[untothislast]

At the moment, these discussion boards are the domain of people pretty well clued up on the general issues (whether on behalf of the pro or anti Peak Oil factions).

The more difficult step, is when we have to engage with those coming to the subject for the first time - whether friends or family. I've made the cardinal error of going in heavy (citing Hubbert, Campbell, Deffeyes, Simmons - et al) and have realised realise you need a pithy way of getting the general underlying problem across, for those who haven't got the time - or initial interest - to browse peakoil.com forums in any depth.

What we'll hear thrown back at us time and time again via the media, are observations such as: 'there's plenty of oil left' and 'we won't run out of oil for decades to come'- both of which might patently be true, but which will nevertheless sink any 'peak oil' argument (at least in the mind of a largely uninformed general public) before it can effectively be made.

I've been thinking of possible ways to explain at least part of the crisis to the layperson - hoping to encourage individuals to grasp the fundamental nature of the problem - and presently feel generally happy with the following, admittedly over-simplistic, analogy:

'There are 501 trees in a farmer's orchard. The first tree is laden with 500 apples, and the others are presumed to bear more or less equal quantities. Collecting the fruit from this first tree is easy, and most of the fruit is gathered without much effort - and (being plentiful, and with expectations of more to come) sold relatively cheaply.

However, when the remaining 500 trees are more closely examined, they're found to bear only one apple each. Therefore, although the potential harvest is as much as has already been gathered, the remaining apples are neither easy to find - nor as easy to pick. The farmer can't make any money from the remaining apples, because of increased labour costs having to be passed on down the line - and those which are harvested, eventually prove too expensive for his customers to buy.

Eventually, he decides he may as well just leave them where they are.'


Could anyone fine tune this (perhaps for the less feeble minded!)? Or come up with a clearer way of getting simple points across? Or would we just be better off maintaining credibility by arming ourselves with scientifically respectable graphs and charts?

[Battle_Scarred_Galactico]

I think analogies get the point across very well, however the truth is just as straight forward, and takes less than a paragraph to write down:

We've based a whole system on something that's irreplacable.

Can a civilisation be run on renewables ? Yes

Will it look anything like this one ? No

[Jake_old]

I think pointing someone to Simmons is the best idea, dowload an interview from global public media, burn it on disk, give it to someone.

I find him so easy to understand, if he doesn't know something, he just says he doesn't know.

I like the way he says, when we first started selling oil, but didn't know how much oil there was in the first place, how could we pick the correct price?

He uses a building analogy where rooms are priced for the lifetime of the building, relative to how much the building cost to make in the first place.

I like analogies, I wish I was better at thinking up my own.

I like the Apple tree's one, I'd prefer though if you pointed out the higher the Apples were on the tree the harder they were to get, so we take all the easiest apples from the lower branches of all 500 trees, eventually, although still left with loads of apples, they are all hard to get.

[nero]

I prefer "The Thirsty Castaway" analogy. Hopefully it is self explanatory.

The Thirsty Castaway:

The sole survivor from a sinking ship reaches a small coral atoll in the middle of the pacific. The lucky man soon discovers the island is deserted and that there is no fresh water on the island except the juice from the plentiful coconuts. He decides that his best hope for rescue is to light a signal fire when he sees a ship passing. So after much sweat and many blisters the survivor manages to start a fire.

He at first doesn't worry too much about keeping the fire going because there is a plentiful supply of drift wood along the beach. Sometimes at night to raise his spirits he makes a bonfire even though he knows there isn't any ship in sight.

The castaway also feels pretty secure about his food and water supply because he placed his signal fire by a large grove of coconut palm trees. But as the days pass he finds that he has to walk further and further to find the driftwood to feed the fire and to get the coconuts to slake his thirst. He starts to wish it would rain for it's thirsty work carrying coconuts and driftwood back to his camp by the signal fire.

As the days turn into weeks the castaway realizes he better start conserving his wood because the driftwood is getting scarce along his beach. He also finds that he has to go further and further afield to find coconuts. Eventually he realizes that he is spending all his time either hauling driftwood or hunting for coconuts.

The castaway realizes that eventually it will become so difficult to find coconuts that he will lose more water looking for the coconut than he gets from drinking the juice. He decides he better reduce his water needs so that he can last until the rainy season and the next crop of coconuts.

The castaway decides that the only way he can conserve his water to survive until the rainy season is if stops taking the long hot treck down the beach to find more firewood. But if he doesn't have his signal fire all ready he has to give up hope of rescue. He is stuck, either he can slow down, take it easy and maybe make his water supply last until the rainy season renews it, or he can keep his signal fire going for as long as possible and hope for a saviour to come along and rescue him.

What does he do?

What will we do?

[Pops]

I also like analogies and I also think they aren’t necessary in this case since there are really only 3 important facts in my mind - maybe that's all it can hold .

Anyway, here’s the bones, flesh it out as you like.


Oil must be found before it can be used.

We've found less and less for over 40 years.

We now use several times what we find.

[untothislast]

Thanks people. Your considerate replies have been most helpful.

I'm always aware that I'm steeped in myriad peak oil discussions by now, and whenever I make a posting (or read those of others) I naturally assume that the readership is familiar with all the basic, familiar propositions.

We should remember that what we take for granted, knowledgewise, has been cumulatively acquired over time via a very specialised set of forums.
When the general public start to sit up and take notice, they won't have had the benefit of the depth of discussion available here. I feel, that the simpler the case can be expresed, the more chance the message has of taking root - then the finer detail can be augmented later.

I'm not wholly convinced of analogies myself, but in some instances - where it's hard to get a point across - it can be a constructive diversion.

Before I started reading the stuff on this site, I really did think oil just lay there underground, in massive lake reservoirs - just waiting to be tapped! And I'm sure many of our fellow public labour under similar misunderstandings. Explaining the reality of oil availability and extraction is, I feel, one of the really big messages to get out first. I tried the simplified analogy approach; first with my wife, then my teenage son, and finally with my 77 year old mother - and it seemed to make sense to them. So, I'm hopeful. Once you can engage someone's attention, they're then more receptive to the unpalatable facts.

Unless we're all planning to take an insular 'survivalist' tack, we're going to need to get the word out to a wider audience sooner or later. Neither the press or governments are likely to make the task any easier for us - as no one wants to rock a boat based on the promise of never-ending good-times. Undoubtedly, the 'there's plenty of oil left' rejoinder is going to be used as often as 'Saddam's WMD' was, to nullify anti-Iraq war sentiment, in trying to make the peak oil warnings seem misguided and foolish.

Good luck with your own chosen method of communication.

[katkinkate]

I like what I read one oil industry representative said recently. He thought he was arguing against peak oil, but what he said was just another way of saying 'the world as you know it is ending', just as elequently as some of us do.

He said something along the lines of, "We are not running out of oil! We are just running out of cheap oil. We used up all the $2 oil along time ago and the $10 and $20 oil. Now we're running out of $50 oil and working on the $60 oil." He gave the impression he thought this was no problem, but you could just point out the businesses that have already gone bankrupt and those struggling while trying to cope with $60 oil. And just think how hard it will be when that runs out and we're working on $80 and $100 oil.

I've noticed something about many of the arguments against peak oil by industry reps and others. They see no problem because the market will find a solution of a kind. They are rich enough that they feel safe from the turmoil and have given no thought to the wider societal implications. While most peak oilers see more often and argue from the point of view of the person who's about to lose their job when the car manufacturer goes bankrupt, and the family in an over mortgaged house in the suburbs who will find it difficult to keep getting into work to pay that mortgage.

It might just look like an economic slowdown for the rich, but will be devastating to the workers and the poor.

[MrBill]

I find the easiest arguments to rebuke are the ones based on articulate emotion or the ones where the facts are either obviously wrong or of quite dubious quality. Call into question the validity of the numbers and the whole argument comes under suspicion.

Therefore, if you use simplistic analogies then people may not take your underlying argument seriously or write if off thinking or saying, that is too simplistic, real life does not work like that.

Probably the best arguments are when you stick close to the facts, but use plain language.

You can use a sound bite or an analogy then to cement the facts of your argument in your subjects mind so that even if they forget all the specific details they will remember your main point.

Good luck.

[grabby]

Analogies make it easier to understand.

How many pies are we gonna make or are we just going to make bread?

[grabby]

[quote="RedJake"]I think pointing someone to Simmons quote]

could you point us to Simmons? I haven't heard of him can yo get mp3 files? those are best I can put them on my ARCHOS. thanks a lot.

[Jake_old]

Yes, globalpublicmedia is a great site.

Go to the archive interviews here

And the one I think I'm thinking of is here

There's loads of other good stuff there too, there's also a links part of this site on the right hand side.

[Jake_old]

Actually this is the one I was thinking of here

[Free]

I also think analogies rather hinder to explain PO, at least initially, as they tend to wind up rather inappropriate and confuse the "victim" even more.

It's really better to stick to the facts and bring the basic points across.

But what I really like are powerful examples to explain what is so special about fossil fuel and energy in general - it is important that the "victim" gets a feeling for this, even if he/she doesn't literally understand thermodynamics or energy density, but that it's at least clear that energy is not something which you can "produce" like everything else, and how dependent our lifestyle is on energy and fossil fuels in particular.

Bartlett and Deffeyes use great examples when they explain how much energy is contained in fossil fuels (for example Deffeyes famous pyramids vs. plane full of visiting tourists).
Or that 1 gram of gas sets free much more energy when burned than 1 gram of TNT.

[untothislast]

Free, don't get me wrong. I'm not completely sold on the idea of simplistic analogies either - although they can be useful in the right context (i.e. where a specific complex point is hard to explain succinctly).

My main worry, is that governments are probably already briefing spin teams to go on the defensive about the crisis, for that unhappy day when public interest in the issue actually crosses the apathy threshold.

Whatever your country, ministers will be martialled and out there on the airwaves; telling us 'it's not a problem' and that 'this is scaremongering - there's plenty of oil for the next hundred years'. One of the ways they achieve this, is by determining a simple, repetitive message - and hammering it home repeatedly for all its worth. 'Saddam's WMD' being a recent case in point. The oft-repeated lie eventually becoming the 'truth'.

What we need to be doing now, is to prepare and come up with short, pithy retorts to the lies, for the time when verbal combat for hearts and minds begins in earnest on the radio phone-ins and tv talk shows. A sort of shorthand, that conveys the central messages in ways that eventually displace the need to repetitively labour over excessive detail.

Granted, people need to be aware of the issues before sloganeering can have any sort of reinforcing effect, but it seems to me it's the simple, repeated lines that ultimately do all the work.

Is there any consensus out there what our 'bulleted points' should be?

[Doly]

My basic points:

- Oil won't last forever
- You can't suck oil as fast as you want from a well, there are geological limits. Analogy: how fast can you possibly drink from a straw? (I know it's an incorrect analogy, but it's good enough for the concept, that is you can't just take all you want at once).
- The problem doesn't start when you run out of oil, it starts when demand is greater than production.
- If peak oil happens in 20 years time, it's still going to happen in your lifetime.
- If you are prepared and nothing happens, you'll be OK. If you aren't prepared and peak oil happens, you are in serious trouble.
- Even if abiotic oil was true, do you think oil could be produced abiotically at the same rate we consume it?
- Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source.

[Jake_old]

Well I think you are talking of convincing other people who have a technical skill. We don't all have this king of thinking.

Its a bit insulting to suggest that simple analogies don't help. I'm not ashamed of not having an indepth, technical knowledge. Simple analogies helped me to understand the problem quite quickly.

Campbells analogy of the Limpets that developed a complex way of living and then couldn't return to a simple existence and therefore died out.

We're heading towards the cliff in a steam train but were still shoveling on more coal.(Thats someone from these boards I think).

Easter Islanders still building statues when the last tree was cut down.

Bartlets bacteria in a bottle, they find 3 new bottles when the first one is nearly full, but the time is twelve O'clock, they will all be full by 2 minutes past.(Ok thats population and not necessarily Peak Oil, but does fit with the need to find exponentially more oil every doubling time.)

I maintain that simple analogies are useful, whether you guys need them or not.

[Doly]

I don't really like doomer analogies with collapsing civilizations. Firstly, because they are too gloomy. Secondly, because they're easy to counter with examples of civilizations that didn't collapse. I'd rather stick to facts about geology and economy, and leave considerations about society for people to figure out by themselves.

[Jake_old]

Fair enough

I think the ones I mentioned are aimed at preventing the doom scenario as they are quite shocking.

But accept your point though.

[untothislast]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RedJake', ' ')Its a bit insulting to suggest that simple analogies don't help. I'm not ashamed of not having an indepth, technical knowledge. Simple analogies helped me to understand the problem quite quickly.

[Jake_old]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('untothislast', 'I') see the use of analogy as a valuable initial way towards raising their consciousness of the issue, but increasingly believe that a shortlist of the key arguments is perhaps a better means of reinforcement.