The Oil Drum: Freako’ takes on Maass’ NYT piece…

Well, I guess this is “discourse.” Stephen Levitt, author of Freakonomics, is already not very pleased with today’s Maass NYT piece. At all.

In fact the title of his post today is, “‘Peak Oil:’ Welcome to the media’s new version of shark attacks” (thanks to Jeff B. of the BBC for bringing this to our attention…)
Here’s a snippet of Levitt:

The cover story of the New York Times Sunday Magazine written by Peter Maass is about “Peak Oil.” The idea behind “peak oil” is that the world has been on a path of increasing oil production for many years, and now we are about to peak and go into a situation where there are dwindling reserves, leading to triple-digit prices for a barrel of oil, an unparalleled worldwide depression, and as one web page puts it, “Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon.” One might think that doomsday proponents would be chastened by the long history of people of their ilk being wrong: Nostradamus, Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, etc. Clearly they are not. What most of these doomsday scenarios have gotten wrong is the fundamental idea of economics: people respond to incentives.

A lot more talk and links after the jump to the new and improved The Oil Drum.