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Discussing with deniers?

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby Ludi » Tue 11 Dec 2007, 18:14:24

Ayoob wrote:IMO, there's no reason to try to "raise awareness" or anything of that nature. What's it going to help?

If you were planning on building an eco-community, would you prefer to have an experienced gardener, or a truck driver that just figured out peak oil? Gimme the gardener, even if he's riveted to Xbox 23 hours a day. Who cares? He's productive.

Would you rather have a chick whose life in the Accounts Payable department is great, and who is peak oil aware, or would you rather have a high school dropout carpenter who can get walls up and fix your bathroom? Gimme the dropout.

I don't give a shit whether somebody's "passed the IQ test" or any of that. I want to be surrounded by people who can rig up what they need to rig up to make life as safe and comfortable as possible.

Talking about peak oil is like dancing about architecture. A nonproductive waste of time.


I agree with you completely. I want to know people who are handy or who are learning to be handy, not people who have some special secret info.
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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby threadbear » Tue 11 Dec 2007, 18:55:47

double post
Last edited by threadbear on Tue 11 Dec 2007, 19:02:52, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby threadbear » Tue 11 Dec 2007, 19:01:36

Social Darwinists view those who are the most successful in our society, as the strongest, the most intelligent, the most worthy of that success. What if you live in a stupid society, or a society based in illusion, delusion, on many different levels? In that case those who are the most successful, are just the tallest dwarfs in a culture made up of mental midgets.

There's no point in trying to change the mind of anyone who isn't receptive. There is a whole other evolutionary process going on right now, that is selecting FOR people who have not risen to the top of a stupid society, and against those who have.

The cultural dinosaur model is about excelling in a purely artificial institutional realm where survival needs are easily met. Everything is big; people, cars, houses, etc... You get ahead by being able to deftly manipulate large corporations, or fit into them. It's a condition that is several abstractions away from a life that fits the new evolutionary model. That model is about fundamental survival skills, like farming, gardening, fixing things, making new things, genuine mutually beneficial relationships with others. The tree shrew individual will trump the dinosaur based one.

Some people are tree shrews, others are dinosaurs. Don't expect if someone is "intelligent" that they will necessarily get it. It has more to do with personality type and type of intelligence than anything.

Tree shrews will hear what you're saying. Dinosaurs won't. DON'T waste your time.
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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby billp » Tue 11 Dec 2007, 20:08:14

One of the hunting party suggested that we might think about using mopeds next year.

Pheasants, quail, chukars, ... and other game birds are welcoming peak oil.

Appearance is less traffic on I-25 this year compared to last.

Cheers
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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby TheDude » Wed 12 Dec 2007, 03:34:06

Ayoob wrote:Talking about peak oil is like dancing about architecture.


Sounds like you're looking for Elvis Costello fans too. 8)
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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby wisconsin_cur » Wed 12 Dec 2007, 08:13:07

Plantagenet wrote:TIME MAGAZINE just had an article saying Peak Oil occurred in 2006.

The word is getting out.

The truth cannot be denied. 8)


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http://www.thenewfederalistpapers.com
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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby Duende » Wed 12 Dec 2007, 12:39:48

threadbear wrote:
Don't expect if someone is "intelligent" that they will necessarily get it. It has more to do with personality type and type of intelligence than anything.

Tree shrews will hear what you're saying. Dinosaurs won't. DON'T waste your time.


Yes. I think our understanding of "intelligence" will broaden quite a bit in the coming years when the script gets flipped.
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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby PhebaAndThePilgrim » Thu 13 Dec 2007, 11:47:33

Good day from Pheba, from the farm:
I never never never mention peak oil. I used to try to talk to friends about it. I have learned to just keep my mouth shut and prepare as best I can.
I have stopped discussing it with my daughter. I think she gets it, but is so overwhelmed with just surviving that she can't face it yet. She is already near a nervous breakdown. She has financial problems, three young boys, and a parent in a nursing home. So, she is the one person I would love to inform, but I refrain because I don't want to add to her stress level. I have informed her that she needs to clear her debts and work towards energy and food independence.
She is doing that so what more do I need to do. Harping on the subject won't change it.
As far as talking about Peak Oil with anybody else. Forget it. I tried.
The majority of folk in this area are right wing, fundamental christians that get all information from three source, in this order;
right wing talk radio (hate radio)
their church
television.
Here are some responses I get:
"Peak what"?
We have plenty of oil. The oil companies are sitting on it.
They need to build more refineries.
Jesus is coming, and it doesn't matter. (this one stops all argument, and any connection with a cogent reality)
Take care of your own. Talking about peak oil with fools isn't going to delay the onset or change the outcome.
Pheba.
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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby Nicholai » Thu 13 Dec 2007, 14:43:17

I definitely agree that it takes a certain personality to understand peak oil. There are some with too much invested in the system to be bothered by reality. Others have just an artificial sense of intelligence in my opinion.

I have friends who travel to Ottawa and host little mock parliaments and get involved in the UN, send food aid to Africa etc. They don't mean to be fools, but sadly, they are. They have a brown friend and sometimes they recycle their beer bottles after a party, so they assume that they are leading the charge for the next world order.

I think its hard for people to shed conventional wisdoms and accept that they might have to look like a social pariah in the meantime. I get uncomfortable around these people because they try to associate themselves with change and progress, modern leftist thinking and forward moving feminists, but I know that they're doing it all wrong. Just like the cumbersome events of the 60's and 70's, so too are these 'types'. They will push the onvelope only to where the conventional bar will allow them, because they don't want to look too silly at the Christmas table.

Laziness also comes to mind…laziness or possibly a lack of curiosity. I know a girl, who drives and drives, goes to functions all over the city. She considers herself a socialist and just got a $23,000 car from her parents (2007 model). She wears the nicest clothes and talks about 'bad' conservatives and the 'important' environment. She attends Rotary functions which are made of mostly of business people and conservative politicians. She would drive 80km every day to go to school in an SUV. I can't rap my head around it and I don't bother to point out her flaws, after all, she is pretty hot?

It almost seems that the once progressive left has been placed into prefabrication. This seems likely due to how limited our media discourse has become over the last decade. The left is Hillary Clinton and the right is Robert Novak? It seems like two warring camps with no real interest in learning about reality. When was the last time you heard an American presidential candidate use the phrase "Global carrying capacity" or "negative feedback mechanism". I understand that most of you will respond with "those phrases are too complicated for the common person", but maybe that’s the problem altogether. We have become too complex, simple as that. Our complexity has gone into hyper drive and we've lost our footing along the way. We no longer have a direction, or even an understanding, of where we’re going.

I'm going to take the early stop and spend my time with cold fingers before the rest of the world finds itself much in the same. Time to abandon ship.

Image
A lifeless tailing pond in Northern Alberta.
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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby xrotaryguy » Thu 13 Dec 2007, 15:34:29

I NEVER try to completely convince anyone that we are starting to run out of oil. People don't want to hear it, and it is a lot of swallow all at once. Instead, I make comments here and there, when it is appropriate. If a person responds favorably, then I will share some of the more compelling aspects of peak oil, etc.

I guess my strategy for convincing people of peak oil is similar to the strategy that a missionary might use to spread "the word of God." These folks merely try to, as they put it, "plant the seed." The most successful missionaries do not generally preach about crazy things like hell, or walking on water, or resurrection, but rather their church's community, how nice it is, etc.

In my opinion, this strategy should be even more effective when used to discuss peak oil than it is when discussing God because, understanding peak oil requires common sense, and belief in the existence of God requires blind faith. Helping to effect solutions to peak oil can actually help the world. Praying to God generally does nothing other than perhaps provide some peace of mind.
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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby TamaraC » Thu 13 Dec 2007, 19:47:28

I'm still trying to figure out how to break it to my husband. We're already in such stressful circumstances.

I find myself arguing what I think is our best choice but fabricating other reasons. (The kids need a yard to play in, or we should move closer to our families (who live in more sustainable parts of the country)).

I figure I may lose my leverage if I express my true fears, so I just make offhand remarks from time to time that he is free to dismiss as "kidding".

To be honest, I'm concerned that we may be facing abrupt (like within 1 to 3 years) climate shifts of truly shocking proportions in 3 to 10 years as well, so I kind of feel like I'm trying to pilot a raft between Scylla and Charybdis with a couple of babies on my lap.

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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby ONeil » Fri 14 Dec 2007, 00:32:45

TamaraC wrote:I'm still trying to figure out how to break it to my husband. We're already in such stressful circumstances.

I find myself arguing what I think is our best choice but fabricating other reasons. (The kids need a yard to play in, or we should move closer to our families (who live in more sustainable parts of the country)).

I figure I may lose my leverage if I express my true fears, so I just make offhand remarks from time to time that he is free to dismiss as "kidding".

To be honest, I'm concerned that we may be facing abrupt (like within 1 to 3 years) climate shifts of truly shocking proportions in 3 to 10 years as well, so I kind of feel like I'm trying to pilot a raft between Scylla and Charybdis with a couple of babies on my lap.

Tamara


Tamara, sepaking to strangers about peak oil is one thing. Getting your spouse online with you is essential.

Perhaps getting a couple of peak oil documentaries and ask him to watch them with you.

Who knows how he will take the information. Will he become a doomer will he acknowledge the risk but become a techno utopian? It does not matter really. What matters is that he is able to discuss the issues with you.

Realize one other thing. People have been predicting the end of the world for quite some time now. Do you think all the people that were worried about Y2K were silly? So while the information that we have access to on this site points to a mad max outcome recognize that this is not the first time the demise of civilization has been predicted.

All this to say that we may yet find a way to dodge this bullet, but, how did you fare in your personal relationships? How did this affect your marriage?
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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby vfr » Mon 31 Dec 2007, 20:57:10

zeke wrote:To me, the concept of resource peaking and depletion is a simple as a lesson learned at age 3 with a bag of jelly beans: sooner or later you say, "all gone!"

However, many friends who flame me for talking about peak oil have the following as foundations for their counter-argument:

1. "there's plenty down there"

and

2. "Oil companies want you to think the oil's running out to boost their profits."

To me, these are non-arguments because they either betray a lack of understanding of what "peak" oil means, are fatuous and self-delusional wishes for what could be, or they base an understanding of reality on the behavior of a for-profit industry.(ie, "high pump prices = plenty of supply.") which is antithetical to any man-on-the-street understanding of how for-profit companies work, with respect to finite commodities.

I talk about peak oil because I hope that people — even 1 person will snap out of it and realize that we need to change our behavior to get thru the coming decades better rather than worse.

Anyone care to share their techniques for debating/discussing this with people who are convinced that there's an inexhaustible supply of oil "down there" or at least how to attack the angle that rising prices mean ONLY that oil companies want more profits; not that supply is waning?

thanks!

gphaze






"If the public does think briefly about future oil supplies, the question usually asked is, "How long will oil last?" This is the wrong question. Oil will be extracted in some insignificant quantity perhaps 200 years from now. The critical question is: When does the peak of world oil production occur?" ~ Richard C. Duncan

It may all be true that what we have been told about peak oil is a hoax. Same as the skeptics that claim global warming is a hoax. It may all be a conspiracy, just a cruel trick on the consumer to line the pockets of industry with more money...only time will settle this debate

http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives/peak_oil/index.htm

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel ... entid=2097

http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2007 ... -peak-oil/

http://www.energybulletin.net/4466.html

I always tell the proponents saying peak oil is a conspiracy and think that we have an unlimited amount of oil, natural gas, coal, uranium...actions speak louder than words.

We can look at Hubbert's prediction of the USA's peak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

He was exactly right.

We can look at global oil production and see what the general trend is.

We can look at the trend in drilling to see how deep we have to go to find oil.

We can look at the quality of crude being produced. Is it light sweet crude or high sulfur, heavy, hard to refine crude? The light sweet is just that 'light' and is on the surface of the oil pool. Whereas the less desirable heavy sulfated crude is on the bottom of the pool. Does the phrase hitting the bottom the barrel mean anything to you?

Lately we have been putting much of our hope in the tar sands of Canada. When we have to get the oil out of the sand and shale it sounds like we are hitting the bottom of the barrel again. Even talk about getting our gas from refining bitumen coal.

Now, some people say we are saving the light sweet crude for national defense and usining the foreign oil and tar sands first. I don't know, I have no inside information about that claim.

We get about 15% of our natural gas from Canada. That 15% amounts to 50% of the natural gas Canada produces. The US sucks down more energy than any other country...no one can come close to us.

Our demands for natural gas are on the rise, just as our demands are for all fossil fuels. Once demand outstrips production we are headed over Hubert's peak in any number of areas besides crude. We can see peak production issues in natural gas, uranium, food or water, just as we will see with crude oil.

It is an easy task to see how much oil is produced in the world. But finding the 'exact peak date' for world oil production is hard to pinpoint. (see peak oil section)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil

For one thing, some countries production are erratic and they are not transparent with their real production and discovery data.

Also oil production is not an exact science and still requires a little luck. We may find a lucky hit down the road that brings in a gusher to distort some of the figures.

No one knows the exact peak date for world oil production, but we do know that time will come in the not so distant future. But finding the peak is not hard problem once we can look back on it by a few years....but we need some time to do it...again, only time will settle this debate.

Check out:

Twilight in the Desert: the coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy
by Simmons, Matthew R.

It is a well written book examining 12 of the key Saudi oil fields and the exaggerated claims of remaining crude reserves of Saudi Arabia.

Also see:

http://www.worldoil.com/INFOCENTER/STAT ... production

http://hubbert.mines.edu/

http://www.mnforsustain.org/duncan_and_ ... The%20Peak





Take care,


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Re: Discussing with deniers?

Unread postby steam_cannon » Wed 23 Jan 2008, 07:52:49

I don't like Jim Jubak, but since he is MSN's Money Senior Markets
Editor and he spoke about peak oil, I'm suggesting people listen to
him speak as it adds mainstream acceptance to the subject.

Jim Jubak on Peak Oil
Image
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FNPVPq5uIcU

Showing people "peak oil" is mainstream
http://www.peakoil.com/post582634.html

Just a fun video...
"Times are changing" - Bob Dylan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vou4qUu5YY

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But it's complex, there is the chance of ameliorating factors
coming into play.
That's not to say there won't be a die off, but
there is some hope for scrapping along a few more years with new
energy supplies. And this complicates things. If there weren't so
many "possible sounding" alternatives, peak oil would be more
obvious to people.

Toe to Heel Air Injection
http://peakoil.com/fortopic31781.html
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Art Berman: Like It Or Not, The Future Remains All About Oil

Unread postby AdamB » Thu 25 Jan 2018, 13:12:29


Art Berman, 40-year veteran in the petroleum production industry and respected geological consultant, returns to the podcast this week to talk about oil. After the price of oil fell from its previous $100+/bbl highs to under $30/bbl in 2015, many declared dead the concerns raised by peak oil theorists. Headlines selling the "shale miracle" have sought to convince us that the US will one day eclipse Saudi Arabia in oil production. In short: cheap, plentiful oil is here to stay. How likely is this? Not at all, warns Berman. World demand for oil shows no signs of abating while the outlook for future production looks increasingly scant. And the competition among nations for this "master resource" will be much more intense in future decades than we've been used to: Since the 1980s, we simply have not been replacing reserves with new discoveries. So


Art Berman: Like It Or Not, The Future Remains All About Oil
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
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Re: Art Berman: Like It Or Not, The Future Remains All About

Unread postby Subjectivist » Fri 28 Sep 2018, 09:46:58

Art Berman is promising prices will stay below $100/bbl for the forseeable future.


https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09- ... g-back-100
II Chronicles 7:14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
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