Bob,

The mainstream and right-wing media are far less honest than the left-wing. I singled out the left-wing because they are especially prone to congratulate themselves for their lack of bias and taboo. In fact, they have a bias toward the people, and taboos against overshoot and depletion.

Overshoot and depletion are taboo in all media, not because they are technical, but because there is no way to tell them as a story that makes the audience look good, and makes others look bad.

Fundamental to all media - more fundamental than the facts - is the notion of good guys and bad guys.

It's so fundamental that Chomsky, a genius who's spent decades studying media and writing books bout how media works, has his own set of "good guys and bad guys" that is not subject to his own analysis: the people are good and the state is bad.

The problem with telling the "peak oil" story is that every single person on Earth, except maybe the hunter-gatherers, plays a bad guy in this story. You can't tell the story without offending the listener!

And if you tell it to a hunter-gatherer, he'll say "yeah, that's what we told you guys in the first place!"

:)

Bryan