[SevenTen]

In an effort to share information among the peak oil crowd, this thread is intended for discussion about discussion.

Did you get that?

Discussion about discussion.

When attempting to talk about the problems attendant to peak oil, you get a variety of negative responses, you may have to deal with consensus trance, or cultural inertia, or just plain, outright ignorance. You don't get through, and you feel like you fail.

We have all encountered it, online and in real life.

So what can we do about it? Hammer away at the facts? Just nod, smile politely, and give up?

Keep trying the same things that didn't work in the past, expecting different, positive results this time around?

No wonder so many people on these boards seem insane from time to time.

What about those of us with loved ones who aren't on the same page? I imagine there are many on this site who fall into that category, and live with some level of continual frustration, stress, and worry about the situation.

So, really, what can we do about it?

We can talk about what works and what doesn't, in an effort to refine our "peak oil game", if you will. Humans are excellent tool makers, so the objective here is to create some conversational tools through our shared experiences. These social and conversational tools will help us "get through" to the uninitiated and unwashed.

There are some excellent written communicators on this site, gg3, seldom_seen come to mind as elaborative communicators, while Aaron and MattSavinar seem to be good with concise communication. Montequest seems good at both. Maybe we'll get their inputs here.

This isn't about trying to get the word out on a large scale. This is about how to talk to one person or a few people at a time, maybe a small group, about the problems surrounding peak oil.

Let's start by discussing how, when talking to people in real life, to deal with the "technology will save us" denial response. I'll type up some things and continue in the next post.

[jdmartin]

I guess for myself I just continue to plant the seed whenever I speak to people and the topic broaches itself. I don't shout from the roof tops, "the peak is near".

Personally, the less people that heed it, likely the better a lot of other people will be. For example, if your thought process is to hurry up and get out of debt on the danger of an uncertain economy, you need to keep a job long enough for that to happen. That means people have to buy things. If everyone thought, "I'm going to quit buying things to get out of debt", the economy would crash, and we'd all be out of a job. Or most of us, anyway. If you want to become a farmer in the field, you need to sell that suburban bunker to get some money for property. If everyone thinks of becoming a farmer in the field, you lose your ass.

So to some extent I think not telling people is also an act of self preservation. Someone's got to be sacrificed in order for others to continue on...

[dinopello]

I think you need to be patient. I'm talking about when talking to people you care about that you see quite a bit. Over time, if the evidence is there, you will find people's attitude changing and as they obtain info (some right and some wrong) I have found that the conversation evolves. The truth never changes. Its important to stick with the facts or make very very clear when you are hypothesizing a possible outcome (no matter how certain you happen to think it is).

I have a friend that was the most cornicopian, optimistic banker dude. He thought we would have flying cars by next decade because of some show he saw. Genrerally he was in the "its the oil companies gouging us" camp. Over time, he's heard some warning signs from me and other sources and he's gradually started asking some very interesting questions about the role of energy in the financial systems.

Another friend was a quick believer in peak oil, but was a technology will save us camp. This weekend, at a bar, he started talking my ear off about how ethanol would cause all these problems (something i told him about 6 months ago). He's not ready to talk about population reduction yet though - I tried and its like it went through his head without registering.

[Twilight]

I've given up.

I have a couple of friends who shared that initial unease and have gradually become convinced, but then they are engineers and somehow it's more difficult to say "technology will save us" or "they'll think of something" when the burden rests on your shoulders. Learning stuff gradually with peers is the best way.

I know a couple of people who regarded the abyss with sadness and looked away. They hope the unsustainability will continue long enough for them to die untroubled.

Most others don't care. They neither understand nor interact with energy. Electricity is a switch, motor fuel is a humming sound heard for a minute while they hold a boom. It's not even a liquid - they never see it in liquid form. They don't even go as far as believing it'll always be there because they'll always need it. Erroneously assuming supply follows in response to demand, requires far deeper thinking than is fostered by the education system. Hell, it requires pausing to make an observation and analyse its conversion into an assumption. At least a business degree is better than most - a wrong answer is better than none at all.

Only briefly in the early days did I bother to communicate it. Then I stopped. Recently I briefly considered it again, but decided against it.

The reason is a discussion of Joseph A. Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies" with someone philosophically inclined. We came to the conclusion that the specialisation of labour in the industrialised world has long since (at least two centuries ago) reached an extent where nearly all individuals neither understand, nor over the course of their lives need to understand, nearly all technologies employed in their service. It was that year's epiphany. Once you see that, you see that educating the public about the issue is neither possible nor necessary, and perhaps not desirable.

Quite simply most people who don't work it out for themselves won't benefit from knowing, so it's a waste of time.

[Aaron]

Explain in simple terms each slide in this presentation.

http://www.peakoil.com/downfile24

(Or PDF http://www.peakoil.com/downfile26)

If the "Which Estimate" slide does not convince them....

Make em watch this:

http://smalley.rice.edu

If that does not do the trick of at least making them want to Google their brains out... then you are talking to a dead person & wasting valuable time.

[Laughs_Last]

Sock puppets and flip charts.

It's like an intervention telling someone something they don't want to hear. They'll get mad and ignore you that day. But in the long run they might be shocked into reconsidering when they realize how much trouble you went to in order to tell them.

[Revi]

A fairly common response from people I talk to about peak oil is that the government has the technology for a car that runs off of water and won't let us have it. I am usually too shocked to tell them that it's bull. The conversation ends. What do you say to people who tell you things like that? I don't know how to keep the conversation going. I'm afraid to offend them.

[I_Like_Plants]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Laughs_Last', 'S')ock puppets and flip charts.

It's like an intervention telling someone something they don't want to hear. They'll get mad and ignore you that day. But in the long run they might be shocked into reconsidering when they realize how much trouble you went to in order to tell them.

[AirlinePilot]

"Alternatives will become viable", "the oil companies are gouging us", "OPEC is holding back, they have plenty", Hydrogen is the future", "Oil wells in Texas and Oklahoma are capped just waiting for the right price", "your being far too pessimistic", "Where are you getting your data?, I haven't heard any of his", "Why don't we hear about this in the news", And the best one of all, my favorite ignorant quote, the top Peak Oil denial....

"They have been saying FOREVER we will run out of oil and so far they were all wrong".

I've heard them all. If folks are even remotely interested you'll know right away. They ask the right questions and really listen. I always tell them now do the work for yourself. Dont take my word for it, be skeptical.

I do a brief outline, takes about two minutes if that. Then I point out a few things going down now and ask them to connect the dots. Throw out some stuff to google and leave it at that. I don't talk doom anymore, it's the quickest way to lose your audience. I still get very frustrated watching educated people bury their heads in the sands of cornucopia.

[davep]

I've managed to convince a half dozen of my ex-colleagues about Peak Oil. They call me " The Guru"

One of them got depressed and eventually got sacked for not turning up to work for two months. The silver lining is that he's now looking at going into farming, but he's taking a long time to get over the early-PO pain.

[Aaron]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'A') fairly common response from people I talk to about peak oil is that the government has the technology for a car that runs off of water and won't let us have it. I am usually too shocked to tell them that it's bull. The conversation ends. What do you say to people who tell you things like that? I don't know how to keep the conversation going. I'm afraid to offend them.

[eastbay]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/busin ... nytemc=rss

In a wide-ranging study published in 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that ultimately recoverable resources of conventional oil totaled about 3.3 trillion barrels, of which a third has already been produced. More recently, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultant, estimated that the total base of recoverable oil was 4.8 trillion barrels. That higher estimate — which Cambridge Energy says is likely to grow — reflects how new technology can tap into more resources.


There is still a minority view, held largely by a small band of retired petroleum geologists and some members of Congress, that oil production has peaked, but the theory has been fading.


It makes it tough to discuss peak oil when they read stuff like this in the mainstream press. CERA is falsely claiming that oil reserves and discoveries are growing faster then it's being produced, when the opposite is true.

I'm still cautious about anything more than a casual mention about PO to friend, family, and neighbors because of the harsh responses I've received over the past few years. Sometimes people will get downright nasty and unfriendly when their core beliefs are challenged, and gas in their SUV forever is a core belief! So it's best to, as jdmartin says, not shout from the rooftops... and maybe with most, at least for now, it's best to not say much of anything about the disaster we know is coming. But there will be a time.

[Ebyss]

I used to shout about it, but people just covered their ears. Now I joke about it. I mention it in passing as though it were fact, but don't get into serious discussion about it. People will believe whatever the hell they want to believe, no matter how much you preach. When they're ready to hear what you have to say, they'll come looking for you.

In the meantime I'm leading by example. Moved to the country, growing some food, raising some livestock etc etc.

[SevenTen]

Damn your eyes!

These are all excellent responses, unfortunately they have only hammered home to me the cluster**** situation we're in. I put way more on my plate than I could possibly eat with this endeavor. And it was possibly a bit naive on my part, if I can be permitted a gross understatement. I need to do more social experimenting myself. I still need to lower my expectations. Perhaps by instead of trying to convince the terminally dense, find the very few who are already receptive and haven't yet been reached.

Crap, crap, crap. Well, back to work at the drawing board. We'll probably be hitting peak drawing boards soon, so there's no time like the present.

[Laughs_Last]

Now that's what I call compelling. I can't imagine why it didn't work for Pets.com

[Newsseeker]

I have found that it is best to present things in a take-it-or-leave-it way and not let that little (ok BIG) doomer inside of me start doing all of the talking.

[CrudeAwakening]

I think most of us have become weary of attempting to enlighten those who refuse to be enlightened. To most people, there's something eccentric and cult-like about the whisperings of a prophet of PO doom, a minority viewpoint trying to make waves in a sea of glibly reassuring positivity.

Discussing the ramifications of PO with someone new to the idea, is akin to explaining to a fundamentalist religious zealot that God may not exist. Because the God people worship today, whether consciously or not, is the God of Progress. And PO threatens the foundations of this belief - we have a clash of belief systems.

The first response most people have, when they accept the reality of PO on an intellectual level, is "but what about alternative energy sources?". This is a manifestation of their unwillingness to accept that their God may abandon them - they must preserve their belief in progress, albeit in a different form.

Much of the discussion on this board revolves around such techno-theology.

Regardless of our beliefs about reality, reality will have the last word.

[Revi]

I'm sure we are not the first culture that has experienced this. I wonder what the dominant myth was in the Roman civilization? As the barbarians circled the gates and demanded to be let in, were the Romans still convinced of their superiority? It began to sink in when they breached the walls, not before, I'll bet.

The myth is what keeps the civilization going. Ours is progress. We don't have progress happening any more, but myths die hard. America is a nation of strivers who believe that they can make it. It's in our minds like an operating system. It's the basis of our existence. Despite evidence to the contrary we keep on trying. No health care, no security, only the chance at striking it rich somehow keeps us going. We'll all have a shot at the big time. Some day we'll get there.

[Newsseeker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CrudeAwakening', 'I') think most of us have become weary of attempting to enlighten those who refuse to be enlightened. To most people, there's something eccentric and cult-like about the whisperings of a prophet of PO doom, a minority viewpoint trying to make waves in a sea of glibly reassuring positivity.

Discussing the ramifications of PO with someone new to the idea, is akin to explaining to a fundamentalist religious zealot that God may not exist. Because the God people worship today, whether consciously or not, is the God of Progress. And PO threatens the foundations of this belief - we have a clash of belief systems.

The first response most people have, when they accept the reality of PO on an intellectual level, is "but what about alternative energy sources?". This is a manifestation of their unwillingness to accept that their God may abandon them - they must preserve their belief in progress, albeit in a different form.

Much of the discussion on this board revolves around such techno-theology.

Regardless of our beliefs about reality, reality will have the last word.

[Jack]

Actually, I've found a way to make some progress. Not a lot - not a full awakening of the slumbering masses - but some.

Human behavior comes down to two emotions - those being fear and greed. Of the two, fear is the more powerful, and stimulates the greater, more rapid response. For this reason, people erect psychological barriers to protect themselves from its effect. You may notice that deodorant commercials seek to exploit the emotion.

Greed is the operative emotion when fear is not - hence, most of the time. After a few adverse experiences, many people seek to control their greed; many fail. The ongoing market in lottery tickets speaks eloquently to both the prevalence and power of the emotion.

Peak oil tends to focus on fear. Fear of change at the very least; greater, deeper fears generally assert themselves. As discussed above, people resist; they don't like to be afraid. They don't like the messenger who brings them fearful news. One is cast in the role of a person talking about cancer; with a few exceptions duly noted, most people don't wish to hear about it.

So, then, my approach. I appeal to others' greed. I speak glowingly of my oil profits, of the escalating value of my stocks. I point out the long trend in Exxon - up 16-fold since 1980, in addition to having paid a dividend of 10% of the 1980 price every year. When gasoline goes up, I make a point of smiling broadly and speaking enthusiastically of how much money I'm making.

Of course, it helps that it's true.

Since people are greedy, they'll listen. I insert the message, and they get a little part of it. I usually add that Archer-Daniels is going up nicely due to corn prices, and mention the food riots in Mexico due to increasing tortilla prices. I add that our own food prices will go up, adding that my profits make me immune to such increases.

The message annoys some - which is fine, since the goal is to get their attention. Annoyance does that well. More importantly, the message gets through to a few.

As an example, I brought in donuts to a certain office on the day Matt Simmons announced peak oil. I told people why I brought the donuts, and made mention of coming $4 per gallon gasoline - and how profitable it would be.

And now, one of those people is talking about the risks of $10 per gallon gasoline - or worse.

So, just as one might hide medicine inside a tasty treat, one can conceal the message of peak oil in a wrapper of greed.

Gloating - it's the right thing to do!

(Yes, I know - the markets will, ultimately, fail. In the meantime, one must deal with the world as it is. Few are ready for the full reality of the future.)