"Respect for ones peers!"
The question of course remains, what is John_A doing? And why?
Since reading him some time ago say something so incredibly naive, in fact, delusional, about the honesty of corporations re SEC reporting obligations, and the resulting accuracy of SEC information, ignoring, if I remember right, the problem of internal corruption in the SEC, otherwise known as the 'revolving door' issue, I have to admit I largely stopped reading what John_A said, since he was clearly lacking totally in critical thinking skills around at least certain areas of his livelihood, though in my mind, I have found myself now and then wondering what he actually is.
A few here in this thread threw out the term 'troll', a name that I believe was correctly noted to not fully or even partially apply to John, but that's the problem with engaging in binary thinking, it leaves out such a wealth of other options.
Based on my initial exposure to John's comments, which have an annoying problem of being interesting about 1/2 the time, and largely gibberish the other half, I again started wondering what John's game is here.
I see two main contenders, one is he's a stock shill, trying to take advantage of the demise of the oil drum to start spreading doubt, for the benefit of someone.
There's quite a few indicators that lead me to believe this, but he's not quite the same as the standard single issue professional shill, so it's not clear exactly what he is trying to achieve. The other possibility is that he's simply suffering from the well known problem of being unable to fundamentally question certain premises that form the basis of his employment, that's a little thing tod used to flash on their quote box, fairly often in rotation, for good reason, it's one of the essential drivers of corporate denial of these issues, and really, any issue that threatens their well being and bottom line.
Let's remind ourselves of what a shill is: a paid promoter of anything, generally online, using resources maintained by others to pretend to be a real person actually having a conversation.
As we saw at tod's fukushima threads, certain issues, particularly threats to a 'revival' of an industry, pull these guys in, particularly when the resource is top level, which tod was.
So what is a shill? The best way to think about a shill is to picture a failed defense lawyer, someone who couldn't pass the bar, or maybe did, then failed to actually be a lawyer. As some of you may remember from the oj simpson trial, the essence of shilling/defense is to pick away at details in order to be able to then create the required doubt in the minds of targets, jury or readers of a forum/blog, in this case. If you recall the basic defense strategy of the oj trial, it was to get rid of as much blood evidence as possible, legally, until what remained allowable could be fit into that little vial that furman was supposed to have then used to create the drops. This method, in case it's not clear, is similar to pointing to single articles by someone like deffeyes where he's wrong on one point, while studiously avoiding any larger picture that shows them right in the big picture.
Shills can further be divided into two rough categories, idiots and smart ones. The idiots are very hard to differentiate from true trolls, or the drudge report legions, and John A has too much information to be in the idiot branch of shilldom, so we can discount that side of things.
The more shills I read, the more I realized they all share certain features, when you look at the smart ones. First is the general structure of their postings/responses, what I call 'connect the quotes', something you were supposed to grow out of by 2nd or 3rd year of college, but again, note, a shill is not a successful person, they are actually a career failure, which is why they often don't realize that they are leaving signatures all over the place in their postings.
Another almost dead giveaway is the focus on the current talking points, this is only obvious if you read them over a month or two. Higher budget shilling uses the tag team method, haven't seen that here, but peakoil.com is not a primary source like tod was, so you won't see that level of work here in my opinion in general, though of course there's nothing to stop one user making two accounts then posting back and forth as if there were an actual discussion.
I personally view this type of shilling/work as the lowest of the low, something only true human scum engage in, because it's a fundamentally dishonest action, ie, a shill is pretending to be a real person having a real discussion. There is an exception to this, ie, when they are honest and note who they are working for, nick of the wind power in tod comes to mind as a very honest and sincere shill, a very rare creature however, and easy to identify because they do not lie about who they are.
Another major identifier for shills is having just a bit too much information for whatever they are trying to present themselves as, but the information is always industry positive in terms of its slant.
Again, there is more in common with defense lawyers than oil industry professional employment.
With this in mind, let's take a quick look at a fairly recent tod graph:
Note the importance of NGL, then note what happens when you remove those, and biofuels, which in general don't really produce much actual energy net, and the ridiculous 'refinery gains' which basically are just volume increases, and what you see there is a peak, a clearly defined, crystal clear, peak.
So now let's return to John_A, and we'll note that he is using 2 of the primary identifiers of a shill, the posting method and the picking away at details while ignoring the actual larger picture, both dead giveaways, but sadly, not completely adequate to pinpoint a true professional, because a fair number of people use these methods, but you can say quite safely that while all smarter shills use these methods, not all people who use them are shills. It's more of a weighting factor that you have to consider, but he could just as easily be working in stocks or in some other area of finance in a corporation involved in trying to extract profit from particularly shale drilling, his initial comment some months back that made me realize he was completely unable to question his own culture/employment, leading to the rather ridiculous claims of sec information being totally trustworthy (but don't worry, this is not a key point, it's just something I used personally to judge him, since it showed me he had absolutely no ability to critically question where his money comes from, typical for corporate types by the way, almost an employment requirement.
Now, having decided to read this thread, just to see where john was going to situate himself, he apparently started losing control of his method, a few places, one that really struck me was the somewhat pedantic and honestly stupid average/mean babble in response to rockman's noting that on average half students are smart and half aren't. To which john decided he had to try to go all pseudointellectual and note the technical issues of means/averages etc, not realizing that in a HUMAN conversation, everyone reading the words 'half students are smart and half aren't,
fully understand the meaning of this statement, and further grasp it is a simple rhetorical device designed to convey a simple idea.
This ridiculous response, which was not a response, but just babble and filling air with bytes, was the first time I started to think that john a might actually be a shill, albeit one having a bad day, but I still can't decide for sure.
Now, this one's for you John, real people, in the real world, are capable of speaking without using mini quotes, ie, they are capable of reading a person's words, then largely understanding what is being communicated, without using first or second year college writing tricks, like connect the quote, and then are able to respond to the basic points. For example, rockman isn't wasting his time quoting you endlessly, he's already decided you are not very smart, certainly not smart enough to waste too much time on. I tend to agree with this, but I do find your point of view/mission or whatever it is, actually sort of interesting from a basic human psychology point of view, and I do idly wonder if you are a shill or just someone whose job depends on not seeing certain big picture things clearly.
You've talked alot about failed predictions in this thread, and like to pretend that both us and global peak OIL are in the future, while you studiously ignore the breakdowns of that type of chart, because, of course, if you stopped ignoring them, you'd have to be quiet and stop repeating misleading things.
Here's my recollection, and, keep in mind, I don't get paid to track this stuff to the degree you clearly do, and this thread has quite clearly shown that you get paid to follow this stuff for some reason, though I'm not willing to state categorically what that reason is, but here's my basic human recollection of what guys like Deffeyes said back in 1999, when I first started reading up on this question, he if I remember right was in the very consverative middle case prediction range for global peak (and really, John, we're talking global peak here, so stop talking about regional bumps as if they prove anything other than that global peaks are bumpy plateaus, at least stop it if you want anyone to take anything you say seriously here) was I believe around 2010 to 2020, give or take. Some others called for it in 2005, again, GLOBAL peak OIL, not natural gas liquids, which are another thing, and which no honest person who was engaging in honest discussion of this subject should be deliberately ignoring. The pessimists were putting it around 2005, a touch early by a few years but pretty close.
Now you've spent many bytes in this thread trying to use typical defense lawyer methods to send focus away from the big picture to focus on some small bumps here with tight oil, and this is one of the reasons I am more suspecting that you are a shill, because you simply have too much information at hand to not see the big picture, which then suggests you are paid to not see it, or to portray a scenario that suggests it's not the case. The interests of tight oil stock promoters come to mind in particular as a group that benefits from this type of media work., though I'm sure there are others out there that can benefit from such spread of doubt.
So, here's the challenge John, see if you can respond to this without using a single quote, that is, read, comprehend, then answer honestly. I realize it's too much to ask for you to actually indicate, as for example honest professionals like rockman do, what your actual interest in this game is, but while realizing this, I hope you realize that an industry professional who makes zero pretence about why he posts, what his interests and experience are, like rockman, and who is consistently reasonable and interested in well stated views, no matter what the ideas behind it, is so far ahead of you on a fundamental human level that if you can't see that, again, I have to assume you are getting paid to not see it.
There's a few other small points which you foolishly repeated in this thread, again, showing either profound ignorance OR a deliberate attempt to discredit a key 'witness', the oil drum, note again, how consistent your method is, it's just junk defense lawyering methodology, discredit witnesses, remember that? So, again, as EVERYONE who followed the demise of tod knows, they stopped because it was boring, OIL production had reached the bumpy plateau, the threads were all the same, the debunking the same, it just was not interesting. As someone who has clearly not volunteered his time on a multiyear basis, many hours per week, john you simply have no way to make any statements about why individuals, who have already demonstrated themselves vastly superior to you in every way through their hard year over year volunteer work at tod, done honestly, with no attempt to disguise who they were, at all, in almost all cases, while you sit around here not once being that honest about your actual existence, you never mention your work in any real way, you just allude to certain areas you may have some connection to, but your overall approach is fundamentally deceptive in my opinion, something you could easily resolve by just dropping your method and being honest about yourself and your reasons for your interests, as well as why you have the luxury of being able to collect this much specific information. My guess, if I had to guess, mainly because peakoil.com isn't really worth spending shilling money on, is that you are involved in the stock sector somehow, but with some type of media involvement, not sure exactly, hard to say.
So here's the challenge john, without using any quotes, respond as a human being, a real person. rockman has done that so many times so there's zero burden on him to prove anything, it's you who have a LOT to prove, like, for instance, that you are a real human trying to have a real discussion with other real humans. I personally doubt you are able to do this, but you never know, maybe you just aren't aware that you are writing like a stock pushing shill, who can say, maybe you ignored your college writing classes, and don't realize what you are doing.
Best wishes, and while I don't think pigs will be rollerskating any time soon, I do remain curious about what motivates our little friend John A, who has too much information to be an idle poster, but is too clueless about certain meta factors globally to be considered as someone who has a good working global perspective.
As a last reminder: crude costs $100-120 for 5 years. A bit of crude has been introduced to global production numbers by tight US oil, and the horribly toxic tar sand junk, both such nasty sources of oil that the use and focus on them now are basically a dead giveaway that we are in peak now. IE, to keep it nice and simple, we wouldn't be using that junk if prices weren't so high, and prices wouldn't be so high if global crude supplies were plentiful. This is the definition of peak oil, so ignoring these fundamentals shows a mind that is at best VERY bad at any larger conceptual grasp of a question. Note, again, that the unimportance of having a larger conceptual grasp is a key method of defense lawyers and shills, since they are basically employed to chip away at evidence until you can create doubt, not to create anything of value.
The misrepresentation of the actual message of peak oil since the late 90s I find interesting too, and very much in line with a mediocre defense technique, simply smear everything by stating false things about what was said, repeat and rinse. Having followed the basic message since the very late 90s, the general thrust has never changed substantially in what was said, though of course it's been adjusted, as all science is, by new data. It's a common creationist delusion that changes in science show that it's not 'true', which of course shows a profound lack of understanding of what science is. Your ignoring of the global numbers and the breakdown of those re what proportions of what create them is to me somewhat revealing, though I'm not sure what exactly it reveals, certainly not a mind, a real person, trying to understand what's happening, but it does show something.
I just couldn't resist posting, and John A, if you should respond, which I doubt you will, and are unable to hold the points I raise here in your head as a single concept, ie, you fall back to connect the quotes, I'll consider myself basically right about roughly what and who you are, as well as knowing you actually can't have an adult conversation, either because your job depends on you not having it, or because you simply can't.
Happy holidays, to all the little good elves, trolls, goblins, nisser, and assorted other creatures, I hope you can make it through humanities attack on the earth, which of course is the real big picture, but we'll leave that to the side.
OH, OH, I almost forgot the other real hallmark of shills, they NEVER respond to valid points that undermine what they are being paid to shill, preferring to hide behind endless mini quotes and detail picking. That's part of the failure to actually engage in human discourse, of course, for example, if I'm having a real conversation with a real person and they show me logically that my point is wrong, I have to change my view, or show that I'm an idiot. I prefer the former. Since John never actually engages meta matters at all, it's hard for him to actually see this problem. Real people tend to drift to the meta points as a general process of honest thought, ie, you bounce from micro to macro, and sort of connect the two. You know, like global economic downturns, rising oil prices, increasing chinese lockdown of global oil/commodity production, etc.... Sort of like noting local weather events and noting increases in severity as global warming increases, and the seas get hotter, which creates stronger storms, and so on. Macro influences micro, micro macro, it's a dialectic, to be technical.
damn it's hard to write in these little boxes, lol...
by John_A » Sun 08 Dec 2013, 17:55:39 
