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Re: Omnipotent? No. Psychopathic? Yes.

Postby bvonahsen » Mon Aug 14, 2006 4:00 am

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Why are you coming to that conclusion?<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Ya know, I'm an artist, I don't have endless energy to spend on these issues. I don't have the research skills many here have. But these things interest me and I take a look, reach my own conclusions and move on.<br><br>So please let me restate - I have moved from a skeptical belief in peak oil to an equally skeptical doubt of the claims made by peak oilers. I don't doubt Hubberts claims though, he makes sense. What we don't know, what no one on this board, or any other I suspect, knows or could possibly know is: "What are the real facts about oil? How much is left?"<br><br>Are the Saudis lying about how much they have? How much is Venezuela really sitting on? Is it biogenic, abiogenic or both? Are capped oil fields filling in? How fast and can you trust those number? Are we just seeing a repeat of the whale oil crisis of around a hundred years ago for which petroleum became an alternative fuel? Are we underestimating human inventiveness and creativity? Are we letting our own fear get the better of us?<br><br>I feel like I have people on both sides of me argueing and trying to get me to believe them. Neither side has all the facts but both have an agenda. <br><br>When you get down to it, no one knows except for a few select CEOS and polititians and they aren't telling. That's how they maintain their power, by gathering facts and information and not sharing. So it seems to me my best strategy is to imporve my own situation, get better at what I do and hopefully increase my options in life. Because really, this is all a big game and none of you here really <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>know</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> the true facts of the matter.<br><br>What we have in this world is one massive game of control and manipulation. The media manipulates it's viewers. The drug industry controls its consumers by way of the medical community and through it's addictive drugs that treat nonexistant diseases. (You probably know your colesterol number but do you know that it is meaningless?) Polititians, as has become abundantly clear, control and manipulate through lies and fear. Every grocery store, every Wallmart or Target or whatever, is an ecology full of predators and scams and bait meant to take as much of your money while delivering as little of actual value as possible.<br><br>The whole thing make me sick. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Omnipotent? No. Psychopathic? Yes.

Postby wintler » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:38 am

rothbardian - very sorry for misquote, accuracy on that front is the least courtesy we can do each other. I WILL pay closer attention, I promise.<br>I agree with you that there is plenty of motive for vested interests to fabricate the peak, but have yet to see any hints on how it might be done. I operate under the assumption that some proportion greater than half of the worlds population are not socio- or psycho-paths or involved in deep dark conspiracies (otherwise i wouldn't get out of bed). Thus global far-reaching conspiracies make me curious as to how they work. E.g. symbiosis between SRA and paedophile networks: i have read and seen enough to believe it does exist, tho i have no personal knowledge, because the evidence and explanations of links are at least plausible. But nobody has even suggested a mechanism for the 'peak oil scam', insistence on the existance of a motive seems to be enough. Dreams End did raise concerns about Heinberg - fair enough, that could be one good data point, but thats as far as any critic has got.<br>Also, I am confused if you are referring to oil depletion as a domestic social issue, since the US (where i'm assuming you are) imports most of its oil, something many Canadians, Venezuelans and Nigerians (which supply that oil) have very strong opinions on. <br><br>bvonahsen - It is certainly true none of us has perfect knowledge, but the important points are IMHO unarguble, if hidden in plain sight (finite planet, finite oil, discovery drought, declining volume and quality of production from existing fields). Personally i doubt any CEO or even head of state does have very much better data than us, they suffer from very narrow focus and too many yes men (and i've seen oil exec's fess up to stunning ignorance). And why should Iran, or even S.Arabia, let the Bush junta know how much oil they really have? Its not in their interests, no conspiracy is required. We have unknowns, no doubt about it - so mark 'there be demons/uncertainty' on your mental map and focus on what you do know. <br> <p></p><i></i>
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Just minding my own business.

Postby rothbardian » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:59 am

et in Arcadia ego--<br><br>So I shouldn't complain about yesfer's stomping action? I should just remain silent? Not sure I follow the reasoning. <br><br>The whole point is that yesfer's behavior has dropped to the level of these people at FreeRepublic ('rednecks' might be a fair description) where all they do is ridicule and sneer at everything.<br><br>The irony (and maybe the humor?) of my comment is precisely that 'yesfer' does NOT have a Chevy on blocks, and does NOT have a mullet. He's a leftie who has lowered himself to FreeRepublic's level. And that is a fair and accurate complaint. I'm just trying to do it with a little creativity.<br><br>When I'm minding my own business, enjoying a bit of robust back-and-forth conversation and debate...and then some guy comes along with this sneering hatred stuff...that's pretty ugly. (Where were your expressions of concern about yesferatu, if I might ask?)<br><br>What advice would you give to a person, when someone comes around and tries to stomp them down with ridicule? My feeling is when someone tries to intimidate others from simple freedom of speech...it's important not just to 'roll over'. <br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Omnipotent? No. Psychopathic? Yes.

Postby eroeoplier » Mon Aug 14, 2006 7:17 am

I think everyone has a chance to be right here. Peak oil is real, and it is now. With inside knowledge of the timing of the peak, oil companies have stopped looking for more (looking costs big $), stalled at building new refining infrastructure (what would be the point?), and started consolidating with other companies ("increasing" their "reserves"). This has helped engineer a premature peak, but it is as real as real can be.<br><br>But in the bigger picture, Iraq's production has been artificially restricted for the last 15 years, hasn't it? Saudi has peaked (signs are), Iran has peaked, Russia has peaked, Mexico has peaked. Iraq is a good old-fashioned mega-reserve pre-peak. They're saving one for later on. <br><br>In the early 1990's I saw Colin Campbell do his Petroconsultants talk to a room of 30 people, half of them pimply undergrads (inc. me), none of them in the oil game. He did a lap of the world with his talk, talking to small numbers of nobodies. Powers That Be don't bother doing shit like that. Oil sands/oil shale deposits weren't even looked at twice back then - they are numerous times less profitable than conventional oil fields - but today there are companies gearing up to go into production. Peak oil is here.<br><br>But even if it wasn't here, on environmental grounds alone (read "for sane and scientific reasons") the pressure is on to seriously curtail our burning of oil. Did you all see the thread on Greenland's melting icecap? Have you seen the picture of the lights of the cities of the world at night? Have you witnessed the peak-hour traffic of even a small city lately? If we want to avoid terrible calamities and huge population culls, the oil that is left must be used to build the infrastructure required for society to live without oil (and while I have your attention, my vote is for as little nuclear as possible - nuclear energy~police state). We may be well on the way to figuring out who and what we want to stop, but we also have to come to grips with what needs to be done instead.<br><br>It looks like I've bought Ruppert's spiel hook line and sinker really. 9/11 was very much about peak oil. I've read his book, but I found it strange and unsatisfying, but I don't think it's all bathwater. <p></p><i></i>
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Peak Oil: Very convenient for the PTB.

Postby rothbardian » Mon Aug 14, 2006 7:56 am

wintler--<br><br>No problem on the mis-read. Thanks.<br><br>About 'peak oil'-- there is, of course, always the chance that one of these things on this long list of 'crises' that play so beautifully into the world domination agenda of the PTB...are actually genuine.<br><br>I'll be the first to admit, I have not yet plunged into the details of this debate. I've just seen enough, from a 'big picture' perspective to have developed some general working conclusions about 'peak oil'. <br><br>For me it's the very simple fact that I am seeing the promotion of this concept coming from the same people who have lied to us about 9/11 and have lied to us about a vast array of things. The people I am talking about are those who comprise the 'mainstream media'.<br><br>Peak oil gets the full blessing and the full backing of every important component of the 'power elite' establishment...the PTB-funded media, academia, Hollywood and a huge array of politicians, all of whom have gone along with the 9/11 lie.<br><br>I keep trying to argue that when it comes to mainstream academia...FOLLOW THE MONEY. Where are all these 'big shot' fancy-pants academic institutions getting a large percentage of their financial sustenance? <br><br>Do people realize all these "foundations" that heavily support academia, are nothing but 'power elite' money? That seems to be overlooked.<br><br>There are any number of articles and essays from counterculture academians, intellectuals and other researchers who provide all manner of evidence indicating that 'peak oil' and in particular, <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>the timing</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> of this 'crisis' is very suspect. Here are a couple articles like this:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/walker/walker15.html">www.lewrockwell.com/walker/walker15.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>"Governments exist on a foundation of fear. The more fear they can generate, the bigger they can grow. Fears of terrorists, of WMDS, of bird flu, of Global Warming (or Global Cooling), of nuclear power, etc. etc. etc. Any fear is a good fear for government. Popular support for wars is based on fear."<br><br>"One of the most popular is the fear of "Peak Oil." The idea is that America must fight over the little pool of oil in the Middle East, because that is all the energy in the universe..."<br><br>"The truth is that our current energy use is minuscule. The entire world burns about 345 Quads of fossil fuel every year. Known coal reserves contain 200,000 Quads, oil shales 10 million quads, the deuterium in the ocean 10 trillion Quads. (Of course we are no longer allowed to think about using the huge thorium reserves… if you are younger than 30, you probably don’t even know what thorium is). To believe that energy shortages are our biggest problem requires very special blinders."</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <br><br>Also: <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1717">www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1717</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><br>Other than that though, I don't have much of a dog in this hunt. I may stand by and let you guys sort it all out.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Peak Oil: Very convenient for the PTB.

Postby Dreams End » Mon Aug 14, 2006 10:26 am

I suppose we could turn this thread into another debate about peak oil. I'll toss in this link:<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/">peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>It's no longer active but the guy who posted there actually believed in peak oil, but just that it wasn't going to come as suddenly or have the catastrophic consequences. He's also a big believer in nuke power for the interim. I have always assumed, though never seen evidence, that the oil companies will invest in nuke power (rather than solar etc) and that they would be helping shape opinion in that direction...<br><br>Anyway, there's good stuff on that site, even though he took some stuff I posted in comments without crediting me.....kinda bad form.<br><br>But one thing I want to address is right there in the name of this thread. When predictions of things being that bad are made, how disempowering is that? What potential activist and opponent of the greedy bastards what runs this place will choose instead to give up as, even if we overthrow the evil oil corps we will still run out of oil anyway and there is no hope? <br><br>I wasn't kidding when I talked about the local group "peakoilnashville" and how their founder posted on the list how we should not blame the outrageous recent profits oil companies have reaped on the oil companies. I particularly remember how this new "expert" talked down to anyone who dared hold outrage at these oil companies that we simply didn't understand how oil pricing worked. I get rather tired of these instant geologists lecturing me and what I don't understand.<br><br>But the larger point is that this woman is a rather prominent poster in the local peace community and is making real inroads with her peak oil view on why oil companies aren't to blame. What's next? "Save the Rockefellers" bumper stickers?<br><br>I have yet to tackle this issue here...I'm reluctant to do so, but also kinda thinking it would bring a perverse sort of pleasure. You see, that racist demographer Virginia Abernethy who is such a big fan of "liberal" Richard Heinberg, is a professor right here in Nashville at Vanderbilt university. I don't know if anyone has ever addressed her blatant racism and her editorship of Occidental Quarterly.<br><br><br>I'll eventually take this on, I imagine and get the same response I get here...but that's okay. <br><br>Some of our most intelligent posters on here are peak oilers...thinking of wintler in particular with whom I've gone round a few times on this. <br><br>But I think we can probably agree that using information from a guy who makes a killing on oil price rises (and rumors of scarcity sure do help that happen) is probably not the best way to make one's case. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: "the future's looking so ugly nobody wants to face

Postby LBloom » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:16 pm

No Peaking: The Hubbert Humbug<br>Tue, 23 May 2006 07:23:33 -0700 M. King Hubbert Print Version <br>Email Article <br>By Greg Palast<br>What if everything you thought you knew about Peak Oil was wrong?<br>Editor’s note: This article is the first part in a two part series and should be read in conjunction with this article: Why Palast is Wrong. <br><br>Saddam had to go, we really should take a look at the theory that we went into Iraq to get its oil. A ride up “Hubbert’s Peak” will allow a clearer view of the real topic of this chapter: the geo-politics of petroleum.<br><br>On March 7, 1956, geologist M. King Hubbert presented a research paper that would, a half century later, become the New Gospel of Internet Economics, the Missing Link that would Explain It All from the September 11 attack to the invasion of Iraq.<br><br>In his 1956 paper, Hubbert wrote:<br><br>On the basis of the present estimates of the ultimate reserves of world petroleum and natural gas, it appears that the culmination of world production of these products should occur within a half a century [i.e., by 2006].<br><br>So get in your Hummer and take your last drive, Clive. Sometime during 2006, we will have used up every last drop of crude oil on the planet. We’re not talking “decline” in oil from a production “peak,” we’re talking “culmination,” completely gone, kaput, dead out of crude—and not enough natural gas left to roast a weenie. In his 1956 treatise, Hubbert wrote that Planet Earth could produce not a drop more than one and a quarter trillion barrels of crude.<br><br>We obtain a figure of about 1,250 billion barrels for the ultimate potential reserves of crude oil of the whole world. That’s the entire supply of crude that stingy Mother Nature bequeathed for human use from Adam to the end of civilization. Indeed, our oil-lusting world will have consumed, by the end of 2006, about 1.2 trillion barrels of oil. Therefore, by Hubbert’s calculation, we’re finished; maybe in the very week you read this book we’ll suck the planet dry. Then, as Porky Pig says, “That’s all, folks!”<br><br>But the pig ain’t sung yet. Planes still fly, lovers still cry and smog-o-saurus SUVs still choke the LA freeway. Why aren’t our gas tanks dry? Hubbert insisted Arabia could produce no more than 375 billion barrels of oil. Yet, Middle Eastern oil reserves remaining today total 734 billion barrels. And those are “proven” reserves—known and measured, not including the possibility of a single new oil strike or field extension. Worldwide, ready-to-go reserves total 1.189 trillion barrels—and that excludes the world’s two biggest untapped fields, which could easily double the world reserve. (One is in Iraq, the other we get to in Chapter 4 of our new book Armed Madhouse: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Class War)<br><br>In all fairness to the Hubbert Heads, there’s a more sophisticated, updated version of Hubbert’s theory. This is where the “peak” concept comes in. In this version of the Hubbert scripture, we ignore his dead wrong prediction of total crude available and look only at the up and down shape of his curve, the “peak.” The amount of oil discovered each year, Hubbert posited, will stop rising by 2000, then will crash rapidly toward zero when we will have used up our allotted 1.25 trillion barrels. We haven’t crashed or even peaked. Oil production has risen year after year after year and discoveries have more than kept pace. <br><br>Nevertheless, like believers undaunted by the failure of alien spaceships to take them to Mars on the date predicted, Peak enthusiasts keep moving the date of the oil apocalypse further into the future. In the new, revisionist models of Hubbert’s prediction, the high point in the curve of discoverable oil on our planet will come in a decade or so. Though we have a reprieve, goes the new theory, still, we’re running out of crude, dude! There’s only another twenty years left in proven reserves! Oh, my! “It’s true that there’s only twenty years’ supply left—and that’s been true for the last hundred years,” Lewis Lapham told me over a decent sauterne at Five Points. (He more often sups at Elaine’s, but I don’t rate that.) Lapham of Harper’s magazine is the only editor in the hemisphere with hard knowledge of the petroleum market, insight he inherited legitimately: His family helped found Mobil Oil, the back half of what is now Exxon Mobil.<br><br>He asked, “Why in the world would oil companies, or any company, announce that there’s lots of its product out there? You’d bust your own market. It’s better to say the cupboard’s bare.” As Lapham noted, we have been “running out of oil” since the days we drained it from whales. OPEC’s big headache before the war shut down Iraq’s fields was that there was way too much oil. We were swimming in it and oil prices stayed low. The last thing oil companies want is more oil from Iraq, any more than soybean farmers want more soybeans from Iraq. Increasing supply means decreasing price.<br><br>This war is about the oil, but what about the oil? The Hubbert Peaksters think they know. They are convinced that Dick Cheney in his bunker is panicked that the world’s supply of oil is about to run out, and so to Iraq we go, to seize the last of it. Here’s the flaw in that argument: To believe that George Bush and Dick Cheney hustled us into Iraq to open up that nation’s untapped bounty of petroleum is to believe that these two oil Texans in the White House are deeply troubled that the price of oil will rise unless they get us more crude.<br><br>But Dick and George get a rise out of the rise.<br><br>Have we peaked? The planet is producing today twice as much as the maximum predicted in 1956 by the “Peaking Man.” But the political uses of holy-shit-we’re-running-out-of-oil! has yet to peak. Indeed, Bush and Cheney are more than happy to allow others to promote Hubbert Peak hysteria in the public. “We need Iraq’s oil” is used as a good bogeyman to get the public behind an invasion that promises to get Americans a fill-up for the family gas guzzler for less than a hundred dollars. Anti-war progressives seized on the Hubbert humbug as proof that Bush’s invasion was a war of “Blood for Oil.” Nuns, professors and rock stars were outraged. But the average American thinks, Blood for oil? That’s a BARGAIN.<br><br>The Shell Game<br><br>Hubbert’s predictions may have been astonishingly wrong but his little forty-page research report is, nevertheless, astonishingly important in understanding the mindset of Big Oil.<br><br>Almost everything you need to know about Hubbert and the agenda behind his crucial 1956 study is contained on its cover page. The oil doomsday pronouncement is “Publication No. 95, Shell Development Company, Houston, Texas.” Hubbert was the chief Consultant on general geology for Shell Oil and his “end of oil” paper was presented to the Texas meeting of the American Petroleum Institute. All else flows there from.<br><br>Every once in a while the landlords of the planet have to remind us to be grateful for their services. In 1956 it was Shell Oil’s turn and Hubbert was their man for the job. It was not a happy time for the oilmen of Texas. Shell and the other Seven Sisters, as Big Oil was then known, faced a heck of a problem: crude was cheaper than dirt—$2.77 a barrel, that is, a nickel a gallon—and sinking. Worse, they were finding more of the stuff all over the planet, meaning prices would fall further. In March of that year, Hubbert presented the solution to his fellow oilmen at the API in Houston. He unveiled this magical chart, which you can view here in its original form as a public service.<br><br>The total sum of oil is 1,250 billion barrels—which runs out in 2006. This chart assumed a low annual burn of oil.<br><br>Look closely. When Hubbert spoke, oil reserves worldwide were zooming heavenward. Despite the tide of petroleum rising around us, Hubbert declared that oil discoveries in the USA had begun to peak “as recently as 1951 or 1952” and that the world’s reserves would follow not long thereafter. He didn’t need to wink. His oil industry audience understood what oil giant Shell wanted America to believe: Oil isn’t abundant, it’s a scarce commodity and therefore…<br><br>1. It’s too cheap—so oil companies should, for the public’s own good, raise the price to conserve this precious resource.<br><br>2. We need to find an abundant alternative to fossil fuel.<br><br>3. We need to protect our access to dwindling sources of crude, by force if necessary.<br><br>Shell Oil, through Hubbert, sought, successfully, to change the way America thought of oil’s price, alternatives to oil and access to oil.<br><br>PRICE: The problem of falling oil prices was solved for Shell, brilliantly, in four years, in 1960, by the creation of OPEC. On paper, OPEC was created by national governments. If oil companies had created this cartel to fix prices, that would have made it a criminal conspiracy—cartels are illegal. But when governments conspire for the same purpose, the illegal conspiracy turns into a legitimate “alliance” of sovereign states. OPEC’s government cover makes the price-fixing perfectly legal, and Big Oil reaps the rewards.<br><br>ALTERNATIVES: As to replacing fossil fuels, Hubbert had the answer:<br>Limitless nuclear power. His 1956 paper is not called “Peak Oil.” Its title is “Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels.” His let’s-go-nuclear chart, call it “Hubbert’s Plateau,” is usually ignored. You can view it here. <br><br>Note that Hubbert envisions a high, flat plateau of nuclear energy outstripping fossil fuels by the twenty-first century, providing us a comfy, electric economy for five thousand years. Hubbert’s Uranium Reich was longer than anything the Führer could have imagined. Who would supply all this nuclear fuel? Lucky for us that Hubbert’s company, Royal Dutch Shell, was about to announce the formation of its new mega-venture, “URENCO,” a uranium enrichment consortium.<br><br>ACCESS: Protecting our access to petroleum, a “peaking” resource, was Shell Oil’s urgent message. Hubbert’s paper was published in June 1956, not long after the CIA overthrew Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh for having nationalized Shell’s and BP’s assets. The paper was released just one month before Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s President, seized the Suez Canal, the oil tanker passageway, and just months before a British-French-Israeli invasion force took it back. Hubbert’s Peak thinking helped provide a justification for war over this “strategic resource.”<br><br>Have we peaked? Worldwide oil reserves continue to rise even faster than America and China can burn it. Since 1980, reserves, despite our binge-guzzling, have risen from 648 billion to 1.2 trillion barrels. Yet, weirdly, despite the rising flood of discovered crude, its price quadrupled between 2001 and 2005. Supply choked, yet there’s no peak in sight. Behind this slow in the flow of crude:<br><br>His bit of bother in OPEC’s second-largest reserve (Iraq)<br><br>Putin’s cutting off financing to, then his seizing of, Russian producer Yukos Oil, reducing its output<br><br>Hubbert’s Plateau<br><br>U.S.-promoted sabotage of oil piping, loading and refining systems in Venezuela; and, not least of all,<br><br>the Saudis sitting on their spigots.<br><br>The oil squeeze tightened after the Bush Administration, beginning with the energy bill of 2001, abandoned conservation and encouraged a monstrous jump of two million barrels a day in U.S. oil consumption.<br><br>So please don’t slander Mother Earth and say she’s run out of oil when it’s man-made mischief to blame. Evil, not geology, has a chokehold on energy; nature is ready to give us crude at $12 a barrel where it was just a few short years ago. <br><br>On June 6, Penguin Dutton will publish GNN contributor Greg Palast’s new book, Armed Madhouse: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Class War. Order it today – and view his investigative reports for Harper’s Magazine and BBC television’s Newsnight <br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: "the future's looking so ugly nobody wants to face

Postby LBloom » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:17 pm

And the companion piece.....<br><br>Why Palast Is Wrong<br>Tue, 23 May 2006 12:28:39 -0700 M. King Hubbert Print Version <br>Email Article <br>By Greg Palast<br>And why the oil companies don't want you to know it<br>Now that I’ve convinced you that the Peak Oil crowd is crackers, let me disagree with myself. We can’t understand the new class war unless we understand why oil, a certain kind at least, has in fact “peaked.” <br><br>We’ve long jumped over Hubbert’s predicted peak and, in 2006, rolled our SUVs right through the “culmination”— that is, used the last drops of the one-and-a-quarter-trillion barrels of liquid crude the good Earth can provide according to the Hubbert jeremiad. Furthermore, “The rise in the production of power from nuclear energy for the United States” ran out long before uranium’s five-thousand-year reign, despite Hubbert’s hope and prediction. Except for a couple of unhappy decades’ experimental folly with “reactors for peace,” nuclear power is pretty much an irradiated corpse. The Shell/Hubbert predictions were dead wrong. Those are the facts. <br><br>But Hubbert was also deadly right. We are indeed running out of oil. There’s no contradiction here. We have to distinguish between an economist’s concept of “running out” and a scientist’s. <br><br>To an economist, every commodity is finite. We are running out of oil and we are running out of copper, aluminum foil, birdbaths, pickles, lumber, clean air, Frappucinos, chocolate, tongue rings, lollipops, silver, cow-shaped milk dispensers, Dylan retrospectives and sand. That is why economics is called “the dismal science.” Limits and scarcity are economists’ bread and butter. There’s a limited supply of every commodity. (And that is why love is not a commodity, as John Lennon noted, because the more you consume, the more you create.) On the other hand, unlike geologists and evangelical ministers, economists believe all commodities can be created as needed. There is an unlimited abundance of anything—oil, copper, hemorrhoid ointment, nose jobs or pornographic balloons. We can even manufacture real estate. (Think of the creation of Holland by landfill or the artificial habitation known as Los Angeles created by draining most of the Colorado River into the desert.) <br><br>The number one theorem of economics is that we are running out of everything and yet we can have as much as we want of anything. Again, there’s no contradiction. All commodities are scarce and abundant at the same time. The difference between scarcity and abundance is price. You can get anything, in any amount, if you are willing to pay any price. (See Los Angeles, above.) <br><br>Back to Hubbert. His report was used in the cynical Shell Oil game to scare us into Middle Eastern conflicts, drilling tax subsidies and nuclear power. On its face, it was stone cold manipulative nonsense, measurably so. But we are running out of a certain kind of oil nevertheless: cheap oil. That is, we are coming to the end of the stuff we can pump at a low cost, the easy oil that practically jumps out of the ground. When we bring price into the equation, Hubbert was correct—technically. Oil production did peak in the 1970s—for a certain type of oil. Re-read Hubbert. When he wrote his analysis, oil was selling below $3 a barrel, just over $20 in today’s dollars, and falling. Therefore, as prices declined further, we’d run out. We did. We’ve pretty much run out of new oil fields we can “lift” for $20 a barrel. Even the cheapest untapped fields in the world—not coincidentally in Iraq—will cost more than the “Hubbert price” to suck up and pipe out. <br><br>At low prices, there’s not much oil. As prices rise, so does supply. <br><br>It’s not magic. At $30 a barrel, Oklahoma stripper wells are worth reopening, drilling in the Gulf of Mexico becomes profitable in 3,000 feet of water, Kazakhstan’s crude is worth piping out even with the high cost of transportation and bribes. <br><br>To simplify: World oil reserves, officially measured at 1.189 trillion barrels, are probably, as one of Mr. Hubbert’s protégés stated a few years back, grossly overstated—if you assume oil selling at $10 a barrel. But kick the price up to a post-invasion $50 a barrel, and the world reserves are wildly understated. <br><br>Reserves are the measure of oil recoverable at a certain price. Raise the price, raise the reserve. Cut the price and the amount of oil in the ground drops. In other words, it’s a fool’s errand to measure the “amount of oil we have left.” It depends on the price. At $9 a barrel (the price in 199<!--EZCODE EMOTICON START 8) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> , we’ve peaked. It’s over. All gone. But at $70 a barrel (reached in the third year of the Iraq occupation), miracles happen. Oil gushes forth like manna. How much more? If you are willing to pay $70 a barrel—and apparently you are—it’s worth it to melt sand and drain out the petroleum. Indeed, the “tar sands” of Alberta, Canada, hold 280 billion barrels of oil—for enough high octane to run our Humvees for a century. Canada’s tar oil reserves are, notably, about 15% higher than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. It’s not pie-in-the-sky stuff. America is dependent on foreign oil—but not from Arabia. Our biggest source of oil is Canada and half of the Canadian supply today comes from tar sands. And that will grow. How could Hubbert have missed all this oil? Answer: He didn’t. On page 20 of his famous “Peak Oil” study, he accepts that the planet can yield up 800 billion barrels of oil from tar sands equal to all the “crude” (i.e., liquid) oil we are using up. <br><br>Hubbert’s Wars<br><br>So where did Hubbert get the idea that we are running out of oil? He didn’t. He made no such prediction. Quite the opposite, he said, after predicting “the culmination of world production” by 2006, he noted, <br><br>“This does not necessarily imply that the United States or other parts of the industrial world will soon become destitute of liquid and gaseous fuels….”<br><br>So what’s going on here? This is where Hubbert brings in Canadian tar sands and heavy oils, which he correctly predicts could more than replace the cheap, easily obtainable “liquid crude” (as he calls the light stuff). And he doesn’t fail to note the location of the giant supplies of the heavy oil: “Mesopotamia” (as Iraq was then known), Brazil and Venezuela. <br><br>So what was bugging Hubbert? We have plenty of oil, it just gets heavier. He warns against drilling for it, preferring a uranium-powered future. Why? Hubbert was writing in the hottest moments of the Cold War. The U.S. overthrow of Iran’s government and the looming tension over the Suez Canal pushed America and the Soviet Union toward nuclear war—and underneath it all was the tussle over oil. Hubbert’s peak did not identify dates we’d “run out of oil” but predicted the shift in the location of oil’s main sources—to Iraq and Venezuela by the beginning of the twenty-first century, which had serious implications, he said, for “domestic purposes and national defense.” To avoid conflicts between the U.S. and Russia, he hoped the superpowers in conflict would turn inward, to uranium, a resource abundant in both nations. The value of Hubbert’s seminal “peak” paper was not in predicting the end of the oil era but in naming, with chilling accuracy, the date and location of our future wars. <br><br>Selling the Peak<br><br>So who’s selling us Peak Oil today? The operator of the supertanker Condoleezza has been running an extravagant advertising blitzkrieg to tell us: We’ve peaked! “The world consumes two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered!” That’s just the billboard. Their double-page spread in Harper’s is even more hysterical: “The fact is, the world has been finding less oil than it’s been using for twenty years now.” <br><br>Unfortunately, that “fact” isn’t a fact at all—reserves rise year after year—and those facts don’t change because Chevron paid my magazine to print it. (If Chevron is truly concerned that more oil is burnt than discovered, it might consider looking for some. The industry has cut exploration budgets from a third of production spending to an eighth. But that’s a churlish comment. Chevron is not in the business of finding oil, but finding profits.) <br><br>Ads sell. What is Chevron trying to sell us when it sells us the “peak” idea that we now use more oil than we discover? The ad says, “We need your help.” I am, I admit, flattered that a big, giant oil company would ask my assistance. What could a petroleum goliath earning $14.1 billion in a year want from me? Apparently, more money. <br><br>The new oil Chevron is finding “requires a greater investment to refine.” In other words, don’t bitch about high prices—we need your cash to mix your next fix of crude. <br><br>The “we’re running out of oil” line still has its uses. In 2005, taking advantage of oil-shortage hysteria, the Republican Congress passed an “energy” bill that was a Petroleum Club wet dream. For example, the feds can now order cities to accept liquid natural gas ports, a boon to Big Oil’s Explosions-R-Us LNG divisions. Drilling under the caribou in Alaska is likely to follow. And, in 2006, George Bush is attempting to raise nuclear power from its crypt. In his State of the Union message, our nuke-salesman-in-chief admonished Americans for our “addiction” to oil—which was a bit like the pusher-man sermonizing against the dangers of the needle. Unfortunately, some environmentalists have echoed the “peak oil” theorem in the false hope that oil companies’ raising prices will lead to conservation. Fat chance. Despite $50-a-barrel oil, we don’t see windmills on the Empire State Building. We will reduce oil dependency only when we have a government less dependent on oil money. <br><br>A closing note of caution: I fear that some may take my noting the super-abundance of oil remaining on the planet as approval for our using it. Far from it—getting off the oil habit is an urgent working- class issue. First, because cheap, good air and water are in limited supply. We can’t keep pooping combustion contaminants into the sky unless expect we expect our children to grow gills that will metabolize sulfur. There’s lots of arsenic on the planet. Don’t eat it. There’s lots of oil. Don’t burn it. <br><br>Second, massive oil use is like any other addiction—it sickens the user and only enriches the pusher; in the case of oil, that would be ExxonMobil, OPEC and Vladimir Putin. Get the petroleum needle out of our veins and we get the extra bonus of watching Citibank go through agonizing petro-dollar withdrawal. <br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: "the future's looking so ugly nobody wants to face

Postby Jezebelladonna » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:28 pm

Sorry to veer off-topic, but I thought I'd report that I, like many people, find assertions based on gross generalities kinda funny. Perhaps it's my natural risibility, but it renders (and most people are aware of this) an assertion...well, laughable.<br><br>Of course, there are ways to get your point across about groups of people and their tendencies that don't involve gross generalities about -oh, I don't know, say.. "lefties" and "mainstream libs"- thereby lending more gravity and credence (not to mention precision and accuracy) to the assertion.<br><br>But I will not let my mirth bubble over onto this discussion because, evidently, writing "ha ha" to an assertion based on a laughable generalization about "lefties" is the equivalent of "Mindless sneering, smirking putdowns, and brutal smacks and slaps for anyone who doesn't tow the status quo line" justifying a comparison of the chuckling poster ("a leftie" of course) to the level of "rednecks" at freerepublic, "where all they do is ridicule and sneer at everything" and "this sneering hatred stuff...that's pretty ugly", especially when it's regarded as "stomping them down with ridicule" as trying "to intimidate others from simple freedom of speech".<br><br>Whew. Honestly, I had to re-read the offensive yesferatu post twice and search the thread thrice for ANY response that matched the above description. In all fairness, maybe the board is glitchy and I missed it.<br><br>Sometimes ridicule is the natural response to the ridiculous. I prefer it, Roth, if you regarded this post, not as the boot of ridicule and oppression stomping on your face, but simply as constructive criticism. Like you, I'm trying to do it with a little creativity. Forgive me if I failed. Alternatively, you could stop grossly generalizing "lefties" or "libs", since it adds little weight to your arguments and (as you are no doubt aware) could even detract from an otherwise solid position. Your call.<br><br>Methinks the less sneering hatred, the better. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: "the future's looking so ugly nobody wants to face

Postby dugoboy » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:35 pm

and to put shit back on topic, i believed in peak oil for maybe 2 months and then it starts sounding like the perfect excuse.<br><br>ok there are documents proving the oil industry has closed down oil refinaries, limited construction of them and the car manufacturers made millions of SUVs that eat gas like candy. and its just a huge lie to demoralize the country. they are artificially creating the shortage, prices go up and profits go up while emptying everybody else's bank accounts. then BP closed down the northern pipeline in alaska a week ago. ISNT IT FUCKIN OBVIOUS IF YOU HAVNT CLEANED THE PIPES IN A DECADE THEY <!--EZCODE UNDERLINE START--><span style="text-decoration:underline">WILL</span><!--EZCODE UNDERLINE END--> CLOG UP.<br><br>fuck incompetence god damn it. no one is this stupid. NO ONE!!!<br><br><br>its all a lie. <p>___________________________________________<br>"BUSHCO aren't incompetent...they are COMPLICIT." -Me<br><br>"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act" -George Orwell</p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=dugoboy@rigorousintuition>dugoboy</A> at: 8/14/06 3:40 pm<br></i>
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Re: "the future's looking so ugly nobody wants to face

Postby Dreams End » Mon Aug 14, 2006 8:35 pm

Thanks for the Palast piece and at least one link between Peak Oil and nuclear profiteers. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Omnipotent? No. Psychopathic? Yes.

Postby yesferatu » Mon Aug 14, 2006 8:37 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Hey, wait a minute...this is Rig Int. 'Yesfer', if you've got a Chevy up on blocks in your front yard and you're sporting a 'mullet'..you're not supposed to be posting over here. FYI<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>hahaha.<br><br>Dude, I am laughing at the arguments because they were coming out of my mouth - <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>same crap -</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> back when I was an asshole republican... FIFTEEN years ago. Cow flatulence, public school system , etc. <br>And you want to put that Limbaugh rhetoric under the umbrella of false flag ops?? Huh? Do you know waht a false flag op is? Describe it so I know we are on the same page before we go any further with this. <br><br>Sorry I laughed out loud when I read your post. It reminded me of me back when I was an asshole rightie. God what a waste of my time and energy. <br> But the liberal argument for helmets is just that - an idea that comes from a liberal idea of government. Hardly dark stuff there, partner.<br> I'm quite the "looney" leftIST nowadays, not a liberal. Just so you know where I am coming from. But liberal ideas like helmet laws are just mundane political views. Nothing more or less. Disagree with it. Fine. It's just politics as it should be. So what are you getting at....other than sounding like me fifteen years ago? Or like Limbaugh? It's just BS foaming at the mouth about inconsequential BS.<br><br>Sorry.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
yesferatu
 

Re: "the future's looking so ugly nobody wants to face

Postby wintler » Mon Aug 14, 2006 10:16 pm

Dugoboy said: and to put shit back on topic, i believed in peak oil for maybe 2 months and then it starts sounding like the perfect excuse.<br>ok there are documents proving the oil industry has closed down oil refinaries,<br>>true, but refineries irrelevant to reserves.<br><br> limited construction of them and the car manufacturers made millions of SUVs that eat gas like candy. and its just a huge lie to demoralize the country.<br>>its a global problem, western oil co's control <20% of global reserves.<br><br>they are artificially creating the shortage, prices go up and profits go up while emptying everybody else's bank accounts. then BP closed down the northern pipeline in alaska a week ago. ISNT IT FUCKIN OBVIOUS IF YOU HAVNT CLEANED THE PIPES IN A DECADE THEY WILL CLOG UP.<br>>believe they do clean them, ~quarterly, and send xray 'pigs' down them to scan for the holes bored by sulfobacteria. Problem was, post-peak Prudhoe Bay was pumping less and less thru the pipes and bacteria grew faster than expected. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=wintler>wintler</A> at: 8/14/06 8:35 pm<br></i>
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Re: "the future's looking so ugly nobody wants to face

Postby wintler » Mon Aug 14, 2006 10:26 pm

Dreams End said on page 1 of ‘oh mikey’ thread (seemed to fit better here) “But I would challenge the peakers to do what I've not seen much of and that's let us know if there is anything that can be done.”<br><br>There are countless things that could and are being done, many of which you instinctively already know. Most of us lack ‘only’ the courage, the skills, or the inspiration (humans learn much better by example than by instruction) to be part of the doing. <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://energybulletin.net/news.php?cat=63">energybulletin.net/news.php?cat=63</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> is one online place to look (flag- association, past co-editor.) for news of some collective/’organised’/institutional efforts at recivilisation on the energy and food fronts, I am reluctant to suggest others because online isn’t where substantive change happens, your home, family and community is. <br><br>I must admit i get frustrated by the persistence of the ‘end of the world’ meme - it fails on any examination. Unless we go full thermonuclear war, the world is not going anywhere. Life, too, will outlast humans and all other mammals, no problem. What we all fear is the end of consumer capitalism, not because we love musical toilet seats but because we’ve been taught that it is c.capitalism that has delivered abundance, and we have 100,000 years of associating resource scarcity with violence. <br><br>In fact it was ‘striking oil’, or more accurately striking fire to wood, then animal fat, peat, coal, oil, and gas, that has delivered abundance, along with our handy knack for tools. Cheap easy energy means relatively easy living (for >50% of population of western world) and waste on completely unprecedented scales (tho enculturation ensures we fret and slave away anyway). Less cheap easy energy in a world where the dominant civilization is already overshooting multiple resource limits means we have a challenge of mind-blowing size and complexity. But there really is no choice but to grapple with the monster, within and without, where-ever we are and with whatever skills and community we have. <br>This night probably will get darker, such is the current momentum of the death eaters and our own stupidities, but they are not all powerful or all knowing, we are not unchanging, and nothing happens overnight. I take a Derrick Jensen line on ‘hope’, but I think we have some stunning advantages – we have each other, and all else that lives, as allies; we have the rest of our lives, and less and less now, to lose; we have an emerging realisation of common purpose, or at least common problems; and we have a literacy in lies and obfuscation which is making more and more of us hard to fool. And we have no choice – there is no fall-back planet. <br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: "the future's looking so ugly nobody wants to face

Postby yesferatu » Mon Aug 14, 2006 10:40 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>writing "ha ha" to an assertion based on a laughable generalization about "lefties" is the equivalent of "Mindless sneering, smirking putdowns<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>I wrote haha because I laughed. I know. I should have written lol. <br>haha vs. lol. Is that the debate here?<br>Or maybe I should not have mentioned my reaction. That I actually laughed. I was about to write "lol" but then I did not want roth to think I was laughing in a "right on bro" kind of way. So I wrote haha instead. <br>Was it that I actually laughed, or my reporting that I actually laughed?<br>After laughing I thought perhaps he was kidding. So I asked. And laughed that I had to ask, and typed haha.<br><br>Enough explanations? Not good enough? More penance?<br>Let me know.<br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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