Joined: Sep 25, 2004 Posts: 4422 Location: Boston, MA
Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2004 2:13 pm Post subject: Educating others about Peak Oil
Please tell me if you had a similar experience when you discovered peak oil.
I found out about peak oil a month ago today. I typed in The End of Oil in google and I took the damn red pill. I started my research at 9:45 and reached this place by 2. Every time I found a new website that had a gloomier outcome, I'd run around the house turning off every light I could find. By 1 o'clock I was sitting in a dark room constantly looking over my shoulder. My hands started to shake a little and I ran around the house again. This time I unplugged every single appliance I could find. I turned off the AC and began to shake all over. I realized immediately that my future plans were going to be changed forever. I'm not sure what good a degree in economics or business management would do. I'll still go to an expensive college to make my parents happy, but it is kind of a waste of money. I made a mental plan to buy a nice machine gun and rob everything I need from others. After ten minutes, I decided that wasn't really an option.
Anyway, How do we tell others about the impending destruction of the American Dream? I tried telling my best friends and they either ignored me or thought I was acting like a maniac. Maybe I shouldn't have started off by calling it TEOTWAWKI. There are several people that I want to tell, but I'm not sure how to do it without scaring them.
The only person I have convinced is my mother. She doesn't consider it that big of a problem. She thinks believes that having a small car, working at a home office, and having a professional degree will protect her from the worst of it. She might be right, even post-peak, people will need quality accountants.
My father is a lost cause. He will never be able to make the change from a growth-economy to a shrinking one. He is starting a travel website based in Mexico. He also works with companies to help them outsource. I don't that either skill will be useful post-peak.
The group of people I might be able to convince are my Environmentalist friends. They already see oil as a concentrated form of evil and corporate greed. They want Nader to win but see Kerry as a good second choice. How should I tell them? Should I bother to ruin the rest of their lives with this information? I feel like The Giver. I know of the bad things but I can't tell anyone without making them depressed.
Also, please post suggestions for educating the masses about peak oil and it's consequences.
Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 1180 Location: England
Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2004 2:23 pm Post subject:
This is something I have also found very difficult, as soon as you mention 'oil' people's eyes glaze over and they think you are mad! They simply cannot believe that such a boring and basic substance like oil can cause so much chaos!!
The biggest frustration is when people accept what you are saying , and then just shrug it off and carry on as normal, today was a classic example, I showed a colleague the oil production curve and projection of future oil price/petrol price.( i didn't want to mention recession etc yet!) He acknowledged what I was saying , chewed it over for a bit , then proceeded to purchase a $39,000 BMW on finance repaid over a period of about a billion years!!
I told my brother, again he acknowledged what I was saying , and then said 'What can you do about it?", told me to 'calm down' and then proceeded to extend mortgage adding an extension to his house ! All I suggested was to get rid of his debt, use his savings to get rid of his mortgage early and stop buying huge cars with finance because even if we are fortunate enough to get a soft landing losing your house is going to be heartbreaking!
The truth is , educating people on this one is going to be difficult , particularly it is only a few years before really noticable changes start happening!!($10 a gallon , recession , oil all over the media, unemployment and getting worse all the time etc!)
Joined: Sep 25, 2004 Posts: 4422 Location: Boston, MA
Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2004 2:31 pm Post subject:
I am making a guess here, but it's an educated guess. Every person on this site is intellectually curious. We find information fascinating. We read books and newspapers. We "consume" news and have a generally good understanding of what is happening every day.
Therefore, when we found www.dieoff.com, we didn't hit the back button. We looked to see if these people knew something we didn't. I think we might be reaching the point where most of the intellectually curious private citizens are aware of peak oil. The challenge is showing the other 98% of the public and the Government that the problem is real. I don't want these people to find out after a 3 hour blackout when the president announces that there is no more cheap energy and that he is enacting martial law.
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 1190 Location: Zoorope
Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2004 3:01 pm Post subject:
Sorry to disappoint you, but there's no way.
I thought that, after one year of talks, I've convinced at least my husband. Well: yesterday he kept saying something about relocating downtown, getting a mortgage (which we don't have!) etc.
It's a lost battle. I just said "I'm not going against my beliefs" without any further explanation. Maybe I just announce peak Oil as my new religion, so he will respect my thoughts! _________________ **no english mothertongue**
--------
Objects in the rear view mirror
are closer than they appear.
By having to announce it as a religion it becomes ridiculous. And the fact that there are so many apocolyptics who are into this subject does not lend it credibility.
So, don't tell em unless you love em. And if they're openminded, great, maybe they'll hedge a little. If they don't, they'll just deal with it along with everyone else, when the prices start to creep.
There are only so many frustrating discussions I can have before I just want to give up.
You guys really are intellectually curious -- and also intelligent, because you have to be able to learn about the petroleum market, economics, ecology, history and a bunch of other things to have the background to understand peak oil and its implications.
I've got my plans for both a hard and soft landing. If people seem interested, I give them a basic peak-oil overview and send them to the Internet.
Joined: Aug 13, 2004 Posts: 34 Location: Brooklyn, NY
Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2004 3:52 pm Post subject:
The best way I've found to explain the issue to someone is to start off by saying that oil is not running out per se, and that peak oil has nothing to do with that. There could be 50 trillion barrels of oil left in the ground and its really irrelevant if we can only pump a maximum of about what we're consuming now + maybe a couple of mb/d. In light of ever rising demand, the situation is unsustainable just from this point of view. Either they're interested at this point and asking questions or its a lost cause.
I realize this isn't a 100% accurate depiction, but when you tell someone we're 'running out' of oil, I've noticed they kinda shut you off. Its better to lead someone into it softly and then start answering their questions. The bottom line though is most people don't want to know about it and I can't really blame them.
"Oil will probably never run out. But what happens when half of it is gone?"
"The last half is tougher to get at, than the first half was."
"It's more expensive oil"
"It gets more expensive, the lower you go."
"So what matters is... just where are we now?"
Once you have passed this point, demonstrating that production follows discovery, and the dates involved clearly prove that if peak's not now... it's soon.
Then point them to the audio/visual section of our links section and let the experts do the talking.
If after this process they aren't at least curious... well... the world needs ditch diggers too. _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
I find it at the moment relatively easy to convince people. A year back I just received a blank stare from most people. Or a "science will resolve it all" answer.
However people start to wonder about the high oil prices. They want an explanation and the media is not providing them that. If you will bring it convincingly they will consider it.
I usually bring it as a fact that the oil production will one day peak and decline. This has been known for years. I will explain them that that the EIA (an organization that most people trust) have calculated that this would happen in 25 years or so, which would give us plenty of time to prepare. (25 years doesn't sound too bad so people have no problem accepting this)
I explain them that this scenario largely depends on the ability of OPEC increase production. I tell them that it appears that OPEC appears to have been fiddling with their reserve numbers (like Shell). That it is becoming more apparent that OPEC doesn't have the production capacity that they said they have. (People generally don't trust OPEC so they readily accept this)
Finally I explain them that this would be a disaster, that the peak would come much, much earlier than anticipated. That maybe we are experiencing the peak right now.
If that doesn't convince them I challenge them to find an alternative explanation for why the oil prices are so much higher at the moment than in any time in history. Even with all the wells in Iraq and Kuwait ablaze prices were lower than now.
Joined: Sep 25, 2004 Posts: 4422 Location: Boston, MA
Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2004 8:46 pm Post subject:
Most of the people I talked to said that Hydrogen fuel cells will solve every single problem. I didn't bother explaining that fuel cells are an energy storage system not an energy source. If they have complete faith in hydrogen, let them enjoy it. Ignorance is bliss.
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 1190 Location: Zoorope
Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2004 4:28 am Post subject:
It's not that simple. If friends believe me or not, well, I don't care at last. But husband... it's important!
I explained eve-ry-thing (you know how women can talk when they want to convince you! ), but it looks like he understand everything but doesn't want to accept the implications. A cousin of mine, last weekend, told me "I think you're right. you're not exaggerating, peak Oil is something true" Then turned his shoulders and kept on planning about his new home with a 30 years mortgage.
People doesn't want to admit that, if Peak Oil is a real and present danger, they have to adapt their life to it. Nobody will persuade them to drop the dream of a new house, a new car, a new job. Maybe because we are used to think about "new things" to get satisfaction in life?
Consumerism will kill us all, not peak Oil. _________________ **no english mothertongue**
--------
Objects in the rear view mirror
are closer than they appear.
Me, I try to post the more significant stuff on my blog. Just a lone voice in a sea of Java geeks - right beside the posts about the latest gadgets, the latest Java JDK 1.5 release from Sun Microsystems, you get an entry from me that goes "Crude oil prices over $50" - not a very big readership by any means but I've got over 30,000 page views since pasting in the Sitemeter tracker.
As for family, my wife sort of "gets it" but she's not tracking every twitch of the NYMEX prices like I do, if you know what I mean ($50.47!!!). My mother thinks I'm too pessimistic, and my brother is studying aeronautical engineering. Perhaps the Air Force will employ him - I'm not so sure about future fate of the commercial airlines. My father, well, I guess he'll know a little about it when the diesel prices go up along with everything else.
Work-wise, some of my colleagues read my blog, they are somewhat aware of the phenomenon, but perhaps, maybe not the 300% overshoot and carrying capacity part. Others just shrug it off or ignore my IM messages. _________________ Live quotes - crude oil, gold and currencies
http://www.post1.net/lowem/page/livequotes
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 309 Location: Ontario, Canada
Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2004 2:28 pm Post subject:
lowem wrote:
...my brother is studying aeronautical engineering. Perhaps the Air Force will employ him - I'm not so sure about future fate of the commercial airlines.
It may interest you to know, that when I took my first summer job at a nuclear consulting company, a lot of the other nuclear engineers were trained in aerospace. You wouldn't think there's a cross-over, but they're both high-tech, high-cost, high-materials, high-safety areas and a lot of what you learn about fluids and thermodynamics transfers well.
He'll have little problem getting a job somewhere, I wouldn't worry. (Wind turbines?) _________________ "Our forces are now closer to the center of Baghdad than most American commuters are to their downtown office."
--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, April 2003
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All I suggested was to get rid of his debt, use his savings to get rid of his mortgage early and stop buying huge cars with finance because even if we are fortunate enough to get a soft landing losing your house is going to be heartbreaking!
), but it looks like he understand everything but doesn't want to accept the implications. A cousin of mine, last weekend, told me "I think you're right. you're not exaggerating, peak Oil is something true" Then turned his shoulders and kept on planning about his new home with a 30 years mortgage.
