The Oil Drum

110 comments on The Swift-Boating of Peak Oil

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JD on November 15, 2005 - 8:20pm

I seriously doubt that Matt Simmons agrees with Crackpot Corsi on anything.

Corsi: Why aren't we resolved to become oil independent by exploring offshore oil with the aggressive resolve demonstrated by Petrobras? Our problem seems to be that the current coalition of radical environmentalists...

Simmons: While it is politically popular to attack the need to open up a few thousand acres of ANWR, this important area could create several hundred thousand barrels a day of extra oil and natural gas, and possibly even far more. So it is too important to abandon. It is time for ANWR's opponents to stop broadcasting photographs of pristine alpine mountain meadows of areas within the 19 million acre reserve which happen to be hundreds of miles away from where any oil and gas development would ever take place.

While there are significant differences between Corsi and Simmons, they are mostly cosmetic. They have the same underlying political agenda: scapegoating the greens and NIMBYs as the cause of energy shortages in the U.S., and lifting restrictions on drilling within the U.S.

Why don't you folks sponsor a debate between Simmons and Heinberg on the topic "Should we drill ANWR, Lease Area 181, and the continental shelf ASAP?" That would be very educational. Corsi will be sitting in Simmons' corner. How about you guys?

I'm here to tell you: Matt Simmons doesn't "get" peak oil. He's pro-car, and has stated numerous times that SUVs aren't a problem. He's pro-growth. As an investment banker, he fully supports our current growth-based economic system. He doesn't give a crap about global warming, as demonstrated by his calls to drill ANWR ASAP.

The recent Denver conference was very telling. They give an extractionist like Simmons a trophy, and insult Darley on the podium. The suits are co-opting peak oil, and purging the environmental/conservation/powerdown crazies who (they believe) are the real cause of the problem.

At some point, you Oil Drum folks are going to have to get off the fence, and choose which side you are on: the suits, or the greens. I think you're firmly in the suit camp at the moment.

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Donal on November 15, 2005 - 8:40pm

REG:
Right. You're in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front.
P.F.J.:
Yeah...
JUDITH:
Splitters.
P.F.J.:
Splitters...
FRANCIS:
And the Judean Popular People's Front.
P.F.J.:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
LORETTA:
And the People's Front of Judea.
P.F.J.:
Yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
REG:
What?
LORETTA:
The People's Front of Judea. Splitters.
REG:
We're the People's Front of Judea!
LORETTA:
Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
REG:
People's Front! C-huh.
FRANCIS:
Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?
REG:
He's over there.
P.F.J.:
Splitter!

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JD on November 15, 2005 - 8:59pm

Very amusing, Donal. Maybe next time you can respond like an adult who actually cares about real-world political issues, like drilling environmentally-protected areas.

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Donal on November 15, 2005 - 10:07pm

If things get bad enough, man will strip mine every scrap of land with any sort of fossil fuel under it. If we get the message out in a coherent way, soon enough, we may avoid that sort of desperation. We can't get the message out by excluding someone that recognizes the problem, but sees a different solution.

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JD on November 15, 2005 - 10:24pm

Where do you stand on drilling ANWR ASAP? In favor or against?

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Donal on November 16, 2005 - 9:50am

Against:

Sentimentally, I like the pristine pictures.

Environmentally, would it really be drilling? Wouldn't the extraction method be pit or strip mining? Drilling doesn't sound so bad, but mining, then years of cooking the kerogen, then refining is a huge environmental concern. Is the energy worth that sort of damage?

Practically, I wonder if the EROEI is even cost effective.

Rep. Bartlett wants to save ANWR for a rainy day, but I do wonder who will be left on that rainy day.

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Stuart Staniford on November 15, 2005 - 9:05pm

He's pro-growth. As an investment banker, he fully supports our current growth-based economic system.

You need to read Revisiting the Limits To Growth, where Simmons gives an account of his discovery of that book, and an articulate defense of the basic correctness of the 1972 book, and the dangers of exponential growth in a finite system. He gaves a whole range of scenarios of how bad things can get how quickly. He mentions CO2 as an issue, and says that the "pollution created by this added energy could be overwhelming or even life-threatening" by 2030.

I don't think he knows quite what the hell to do, and I join him in that camp, but he definitely understands the problem.

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JD on November 15, 2005 - 9:34pm

but he definitely understands the problem.

That's good to know. But then why drill ANWR ASAP? Isn't that exactly the opposite of what you would do if you understood the problem? Why increase pollution and burn through oil ASAP? That is the problem, not the solution to the problem.

It doesn't make any sense.

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Stuart Staniford on November 16, 2005 - 1:59am

Weeeelll. I think part of the issue is this: there's a number of potentially pressing pieces of the problem:

Oil supply might decline faster than the economy can tolerate due to high decline rates and we might end up facing depression style economic conditions in the not too distant future.
Large fractions of the oil supply might go offline due to geopolitical problems
We might fail to ever develop substitutes for oil that will allow us to have anything like our current civilization, particularly since we'll leave our grandkids with a world with fewer other undegraded resources left.
The climate might go to hell (eg undergo an abrupt flip to some completely different state, as it has in the past).
Some developing countries might start to fail really badly causing overwhelming human suffering and refugee problems

I think reasonable people can differ about which of these are the greatest risk. I suspect Matt Simmons is mainly worried about 1) and 2), which tend to make drilling ANWR look like a good idea. I suspect you are worried about 4), which argues for leaving everything possible in the ground. I think Roscoe Bartlett is driven a lot by 3), which tends to also argue for leaving ANWR to our grandkids (especially since he has so many of them!). Personally, I can't decide which to worry about the most, hence the fence-sitting behavior that is galling you :-)

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Donal on November 16, 2005 - 1:03pm

No. 5, of course, is already happening, with or without oil depletion. We won't exploit ANWR for them.

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PhilRelig on November 16, 2005 - 2:16pm

Yes, and the "out of sight, out of mind" principle strongly applies here. The suffering that is already being occasioned in the "Third World" by high energy prices (in places like Zimbabwe and Zambia, to mention only the two most extreme current examples) is being widely ignored in the "First World" press and in "First World" consciousness more generally. Look for this myopia to persist and worsen along with the underlying problem in coming years. It's much easier for the affluent to enjoy their affluence if they avert their gaze than if they look these disturbing realities square in the face.

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LevinK on November 15, 2005 - 11:51pm

I can not restrain from objecting such kind of arguments.

With the same success you can claim that G.W.Bush agrees 100% with Adolf Hitler on the point that a country must have strong military. So... what is the conclusion? Are they from the same party or what?