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PeakOil is You

Improving Peak Oil Credibility

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

Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby Ludi » Sun 28 Mar 2010, 17:07:56

Loki wrote:What's wrong with advocating genocidal tyranny? Seems credible to me... :roll:



Um, yeah. I guess it does to most people here as the comment sailed by without question until I asked for clarification.

That genocide is called for here on these boards with no censure (not censorship) is troubling.

Apparently these are the people who should die:

americandream wrote:Conservatives, Fascists, nationalists, Christians, Muslims, other holy joes and other assorted scum and traitors.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby mos6507 » Sun 28 Mar 2010, 20:14:10

Ludi wrote:Um, yeah. I guess it does to most people here as the comment sailed by without question until I asked for clarification.


If you've read one call for genocidal tyranny, you've read them all. We're desensitized to it.

Ludi wrote:Apparently these are the people who should die:

americandream wrote:Conservatives, Fascists, nationalists, Christians, Muslims, other holy joes and other assorted scum and traitors.


You forgot the baby boomers and the pigmen.

Might as well throw these guys into the pyre as well ;)

Image

This song comes to mind.

Image

Self-riteousness is a slippery slope for doomers.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby Ludi » Sun 28 Mar 2010, 20:21:31

mos6507 wrote:
If you've read one call for genocidal tyranny, you've read them all. We're desensitized to it.



Yeah, I'm not quite jaded enough, I guess. :cry:

But then, I don't play Halo-3.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby shortonsense » Sun 28 Mar 2010, 21:36:28

Loki wrote:What's wrong with advocating genocidal tyranny? Seems credible to me... :roll:


And has nothing to do with resource depletion...but is certain to get linked to it in the minds of those or have not yet decided. And then PO'ers get giggled at....and ZIP goes the credibility.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby Loki » Sun 28 Mar 2010, 22:21:51

shortonsense wrote:
Loki wrote:What's wrong with advocating genocidal tyranny? Seems credible to me... :roll:


And has nothing to do with resource depletion...but is certain to get linked to it in the minds of those or have not yet decided. And then PO'ers get giggled at....and ZIP goes the credibility.

One could make the argument that resource depletion will require the establishment of an all-powerful centralized state in order to ration remaining resources. It's a bogus argument, but it doesn't stop many from making it.

But I think peak oil has very little to do with AD's agenda. He thinks the answer to all problems is Stalinism. Peak oil is simply a pretense.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby shortonsense » Sun 28 Mar 2010, 22:29:03

pstarr wrote:
shortonsense wrote:
Loki wrote:What's wrong with advocating genocidal tyranny? Seems credible to me... :roll:


And has nothing to do with resource depletion...but is certain to get linked to it in the minds of those or have not yet decided. And then PO'ers get giggled at....and ZIP goes the credibility.
Do you really believe that one interested in resource depletion would gives a rat's @ss what a climate-change denying creationist like yourself cares or thinks?

Laughable :lol:


The topic is whether or not the linkage between resource depletion in general, or peak oil in particular, to the attitudes, claims and scenario's of warmers,coolers, changers, faked moon landing or religious nuts, harms resource depletion credibility, not whether or not you hallucinate such attitudes, claims or scenario's in others. Again.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby shortonsense » Sun 28 Mar 2010, 22:35:24

Loki wrote:One could make the argument that resource depletion will require the establishment of an all-powerful centralized state in order to ration remaining resources. It's a bogus argument, but it doesn't stop many from making it.


Someone could make that argument. And then someone would mention that we didn't need such a thing as England ran out of coal, or the world ran out of whale oil, so it doesn't seem a guarantee that peak oil would justify such a claim.

Loki wrote:But I think peak oil has very little to do with AD's agenda. He thinks the answer to all problems is Stalinism. Peak oil is simply a pretense.


Which is exactly the problem. PO being forced into proximity of someone's favorite crackpottery, its guilt by association.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby mos6507 » Mon 29 Mar 2010, 00:01:22

Humans are social creatures. We always seek approval. And I've identified a fixation on my part over how other people feel about doom, and about me being a doomer. There are practical reasons why one might want to spread the word of doom, but at a personal level, it would be incredibly liberating not feeling like a closeted homosexual because one is embarrassed about how people would view you if you "came out" to them. One could say the same thing about a great many minority ideas, like being an atheist.

I wonder sometimes about what kind of person has the guts to strut down the street openly proclaiming his or her doomerism. The world kind of needs a "doom pride" parade. I guess I saw Transition as a way to hide behind the solidarity of a group. But good luck finding other doomers at a local level. They are too few and far between.

So at an intellectual level, whether peak oil has or doesn't have credibility based on how people slot me into some subculture categorization shouldn't matter to me. After all, I no longer even identify myself as truly belonging to the people who would be judging me, and yet the animalistic part of my brain still craves approval and fears rejection.

The topic of doom is such an elephant in the room that I am convinced that a great many people probably would be openly doomer if they didn't at some subliminal level know that doing so would make them social outcasts, and so they 'self-correct'. The warning signs that flash before their eyes all the time get back-burnered. If it's not actionable (and most would feel that it isn't--powerdown and doomsteads are totally out of the question) then they can't allow themselves to latch onto it and go through the endless fight-or-flight stress.

I think this is part of everyone's cultural programming. It's the reason why most people don't look like Jesse James, riddled with tattoos. Everybody feels like they have to conform to a certain minimum acceptable cultural norm. And part of that is not questioning the growth paradigm. I don't say that as if to impugn corporate america or the NWO for imposing that on us (as so many of you do). I think that runs to the bedrock of who we are as a society and TPTB merely reflect that back onto us in a vicious cycle.

But the fact remains that the process of evangelizing peak oil to those who are in that mindset in some sort of Milquetoast inoffensive way is impossible. The conclusions of peak oil (which doesn't even really HAVE to include die-off) are just too contradictory to the story of infinite growth to accept.

So it's clearly a red pill / blue pill thing, and the only way someone is going to cross over is if they grasp the red pill on their own.

Remember, the web is a PULL technology. When I stumbled upon the peak oil concept with dieoff.org and all that jazz, I voluntarily clicked through all those links. I could have just tuned out. I didn't. How many of us here became doomers because someone personally approached them about it, unsolicited? Probably very few if any. There was some trigger-point that grabbed you, and you kept going down the rabbit hole.

So you can tailor the message any way you like but no matter what, the person is voluntarily swallowing the red pill. He isn't being actively converted.

The fact that I've spoken to my mom endlessly about doom and she still hasn't taken the red pill is instructive. How can there be a more trusted source of information than your own next of kin? If that isn't going to work, then certainly most peak oil awareness programs are destined to only pull in the small minority of people who are already predisposed to this for one reason or another.

So I guess what I'm saying is that peak oil will never be considered credible because people's universal assumption about the world is based on a lie: that we can infinitely grow in a finite system. It is like the bombshell of evolution and the earth revolving around the sun combined.

I know people hate it when doomerism is laced with quasi-religious rhetoric, but it is truly an epiphany, a life-altering moment of enlightenment. Maybe for technocopians it might not have seemed like that much of a shock to the system, but for most of us it was. It was like a punch to the gut that lasted for days. The adult equivalent of being told that Santa doesn't exist. And people wonder why peakers aren't considered "normal"? If you can process that sort of information and then stroll back to continue your life totally unaltered, then that is what's not normal.

And that's what I literally tried to do for close to five years. I lived a dual life of going through the motions during the day and doomer by the keyboard at night, and it's just not healthy. Not that stressing out on doom is healthy either, but it's perfectly natural.

So why don't we lay off on trying to blame doomers for being weirdos? It's a tough cross to bear.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby AAA » Mon 29 Mar 2010, 17:39:55

Talking about credibility of po.com...

Has anyone checked out the latest poll results from the front page titled "Our Next Catastrophe".

Majority of the voters picked "Zombie Attacks"

Majority of the PO members are a joke. There is very little credibility here. Many are so far strung out that even if oil was $500/barrel and global production dropped 17% in 2011 that many visitors would not seek answers here. They would quickly move on to another site.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby mos6507 » Mon 29 Mar 2010, 20:00:23

AAA wrote:Majority of the PO members are a joke. There is very little credibility here. Many are so far strung out that even if oil was $500/barrel and global production dropped 17% in 2011 that many visitors would not seek answers here. They would quickly move on to another site.


Then why are you here? Either lower your expectations or you'll be forever disgruntled.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby AAA » Tue 30 Mar 2010, 12:24:00

mos6507 wrote:Then why are you here? Either lower your expectations or you'll be forever disgruntled.


This might be a new concept for you mos but have you ever desired to be helpful to other people.

Everyone can bring something to the table that is helpful for the PO community. Even you and pstarr :-D However it seems that a lot of garbage has to come from some po members before anything worthwhile comes out. But even then the worthwhile knowledge is just that...worthwhile. So I tolerate the garbage but most people don't. Fortunately I have thick skin.

I bring oil, financial, and planning/doing knowledge. I am hoping it is helpful to others.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby AAA » Tue 30 Mar 2010, 13:45:03

pstarr wrote:So far, not much. My financial advisers, top firms all, know little about the unique financial/economic ramifications of primary energy resource depletion i.e. receding horizons, the export land model, energy multiplier affect, and especially Hamilton's work on supply constraints and recessions. etc. Do you?


I don't bring investing advise or estate planning. I encourage frugal living, investing, and living within your means now so that you don't have to worry about money later on.

Money is the number 1 factor from preventing people from moving out of the city to the country.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby shortonsense » Tue 30 Mar 2010, 14:05:36

pstarr wrote:Make a point and stop babbling. You may be fascinated with your own keyboard, but others can not see it.


I started this thread. Put down the local product of choice, wait 12 hours until brain starts functioning again, start over.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby shortonsense » Tue 30 Mar 2010, 14:12:13

AAA wrote:Majority of the PO members are a joke.


I might disagree. We certainly have some individual examples, the lost puppy I seem to have acquired being one of them, but I think that somewhere in here is a core which, for whatever reason, is more than a little worried about what the direction of the country and world entails during the transition from the fossil fuel age to what comes after.

Some of us are quite comfortable with what we think the transition will yield, we are called names and generally insulted for being here. Others want to use the concept for a trigger to some agro-utopia where the guns and ammo come out, strongest man wins, he-man, super-gardener rules type of concept. Interesting to be sure, but the Amish way of life had its opportunity to rule the world and lost out.

The credibility of the concept for me tends to run with how well its been thought out, rather than a <peak oil happens> -> <miracle/disaster happens> -> <cool scenario to my liking develops>
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby AAA » Tue 30 Mar 2010, 14:19:09

shortonsense wrote:
AAA wrote:Majority of the PO members are a joke.


I might disagree.


There are 28,809 members on po.com and I bet less than 50 of them actually provide meaningful content.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby shortonsense » Tue 30 Mar 2010, 14:21:31

pstarr wrote:
AAA wrote:Majority of the PO members are a joke. There is very little credibility here. Many are so far strung out that even if oil was $500/barrel and global production dropped 17% in 2011 that many visitors would not seek answers here. They would quickly move on to another site.
Those particular results were almost certainly cynical comments on the low quality of the particular poll. There are many such poorly designed "push" polls posted here by trolls and PO debunkers to discredit this site. I would never refer to them for serious analysis


of course you wouldn't....if any information whatsoever contradicts your belief system, your first and most strident instinct is denial. First instinct while under the influence is incoherence.

Such a belief system, one which cannot accept facts (locally grown meat and produce in America, who knew!) and will choose whichever point of view most closely resembles a hoped for conclusion rather than the reasonable consequence to an action or event, is why the credibility of peak oil is suspect in the eyes of normal people...sober ones anyway.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby shortonsense » Tue 30 Mar 2010, 16:03:58

AAA wrote:
shortonsense wrote:
AAA wrote:Majority of the PO members are a joke.


I might disagree.


There are 28,809 members on po.com and I bet less than 50 of them actually provide meaningful content.


I wasn't thinking of the total count when I made my comment, I was thinking more about the 50 or so who actually participate. Sure the lurker/registration group is pretty awful, that happens all over the place. I was thinking more about honest participants, only a few of those do it admittedly to screw with people, and we know who they are.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby Ludi » Thu 01 Apr 2010, 08:45:14

shortonsense wrote: the Amish way of life had its opportunity to rule the world and lost out.



Why should there be a way of life to rule the world? How about a bunch of different ways to live? If you don't like the Amish way (I sure don't!), how about giving us some more options? Personally, I'd like to see more useful content from you about how you live, how you see yourself living in the future, and helpful information you have gathered about living. I find the most credible folks to be the ones who have solid, real -world information about different ways to live which they are implementing in their own lives and share on a regular basis here.

But that's just me. Other folks probably have other standards of credibility. :|
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby mcgowanjm » Thu 01 Apr 2010, 09:10:32

Why PO credibility in the first place?

Are we looking to recruit? For what?

And I believe that Heinberg(perLeananPONews) has it wrong this time. There is no way to transition this Society/Civilization
to a Resilient Downsize Economy.

The proGrowthers at all cost will simply take what Resilience 'leaves'
in the Tragedy of the Commons.
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Re: Improving Peak Oil Credibility

Unread postby mcgowanjm » Thu 01 Apr 2010, 09:13:57

Here's someone needing credibility:

Greer wrote:Third: Two workers in different countries work in identical factories, using identical tools to make identical products. One of them makes twenty dollars an hour plus a benefit package; the other makes two dollars a day with no benefits at all. Why is that?

The last one is the easiest, though you’ll have a hard time finding a single figure in American public life who will admit to the answer. It’s not considered polite these days to talk about America’s empire, despite the fact that we keep troops in 140 other countries, and the far from unrelated fact that the 5% of Earth’s population that live in the US use around a third of the world’s resources, energy, and consumer products. Like every other empire, we have a tribute economy; we dress it up in free-market drag by giving our trading partners mountains of worthless paper in return for the torrents of real wealth that flow into the US every day; but the result, now as in the past, is that the imperial nation and its inner circle of allies have a vast surplus of wealth sloshing through their economies.
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