[hereford]

Hi all,

Over the past 9-12 months, I've been read posts from this sight ... some very interesting stuff. Lately, I've been addicted, I check news stories 2-3 times a day! So today, I finally registered.

I've been in the oil exploration business for 22+ years, and have heard the peak-oil arguments in the background for many years. I sort of forgot about it all, until a couple of years ago. To be honest, I'm not 100% convinced that we've reached or are near peak-oil. I've seen many fields come online or improve (north sea, venezuela, brazil, nigeria, russia, pakistan, deep-water gulf of mexico, etc.), so maybe this trend will continue. On the other hand, there is massive evidence to support the fact that we've pretty much peaked out. Just want to point out that I'm not totally convinced either way, at this point. What really amazes me, is that there are a few people that post, who seem to WANT the peak-oil breakdown to occur. I'm not sure why.

At any rate ... onto my real question: is our (U.S) government somehow trying to cover-up the reality of peak-oil? Are they using arguments such as Iran, Iraq, hurricanes, global markets, etc. to cover-up the reality, or are they not really aware of the state we are in?

[XOVERX]

I've only heard of the PO idea for a couple of months so you're way ahead of me.

My 2 cents: Most of the government "knows." You've got the Army Corps of Engineers out there warning the bases. You've got Hirsch Report, commissioned by the DOE. You've got the IEA out there deliberately cooking the numbers:

http://www.energybulletin.net/2544.html

So yea, I think that the government "knows." Oh, there's some individual congressmen and senators who don't know, because they don't care about learning, but overall, they know.

Therefore, yea, they want to coverup PO in the sense that they don't want to talk about it so as to keep the folks comfortable for the time being.

The ones I think that are ignorant, however, are the mainstream media. These guys don't have a flippin' clue. That's because they are in the entertainment business, only masquerading as media people.

You a wildcatter? Texas?

[Geko45]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hereford', 'L')ately, I've been addicted, I check news stories 2-3 times a day! So today, I finally registered.

[master_rb]

i don't think there is any special department in the gov. to cover it or some kind of top secret CIA operation to mask PO, it's one of those things that everybody agrees on being quiet, you know like if there's somebody cheating on his wife and everyone knows but nobody's saying anything, same thing here if you open your mouth you might cause massive market crash and other side effects which at the end might come back to you as acctually your fault for all the trouble - even though all you did is said the truth

that's my personal view on this matter

[rwwff]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hereford', 'W')hat really amazes me, is that there are a few people that post, who seem to WANT the peak-oil breakdown to occur. I'm not sure why.

[KhanCEO]

I would just love to see this happen , because it never will:

President Bush's 2007 State of the Union Address "Remeber last year when I told America it was addicted to oil? It turns out I left out a few details, I didn't tell you that we NEED this stuff because all of our 230 million cars in america all run on oil and so do the machines that make our food. You know we are in Iraq for oil; I was just kidding about that whole WMD thing.(makes his stupid giggle). Yeah, and now that this stuff is running out without any replacement it looks like your whole family is gonna die. It feels so good being honest and truthful I should do this more often. Please, remember to vote republican, we are more honest now, really."

-A riot breaks out before he is done with his address-

[joewp]

I don't think they have to make any effort to cover it up. Most people don't want to hear about it. Most people just ignore any suggestion that peak oil will happen in their lifetime and buy a new H-3, expecting gas prices to "moderate" for the forseeable future, and then "they" will come up with something, like ethanol or hydrogen.

I think it's because they're scared to think about it.

[Zardoz]

Denial is deep and pervasive because this is a lose-lose situation for all of us. There will be no winners. Nobody will do better as oil and the zillions of products that are made from it get expensive and scarce.

Everybody wants everything to continue on as it is now. We don't want the party to end, so most everybody is pretending it won't.

[joewp]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', '
')Everybody wants everything to continue on as it is now. We don't want the party to end, so most everybody is pretending it won't.

[directinfo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hereford', '.')..What really amazes me, is that there are a few people that post, who seem to WANT the peak-oil breakdown to occur. I'm not sure why.

[FaceDown]

I recall in elementary school (K-5) that we were told about how oil would be gone in 30 years. This message was repeated up through the end of high school in 1987. When I got to college and entered the field of geology, most all of my classmates took climatology and water resources classes. It was clear to me that they has received the same message I had received; "don't go into oil and gas because it will be gone soon and you will be the devil for supporting that industry". I'm paraphrasing, but that was the general message I received.

Anyway, I went for the oil and gas side because it was interesting to me and today I am still an oil and gas geologist.

I'm relating this one small sliver of my life in regards to the original question. I don't think there is a cover-up. I believe that it is simply human nature. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. We were all told in the 70s that the oil was going to be gone a long time ago. And the majority of the people who were told that are still alive. Why would this large group of people believe the news this time? They wouldn't. I think it is as simple as that.

Me? Of course there is peak oil. Oil and gas in commercial quantities is increasingly difficult to find. We are long past our days of finding one major oil field after another. Common sense tells you that the peak will happen. The only problem is that these same basic conditions existed in the 70s, too (no more major finds, increasing prices, geopolitical instability, etc). We are just 30 more years down the road today.

It's all about the timing. This may be our time. It may not be our time. As many on this board have said, we will only see it in the rearview mirror. I think there is a lot of truth to that and that doesn't require any kind of cover-up.

[rsch20]

my opinion is that there is no cover-up, and that this is just a very very good example of heuristics and biases.

this article is pertinent, it's about heuristics and biases, and global risk in development of AI and other technologies (nano-tech goo etc).

It's not specifically about PO but rather techno-risks, but I found it very enlightening.

Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgement of global risks
http://www.singinst.org/Biases.pdf

basically we are unable to form the proper emotional connection to world-impacting events. 1 person dying near you is a tragedy, but you are physically incapable of multiplying that emotion by 6 billion. we also tend to be wildly overconfident that large-scale bad events will not happen.

[brentcrude]

There is no cover-up, just ignorance, denial or plain optimism

The PO argument is about dates - 3/4months, 3/4 years or 30/40 years.

Its the difference between seeing a large truck thats about to hit you and spotting a large truck way down the road on the horizon.

The nature of oil statistics means that any arguments always end up in subjective judgements. The oil companies, the Saudis, CERA and most economists can always come up with enough reasons to push the horizon out. And the optimists/economists that believe PO is 30 years away are also inclined that science will find an energy solution - plenty of time to step out of the way of the truck.

Given the uncertainties, no democratically elected government is going to be able to take adequate action - the public just wouldn't be sufficiently convinced to make the sacrifices necessary.

When PO arrives - the public simply won't know whats hit it

[skeptic]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hereford', 'H')i all,


At any rate ... onto my real question: is our (U.S) government somehow trying to cover-up the reality of peak-oil?

[untothislast]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('skeptic', 'I')f you look at the background of most politicians ( at least here in the UK) a remarkable number of them are economists or lawyers. The rest have mainly studied 'soft' subjects - they're Oxbridge Classicists.

Not that many scientists. Margaret Thatcher was the recent exception to the rule - university degree in Chemistry.

[Doly]

That paper is fascinating. I especially like these ending paragraphs:

In addition to standard biases, I have personally observed what look like harmful modes of thinking specific to existential risks. The Spanish flu of 1918 killed 25-50 million people. World War II killed 60 million people. 107 is the order of the largest catastrophes in humanity's written history. Substantially larger numbers, such as 500 million deaths, and especially qualitatively different scenarios such as the extinction of the entire human species, seem to trigger a different mode of thinking - enter into a "separate magisterium". People who would never dream of hurting a child hear of an existential risk, and say, "Well, maybe the human species doesn't really deserve to survive."
There is a saying in heuristics and biases that people do not evaluate events, but descriptions of events - what is called non-extensional reasoning. The extension of humanity's extinction includes the death of yourself, of your friends, of your family, of your loved ones, of your city, of your country, of your political fellows.
Yet people who would take great offense at a proposal to wipe the country of Britain from the map, to kill every member of the Democratic Party in the U.S., to turn the city of Paris to glass - who would feel still greater horror on hearing the doctor say that their child had cancer - these people will discuss the extinction of humanity with perfect calm. "Extinction of humanity", as words on paper, appears in fictional novels, or is discussed in philosophy books - it belongs to a different context than the Spanish flu. We evaluate descriptions of events, not extensions of events. The cliché phrase end of the world invokes the magisterium of myth and dream, of prophecy and apocalypse, of novels and movies. The challenge of existential risks to rationality is that, the catastrophes
being so huge, people snap into a different mode of thinking. Human deaths are suddenly no longer bad, and detailed predictions suddenly no longer require any expertise, and whether the story is told with a happy ending or a sad ending is a matter of personal taste in stories.

Reminds you of the way doomers talk, doesn't it?

[hereford]

I appreciate all the replys to this post. A few more details - I live in Houston, and work as a software developer in the oil exploration industry ... we're very dependent on big oil.

Houston is booming right now. As a side note - there's a large section of freeway that is being expanded from 10 lanes to something like 26 lanes. Should be done in 6-7 years ... just in time for PO? I don't know, but I think about that everytime I look at the construction.

[dhfenton]

I seriously doubt there is a cover-up. Politicians don't get elected telling the truth, or warning of serious problems yet to come. They get elected by telling the public what it wants to hear (that's called lying in some circles; but politics seems to view it differently).

If there were a cover-up, it would have to be bi-partisan, and pervasive over many years. I don't have that much faith in Washington to believe they could be that organized. I have to believe its bad news and politicans don't like to deal with bad news, or problems. They're more inclined to screw up what isn't already broken.

[eric_b]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hereford', 'I') appreciate all the replys to this post. A few more details - I live in Houston, and work as a software developer in the oil exploration industry ... we're very dependent on big oil.

Houston is booming right now. As a side note - there's a large section of freeway that is being expanded from 10 lanes to something like 26 lanes. Should be done in 6-7 years ... just in time for PO? I don't know, but I think about that everytime I look at the construction.

[shortonoil]

The human mind is an organ. Like our heart that pumps blood or our stomach that processes food, the mind is an organ that processes information. It evolved over a vast expanse of time to improve the survival potential of a hunting gathering creature in its localized environment. The ability to solve complex problems is not innate to the creature; for millions of years the creature had no complex problems to solve. The complexity of the problems that they had to solve consisted of where to dig for an editable root or how to avoid being eaten by the local dominate predator. Today we can solve mathematical equations because we have learned to press into service the processors that originally evolved to help us search for roots, or some other survival function. Thus, we are not innately proficient at solving mathematical equations. We have also learned to press into service other processors that have helped us to develop a technologically based civilization. This has occurred because it allowed for an improvement in our short-term survival potential. But it doesn’t mean that we necessarily are, or ever will be, really good at it!