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24 comments on Daniel Yergin challenged on NPR (OnPoint)

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ericy on September 21, 2005 - 4:41pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

I had heard it yesterday morning while in the car.  I guess my reaction was that it wasn't a puff piece, but Yergin wasn't on the ropes either.

He trotted out the "they have been wrong before" argument, which in no way minimizes the issue.

Arguing against the 'fairy dust' turns out to be surprisingly difficult.  In theory anything could happen.  Well, in theory monkeys could fly out my butt, but the odds are pretty damned small.  If you are going to start to argue that new technologies of some sort that will change the dynamic, we are at a point where we really need to know what those technologies are so that we can see whether they make sense or not.

His comment about cell phones doesn't seem relevant though - we got by just fine without cell phones, and when they were developed and costs came down, people readily adopted them.

Regarding the new production, he might be at least partly right with some of those.  I am a relative newcomer to all of this, and other people here can comment much better than I can.

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step back on September 21, 2005 - 6:02pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
As I explain above, his comment about cell phones demonstrates that he knows less than Dan Quail about "technology". He is a blabbering idiot and you are giving his blabber equal weight to the well researched discourses of Matt Simmons?

For TOD readers who do not have any technology background, just realize there was a reason why the nerds in the engineering degree programs at college were studying all night instead of partying like there's no tomorrow and burning their brain cells on booze. Engineering is hard hard shit (to put it in Georgie Porky Bushie terms).

If you believe there is a real something you can call "Technology" and this "it thing" will save us, you are praying to the Tooth Fairy.

There is no Santa Claus and there is no "Technology". In each market sector there is an incredibly complex set of interlocked technology subsectors and businesses that by luck, sometimes click together. No matter who the hell they are, they all have to obey the laws of Mother Nature if they are building something real. If Mother Nature says you can't suck oil out of a conch shell, then that's the law of nature. No amount of wishfull thinking about "technology" and how "it" is going to save us will reverse the absolute rules of Mother Nature. Mother Nature does not "hear" the wish barks that come out of our pathetic oral cavities. After all, we are freak accidents of evolution and will probably obliterate ourselves fairly soon, thanks to the likes of Dan Quailbullshit Yergin and those that bow in his shadow.

Sorry for the vitriol. Shit begets more shit.

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Stuart Staniford on September 21, 2005 - 7:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Mmmm.  What was Matt Simmon's PhD in again?
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Stuart Staniford on September 21, 2005 - 7:50pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I should say more explicitly that I don't think these attacks over qualifications are all that valid.  This is a very interdisciplinary problem so I don't think any one set of qualifications trumps all others.  Good judgement can arise, or fail to arise, in many different academic or career paths.
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step back on September 21, 2005 - 9:50pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
This is not a quibble over qualifications.

This is an exposition of hot air.

If you listen very carefully to what Dan Quailhead Yergin says on NPR, he is saying that "Technology" always advances to the point where it happily "surprises" us. It did so for computers (cell phones) and therefore surely it will do so for oil.

This is an issue of substance, not a quibble over academic qualifications.

The man does not know what "technology" is, and yet he waves its flag in proud defiance of his own ignorance. People listen to this babble, and they act on it.

Here is how they act: They say, why should we listen to Matt Simmons? There is an equally valid argument on the other side. Problem is, there isn't.

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24 comments on Daniel Yergin challenged on NPR (OnPoint)

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