[RedStateGreen]

Isn't that like Shut Your Filthy Rotten Traps?

[Revi]

I'm not shutting up. It's still time to get working on the solution. We cut our fossil fuel use by over half in our household over the past five years, and we are doing better economically because of it.

Now is the time to go green. If Obama can get us into a clean energy future we may just live through peak oil.

Now isn't the time to shut up. It's time to get to work.

[jboogy]

I only read the first paragraph, I have to respectfully disagree with Mr. Hirsch. Forewarned is forarmed.

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', '[')url=http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/11/14/peak-oil-prominent-peaker-tells-allies-to-temporarily-pipe-down/]He wants all of us in the peak oil movement to shut our traps.[/url]

And to pipe down until this economic calamity passes... lol. Good luck dude.

[PenultimateManStanding]

It's been a long standing theme here and elsewhere that when the general public catches on there will be mayhem. But why should anyone worry about that now? Prices are way down. What is Hirsch worried about? This isn't the time yet for that.

[mos6507]

Whatever you tell people, they won't believe it right now anyway, so I don't know what he's worrying about.

[Carlhole]

Everybody knows about the peak oil theory already. Its mentioned all the time on stock market forums casually and with no explanation - because people are well acquainted with the concept and there is no need to explain it. And it's mentioned in a whole lot of other places too. You see it everywhere.

If the PO.com membership reflected informed opinion at large regarding the subject, there would be a whole lot more people here like Lorenzo, John Denver or OilFinder.

It's just that PO.com tends to inculcate and/or distill out a doomer mindset. Thus, if this board is where you are imbibing most of your doctrine on the subject, you'll end up thinking like everyone else around here and you won't have the benefit of all those other voices on the matter.

Hirsch, in his article, clearly makes the distinction between (1) our current global economic calamity and (2) the effects of peak oil. Like me, he doesn't appear to believe that our economic problems were/are directly caused by peak oil. Rather, high crude prices were caused by a decades-long economic paradigm unwinding in its end stages.

The recent IEA Report 2008 has made clear that peaking of world oil production is not taken as a present dire predicament - it's still a future threat. In short, they have said that there is plenty of oil & gas around.

Therefore, our current economic problems are exactly what they appear to be -- completely man-made -- having to do with the intangibles and abstractions of money supply, interest rates, currencies and derivatives finance rather than any underlying physical resource shortage.

It's silly to speak in terms of doom about the present calamity because if the world were actually approaching some armageddon due to lack of energy resources, the stock markets of the world would react much more violently than they have. The stock market's present turbulence doesn't reflect impending doom; it reflects uncertainty and gloom over earnings for the next few quarters.

[AirlinePilot]

Nate Hagens is one of the authors over at The Oil Drum. I specifically think he nailed why Hirsch is wrong about this....

"It is too late in the game to keep things under wraps until we ‘notice’ the energy emergency again. A core part of the financial spiral was flattening of net energy growth beginning to crimp other areas of the economy (and environment). A spandrel response to this biophysical phenomenon was an explosion of debt, rule changes ‘creating’ outcomes akin to those of cheap oil, easy credit, hedge fund leverage and speculation in financial assets. The only ultimate way to heal the deepening financial morass is to call attention to what matters - natural capital (including the oil, gas and coal we still have from ancient solar bank accounts and what we might be able to harness as ‘interest’ from current solar flows).
Investment capital is going to be in short supply. As such it needs to be diverted towards those ends that society will need the most in the future, not just towards a ’shot in the arm’ to the Disneyland economy that brought us here.

For that reason and the fact that President-elect Obama has a ‘Kennedy-esque’ quality about him, leads me to respectfully disagree with Dr Hirsch. Pain is coming. Change is coming. We need to lay our best hand on the table and get to work, not take a rain check until the $1.85 gasoline is used up on short term consumption.

The stakes have never been higher. Oil is not our only limited resource. Time is another."

I agree 100% with that comment. Very well stated.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', '[')url=http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/11/14/peak-oil-prominent-peaker-tells-allies-to-temporarily-pipe-down/]He wants all of us in the peak oil movement to shut our traps.[/url]

And to pipe down until this economic calamity passes... lol. Good luck dude.

Anyone interested in taking his advice? I can think of a few who should.


(I wonder if all the shut your damn mouths threads should be merged... hmmm)

[AirlinePilot]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'T')he recent IEA Report 2008 has made clear that peaking of world oil production is not taken as a present dire predicament - it's still a future threat. In short, they have said that there is plenty of oil & gas around.

[AirlinePilot]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'h')ttp://www.shutthefu*kup.com/

heh, heh...

Put the "c" back in that url and paste it in your browser

[yeahbut]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'I')f the PO.com membership reflected informed opinion at large regarding the subject

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cbxer55', '
')This is the "open forum", anything goes here. If I were specifically wanting to discuss "peak oil", I would go to the forum so named. BTW, it is not that I do not believe in peak oil, just do not believe it will happen in my lifetime. (If it does, OH WELL!) And the IEA gladly supports that, thank you very much!

[TheDude]

"No personal attacks or flaming allowed anywhere on STFU Forums."

Visited HateForum.com years ago, still running I see. Pure bile.

From the comments:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'J')EWS ARE EVIL!!!
Comment by mos6507 - November 14, 2008 at 11:03 pm

[IslandCrow]

Basically I have shut up long ago about talking about PO directly. If I want to deal with the subject I tend to go in round about ways of talking about small details of it, or expressing my concerns in non-PO terms.

For example: being in a wooded country it is easy to encourage people to look to placing woodburning heating "to reduce the cost of electricity/oil". (This one is easy as electricity charges just went up 14%.)

Or: "It would be good to have a solar powered backup lighting system to cope when the power is cut during storms".

But I do wish I could really sit down with someone and talk with them face to face about PO and the implications (especially the means to mitigate some of the effects).

[virgincrude]

Carlhole, from what I can understand of your post, you seem to think the stock markets reflect some kind of sober, intelligent life form: reacting according to clear signals which the ordinary society (i.e not involved in any way in stock trading) has begun to signal. From what we've seen of recent behaviour on the stock exchanges world wide, I'd have to wonder about the basis for your assumption ... WTF??!! ARE YOU CRAZY??

Sheesh.

Peak Oil is just like other terminology the general public have little or no understanding of: 'subprime', is another example. Remember Palin's interview where she had to squirm her way out of the question of 'The Bush Doctrine'? She had NO idea what it meant. There was another one recently in an interview where the guy squirmed for a long while trying to hide his ignorance of the term 'appeasement' ... did you see any of those? Usefull examples highlighting the general level of ignorance which lies beneath a thin veneer of apparent intelligence.

After the recent IEA report, people are cherry picking quotes to suit their own agenda: some say okay, they didn't say peak is close, but we need lots of investment to just keep up with decline rates, therefore we're gonna be just fine. Some guy calling himself Benny posted a comment in the WSJ basically stating: stop whining, everything's going to be okay because nobody's going to want all the fuel lying around. He is in some kind of denial about the current state of the world economy, proving Hirsch is right: people are having a hard enough time truly understanding the economic crash, and they are all expecting economies to somehow rise back up out of the credit-induced recession, and presumably resume business as usual.

The fact that nobody can accurately predict when the economy of any single country in the OECD (let alone the USA) will climb up out of the trough, even without taking energy prospects into account, means this depression is open ended. Whether or not economies begin to recover depends on a few factors which are in no way guarranteed, for example: a return of consumer confidence (meaning people will have jobs and salaries enabling them to buy new fridges/cars/TVs/furniture etc.,) a return to normalcy in credit and financing, etc., and a cheap supply of fuel for industry.

The IEA basically stated, it's okay, we're not running out of oil and gas, we just need to invest huge amounts .... just to STAND STILL. They also said there is NO GUARRANTEE these investment will be forthcoming at a time when credit is unavailable, stocks and earnings are down, markets are stagnant and currencies are unstable all across the world......

In a way Hirsch is right. There's no point talking about peak oil if you start talking about the economy: it's enough to freak out the most flexible mind.

[Ferretlover]

"Robert Hirsch Tells us to Shut Up"
HHhmmm... I believe there's an old saying that would pertain to the topic at hand: something about 'locking the barn After the horse has escaped...'

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('virgincrude', 'C')arlhole, from what I can understand of your post, you seem to think the stock markets reflect some kind of sober, intelligent life form: reacting according to clear signals which the ordinary society (i.e not involved in any way in stock trading) has begun to signal. From what we've seen of recent behaviour on the stock exchanges world wide, I'd have to wonder about the basis for your assumption ... WTF??!! ARE YOU CRAZY??

[RedStateGreen]

People already have a sense that something is wrong. They just don't have the terms to link it to.

For example, the decrease in gasoline usage in spite of falling gas prices, that isn't explained by any huge loss of jobs around here.

I don't think people are so stupid that they're going to start riots if they know the truth. It might even stimulate the economy, as people start prepping.

[dinopello]

Hircsh maybe should have taken his own advice earlier this year...

Peak oilers should not be predicting prices since as we see, severe economic disruptions that we know will occur destroy the price. Keep talking about the supply picture going forward. Now *is* the time to be talking about that since with energy prices low, it is the better time to restructure infrastructure for a declining energy budget than during the spike side of disruption.