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adamdschneider on November 18, 2005 - 2:57pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Corsi says to "show us the science," prove them idiots and they'll go away.  While I highly doubt this, perhaps an in-depth article series on the science and--equally important--the history of oil exploration might be a nice addition to the site.
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ericy on November 18, 2005 - 6:27pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That isn't how it works in the real world.  There are all kinds of ideas out there that aren't accepted by the mainstream.  Alien abduction.  ESP.  Loch ness monster.  That the twin towers were brought down by controlled demolition.  Zero-point energy.  On and on.

Mainstream scientists simply don't have the time to shoot down every fringe idea that is out there.  We all live in a world where people have finite amounts of time.  We all have things we like to do when we are away from the office, and for most of us, shooting down these things isn't entertaining.

If these people want mainstream scientists to take this theory seriously then they need to start convincing them one by one.    And I will admit that going into it, there will be a natural inclination to dismiss the theory without serious consideration.  In my business we call it "flipping the bozo bit" - meaning that once you conclude that someone is a bozo, there is a tendancy to filter out and ignore anything that person has to say.

There have been times in history when the radical new theory turns out to be correct.  When I was in graduate school, I had a professor who when he was a student had to study quantum mechanics in the math department because quantum mechanics was considered too controversial.  Oftentimes what happens though is that for the radical new idea to gain a foothold, the adherents of the new theory need to convince someone who is well known and respected in the field.  Once this happens, there is a tendancy for people to sit up and take notice and think to themselves "perhaps there is something to this after all".  Another avenue is that the new idea is picked up by new people entering the field, and the old ideas die out when the older folks die out.

At one point cold-fusion was in the 'bozo' category, but some have kept poking away at it, and it appears that there might be something to it.  Don't get your hopes up though - the amounts of energy are extremely small - it is more at the level of an interesting physical phenomenon.

Getting back to abiotic oil, instead of waiting for the mainstream to come in and prove that they are idiots, it is upon them to come here (or somewhere where the mainstream view is held) and convince someone who is known and respected in the field that they are not.  If they manage to do this, then the rest of us might say that it is worth a 2nd look.

My own personal view is colored by the fact that I am not trained as a geologist - thus I am initially inclined to defer to the mainstream view.  And regarding Corsi's book in particular, I don't want to give that SOB a dime of my own money, thank you very much, so there is no way in hell I am going to buy the thing.  I have flipped a few more bits than just the bozo bit for Corsi, and most of these bits have names that couldn't be printed in a family newspaper.

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adamdschneider on November 18, 2005 - 6:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well, that's certainly how it should work, but alas often times people will believe what they want to in the absence of good evidence why they should not (and sometimes, distressingly, even when they have such evidence). Peak Oil seems a bit different to my mind than most of these science spats because it has the potential for profound consequences in all of our lives, raising the stakes a bit. These guys are obviously battling for the "hearts and minds" of the crowd, so why should we just "flip the bozo bit" and walk away, grousing all the while about the share of airtime they are getting? We know better. Not everyone does.

By the way, I wasn't really suggesting the piece on the history and science of oil exploration as a direct response to these guys, but as an educational piece like the kind we get each week on the technology of drilling. It would have, however, the beneficial side effect of giving us ammunition to counter our own close friends and relatives if they try to pull this abiotic oil garbage on us over Thanksgiving or elsewhere.
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ericy on November 18, 2005 - 8:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That is how the media frequently handles it. They find two people with opposing views, and let them argue it out. The assumption is that each persons argument has some validity, and therefore the public will conclude that the truth must lie somewhere inbetween. I suppose you could do a reductio ad absurdum by considering an argument between an astronomer and a member of the flat earth society. Or perhaps a professor of mathematics and a child arguing whether 2+2=4 or not. I guess my point is that the media is for the most part scientifically illiterate. Frequently when they have debates between a mainstream view and I guess what I would call a radical view, they have a hard time seeing that there is this imbalance in the relative weights of the arguments.
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LevinK on November 18, 2005 - 8:16pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well, my experience with most people is that wishful thinking can not be refuted with rational arguments it, it is simply impossible. By simply giving this guy an airtime you will actually support his cause because people will choose to believe him no matter what. The only way to give the red pill to the majority is a nice crash with reality.
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GreyZone on November 18, 2005 - 7:07pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Corsi can prove his abiotic oil very easily - go out, make predictions about finding oil specifically where conventional theory said no oil should exist and make money doing it. If he can do that, repeatedly, people will start to take notice.

For now, Corsi is no more credible than whackos who believe in astrology. He is responsible for proving his crazy theories, not the rest of the world.

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adamdschneider on November 18, 2005 - 7:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Of course we as rational people think that it's up to him to prove hsi theories, not up to us to disprove them. However, is this really how the "rest of the world" will view it? I think that most of them will--if they don't hear a resounding chorus of contrary fact from the exploratory community--either give credence to Corsi and his ilk because it's what they want to believe or--even more likely--simply shrug their shoulders and chalk it up to another scientific dispute that has no bearing on their private lives. That's the issue I am trying to broach. I don't care one whit what Corsi cares; he's only one man. I care how many people he manages to drag down with him because THEIR collective belief/inaction may have a profound effect on me.
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peakearl on November 18, 2005 - 8:20pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
If peak hits as we expect, and Corsi keeps up his nonsense, ultimately people will insist he put his money where his mouth is or he'll look more and more ridiculous.
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GreyZone on November 18, 2005 - 8:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I don't disagree with your assessment of how the "rest of the world" will view this dialog. That's precisely why I lean in the direction of collapse as outcome of all this. Corsi has connections, as evidenced by his participation in the Swift Boat affair. And Corsi and his ilk will block any dialog that threatens the US dollar hegemony, which is predicated on oil, even as oil starts to become scarcer. You can fight this fight with no certainty of winning or you can prepare in some other manner.
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CmdrPhil on November 19, 2005 - 12:08am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The experiment has already been done.  Prior to WW2 the origins of oil were not well understood; prospecting for oil often required a divining rod and a lot of faith that God was on your side.  If you started with the premise of abiotic oil you went out of business pretty fast.  Noting the geology of where drilling was successful lead to biotic theories of oil creation, not the other way around.

Perhaps the Corsian response would be that the abiotic oil is so deep that until recently we didn't have the capability of finding it, which would also burden abiotic proponents with explaining why these deep abiotic deposits don't migrate closer to the surface over billions of years.

The truth is that I wouldn't be surprised if abiotic processes generate trace amounts of hydrocarbons.  But I favor occasionally poking at the obvious holes in the Corsians argument but ultimately letting them come to us - if abiotic oil will save us from the peak, where is it?  Just find one 100 million barrel field in basalt with no sedimentary source rock beneath it and we'll let him sit with the grown-ups.  No Mr. Corsi, deepwater Brazil doesn't qualify.

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Leanan on November 18, 2005 - 7:25pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Stephen Jay Gould used to like to tell the story about how back in the 1960s, students at his college staged a mass demonstration to protest a talk by a couple of quacks who believed in the "pseudoscience" of plate tectonics.  Gould was with them.  

Of course, now you'd be hard-pressed to find a scientist who doesn't believe in plate tectonics.  Gould says what made the difference was that someone finally came up with a mechanism.  

He used to use that as example of how scientists will come around, no matter how wild the idea is, if there is actual evidence.

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Prof. Goose on November 18, 2005 - 8:03pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
sometimes finding a mechanism or an empirical "hook" is the only thing that can loosen a theory's "protective belt..." you know?
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wkwillis on November 19, 2005 - 12:46pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It was called Continental Drift back then, Plate Tectonics was what was happening and when the finally had an explanation for continental drift, the name for the explanation is how the anticontinental drifters managed to change sides without too much embarassment.
Scientists don't like assertions where "and here is where the miracle occurs" is someplace in them, but the continent outlines and the fossils and the rock magnetism said that something was there to be explained and we didn't have an explanation till then.
There was a similar problem in evaporite deposits. Until Snowball Earth there was no statistically meaningful way you could explain the anhydrite problem, and there were about a dozen others. Salt deposit explantations ranged from the statistically impossible to the absurd. But it's still the received wisdom in evaporites.
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116 comments on Open Thread

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