‘Peak Oil, a theory popular among Chicken Little types’

Peakoilpost

From Daily Tech, or is it Daily Denial?…

Despite Reality, Belief in Peak Oil Persists

“Peak Oil, a theory popular among Chicken Little types, has been much in the news recently. The idea behind it is that future production levels of any consumable resource can be reliably predicted based off a single factor: the size of the known reserves. Once half those reserves have been consumed -- so the theory goes -- production will steadily fall, no matter what.”

“So yes, oil will one day peak. But it won't be in our lifetimes, or our even our grandchildren’s. And when it happens, it won't be an earth-shattering catastrophe, but rather a smooth and natural progression to better, cheaper alternatives.”

Daily Tech Blog

For the record, here’s a quote from T. Boone Pickens’ testimony at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee...

"The world produces 85 million barrels of oil a day, or more than 30 billion barrels of oil a year. We haven’t replaced that amount of consumption on an annualized basis since 1985. World oil production, I believe, has peaked, and the world’s current oil fields are declining at the rate of 8 percent a year. The simple truth is we’re never going above 85 million barrels of oil production."

Aaron

In order to bait a link, you need a hook. Hooks come in variety of flavors, some of the more popular would include:

* News hook
* Contrary Hook
* Attack Hook
* Resource Hook
* Humour Hook

There are others, but you see the point. There are two main types of hook in there, the nice hook, and the nasty hook. I'd say in most cases you can get away with a contrarian viewpoint, but not an attack. No one likes an arsehole, so there's no real benefit, as sure you may get a ton of links from outraged blog peers, but they'll likely ignore anything else you write.

Contrary Hook

* Be the only one in your niche to find something to not like about a story, or like about a story/product.
* On the same theme, post "Why <insert prominent blogger name here> is WRONG about..."

The Art of Link Baiting
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"When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.

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Gus · Tar Sands Joined: May 27, 2008 Posts: 23

Wow, I just read the article and the comments that people gave. It is truly amazing how stupid people are.

Twilight · Expert Joined: Mar 02, 2007 Posts: 3076 Location: UK

Thanks, Aaron. I thought about clicking the link, then I saw your post and thought better of it.
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killJOY · Fission Joined: Feb 21, 2005 Posts: 2510 Location: ^NNE^

The peak oil "argument" has been validated in the last few years.

The peak oil "cause" is lost. a goner. no one wants to accept it. hence articles like the one above.

so.

People are gonna die.

Peakoilpost

But it's nice he's called the contrarian now, two years ago I would get that label Wink

Wren · Tar Sands Joined: Apr 30, 2008 Posts: 64 Location: Oregon

Great. More misinformation being spued out to people that are just learning about this idea or aren't real able to discern what is going on. People are stupid, and people are going to die, but... I feel more like "there but for the grace of (something) go I". I'm lucky I was able to learn about this years ago in a contect where it could start to unfold and make sense to me. Unfortunately, I think when people see this kind of stuff they just say "ok" and will not tke any action for their own lives or family until it's too late. Or never. This kind of writing really sucks, for more reasons than just poor writing ability, for the crappy contents.

Aaron

Impervius · Tar Sands Joined: May 27, 2008 Posts: 24

I have yet to see a Cornucopian accurate describe Peak Oil. Its always:
"Peak Oilers are saying we are running out of oil, there is plenty of oil!"

"Peak Oilers say we have used half the oil in the ground, we dont know how much is in there!"

I have never heard an anti-Peaker say anything about Peak Prodution or mention the fact that for the last serveral decades we have been discovering LESS oil than we have been using. Its only a matter of time before production falls.

Electric_Economy_2025 · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 01, 2008 Posts: 143

Is there any post that takes this news article apart ?
I know all of it has been shown to be false in different post here and there, I would just like to see a reply to this article that shows how full of crap it is.

jedinvest

cestlavie · Tar Sands Joined: Feb 12, 2007 Posts: 79

You mentioned "Is there a post that takes this news article apart?"

Sure, the news article should have included these graphs available using google image search...

world oil production
top 20 oil production (bar graph)
oil producing countries past peak
world crude oil price in USD
world crude oil discoveries
World oil demand
Human population
The number of vehicles at global level (millions)

Allright, enough of the serious stuff. Now time for a story. My (very psychic) friend was completely clueless about peak oil. And I did not mention the subject since I felt sorry for her. She had an autistic son and was headed for divorce (shes divorced now with a new boyfriend). So I never mentioned anything about peak oil to her. However, eventually my conscience called. She had once told me she felt the future would be "chaotic". I beleived she had ESP since she correctly diagnosed my christmas tree as being toxic (not the ornaments, not the tinsel, but the entire tree). During the winter I took the only available (movable) rocks from under my CCA (arsenic) treated deck and put them in a bucket filled with water and the tree in the bucket happily sucked up all that arsenic laced water and (unknowingly to me) was going to drop the pine needles onto the floor. Anyways, her reponse to my email with all the graphs was simply "thats scary". After the correct Christmas tree diagnosis (the day after), I dumped the bucket of water (which now had a metallic sheen on the top of the water) into the snow.

I was happy to know that my experiment was a success - someone with no knowledge of peak oil was made quickly aware by simple graphs. And it took her (at most) just a few minutes to quickly get the idea of things. Now she will look at rising gas prices and continue to be aware and will have the chance to change things. For herself and her family and the world in general...

pedalling_faster · Intermediate Crude Joined: Dec 10, 2005 Posts: 941

ROCKMAN

I'm with cestlavie... a little lightness for the moment but a minor point towards understanding by the masses.

I've been a petroleum geologist in Houston for over thirty years. Back in the 80's and 90's I would do volunteer work with the inner city schools. My bit was relatively simple: show them rocks and explain all the everday products that come from them. Like real baby talcum powder was made from a real mineral called talc (which is why baby powder is now commonly made from corn starch...not good for babies to breath ground up rocks containing minor amounts of radiactive material). Not having any experience dealling with children I focused on jr high and H.S. Big mistake: at that age there wasn't much interest in the material...big surprise...dah!!

But 4th graders...what a difference! They were so pumped to learn about anything....especially rocks. Of course, a few dino bones didn't hurt the effort to stir them up. It was truly one the most satisfying efforts of my life...to have a captive audience that really wanted to hear what I had to say...what an ego builder.

And to the point: lots of reason for some folks to react negative to attempts to discuss PO. Some are unhonest efforts at self promotion (i.e. media). Others take the head in the ground approach. Many of you have your own stories about such less then satisfying conversation.

I think for our own collective sanity we might adhere to the ancient observation: trying to teach a pig to sing only frustrates you and irritates the pig. Like the previous post I am very satisfied to help someone reach their own conclusions. But I've reached the point to forego efforts with diminshing returns. But for those of you with the energy: get after those silent pigs!

Revi · Fusion Joined: Apr 25, 2005 Posts: 3509 Location: Maine

But, don't we have enough oil and natural gas to power 160 million households and cars for the next 60 years? That's what the American Petroleum Institute says. They wouldn't lie to us would they?

http://www.energytomorrow.org/
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