[wisconsin_cur]

WSJ Link

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')IDDLEVILLE, Mich. -- It was around midnight one evening in November when Aaron Wissner shot up in bed, jolted awake by a fear: He wasn't fully ready for the day when the world starts running low on oil.

Yes, he had tripled the size of the garden in front of the tidy white-clapboard house he shares with his wife and infant son. He had stacked bags of rice in his new pantry, stashed gold valued at $8,000 in his safe-deposit box and doubled the size of the propane tank in his yard.

"But I felt panicky, like I needed more insurance," he says. So the 38-year-old middle-school computer teacher put on his jacket and drove to an all-night gas station, where he filled three, five-gallon jugs with gasoline.

"It was a feel-good moment," says his wife, Kimberly Sager. "But he slept better."

[Oil-Finder]

That article is a great example of how people can turn anything into a religion.

[wisconsin_cur]

I'm disturbed

1. By the apparent use of "religion" as an apparently derogative term.

2. That anyone who truly believes in something (or anyone who believes anything) is, implicitly, derided as such.

3. By the criterea you seem to be using we are all religious (even if we are religiously assured that there is not problem of resource depeltion) and therefore to be derided.

4. This leads me to find the comment not only with out content, but also misanthropic.

I'm sure you can find a much better way to deride the subject of the story (it can be done and I expect it to be done by some posters on this thread) and to demonstrate his folly.

Drive by derision, however, does not add to the converstion.
---
edited for clarity and style

[kokoda]

I wonder when the masses will in fact embrace the concept of Peak Oil.

I can't imagine the front page newspaper headline "World Oil Production has Peaked" .

What I do see is a continuation of what we have now ... rising oil prices, the vague promise of OPEC increasing oil production sometime in the future, the promise of alternative energy sources replacing our dependence on oil, economic uncertainty, oil wars, etc, etc.

The oil companies also seem to be talking down Peak Oil, instead using terms like "the end of cheap oil" with the inference being that there is plenty of oil ... if you can afford it.

When recession hits other factors will be blamed. The good thing about recession is that oil demand drops which will in effect disguise oil shortages.

Only after several recessions and perhaps a major depression will people finally wake up to the obvious problem.

Unfortunately by then it will be to late to mitigate the problem.

[topcat]

I say 'way to go WSJ.'

Too bad they didn't mention PO.com

[TheTurtle]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kokoda', '
')I can't imagine the front page newspaper headline "World Oil Production has Peaked" .

[jedinvest]

That was a silly video. Not too surprised as most of what comes from the WSJ is very silly. I understand they were sold to Murdoch of Fox News fame. Way to go -- let all our media become a political soap box.

Anyway, this guy is hoarding gasoline containers so he fill up his lawn mower, which is kind of ridiculous use of precious gasoline. His stock of food and spices is good for a hurricane or earthquake, but not for anything more extended.

However, his idea of moving to a better location is spot on. He better go while the moving vans can fuel up!

[Carlhole]

I've always thought that a great deal of energy related unpleasantness will be felt long before real geological constraints are reached because of the growing anticipation of petroleum supply problems decades in advance. This correct anticipation, by industry elites and insiders at first, leads to intense political turmoil in the present.

Therefore, we will never hear the phrase "world production peak" as explaining immediate current events. Descriptions of current events will always center around the details of the particular political struggle at hand - not the underlying economic problems of growing energy scarcity.

It's well known that Dick Cheney had been making speeches about the difficulty of oil companies to keep up with both depletion and projected growth long before he recommended himself as VP to Bush. He was quite clear about the continuing importance of the Middle East to economic growth and energy stability in the rest of the world.

Those 911 attacks were a godsend to Cheney's objectives. And think they are directly related to the peaking of world oil production. It seems a quite reasonable position. Yet, even here on PO.com, this idea gets scoffed at as ridiculous. Perhaps historians of the future will be able to review this period with the benefit of hindsight and clearly see the progression of historical events as the world's energy security slowly fails. Certainly a profound relationship between energy and politics will be discerned from early on and analyzed through decades of intense political change.

[Michigan]

Thanks for all of the interesting comments.

I imagine the article can be read from the "doomer" perspective. I suppose Neil intended it to be that way. He had a 1,200 word limit, so I suppose he had to find an angle and go with it.

I'm not sure what the belief in God or an afterlife a.k.a. religion has to do with the article. I'm all ears for this.

I think this a series of articles that Neil and the WSJ will be writing. Of course, it will all depend on how prices go. If they go down (due to a global recession), I don't suspect the WSJ will stay on track.

The WSJ has done several peak oil stories now. But, as you note, they usually don't use the words "peak oil".

For the video, Neil interviewed me on camera for 30 minutes, and then asked for the 5-minute tour of the house. Go figure that the video editing person in NYC decided to go with the short-term preparedness angle.

Clearly, I'm planning for BOTH an unlikely but rapid collapse (thus my use of the term "insurance") and for a slow yet painful decline (my community outreach and plans for the sustainable house).

I don't know what to say about Cheney or the various choices of the administration. One could easily take the position that everything the administration has done is to keep the USA in the position of having "their" 20 mbpd no matter what. We will see.

For more analysis (of mine) on Neil's article about me, I invite you to visit...

http://valuesystem.livejournal.com/29855.html

Cheers,

-- Aaron Wissner

[roccman]

Again - the point is missed.

Resource depletion is only but a symptom of THE issue...

too many people want too few resources.

There is no happy chapter...

Billions must die...that is just the reality.

We are already seeing food shortages...electricity shortages...water shortages...

A recession (read DEPRESSION of herculian proportions) will amount to nothing in the long term.

[Oil-Finder]

I call it a "religion" because the person in the article is suddenly and dramatically changing their entire lifestyle and world outlook based upon one supposed fact. You would think they had just found God or Jesus or Allah or whatever and suddenly decided to become a monk, or were suddenly preparing themselves for the imminent Second Coming.

A religion does not necessarily need a god or an afterlife.

[MattSavinar]

Original article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1201289 ... b_page_one

[Oil-Finder]

How could you have missed this?
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic35923.html

[MattSavinar]

oops, I did search. My apologies for missing it.

@ the board overlords: if you want to delete this thread you will find no objection from me.

{I have not yet achieved overlord status, so I just merged your thread with the pre-existing one, Matt. -TheTurtle}

[roccman]

Spill on aisle 4 -

Hey mods - bring a mop - and merge this with the other 85 zillion threads vindicating us.

[MattSavinar]

somebody at TOD made a good point. This article was not about "alerting the masses" or even covering the issue honestly. It was to alert the hoi-polloi in the Wall Street boardrooms that there is growing a number of people with disposable income who are into this sort of thing.

[MattSavinar]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '
')
I call it a "religion" because the person in the article is suddenly and dramatically changing their entire lifestyle and world outlook based upon one supposed fact. You would think they had just found God or Jesus or Allah or whatever and suddenly decided to become a monk, or were suddenly preparing themselves for the imminent Second Coming.

[billp]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')reliable wind for power

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MattSavinar', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', '
')
I call it a "religion" because the person in the article is suddenly and dramatically changing their entire lifestyle and world outlook based upon one supposed fact. You would think they had just found God or Jesus or Allah or whatever and suddenly decided to become a monk, or were suddenly preparing themselves for the imminent Second Coming.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oil-Finder', 'I') call it a "religion" because the person in the article is suddenly and dramatically changing their entire lifestyle and world outlook based upon one supposed fact. You would think they had just found God or Jesus or Allah or whatever and suddenly decided to become a monk, or were suddenly preparing themselves for the imminent Second Coming.

A religion does not necessarily need a god or an afterlife.