Thanks for the thoughts, Debbie;

Well, my Fellow Moles and Shrews, if we're right, even in our small numbers and with such apparently laughable influence in 'the dialog' .. it seems to me the most useful action aside from the attempts at outreach are to conceive and develop contingencies that can be rolled out quickly once this situation proves itself to enough of a critical mass of the people.

The reasons for creating very visible devices on my own house is threefold at least.
1) So others know I believe this is worth committing time and effort to, right now.
2) So My home actually has some alternative ways of keeping us warm and ok..
3) So I have some designs and plans worked out that I can then share with neighbors as soon as anyone is interested in them.

I do get a lot of neighborhood interest already.. even some very rough and gangsta dudes were shaking their heads in appreciation and saying 'That's it, man. That's the thing!' And no, I'm not worried about them trying to drop a 100 pound box off my roof at gunpoint and having their way with my family.. in case such responses are about to come up. Many people do get it, and just need to see that it's possible AND necessary AND already happening around them. There is a LOT of inertia to fight, and the pressure we apply against such weight has to be persistent and continuous.

Bob

I live in the Cleveland area, and I was also surprised by the high count of "peak oil" occurrences in Cleveland's Plain Dealer. I don't know anyone IRL who admits to thinking about such things. (Besides me.)

So I did the "peak oil" search on the Plain Dealer's website myself. Although a lot of matches are returned, most of the matches I looked at turned out to be from reader comments, not from the article as published.

I realize that this was only intended to be an informal cocktail-napkin-grade test, but I think the search system at cleveland.com is creating an anomaly that's unfit for even that, in this case.

I don't understand the evangelical zeal with which many seem to want to spread the gospel of peak oil. Resource depletion is real, it follows a skewed distribution similar to what Hubbert described, and it's implications for human society and for the biosphere are profound. But why the urgency to convert the skeptic to this reality? The reality of the situation can't be change. Forwarned or blindsided, the outcome is the same. Population collapse is inevitable. If people want to wallow in denial, or are just too plain stupid to see the obvious, why is it anyone else's business to attempt to convince them? Why not hold on to whatever competitive advantage awareness may convey over unawareness?

Hi, Debbie. One way to look at how ideas are propagated is via conversation theory (some people use the word "memes" as analogs to "genes" propagating via DNA, as you do).

Start with that human beings are engaged in a network of conversations and nothing gets done without a conversation. For humans language is inseparable. Human conversations take all forms from the obvious (spoken) to the hidden (the little voice in our head).

When we are born, we enter the network of conversations already being spoken. Some conversations have been going for a very long time, like the conversation for war, and some are new, like what happened in a sports game yesterday.

For most people, conversations just happen to them, just like the weather. They aren't consciously choosing the conversations they participate in. Others are consciously aiming to change the conversation, like we are here at TOD.

But new conversations often have to displace existing ones as they propagate because they often say competing things. For instance, there once was a conversation that slavery is fine, now the opposite conversation is spoken (at least in most parts of the world). But that certainly did not happen overnight.

That's because conversations defend themselves. In other words, it's often difficult to dislodge existing conversations because the new ones trigger the immune system of the existing ones. Witness what is happening with the conversation for public health care. That has triggered a whole host of existing conversations that were lying in wait. In a town hall meeting on television I've heard old conversations be triggered like "you're turning us into Russia" and "government is the problem not the solution" (possibly the world's oldest conversation? ;-)

We've looked at other conversations that are triggered by the peak oil conversation here on TOD, from "technology will save us" to "it's a plot to take over the political system with a world government."

It is in the nature of conversations to disappear once spoken...so something has to keep them alive, like transferring them to books, for instance. But even then someone must read the book and re-speak the conversation or it ends there.

A book is an example of the physical world supporting the existence of a conversation, but there are many others. The very fact that we are (mostly) still driving oil-fueled cars supports the conversation "there is plenty of oil." That people have these things called "retirement accounts" for which they receive monthly statements is an incredibly powerful physical support mechanism for a whole family of conversations. My website definitely has more traffic when the gasoline price signs show a high number vs. a low number — another example of the physical world altering the network of conversations.

That is all to say that although the number of people speaking the peak oil conversation is growing, it is doing so slowly mostly because the physical world does not support it, just as greenish points out. In many ways, it is remarkable that the peak oil conversation has grown like it has. I think it was Slate that recently has a piece polling its readers on the likeliest way the U.S. would end and peak oil was number 2. It's useful to consider that the U.S. is just a conversation supported by a another conversation written on paper i.e. the U.S. Constitution. (It is also supported by the physical landmass of the North American continent, of course.)

In my view, the conversation will not grow quickly enough to cause a tipping point without the perturbation some of us see. That's not a game that I think can be won, not in the time we have left.

Instead, the conversation I'm propagating is more like "people can live fulfilling lives without oil and our consumer society." I do this because, being a social animal, my happiness and safety are largely dependent on the society in which I live.

-Andre'

That list is quite telling, even given its limitations. But let's ask about the positive: What's going on with The Oregonian that has made the topic so prominent? How can we replicate that success elsewhere? Where can that success be replicated?

Lot of editors regard PO as a plot by Big Oil to disseminate fear so that they can pump up prices. That's why they keep it off the pages. Find a way to counteract that.

I have to say there has been quite an uptick in the number of articles I have read in the past 6 months on PO. Not to mention every major investment bank has now come out and acknowledged the issue over the past 12 months. The professional investment community knows but the majority of Americans have no idea largely because it is not something the mainstream media appears to understand yet, I do believe that may change after the next price run-up and collapse in the next 1-5 years. But I suspect the focus will again be on speculators, bad loans or some other distraction that is ultimately a result of this phenomenon. People don't seem to have the will to understand PO, which I believe to be the most significant economic event of the 21st century.

I work in the upstream oil & gas industry and there seems to be a BAU type of mindset here at least in the U.S. I think this is largely because most domestic E&P companies are now primarily natural gas (typically 80% gas 20% or less in crude) in terms of their portfolios and there is a lot more natural gas to be drilled for in places like the Haynesville Shale, Barnett Shale etc. so we are not having any problems increasing production.

Even though we have economists and financial analysts coming into our office all the time and beating the drum loudly regarding our nations future energy crisis, but many of the old guys here seem to think it is just because they are energy bulls trying to sell something when in reality we are facing the very real problem of energy scarcity. Additionally, many people working in the O&G industry are at or near retirement age and are not really the type of folks who want to be concerned with such large problems as they are nearing the end of their careers. With the exception of maybe guys like Boone Pickens or Matt Simmons.

Oregon has an order of magnitude more hits than any other location in the US.

I would think the next question is "Why is it ok to cover peak oil in Oregon?"

They were first to start a peak oil task force. Did the conversation start from individuals? Or did the leadership come from government?

It seems to me that one rather inexpensive thing that governments could do is mail all citizens a document explaining peak oil and that it is real and that the citizens should get prepared for higher prices (it would not need to talk about food shortages or anything more dire than high prices).

That would end the "I would be crazy for talking about this" issue (and possibly unblock some editorial pages) and allow people to start the conversations that are needed to solve the problem.

Just to get things a little more into perspective:

14100 search hits for "britney spears"

92700 for star trek

Search results from the on-line version of the Cleveland Plain Dealer

get the picture?

fyi, this kind of "data mining" can become a rigorous scientific tool with not too much added effort. It wouldn't work for the papers with no mentions of "peak oil" but might work for the published literature on Google Scholar, for example. With a multi-year search you can plot it as a history curve of change over time... This figure is what you get for the NY Times, with a 10 year search for the word "sustainability". If your key phrase doesn't have multiple meanings you get a fairly clean rendition of the flurries of discussion about the subject.

Also of interest is the number of Peak Oil videos on you tube, and the dates they were uploaded. Not a whole bunch the last 12 months but loads before. This is an indication that people are more concerned about the economy, imho.

Most governments are well aware of the ensuing catastrophy. They haven't got the faintest idea how to tackle it. Admitting their position will create a total chaos which will demolish any chance of getting out of the existing avalanche. Their solution for the nearest future is to postpone admitting its existance as long as possible. They hope that within a few years Alternative Energy and higher energetic efficiencies will be able to fill the opening gap of energy resources.

I think that the basic problem is not getting people to acknowledge peak oil, but rather getting them to acknowledge peak capitalism. I have visted plenty of alternate energy websites where at least 99% of the discussion participants admit the reality of fossil fuel depletion, but less than 1% are willing to admit that an economic system whose raison d'etre is to "sell more stuff this year than we sold last year" is unsustainable. If a reasonable response to peak oil within the context of private finance capitalism were possible, I think that a serious, mainstream discussion of the issues would be under way.

My strategy is "let it fail."

Guess what mammals, there's a major meteorite headed our way! Is this good news or bad news? Well, it could wipe us and the entire planet out. That would be bad news. But it might just wipe out those who are big, clumsy, and not adapted to change. It could lead to . . . total planetary domination by us.

The attention to energy issues will (IMO) come of its own accord -- and in the absence of such a "catastrophe," we won't be able to succeed anyway. I tend to be skeptical of attempts to spread the peak oil message through a new, more clever media campaign. I know, Al Gore did it, but that took nearly 20 years of publicity and slow infiltration of the environmental movement -- and look how fragile it is, if some in the global warming community see the peak oil conversation as a threat to them. A media campaign sounds like a new, more clever way to take on the dinosaurs pre-meteorite, so that even if one particular mammal species seems to be doing rather well, I'm inclined to wait and see.

We should be preparing for a future in which the economy is manifestly in disarray, and previous conversations have been shown to be bankrupt. What's so scary about this? Isn't this what everyone on TOD is talking and thinking about? The economy is actually already in a crisis, but no one sees it: we are waiting for the "seeing" to come about. "Apocalypse" means "uncovering." What conversations will we be having then? We should look confidently towards this future and plan accordingly. But there is no point in trying to bring about this "uncovering" ourselves; that part will be done for us by nature, with a possible assist from us. We need to focus on ways we can help out nature, and what policies will be needed at that future point.

What policies will we need in this not-too-distant, apocalyptic future? The articles by Herman Daly and others and groups like CASSE (http://www.steadystate.org/) are a good starting point. As a thought experiment, I'd envision a chaotic situation in the U. S. A. in 2012 (or 2016 or whenever), with 20% unemployment, 30% annual inflation, and both political parties in disarray, and what would a presidential candidate say in such a situation? I'd stop worrying about how to get on "Good Morning America" and start worrying about this question. If we have a good set of policies and a small but knowledgeable group of followers ready at that point, it could lead to success. It's the policies that I'm looking for, not the specific tactics or which prominent politicians we might recruit -- when we've got the policies, we can look at how to promote them.

Keith

I don't understand this religious zeal over peak oil. Of course it will. Everything does. But you ignore economics. As oil runs out, the price increases. As price increases society switches to something else. Did you not notice that last year all kinds of alt energy ideas/business sprang up? Or that consumers stopped buying SUV's and moved en mass to smaller cars? Or that as the recession kicked in coal demand has cratered?

Yes, you noticed those things. But you are too dogmatic, too religious in your zeal. You pretend peak oil lives in a vacuum with no economic or societal dynamics. You sound even more deaf and dumb than the public and media you criticize.

I don't think that Tribune did in fact come up with zero. In 2006 there was a great special section called "A tank of gas, a world of trouble" or "Oil Safari" or something. A big pull-out section.

A sidebar apparently included the words "peak oil"

...with crude prices hitting record highs since 2004, global oil demand outstripping supplies like never before and major discoveries stagnant for 20 years, peak oil has migrated from the fringe to the center of the global energy debate.

I found it by googling "where does oil come from tribune".

There was this review on Energy Bulletin:

"Just opened my hard copy of the Trib this morning and found the special insert at the number two slot, behind front page, section A. The special insert is HUGE! In my thirty odd years of reading local newspapers I cannot remember a devotion to one subject this extensively. The graphics are quite impressive also."

Is anyone really surprised by the media's lack of attention to this? Look at the reaction to attempted changes in our healthcare system. During the 2008 campaign it was either the number 1 or 2 issue cited by voters that they wanted addressed. So we vote in someone who vows to make changes and what is the response. Wah, wah, wah, "I want change but I don't want it to be hard, I don't want to give anything up, I don't want my taxes to go" up and on and on and on. We are a nation of children, babies really. We don't want to discuss the hard issues and deal with them. I speak to smart people about this and they simply reply "that can't be true, there's plenty of oil, another technology will supplant oil", without actually looking at the reality of the situation. In the last few months the highest selling vehicle in the US is the Ford F-150. The same idiots buying such cars will be crying in their beer and claiming a conspiracy by "The Arabs" when the world economy kicks back in and oil spikes. Americans need someone to hit them over the head with a hammer to get them to react. I don't see that changing as Americans feel entitled to cheap energy and that if we don't get it we demand it somehow. It's ridiculous and sad. The current administration is clueless about this as well. Oh well, as the Grateful Dead said, "going to hell in a handbasket and we're enjoying the ride."

Thanks for your effort here Debbie. I wish you were my representative in Oregon. I live just outside of Eugene. Oregon is full of old hippies that still remember the oil shocks from the 70's and 80's. They live in a prolonged truce with the "redneck lumberjacks" in their mega tire supercharged pickup trucks. Fortunately, it is the old hippies that hold the council seats.

I also have had some experience in Broadcast Television. It seems perfectly natural that we should see scant coverage of Peak Oil in the major media. To understand this is just "Follow the Money". Virtually all major media in the U.S. is funded by advertising dollars. The implications of Peak Oil is quite clear to most people once given a little thought. We will have to stop buying stuff, get out of our cars, and start walking. Any news editor worth their salary will say to their reporter: "Are you nuts? We can't run this! We'd be effectively telling our readers not to patronize our advertisers. The next thing you know, Ford and GM will be pulling their ads. Then we'd be out of business too! Tell you what, you bring it back to me all watered down. Interview some skeptics who support business as usual so it doesn't frighten away our income stream, and then maybe, I might consider running it then. I'll let you know."

It seems global warming is less risky to present. It is relatively easy to find "solutions" that will be somebody else's responsibility. For example: sequestering CO2 from a coal fired power plant does not require the average suburbanite to change his living arrangements or buying habits.

I think that one of the problems with the Peak Oil coverage is that in the United States, you don't get a lot of news from your news media. A lot of it is just opinion or fluff.

Last fall, I was in Kathmandu, Nepal, between treks in the high Himalayas. There you have your choice of (pirated) satellite channels. You can listen to the news from CNN, and then you can switch to the BBC, which is much less opinionated. To get the Arab take on things, you can go to Al Jazeera, which has a good English language news service, and if that's not enough you can flip through the English language stations from nearby India. India has 1 billion people, English is one of the official languages, and TV is a very competitive business.

By contrast, in the spring I was in Utah, where all the TV channels had the same news. At that time, it was all about the swine flu. Since I was sitting among a bunch of medical professionals, I asked them what they thought about the coverage, and their consensus as medical experts was, "It's all cr*p." At that point, I turned the TV off and wished I could get the BBC (or even Al Jazeera). Americans don't get any real news in their news.

The basic problem is that U.S. news coverage is focused on the events of the moment and is very shallow. An on-going trend gets no coverage until it turns into a crisis, and then the coverage ends when the immediate crisis is over. U.S. oil production peaked in 1973, and unless gasoline prices have hit a new high, the media is no longer interested.

I notice that some of the highest hit rates for "Peak Oil" were in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Houston Chronicle. The first two are noted for their in-depth coverage and the last is in the midst of the U.S. oil company head offices.

Windows was a terrible OS, but Mac didn't dislodge it. Likewise VHS and Betamax machines...

Probably these silly analogies don't help us much. Back when it mattered, Mac was a very expensive closed system, poor value for money despite significant technological brilliance (another big minus: as with the iPhone, Apple decided for you what software they deigned to allow you to have.) Back when it mattered, VHS offered uninterrupted movies and Beta offered poor run time, while the minor difference in resolution mattered only to a handful. And even if Mac and Beta had been "better" overall (rather than on just a single dimension), I don't see a strong analogy with news coverage. (As for the dinosaurs and mammals, the analogy seems simply unintelligible.)

Perhaps abstract concepts such as those called "Peak Oil" and "Global Warming" aren't really "news" most of the time. Generally, and from the point of view of a broad audience as opposed to an audience of specialists of one sort or another, there is no particular change - nothing new, no "news" - from day to day or week to week on those fronts. When there is in fact "news", such as last year's price spike, it certainly does get coverage. However, the "news", the change, was the price spike rather than the abstract concept. Searching on "Peak Oil" won't turn it up those articles since the concept may not appear in those words, or even at all.

And perhaps it's unsurprising that The Guardian and The Oregonian, or something like them, would top the search-hit lists, since their financial or editorial arrangements apparently encourage them to run funky offbeat opinion pieces, such as those by George Monbiot in The Guardian. But workaday newspapers teetering on the edge of bankruptcy probably have more immediate concerns than to fuss over conceptual abstractions.

N.B. I am surprised that the Falls Church News-Press is not on the domestic list, since Tom Whipple writes his regular series there. Maybe it's due to their obtusely structured web site - his current article at this writing is easy to find, but I have yet to discover a table-of-links page for his series.

Allow me to take a slightly different angle of attack here, and consider another angle of news coverage that has been lacking...and allow me to be try to careful and put this in a way that is understandable, and have you guys sort of "slice and dice it" for a bit:

Suppose I were to put in a newspaper that we could be on the front edge of the greatest percentage drop in crude oil consumption since the birth of the oil age, and that it is already underway.

Could I back it up with any facts or events that would demonstrate where I am getting this idea?

The two big historic players (Toyota and General Motors) in the auto industry (the biggest consumer of crude oil is still automobiles) are both committed to and preparing to deliver the most fuel efficient (in terms of crude oil consumption) vehicles in the history of the industry), and not efficient by matters of a percent or two here or there, but by orders of magnitude.

Suppose I were to point out that while people in general have basically been blind to the reality of peak oil...but that the oil industry suffers from a blindness as great and does not see that they are about to slam full speed into a brick wall.

Would anyone who is or has been involved in the production of crude oil believe that such a thing was possible?

Suppose I were to point out that with the recent unnoticed advances in battery technology, that the power of the world's grid based energy system will soon be in direct competition with crude oil for the consumers energy dollar, and that the amount of portable liquid fuel on the automobile will be so small and consumed so efficiently that it can be easily substituted by any number of natural gas, propane, bio-fuel or even manufactured methanol (made from hydrogen and captured carbon)options?

How fast can this happen? A decade? Less than a decade? Has the crude oil industry even considered how fast and how greatly demand for their product could drop in the upcoming 10 years (note: I didn't say would drop, I said could drop) and looked at any contingency plans for this greatly under-reported possibility?

This whole story could play out vastly different than most people seem to realize. Predictability is pretty much gone...how does the media attempt to predict the future for its audience when the various possible outcomes are so numerous and so wildly varied as to verge on the edge of chaos? Catastrophic collapse and failure...or a new clean industry which will free up trillions of dollars, who can know? I will say this...I don't think most people can comprehend how fast this technology is moving and how great the implications are for the average person in the developed nations.

My father recounted to me the first time he rode in a car with an automatic transmission, a 1948 Oldsmobile. He said it was one of the reasons he became a mechanic, so fascinating was the idea that fluids could move around and shift the car so that a middle aged female school teacher could drive it in comfort. It astounded him at the time. Within the next decade almost all cars had the option of automatic transmission. He asked the school teacher how he it worked, thinking that she, being an educated woman, was as interested in the technology as he was. "I have no earthly idea", she said, she simply drove it.

This is the way the revolution will occur. Most college educated people and office workers will use it and not even realize the revolution is right under the hood. It is coming fast.

RC

The media's failure to appreciate the significance of our problem may have many causes - for example: elimination of their science or investigative journalist departments - but it seems, for some, to be in their fundamental nature.

A recent study at the Univ. of Buffalo Study Demonstrates How We Support Our False Beliefs looked at how voters perceived Iraq's linkage to 9/11, however, I think this studies findings could just as easily apply to 'Peak Oil' or 'Climate Change'.

The study addresses what it refers to as a "serious challenge to democratic theory and practice that results when citizens with incorrect information cannot form appropriate preferences or evaluate the preferences of others."

Co-author Steven Hoffman, Ph.D., visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, says, "Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as 'motivated reasoning,' which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.

"In fact," he says, "for the most part people completely ignore contrary information.

"The argument here is that people get deeply attached to their beliefs," Hoffman says.

"We form emotional attachments that get wrapped up in our personal identity and sense of morality, irrespective of the facts of the matter.

Not sure if this is a uniquely American form of incuriousness or maybe it's true - you just can't teach old dogs new tricks.

When I searched the Los Angeles Times for "peak oil" using the quotation marks, five results were returned, three of which contained the phrase. The articles are:

"$20 Per Gallon" Christopher Steiner, July 26, 2009

A green industrial revolution?, Opinion, May 9, 2008

"Letters to the editor" August 4, 2007

One reference per year is pathetic.

The transition will be a lot easier than you think. Right now energy is wasted because it is too cheap. By wasted, I mean everyone drives large cars, leaves lights/appliances on, over heat/cool, have inadequate insulation...

I agree we are near or possibly even past the point of peak oil. But as soon as that starts manifesting in higher prices, voluntary conservation will cut demand rapidly and significantly -- well beyond what you "true believers" imagine possible. I think every American could easily cut their energy use by half, without really feeling pain.

Look at the impact $5 gas had last year. Conservation really kicked in. In my city buses were suddenly crowded. SUV/truck sales tanked 40%+. Businesses all flocked to sell wind, solar and battery solutions. But the higher prices were temporary, so that investment is gone now.

My solution is a tax that makes energy permanently expensive. Give us $140 oil consistently and 10 years from now everyone would have well insulated houses, fuel efficient cars, white/solar roofs. Easy changes that would crater oil demand.

Go ahead. Argue with me and call me a dog that can't learn new tricks. But you are the dog that doesn't understand economics 101 and refuse to accept the lesson of recent history.

Crash Proof Products

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9oINEsDIH8

The Globe and Mail results are pretty easy to explain. Jeff Rubin ("Why Your World...") and Thomas Homer-Dixon ("Carbon Shift") have both recently launched books in Canada that address peak oil. These have gotten a fair bit of coverage in the print press. Having said that, I haven't seen a lot of evidence that they've become major policy issues.

There was an opinion poll conducted here in the early nineties that indicated the environment had become the number one concern of Canadians. Then we went into a fairly deep recession and it all but disappeared from the polls as a response.

I agree that the omission is shocking. I have a daily 'Google Alerts' for Peak Oil and the hits are almost never in the mainstream media in the US.

But as a former reporter and journalist, I do not think this is because of corporate interests in the media. In all the years I worked in newspapers, I never once had a story squelched because of that, despite what many people think.

But I do think there are several other cogent reasons, and they might point the way to a solution:

1. The US media is hard-driven by the daily news cycle. Story assignments are generally based on what is happening in today's headlines. Editors spend vastly less time assigning think pieces and long-term analyses, and even when they do, those kinds of stories are usually based on hard news that's already on the front page.

2. Peak Oil began years ago as a 'fringe' theory promoted by 'radicals' and 'doomssayers,' at least in the mainstream imagination. Editors and reporters rarely want to go out on a limb and appear to have taken sides on a 'tainted' issue like that.

3. Peak Oil has not yet gained a high-profile, mainstream spokesperson, as global warming did with many people, among them Al Gore. It has, to my knowledge, not even attracted the imprimature of high-profile Congressional committee hearings.

4. The chatter against the Peak Oil idea is as loud, or louder, than the chatter supporting it. Lots of mainstream pundits pooh-pooh the idea, especially economists, who loom large in the punditocracy.

However, all of this is now beginning to change. Just in the last six months I have detected the beginnings of real movement in increased coverage.

But if we want to accelerate that change, the above reasons point to some solutions.

1. Sadly, Peak Oil needs to become a news story before it becomes a subject of serious media analysis in the US. Generally speaking, when activists want to take an ignored crisis and make it a front page story, they hit the streets. I was an early member of the AIDS groups ACT UP, back when AIDS was totally ignored by the media. We chose targets on Wall St and the drug companies, zapped them with creative demonstrations, got arrested, tied up traffic and bingo - front page coverage. THEN the media began reporting about what we were demonstrating about.

2. Peak Oil needs to try to shed the 'fringe' image and claim its mainstream mantle. Actually it is already doing this, since lots of mainstream types are signing on, writing books, teaching courses, etc., but this has not really broken through. One way that other issues have accomplished this, for example, is through a things like full-page ads in places like the NY Times, WSJ, Wash Post, etc., signed by 200 REALLY IMPORTANT AND CREDIBLE PEOPLE - Nobel laureates, top scientists, university presidents, famous authors, artists, heads of major corporations, credible celebrities. That really gets the notice of assigning editors - and a lot of other people as well.

3. There's a reason why most causes have high-profile spokespeople, from Bono (Africa) to Liz Taylor (AIDS) to Al Gore (global warming) to celebs talking off their clothes for PETA. Because they're HIGH PROFILE. Because they're celebs. That's what drives the US media. That's what gets attention. So Peak Oil would do well to recruit, recruit, recruit.

4. The chatter against Peak Oil needs to be constantly opposed by the arguments for. Whenever some well-known PO denialist is going on the Newshour, say, or is going to be quoted in the Times, the editors or producers need to know exactly where to turn to find the opposing voice. In addition, whenever some supposed expert makes a boneheaded public comment denying PO, some credible voice has to pipe up to complain. This requires a sophisticated PR campaign that includes a media watchdog component. Think GLAAD, or the Anti-Defamation League.

5. The Peak Oil crisis will be addressed by the media when it becomes a political story. You can forget the Republicans, but within the Democratic Party a peak-oil caucus demanding candidates take a stand, demanding hearings, etc. can elevate the story to a news story very quickly. Similar pressure groups within the party - from labor to women's rights to the environmental movement in the 70s etc - saw their issues go from ignored to frontpage very quickly.

To my knowledge, the Peak Oil movement has not yet done these basic things, which have been tried and tested for movements and causes over decades.

There is no reason to think these strategies would be any less successful for this crisis.

Interesting

My 'local' paper Bellingham Herald had only one hit whereas our real local environmental paper, Whatcom watch had 11 hits just 2007-9. The word is getting out but not from our daily newspapers.

I started by writing letters to the editor (of the daily Red Deer Advocate)(Red Deer, Alberta being the Hummer capital of the world) on a fairly regular basis on the topic (as well as climate change). After a year or two, one of the editors asked if I'd like to write a column. Now, I write one twice a month called "Energy & Ecology". So far, so good. And this website is by far my best source for material.

No Peak Oil for Americans ... and I don't care. Let them eat cake, if they want their fantasies they are welocme to them.

I have my own, personal peak oil and that's all that matters to me. The longer fools deny, the more advantages I can accumulate. In the land of the blind the one- eyed man is king.

On the international scene there seems to be more mention of peak oil on television, as well. As an example, here is a seven minute panel discussion on peak oil, that we are not likely to see in America.

Actually there have been a number of reports on peak oil in America, like this interview with Robert Hirsch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=489IEnzg6GU&feature=related

Besides the obvious work of corporate newspapers to skew the news and not report fully anything that upsets the applecart of big business there is the human mind to contend with. We are very good at learning to predict those things that happen regularly and very good at dealing with dangers that our hunter-gatherer forefathers would have encountered regularly. Thus it is easy for a child to learn to fear snakes, being so primed. It is harder to teach humans to not trust authority. Humans seem not to be primed to know how to handle winning the lottery, whether it be the GA lottery, or the large unafraid mammal lottery (NA and Australia for example) or the fossil fuel lottery. We are primed to believe that tomorrow will be essentially just like today.

And we are programmed not to think about the most inevitable fact of our lives, ie that we will surely die.

Contemplating loss of lifestyle is like contemplating death for most people (the 1/2 the world that has a lifestyle rather than just a survival mode) as I have seen from 8 years of blogging peak oil.

Many people I know, despite accepting the idea of Peak Oil, live no differently and make no preparations. I think our brain, once big enough to encompass the concept of our inevitable death, had to create programs to constantly distract us from that thought so we would pay attention to passing on our genes effectively. I think that same program clicks in for Peak Oil and Global Warming. I doubt that increased press coverage would make much of a difference in what people do even if it changed what they thought.

We should also keep pushing the door open on how the negligence and disinterest in the peak oil problem is just one symptom of the larger negligence and disinterest in the real world and the problems associated with it being physical. People are actually so preoccupied with cultural issues they seem blithely unaware that we even live in a real physical world as well as in a cultural one too. All of nature's languages are "unspoken" is one of the problems...

In a NY Times article yesterday there was mention of how the super rich are not getting super richer any more, a kind of "max money" phenomenon... "After a 30-Year Run, Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Wall" The strange reality is that though less easily determined than "peak oil","max money" is just as certain to approach a natural limits as a measure of how much real value people can extract from the earth. Same as any other growth limit you'd see it coming when the growth curve reverses curvature.

So I naturally wrote the Times about the real world economists, JM Keynes & Kenneth Boulding, who saw that coming as a consequence of our existing in a physical world, and what it would mean...

"The more sobering wall for “the rich” is that a limit to earning from investments also applies to endowments, insurance companies, retirement funds, globally.

What they naturally all face is the “physical world problem”. As growth economies run into natural limits, the growth of their parts run into conflict with each other. That undermines earnings and the health of every part.

How economies can remain healthy as they become zero sum games was discovered long ago by the real world growth economists JM Keynes and then Kenneth Boulding. Economies approaching limits can remain healthy if investment growth is stabilized by excess spending, rather than by mounting financial strain. It’s a neat solution, and the new physics of natural systems suggests an interesting practical way. The tax status of investments could be based on real measures of their sustainability. Then we’d learn to limit ourselves to making lasting investments."

…It treats investment as the economy's steering wheel and each investor as having a stewardship responsibility for steering the system in new directions. Using their profiting from having control of shares of the whole, which is what money is, comes with an obligation to benefit the whole too. New meaning for money…

Results from Scandinavia:
Aftenposten (Norway) 13
Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden) 11
Politiken (Denmark) 1

A leading Peak Oil expert in Norway is laughing at the Peak Oil phenonemon altogether:
- There is a large potential for energy conservation,
- Large parts of the planet remains to be searched for oil, and the potential for EOR is large
- The potential in heavy oil (Venezuela, Canada,..)
- Aramco see no need to invest at $70/barrel
- OPEC has several millions barrels per day spare capacity
- IEAs announcements is a part of a political play
- The oil market is driven by financial investors aiming at the gold, oil, etc.

I do not buy this at all, but it illustrates what we are up against.

Deaf and dumb is definitely a big part of it, but mostly I think it's the willingness of the 'non-willing to admit peak oil' demographic to only listen to certain people. They are first taught to not think for themselves. Secondly they believe only what they hear from people certified by their peers to be good sources of information, and once established 100% of that information is deemed correct. Once those two psychological factors are established, they believe anything they are told by their 'leaders', like abiotic oil, etc.

Trying to jolt them out of their predisposed perspective would be as futile as trying to stop a train by throwing an empty aluminum can at it. Better to just let them experience peak oil by way of some alternate explanation provided by their 'leaders'.

Tor Olav said "I do not buy this at all, but it illustrates what we are up against."

This comment is what sanity is up against. You doomsters don't buy the counter argument, but have no reasonable counter to it. You believe -- because you believe. This is religion, not science.

Conservation is everywhere, right in front of your faces. Yet you don't believe. Last year oil prices briefly went to $140, and people conserved immediately and deeply. Yet you don't believe. PEOPLE, IT HAPPENED! THIS IS NOT A FUTURE PREDICTION. Investments came from everywhere practically overnight, developing solar, wind and biofuels. Yet you don't believe.

I personally live in a city. I live pretty energy frugally. Yet I could cut my consumption by 50% easily, and with little effort/pain. I could car pool. I could turn off every appliance except the fridge. I could shower in cold water. Hang clothing out to dry. How much of a sacrifice are any of these? Answer, none.

Believe this, everyone will adapt rapidly to higher prices. They are not adapting now because prices are so cheap energy is wasted.

I ran into this fairly nice peak oil article I ran across today in the Salt Lake Tribune. So a few are getting through. This might be one that could be reprinted elsewhere.

Current population growth not sustainable

Excerpt:

Inhabitants of the United States literally eat oil. Oil is necessary to make the fertilizer and pesticides used on our crops; to irrigate them; and to fuel the machinery used to plant, cultivate, and harvest them. In one study conducted in 1994, it was calculated that feeding each American each year required the equivalent of 400 gallons of oil, exclusive of the energy, mainly oil,needed for packaging, refrigeration, transportation, and cooking. The authors calculated that for every calorie of food energy delivered to the consumer, 10 calories of other energy, mostly oil, are required. The lesson is clear: Without oil we starve.

So how fares the oil basket into which we have put so many eggs? Well, it's looking quite frail. Oil is a limited resource. Each successful well exhibits an early rise in production, a tapering off as production reaches a maximum (peak), and a decline until it is no longer economical to pump more. As with each well, so with entire fields and world production as a whole. U.S. production peaked in 1970.

Hi Gang (whichever gang reads old posts), sorry to have missed this and be commenting late, but real-world monkeyshines had me away from the keyboard when this initially ran and it has just been drawn to my attention.

Flattering to see my quote showing up in Debbie's post. I haven't the time even now to read all the links, though I scanned the "marketing plan" for peak oil and it's generally good advice.

My own experience/expertise is in environmental activism, in which defining and reframing issues for the culture is central. My methods are not standard ones, owing more to phase-state transitions and fitness landscapes than Madison Avenue rules of thumb. Still, there's a lot to agree with in the "marketing plan" linked above, particularly when compared with the almost entirely uncoordinated way it has been handled so far.

Whether it is even possible at this point, without a wrenching reframe and a high level of control over the message, is an open question.

For instance, I applaud Debbie's post (and Debbie's comments in general on TOD), and I think this is a good discussion to have. However, I would not discuss actual strategy in open forum, nor would I undertake a program which didn't have good control over the message, terminology, and timing, and a restricted number of key players at most stages.

Then there's the rationale. Perhaps conspicuous, inasmuch as I'm commenting here, is that I have not attempted to popularize "peak oil" to date. For me, the first step is the rationale for action, which generally involves a new pre-prepared state, or at least a reasonably probable new state, for the perturbed system to collapse into. (Perhaps analagous to planning the direction a tree will fall when you cut it down).

Several years ago I privately posed a question to one of the oildrum's key players who had become a friend: if you could push a button right now and have everyone in the world magically and instantly understand "peak oil", would you push it? I'm still waiting for an answer. And that really cuts to the quick of things.

We have this tribal "feeling" - I have it too - that once we comprehend something, we need to transfer the information to everyone else we know. This served us well during our evolution. However, in the current context it may be more of an unexamined assumption. Personally, I've found that tight controls on information are usually the difference between success and failure, and I think there are deep reasons this is true. I'll note that few understand my reasoning, so I may be simply delusional and very lucky. It can't be delusional alone, though, because I have tended to succeed on fairly large scales over the last 35 or so years where others have not.

I'm not arguing against popularizing "peak oil"; I "feel" the same way most of the rest of you do. But I have not yet convinced myself.

With that caveat, I think that the debate on "peak oil" (or related issues) can be reframed. If so, it will probably be done by a tight core of disciplined folks with real-world experience and a clear sense of exactly what they are trying to do, in detail. The stakes for the world are as high as they can possibly be. I may try putting together such a team, or could advise them; click on my user name if you wish to be in touch. I'll be leaving TOD as a commenter soon but will keep my contact information live for a time.

I do agree with "getting one's hands dirty". Most discussion on affecting the world seems to focus on "bottom up" solutions (like, creating a society whose members all understand thermodynamic reality) or "top down" solutions (like electing a really really smart person who isn't a politician and will make mostly the optimal decisions). Problem is, these haven't a prayer of changing the game in the time available. That leaves the gritty middle ground where "cultural reframings" constantly propagate wavelike through the zeitgeist, and where the direction the trees will fall is determined.

Undertaking such a daunting and thankless task is traditionally the domain of idealists, but idealists tend to not want to get their hands dirty. As though a personal low carbon footprint and good karma means anything useful in the context of a planetary mass species dieoff, as our species tapdances blindfolded through a minefield of unseen positive and negative feedbacks which will affect the next billion years of life on earth, and not incidentally the extent to which our species participates in it.

So I'll throw this out: personal crystal-green purity is a self-indulgence, a conceit. I wish such people well, but otherwise I have little time for them, and I've earned the right to feel that by listening to their opinions for decades; which I no longer do since they seldom change. I suppose if few melanoma cells aspire to become basal carcinoma cells, that's dandy but it doesn't really alter the overall prognosis. I don't mean to sound harsh, but there it is.

My respect goes to those who actually engage the complex systems we're immersed in hoping to affect them, even knowing that their chances of success may be low. So I tip my had to citizen-lobbyists, campaigners, and activists.

Those who say it's impossible to make a change now may be correct by their own definitions, but I disagree. There's something I've termed a "nihilism heuristic" which causes humans to conflate all outcomes past a certain subjective "bummer" level and consider them effectively equivalent. This is a human brainfart, an evolved conceptual idiosyncracy, nothing more. It's useful when individually running from predators, less so when planning to volitionally affect the future of a planet and all its species.

The system contains very large degrees of freedom still, and while to some people all "bummer futures" are equivalent and somehow fungible, the fact is that those possible futures are all different. A future where hummingbirds survive is, all else equal, better in my mind than one in which they don't. A +4.3395 degree global warming result may be enough different from a +4.3396 global warming result to be worth dedicating one's life to achieving. A future where 900 thermonuclear warheads are detonated is probably worse than one in which 774 thermonuclear warheads are detonated.

In other words, activism which is grounded in a probabilistic worldview can be valid and useful. I think it can also be more effective and realistic.

I've had large ad agencies under contract to me (and know their limitations), have steered international movements, have brought issues from obscurity to total change on a global level, and have also done large successful projects which totally sidestepped public awareness. (sorry, no specifics in this forum). And I'm not special, many of you could do the same stuff. Honestly. A bit of discipline and focus, a willingness to set aside personal fear and wealth, and there are many opportunities for huge change to the future due to "you" personally having been born.

And yet few of those who read this will believe it, because it stands in utter contrast to the conversations normally heard.

I'd probably be classed as one of the darkest doomers who visit here by any decent mindreader. However, I think the decision that it's hopeless to strive would also constitute a self-indulgence, one that I don't have any right to. Moreover, my associates and I - whoever they may be at the time - may make a difference. It has happened before. Repeatedly.

I'm very sorry to have missed this keypost and its comments in real time. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to engage individual comments after the fact, even to say "great!" or to rebut those taking issue with my quoted words. But there are some smart folks here and I invite them to be in touch with me by clicking on my user name.

Lets come up with that rationale. Then we will change the way the world thinks, or fail spectacularly. I'm here.

Thanks for the keypost, Debbie; sorry I missed it.