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Forget Everything You Think You Know About Oil, an article in Worldnet Daily discusses a book by Jerome Cosri and Craig R. Smith where they state that oil is not a fossil fuel, oil reserves are actually growing, global warming is a hoax, alternative energy is un-economical, and other such wonderfully ignorant statements... Well, I'm not going to debunk these statements one by one (though it would be quite easy, starting with abiotic oil... and if you look back a few weeks in my blog, you will find the method that the USGS uses for reporting "proven" reserves--by averaging what is 95 percent likely to exist with what is 5 percent likely to exist...), instead I'm going to focus on who Jerom Corsi and Craig R. Smith are, who they have ties to, and what their motivation in propegating this bullshit information could be.
Jerome Corsi is, in short, a hyper-conservative with a history of connections to the Republican Party and a history of inflammatory statements against the left. He has a PhD in Political Science--yet he feels qualified to debunk the world's top geologists and thinks that those of us who know how to ask our own questions won't realize that his motivations for publishing a book protecting the culture of consumption and big-oil are completely political and have nothing to do with actual science. Jermoe Corsi was at the forefront of the movement to demozine Senator Kerry's war record in the "Swift Boat" BS where most of his primary charges were proven false. At best, he is a biased source when it comes to politics (as all he does is bash the left) and even less credible when it comes to oil...
Craig R Smith is, of course, also a conservative, and an economist by trade. His history as an author focuses on helping well-to-do people invest their money in ways that will make them more well-to-do and make those who are already more well-to-do even moreso. Not to mention True Wealth: in his words "The goal of True Wealth is to help you understand money, stewardship, and giving from a Biblical perspective." He touts Reaganomics as genius, yet of course admits that the national debt tripled under Reagan's watch. So... he's a conservative economist and it should be apparent that his recent foray into the "debunking peak oil" genre is a thinly veiled attempt at maintaining his base of hig-wealth investors who support his multitude of web sites and investment advice publications and schemes. He makes rediculous statements like this: "Each 1 cent rise in gas prices sucks $14 billion a year from consumer spending." Not only is that claim unsubstantiated, but if we break down the math, we see that it's completely rediculous. For a one cent increase in gas prices to equate to $14 billion, people would need to be using 1.4 TRILLION gallons of gasoline each year. While Americans do consume an obscene 135 Billion Gallons of gasoline per year, it shows that Smith's math is off by a factor of 10!!
Still want to trust economists with political motivations rather than scientists?