Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Phreak Oil

From: [email-masked] ("Hal Finney")
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:52:20 -0700 (PDT)

Mike Lorrey forwards from Wikipedia:
> "Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas
> ...
> Geologists from the following countries are represented in ASPO:
> Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy,
> Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the
> United Kingdom.

and then comments:

> It is thus clear that, like the European driven hysteria about global
> warming, as a mechanism to institute US carbon taxes that will help
> fund a social welfare state in the US while purporting to be "solving
> global warming", the "Peak Oil" phenom is just another European-run
> propaganda front in the euro-socialist culture-war against low-tax
> Americans. When "Peak Oil" fails to sink in, what next? Shall we see
> claims by european scientists that hyperthermophiles are gobbling up
> all of the oil? Will we see european marine biologists protest the
> tapping of undersea oil seeps when rare and endangered species of
> Archaea are discovered surviving off of the seepage oil? Will we EVER
> see a widespread public acknowledgement by european scientists that
> Europe is solving its energy needs via nuclear power, and its nuclear
> waste problems with breeder reactors?

I don't agree with Mike's ideological spin here.  There are plenty
of Americans worried about Peak Oil.  It may be that ASPO is more
euro-centric as it was founded by Colin Campbell.  But if you do a
Google search on Peak Oil you will see site after site with American
commentators.

And they aren't particularly bleeding-heart liberals, either.  In fact
PO crosses ideological boudaries in an interesting way.  We do see
environmentalists worried about both PO and Global Warming.  But there
are also distinctively American guns-n-gold survivalists who are extremely
active on the PO message boards.  I imagine there are end-times Christian
Conservatives looking at this as well, although I haven't run across
those groups personally.

The real problem with organizations like ASPO is that they have already
firmly staked themself to the position that PO will be a major problem in
the near future, and as a result you will find the same one-sided news
and reports as on other PO sites.  It's not a good source for unbiased
information.

The Wikipedia article is reasonably balanced and does link to both sides,
but the pro-PO sites among its links far outnumber the skeptical ones.
I suppose that's inevitable; the same thing happened with Y2K.  Fear sells.

One good thing about Y2K is that it was over and done with.  With PO,
even if nothing happens it won't go away any time soon.  In fact, the
longer we go without disaster the more sure the proponents will become
that doom is just around the corner.

Hal
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