THE Peak Oil & MSM ('05) Thread

BabyPeanut · Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:52 am Post subject:

My brother told me that he had a lot of trouble determining if his old cat was sick or not. He said that cats are biologically predisposed to never show any signs of weakness.

I think that the US gubment and the corporations that own it are like that too. Admission would be a sign of weakeness. Therefor Rupert Murdock, et. al. will never mention Peak Oil.

mindfarkk · Heavy Crude Joined: Dec 07, 2004 Posts: 481

i think NeoPeasant is right. corporations determine what gets on the news, and what are we saturated with right now in the American media? commercial after commercial advertising cars - and not just cars - BIG BIG trucks and SUVs. in fact BF was commenting to me he is so sick of car commercials, it's like we've never seen so many. maybe sales are down so advertising is up; but it's up on every commercial channel, all the time. whether investors or owners, these are the people who determine what we hear on the news - not the actual news itself.

i've heard of two articles being posted on PO, CNN and national geographic. each time i went directly to the site and was unable to find the article in question. the one on CNN was supposedly posted the day i went to check it. i'm curious if these articles were pulled.
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what, me worry?

mindfarkk · Heavy Crude Joined: Dec 07, 2004 Posts: 481

a couple of interesting links:
link (lists murdoch's holding in the US and internationally) and,

link (lists the owners of every? major news group in the US)
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what, me worry?

johnmarkos · Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:25 am Post subject:

More mainstream media coverage of PO: link

johnmarkos · Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:41 am Post subject:

So, if you believe my assertion that peak oil is covered by the mainstream media, why are people in denial? I agree with Albert Bartlett: this denial is a failure to understand the implications of the exponential function.

link and link

DamianB · Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:08 pm Post subject: From WSJ last year

Front page last September apparently: link
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"If the complexity of our economies is impossible to sustain [with likely future oil supply], our best hope is to start to dismantle them before they collapse." George Monbiot

mindfarkk · Heavy Crude Joined: Dec 07, 2004 Posts: 481

i don't think it's just denial. americans are bombarded by information every day. most of us have hectic lives to begin with. we are asked to make an ungodly number of decisions within an environment of competing sound and visual bites designed to stimulate our limbic systems ad nauseum. unless something is interesting (sexy) or genuinely, immediately threatening (9-11) after a while i think most people just screen stuff out, otherwise you get pretty overwhelmed. i'm sorry but article titles like "the end of cheap oil" don't really grab me by the short hairs with a sense of "this needs attention NOW". it's kind of like yeah, buddy, i already know the price is up at the pump. tell me something i don't know. then again, articles titles like "ECONOMIC CRASH IMMINENT!!!!" unless they are displayed on the front page of the wall street journal are probably going to get screened out as more nihilist bullshit. i mean, we've survived decades of "the end of the world is nigh" type news/propaganda (take your pic), the last being Y2K, and now constant news about the war in the mideast, with literally dozens of interests screaming for your attention and saying contradictory things. what is the average person going to do? they are going to throw up their hands and get busy paying the rent, because when everything is a crisis, nothing is a crisis. and that's what life is like these days. there are thousands of special interests out there competing with PO saying "THIS IS A CRISIS AND WE NEED YOUR ATTENTION NOW" - far too many to actually attend.

i think what some cast as apathy is actually simple information burnout.
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what, me worry?

threadbear · Expert Joined: Jan 22, 2005 Posts: 7502

It's the combination special. Lack of mainstream attention, disproportionate attention to stupidity, weak powers of discernment, people being worked to death in the slave market of the new economy.

JayHMorrison · Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 1:31 pm Post subject:

mindfarkk, I think you basically nailed it right on the head. People are overwhelmed with info these days. Too many times in recent history have we been flooded with cries of "The Sky is Falling!!!"
Global Warning, Y2K, etc. We live in a world where there is always a crisis of some sort that someone is yelling about. Oil just falls somewhere in the middle for most people.
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Make a man a fire and he will be warm for a day.
Set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

Riddick · Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 1:36 pm Post subject:

Riddick · Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 2:09 pm Post subject:

Who's really controlling the media?: link1 and link2 and link3
P.S. DamianB - love the Alex Grey picture.
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"Your failure to be informed does not make me a wacko." - John Loeffler

December 23, 2012

MattSavinar · Elite Joined: May 09, 2004 Posts: 1999

I think the recent 9/11 Fark thread is an excellent example of why issues that buck mainstream thinking don't get covered by the media. Imagine you're a reporter who wants to cover the implications of a drastically reduced oil supply on the American way of life. You go to your supervisor/editor with a story proposal. Even if your editor is in agreement with you, he or she is not going to let you publish anything that might challenge people's world view.

Why? Well for every person that reads such an article and thinks, "Mmmm . . there might be somthing to this story," there will be one or two who simply say, "Hahh - more conspiracy stuff . . . This peak oil stuff can't possibly be true or our politicians would be talking about it openly. The silence on their part wouild require some type of conspiracy - and you know the government can never keep a secret." And for every one who simply laughs or dismisses the story, there will be a nutcase or two or who actually email the reporter with threats of physical violence or the institution of legal proceddings.

If the story goes out to millions, that's quite a few nutcases you get to deal with. We Peakers only need to look in our own backyard to see the mentality that prevents the isssue of the millenium from being covered.
Matt

oowolf · Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 4:28 pm Post subject:

Hubris: (Greek);an arrogant, excessive pride resulting in a lack of some important perception or insight. Our "leaders" delineated succintly. Watching current events is becoming more and more like watching "Triumph of the Will" and wondering "What ARE these people doing?" An rapidly increasing, appalling, culture-wide decline in self-conscious reflection leading to terminal self-deceit.
Pride goeth before a fall....

Riddick · Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 4:29 pm Post subject:

Check this out. With the Bush admnistration doing things like this is there any wonder why the flames of the 9/11 conspiracy theory are growing?

Wed, 9 Feb 2005 Bush Administration Blocked The Public Release Of A New 9/11 Report For More Than Five Months Free Press International 2.9.2005
The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of a new 9/11 report for more than five months, according to the New Yorks Times. The administration finally provided a heavily 'blacked out' (redacted) classified report and a declassified report two weeks ago.

The edited report revealed that in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations. Imagine what's in the blacked out part of the of the new 9/11 report.
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"Your failure to be informed does not make me a wacko." - John Loeffler

December 23, 2012

Tuike

There was a very large story about oil wars and such matters in the leading finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.

The story told how Saddam made the US upset in the past, how Germany lost WW2 because allied pervented it from reaching Russias Baku oil fields, 1970's oil crisis and how present US leadership is connected with oil.

Peak oil is mentioned on a small graph where Huppert's curve is drawn. It is an old version of the peak oil prediction. They should have put an updated version from ASPO.

The story's writer used the following sources:
- William Engdahl: A Century of War
- Stephen PelletiÃ¨re: Iraq and the International Oil System
- Richard Heinberg: The Party's Over