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57 comments on I wish I didn't have to be the wet blanket

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Marklar on September 25, 2005 - 2:41am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
yeah im starting to doubt Simmons. I really admire him, but he's making some bold predictions that could easily turn out to be false and then hurt the name of "peak oil" since he is the most mainstream.

However, this piece you posted seems optimistic and fails to mention that SA recently admitted that they will be unable to keep up with demand in 10 - 15 years.

So who knows?

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sekiyu on September 25, 2005 - 7:03am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The article critical of Simmons neatly avoids his main points by pretending to deal with them. For example, Simmons wrote about the water cut in Saudi fields, not the use of water per se. But the article's author is a Halliburton man, so maybe he talked to Cheney and Karl Rove about how to obfuscate the issues. As for Simmons' predictions, I agree it's risky to specify numbers that people can use to beat you with later if you're off. But does anyone hold economists to account for their predictions? (just a joke!) Seriously, we all seem fairly certain that gasoline and heating oil and other product prices are likely to get more expensive or at least not drop for a long while. No one will remember Simmons said $100 per barrel or whatever because for most people the proof of the peak oil pudding is in the eating of high prices. At the institutional level, having Simmons out there speaking on peak oil already has initiated a movement to get serious data on reserves and so on. That trend's not likely to go away, so he's done all of us and our kids a big favour.
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louGrinzo on September 25, 2005 - 10:01am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I think that one of the most important and revealing, yet almost completely overlooked, details about our current situation is something Simmons said in an interview.

Go to http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/212 and check the last question and answer.  The interviewer asked Simmons what Bush wants the American public to know about peak oil, and he says Bush told him  "Matt, you continue to speak out, loudly and honestly, about how serious our energy problems are. You have no axe to grind and it really helps."

To me, this sounds like Bush and his advisors are well aware of the proximity of peak oil.  (I'm amazed by how often the question is discussed about whether Bush or some large corporation or another "knows about peak oil".  I think those entities would have to be phenomenally stupid not to know, and we should assume that they do know until we're presented with very strong evidence to the contrary.)

I suppose the cynics could say that Bush doesn't believe in peak oil, but he knows that having people like Simmons talking about it justifies higher prices which helps Bush's oil industry friends.  Even as cynical as I get with American politics I'm not ready to make that assumption without solid evidence.  

(And yes, I'm intentionally ignoring the possibility that Simmons is simply lying about what Bush has said to him.)

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wadosy on September 25, 2005 - 10:57am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
autumn 1999, cheney speaks to the london institute of petroleum about peak oil

september 2000, cheney's PNAC complains the oil wars will be slow to get started without a "new pearl harbor" to rally support.

may 2001, cheney calls for 1300 to 1900 new electric plants, most probably nukes

june 2001, cheney's National Energy Policy Development (NEPD) Group emphasizes nuclear and hydrogen

september 11, 2001

September 2002, peak oil is probably the primary cause of the wars. PNAC's september 2000 document "rebuilding america's defenses", laid it out pretty clearly, and government policy seems to be following it pretty closely, which shouldnt surprise anyone, since this document was adopted as the official bunnypants administration's "National Security Strategy in september 2002, in some places, verbatim.

PNAC's plan seems to be: grab all the oil possible to (1) hinder china's development into a military rival to the usa, and (2) grab all the oil possible to sell at the highest possible prices to finance the transition to a hydrogen economy.

at 10 billion bucks a clatter, how much are 1900 new nuke plants gonna cost?

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MikeCapone on September 25, 2005 - 11:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"at 10 billion bucks a clatter, how much are 1900 new nuke plants gonna cost?"

Just imagine what investing that money into wind/solar/wave/geothermal would do... What a waste.

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wadosy on September 25, 2005 - 11:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
i should point out that PNAC's "rebuilding america's defenses", which lays out the plan we seem to be following, which was adopted as bunnypants' National Security Strategy, was also the document that called for the "new pearl harbor" to get the program started.
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57 comments on I wish I didn't have to be the wet blanket

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