The Oil Drum | Peak Oil Media Redux (or "The Course of Our Lives WILL Be Determined by the First Derivative of a Function, Redux)

74 comments on Peak Oil Media Redux (or "The Course of Our Lives WILL Be Determined by the First Derivative of a Function, Redux)

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Pitt the Elder on July 23, 2007 - 3:23pm

I just don't get it. Seriously.

It's because TOD is a fanatically devoted to a fringe opinion on a fringe issue, and reacts poorly when its Message isn't treated as a revelation. (If you think TOD doesn't react poorly, you're kidding yourself. Remember when TOD got a Slashdot story? The Message was treated with skepticism, and the next day TOD was full of insults and anger at not being greeted as revelatory heroes. Or just look at the suggestion right below to spam sites via fake blogs to trick people into accepting TOD stories.)

You know how people complain about "special interest groups"? That's you.

If you want to be treated differently, act differently. There's a great deal of lunatic-fringe ranting on TOD that has very little to do with the core idea of "oil is finite" - see the Drumbeat discussion about Kunstler. There's an obsessive focus on bad news, and little or no attempt to present unbiased information. There's a heavy apocalpytic bent. Wild claims are regularly made, infrequently challenged, and almost never backed up, save by a small fraction of the posters. There's a strong sense of entitlement, with frustration at the public that your Truth isn't being accepted, and it boils over into ranting, insults, and a retreat into a "us-vs-them", "we're better than them", and "they're doomed anyway" mentalities - even from some of the more sensible posters and staff.

None of that makes you look good.

You might remember some posters periodically expressing concern that some of the wilder claims and antics on TOD would undermine its credibility, typically followed by rebuffs that credibility doesn't matter?

Well, say hello to the ramifications of lacking credibility.

Whether or not you're right, you're a fringe group expressing a fringe opinion. That means you have a heavier responsibility to be well-behaved than groups whose ideas already have strong traction, since you're in constant danger of someone writing you off as lunatic fringe. While not easy, I suspect you'd be dismissed out of hand by a lot fewer people if you followed a few simple rules when trying to introduce peak oil to nonbelievers:

Be brief. Nobody likes a rant. In particular, stick to the core topic of "oil production will slow and decline", and say nothing about your (speculative) theories of what that will cause. "Peak oil" and "why civilization will fall" are not the same thing.
Support your argument. Ask "why?" about everything, and be able to provide outside evidence for every assertion you make. Fringe groups don't get the benefit of the doubt.
Be open-minded. You will be wrong about some things, and being unable to consider and admit to that idea makes you look like some weird sort of doomsday cultists. Anyone claiming to have The Truth is seen as a crackpot. Anyone saying that Truth is being suppressed is usually tuned out immediately. As a rule of thumb, anyone using the acronym "MSM" is rarely worth listening to. Don't be that guy.
Be polite. People will be skeptical, and even derisive, but yelling at them just makes you look like the lunatic fringe.

You want to be listened to? Deserve it.

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NZSanctuary on July 23, 2007 - 6:19pm

"It's because TOD is a fanatically devoted to a fringe opinion on a fringe issue"

A fringe issue, eh? I would argue that energy (and oil in particular) is an issue that is about as far from being fringe as you can get. Well, except maybe Paris Hilton...

Fossil fuels (and oil in particular) as a finite resource, our wars over them and our need to find alternatives are not fringe issues. Everyone bar abiotic oilers believe we are burning finite resources. Energy issues are in the news all the time. The issues are not fringe, but there is a strong bent here towards one end of the timescale.

The comments sections, which appear to be where the bulk of your comment is aimed, are secondary. People are free to express whatever they like in comments sections below online articles, and often do. Go to any standard news source and the comments below articles that touch on important issues vary between outright support for the author's view and trashing of his/her opinion. At least here, there are a number of people who actually try to back up their arguments with data/sources (even if you don't always agree with them)...

"As a rule of thumb, anyone using the acronym "MSM" is rarely worth listening to."

One could just as easily argue that, as a rule of thumb, people rarely think for themselves and therefore are rarely worth listening to anyway. A term like MSM has nothing to do with it.

I agree in general with your comments on being careful about how you put forward arguments, but IMHO TOD seems to be ahead of the curve when it comes to online news groups.

"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein

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b3NDZ3La on July 23, 2007 - 9:03pm

1. Be brief. Nobody likes a rant. In particular, stick to the core topic of "oil production will slow and decline", and say nothing about your (speculative) theories of what that will cause. "Peak oil" and "why civilization will fall" are not the same thing.
2. Support your argument. Ask "why?" about everything, and be able to provide outside evidence for every assertion you make. Fringe groups don't get the benefit of the doubt.
3. Be open-minded. You will be wrong about some things, and being unable to consider and admit to that idea makes you look like some weird sort of doomsday cultists. Anyone claiming to have The Truth is seen as a crackpot. Anyone saying that Truth is being suppressed is usually tuned out immediately. As a rule of thumb, anyone using the acronym "MSM" is rarely worth listening to. Don't be that guy.
4. Be polite. People will be skeptical, and even derisive, but yelling at them just makes you look like the lunatic fringe.

You haven't been paying attention, or you're focusing your ire on the discussions threads instead of the articles.

Each and every one of the criteria above (and they are good ones) has been practiced in dozens, no, hundreds of articles, here and elsewhere. Where have you been? Haven't you read any of them? And yet peak oil cannot hold a candle in the media to what's-her-face, the blonde arrested for drunk driving.

No, there's something else wrong, seriously wrong.

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westexas on July 24, 2007 - 10:21am

"Pitt the Elder:"

TOD is fanatically devoted to a fringe opinion on a fringe issue

http://www.energybulletin.net/11695.html
Published on 12 Dec 2005 by Fortune. Archived on 13 Dec 2005.
The Rainwater Prophecy
by Oliver Ryan
“Richard Rainwater made billions by knowing how to profit from a crisis. Now he foresees the biggest one yet”

Richard Rainwater on Peak Oil:
"This is a nonrecurring event," he says. "The 100-year flood in Houston real estate was one, the ability to buy oil and gas really cheap was another, and now there's the opportunity to do something based on a shortage of natural resources. Can you make money? Well, yeah. One way is to just stay long domestic oil. But there may be something more important than making money. This is the first scenario I've seen where I question the survivability of mankind. I don't want the world to wake up one day and say, 'How come some doofus billionaire in Texas made all this money by being aware of this, and why didn't someone tell us?'"

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mdsolar on July 25, 2007 - 3:22pm

Your comment about slashdot might be right. I submitted the following on Saturday and it climbed faster than anything I've seen to the top of the firehose and stayed there all Sunday. It is still pretty high above other submissions. The firehose is a system whereby users can rank submmitted stories.

Here it is:

Over at The Oil Drum there is an interesting discussion going on about a report released (in draft form) by the National Petroleum Council. The report is a response to questions from Secretary of Energy Bodman about the ability of oil companies to meet projected demand for oil (at a reasonable price). The report seems to say that this cannot be done and recommends that the government 1) force conservation through efficiency regulations, 2) shift to other energy sources, 3) reduce regulation on drilling in the US, 4) use US power to force open markets in oil, 5) pay for the education of engineers in the oil field, allow retiring workers to consult without tax penalties and raise H1-B quotas and 6) pay the oil industry to accept carbon dioxide from coal use for sequestration.

The discusion at The Oil Drum is finding that the report is fudging on the peak oil issue while at the same time predicting a greatly increased oil supply mainly from the Middle East using new technologies and discoveries. My own acerbic take on the report findings can be found here.

Now my stats for getting stories published in slashdot are rejected (23), accepted (4) and pending (10). Five of the articles not accepted were published under another submitter. But, nothing I've submitted has ever been this popular. Now, a reason for not accepting this so far could be that I use provocative language in the submission and the editors don't feel I've represented the report accurately enough (I feel I've cut through some of the BS myself). But, another problem could be citing TOD. Slashdot does cover energy issues from time to time so the submission does seem to me to be on topic. Just to note, I am a renewable energy cornucopian (to adopt a TOD phrase) which may be even more fringy than some other positions.

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74 comments on Peak Oil Media Redux (or "The Course of Our Lives WILL Be Determined by the First Derivative of a Function, Redux)

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“So one may almost say that the theory of universal suffrage assumes that the Average Citizen is an active, instructed, intelligent ruler of his country. The facts contradict this assumption.”

—James Bryce (1909, 35)