Hello Gilgamesh,
Good points, but consider the release of weaponized Ebola-Smallpox as just one of many induced, shifting Liebig Minimums that can be implemented upon a designated area.
Something this way comes.....
Recall Asimov's Foundation Principles of Predictive Collapse and Directed Decline. Also, don't forget the multiplicative powers of cascading blowbacks. Even if you survive the bioweapon, if there is no food or water, pretty rapidly your further survival is extremely questionable.
Perhaps, the next big thing is a bioweapon release that decimates livestock [hoof and mouth disease], or birds [Avian Flu], or plants [wheat blight]. Or military attacks on electricity-infrastructure or water infrastructure [see Iraq, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, etc, etc]. Malaria, diarreha, West Nile disease, AIDS/HIV, all can be enlisted, which then becomes the Liebig Minimum for those so unfortunately and personally afflicted. The randomness is so powerful, yet so hard to pin down as to the source. Nature? Man? Nature? Hell if I know.
Or recall my earlier post of rationing tires as the mechanical Liebig Minimum to rapidly accelerate the 60-75% labor shift to bicycles and wheelbarrows. Encouraging Cascadia and New Vermont Republic Secession can also be very helpful in further limiting immigration overshoot into these enclaves. Although Halliburton work camps seems to be the elite preferred method. Time will tell.
The list is nearly endless in terms of societal Liebig Minimums that can be tweaked to destabilize a habitat and alter its trajectory. Don't forget that Mother Nature is lending a hand too with highly visible droughts, hurricanes, climate change, etc. Recall my Somalia post--where brother clans fought to the death over a stand of trees--Earthmarine dynamic for one side? What about Eucadorian natives blowing up pipelines? Mexican Zapatistas?
Consider Zimbabwe: the recent program of the police forcing instant price reductions only when their hoarding buddies are right outside with their pickups is ideal for them to rapidly stock their 'survival lifeboats'--what a sweet deal for them! Consider all the other earlier events such as the 25,000 tribal genocide driven by the Shona, Project Murambatsvina, etc, etc.
The Porridge Principle of Metered Decline is a great strategy of subterfuge, especially if most people are in denial of an obvious geological decline like Peakoil. Consider Gazprom's private security army, or our contractors in Iraq. Pemex will have its own troops soon too.
Not too hot, not too cold, but just right to fly under the radar of 6.5 billion people.
Now, I make no claim to be a Hari Seldon. But another concept of Foundation is that it be hidden. But, like the classic book series, there is nothing wrong with an additional Foundation to further kick this optimal Bottleneck Squeeze along the paradigm shift. It can even be in our plain sight,
But feel free to disagree as I certainly do not have all the answers, but I have lots of speculation. Your mileage may vary.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
You, sir, are obviously not Hari Seldon, as he would have the good sense to get the heck out of Phoenix. Of all the places in this country likely to let go with a bang the desert southwest is right behind the gulf coast. I was recently on Lake Mead - down 100' since I last saw it in the mid 1990s.
Something wicked this way comes ...
I think you could argue that long hibernation becomes less important to high fatality rate if the asymptomatic period is long enough. HIV being a good case in point.
If your doing a weapon you probably would rather have the virus resevoir in people rather than in the soil anyway....
Consider something like Jaagsiekte sheep retrovirus (JSRV) as a starting point, airborne via virus laden lung fluid that can be spread with a sneeze or cough, causes small cell lung cancer in sheep & goats.
(the coat protein will cause tumors in mouse and human in tissue culture, not, it seems, in vitro but who knows...)
Dr. Bartlett's presentation has been a staple of many of my classes. It presents the mathematical certainty of unregulated growth and its end result. We do not live on a planet named Infinity. It is named Earth. This basic mathematical notion extends to every aspect of our finite planet from oil, to water, to aluminum, to ginseng, to geothermal energy. And, what's more important--it's all interrelated. At the root of the book "Limits to Growth," this basic mathematical insight brooks no silliness, no room for shilly-shally, no perpetual motion machines, no cornucopian geewizardry, just the limits of our finite existence. Everyone who pooh-poohs this idea may as well pound their head against a brick wall and try to tell the world that it is okay, because statistically only a tiny fraction of the atoms in his head are hitting the wall, therefore it couldn't possibly hurt.
Bartlett tells the story I have tried to tell here oh so many times and been told that I am something of a troll or a lunatic. Well, as my message matches Dr. Bartlett's message which makes him a troll by the communicative property of addition and multiplication, then we brethren trolls will continue to state the basic fundamental message that unmitigated growth on a finite world is impossible. THEREFORE, we accept the small-brain's appellation and call ourselves TROLL.
ALL HAIL TROLLS!!
Hello Cherenkov,
Please tell your students that the Grim Reaper [who already stalks the land], that he is a non-stop and tireless worker; that he never suffers from any possible energy-depletion Liebig Minimum to even slow the swing of his awesome razor-sharp Scythe:
http://library.thinkquest.org/16665/media/reaper.jpg
Image taken from the glossary at the website, "Death, An Inquiry into Man's Mortal Weakness" at:
http://library.thinkquest.org/16665/cgi-bin/index.cgi
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Yes, as I stated before, it is all interconnected. Sprengel and Liebig would have approved.
"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'"
Death does stalk the land and its scythe is singing the whetstone.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W.B Yeats
It holds the black door open for all of us.
Apparently the DOD also believes in peak oil. Here's a quote from a recent DOE email (EERE Network News) I received.
Green Hornet
http://livingwithoutoil.blogspot.com
http://my-words.org/Beyond2010-top/top.htm
People are too busy with their own personal lives to even think about peak oil.
Hello IndyDoug,
Then sadly, the busy families, such as the Duggars:
http://www.duggarfamily.com/
... will have much free time in the future to ponder Peakoil & Overshoot ramifications when their genealogical tree is whittled down to size. Notice that I am not wishing this on anyone, but it is the simple fact that: Nature Doesn't Care. That is why I have no DNA-offspring.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Right on, Roger (and Mark B for clarity); seems virtually all (including Prof Goose) have hijacked your criticisms for their own purposes or justification. Remarkably, after all the analysis by those who know the difference, we're revisiting the exponential function.
Good work, Don Sailorman, you steered the discourse to better, more productive waters.
Things are getting bad here, looks more and more like a blog of opinions. Would normally stick around. 'Night.
wow, John, did you even read my conversation upthread with Roger? He made his point, I countered, he agreed.
How is that "bad?"
I said this was ONE of the factors, not the only one...and it seemed to me that understand what Bartlett is saying helps you understand PO.
There is also this little gem of a quote from Herbert Stein:
"If something can't go on forever, then it won't"
Here is another voice pointing out that the "one factor" is also the most important (Final Empire):
We face planetary disaster. The destruction of the planetary life system has been ongoing for thousands of years and is now approaching the final apocalypse which some of us will see in our own lifetimes. Far from being a difficult and complex situation it is actually very simple, if one can understand and accept a few simple and fundamental propositions.
The consensus assumption of civilization is that an exponentially expanding human population with exponentially expanding consumption of material resources can continue, based on dwindling resources and a dying ecosystem. This is simply absurd. Nonetheless, civilization continues on with no memory of its history and no vision of its future.
Hello Afteroil,
Thxs for the link. Those two short paragraphs you posted express the problem very succintly--Kudos!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I met the author while he was in portland a few years back .He is a interesting fellow,and has produced a excellent read
It's certainly true that most people, in the USA at least, can't do much more than basic math, and most are poor even at estimating that. Some decades ago when I taught high school science, I introduced slide rules as a notion, to kids who were ready at semester's end to graduate from an ostensibly college-prep school. Fully half could not manage to place the decimal point correctly half the time, even after practicing. These were all kids who had passed all required math courses for graduation, most with a B average. (the math department was not happy with me, and I was laid off at the end of the year; they needed a new gym so someone had to go...) That was in the mid-70's, and it's my impression that the situation has not improved. So some innumeracy is real and common.
Yet that alone can't explain the resistance of folks to the dead-easy facts of peak oil. I get the same resistance from friends with double-800's on their SAT's. There's an irrational resistance to any negative conclusions, and that's a well-worne insight here.
But beyond that or because of it, many question the motives of those who talk about peak oil. Why are we telling them these distressing things? What is our agenda? It doesn't compute that we're passing along bad news as a good deed; we must either desire for this to become true and be seeking to proseltyze it to expand our unholy coven of adherents in the manner of an aggressive religion, or simply desire for them to be bummed out for unspecified but presumably creepy reasons.
Who gives away misguided information for free? People with "other" religions. Who gives away valuable information for free? Nobody! There must be an agenda. (We are, after all, evolved as a species to err greatly in favor of seeing faces and conspiracies even in random data).
So how to convince the world that TOD is a non-prophet organization, with good information?
I dunno. But I can't help noting the irony that if a group like this was a secret society trying NOT to let the masses know, and keep them from this trove of data so we could personally enrich ourselves, that the media would be all over it.
In short, we're not acting sneaky enough to be credible.
Best Hopes for a secret handshake.
Good night and good luck.
conditioned to see ourselves
as subservient members of a larger
society that always "provides".
Between ages 0-2, Mommy and Daddy were the gods who ruled our universe and always "provided" when we brayed and cried.
Between ages 3-6, Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy were added to the list of deities who saw to our every need. All we had to do was to be "good" and to go along with the social order. Don't rock the boat. Then we would be "rewarded".
Later in life many of these models of how the world works were shattered.
However, a new model emerged. Corporations, government, and "The Market" became the new gods who ruled our universe and always "provided".
All we had to do was to be "good", go along to get along and not rock the boat. Then we would be "rewarded". If we rebelled and went against the mainstream order, we would be punished.
Then a stranger comes along and tries to "rock the boat" by telling us our new gods are unsustainable (that the true Truth is Peak Oil, Global Warming and Population Overshoot). It is clear that this stranger is out to be plain mean; just like that bully in school who revealed to us that Santa Clause was not real. Who wants that again?
Stranger= Bad.
Corporate Mommy & Daddy= Good.