If being 'liberal' means being against the unleashing of a neo-con lead military-industrial complex through the Mid-east, that takes a half-trillion US$ out of the economy each year to maintain itself, then I guess most US posters would go into that category. Also a majority of the US population would too judging from the latest election results.

'Conservatives', as part of their view on things, maybe have less to discuss and/or just accept the status quo in the present government more readily. In general, if they wanted to talk here, they don't seem to have much to say. Who's stopping them from saying anything? Really no one.

PS - Aaron, have you figured out why the Chinese are so interested in PO?

Hey, I'm here... and being "Conservative" does not mean you are a neo-con. Some of us actually vote Libertarian when the option presents itself.



There's no way you can get that from an IP address.

Yes, it seems China is still very interested... yet no Chinese posters as far as I can tell. The fact that the blip is on Beijing and not Hong Kong leads me to believe that the Chinese gov is behind that.

Sorry Daculling, I was not sure what the labels were being apply in this discussion.

As recently as a few days before the election, our President was still implying that anyone who was 'not with us' was 'against us' and 'wanted the terrorists to win' and/or 'don't have a plan to defeat terrorism'. This is very divisive talk and fragments political discussion into us and them groups.

Hopefully we will have less of this going forward, that is until the effects of PO get more severe.

'not with us' was 'against us'

Well, I guess I'm a terrorist then... I can live with that. Continuance of this rhetoric will sink the Republican party... of which I was never a part anyway. No skin in here... Die in a fire I say.

Still conservative though...

On these forums, if you don't agree with the extreme environmentalist and left wing views expressed, you will be shouted down.

I am a conservative and I don't believe in the threat of man-made global warming. Environmentalism is just a way for the extreme left to carry out their political agenda. The left knows that it can't bring down capitalism by confronting it directly so they use environmentalism.

Look at Bjorn Lomborg, the skeptical environmentalist, physically assaulted by eviro-facists because he dared to question them.

Now they are getting excited about peak oil because it might fulfill their twisted fantasies.

Unfortunately, unlike the lie of global warming, PO is a reality.

Leftism and hardline enviro-facism are unquestionable religions on these forums.

I've got a file going with great quotes from this forum, like this beauty, that I've copied and pasted. Some day I'll post it in the Hall Of Flames.

Peak oil, economic collapse, and environmental Goetterdaemmerung will render laughably archaic our concepts of "liberal" and "conservative." Like so many other things around us, these mindsets are creatures of the Oil Age and require ever-rising inputs of cheap energy.

Things---and we---are going to change more than we can possibly imagine. This includes the premature conversion of many of us into CORPSES.

Not my experience here. Open your mind dude or get lost.

Yeah, nothing is more hilarious than faith-based science. Johnston, there's no "belief" necessary. Climatic science is not Christianity, nor is it a partisan political issue. It just is, much like peak oil.

While liberals are probably the majority here, there are plenty of folks here like Johnston who couldn't give a shit about environmental issues, and are downright hostile to any suggestion that the human influence on the earth's ecosystems might be negative in any way. There are libertarians here, and neo-cons, and progressive liberals, and Zionist fascists, and socialists, and Bible-thumpers, and lovers of all things nuclear, and everyone in between. And people like me, treehugging, gun-toting, athiest, socially conservative vegetarians. OK, maybe I'm the only one.

While I usually roll my eyes when I hear the word diversity, the diversity of opinions here is what keeps me coming back. Most of the other forums I haunt are filled with kool-aid konservatives who wouldn't know an original thought if it busted a cap in their ass.

PO has a more immediate problem for these lefties in the intermediate time frame. When world wide production slips below 80 mbpd, and the price goes ballistic into the hundreds; those people that make up the upper half of the lower end support for the Democrats isn't going to be singing, "send me a hybrid" or "Jee, I want to replace my air conditioner." No, they're going to scream bloody murder and *DEMAND* that we use military force to GO GET THEM SOME OIL.

There won't be any whining about CO2 and global warming. There won't be whining about how its unfair to India or The Central African Republic of Really Hungry People. There won't be any waiing about "death to corporate America and the Evil Central Bankers."

PO is not a tool that is well suited to supporting the call: "No Blood For Oil." The closer the fantasy approaches the upcoming reality, the more lefties around here are going to be horrified. I'll be here watching, and I'll throw a wake when some politician, probably a democrat, looks into the camera and says, "we must deploy the marines or else we are going to lose access to the oil our economy must have."

I've always considered myself a fiscal conservative or libertarian second and a scientist/thinker first. If accepting the overwhelming evidence and consensus on GW/CC/resource depletion/environmental degradation makes me a leftie then so be it. Not all of us Ayn Rand reading entepreneurial types sniff our own ideological merde and think its perfume. I don't post here too often because there are numerous articulate posters here that practically take the words right out of my mind; gg3, Jack, pstarr, blistered whippet, Prairie Mule, rwwff, ibon, and the list goes on.

I think you make an interesting point here. In my own life I can see how the "internets" (to quote our glorious leader) has changed my own perspective. I've moved decidedly to the right in the past 10 years, at least in some areas. Apparently being "conservative" means you believe whatever Rush Limbaugh or BushCo tells you to believe, so I don't label myself conservative and I still can't bring myself to vote for a Republican, but nevertheless, being exposed to a wider range of opinions on the internet has enabled me to escape the liberal echo chamber that is Portland, Oregon.

To change the subject entirely, is the map you posted a proportional dot map? Seems like all the dots are the same size except the Beijing dot. Why is that?

1.) It could simply be that all those hits are being recorded at the central China firewall. I'm not sure exactly what the technical layout is for their internal internet, but I suspect the public accesses via proxy services. Has a double advantage in that large images and stuff can be cached, preserving external bandwidth; as well as allowing a lot of filtering of content and banning of sites.

2.) I think oil security may be a very, very sensitive topic. Its one thing to criticise the government on land and legal reforms, markets, wealth disparity, and that sort of internal debate; but its an entirely different matter to bad mouth the Chinese President in an American forum; or to call into question China's future international machinations as potentially immoral or simply stupid. Given the majority view on this board of lefty Americans who think war between China and the US is certain to happen; I'd be quite surprised if you heard a peep out of anyone within the PRC.

And certainly no one over there with both authority to speak and knowledge to be credible would expend even the tiniest effort to debate with us Americans about the US/China partnership and how it forms a strong, mutually beneficial economic entity. Trust me, they think we're stupid idgits that have a twenty word attention span before we have to go scratch our butts and run off at the mouth.

Anyone here ever even bothered to watch a press conference with authorized PRC personel? Reporters actually ask a REAL question, not a stupid gotcha, and then sit down to listen to an extremely in depth answer without interupting the speaker. Makes me embarrassed for the American press corp, more interested in their own fame and face time, than getting real answers and information.