The Swift-Boating of Peak Oil
Posted by Stuart Staniford on November 15, 2005 - 7:32am
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: aspo-usa, gas prices, hubbert peak, matthew simmons, oil prices, peak oil [list all tags]
Browsing peakoil.com late at night, I came across the following interesting specimen at Rigzone, of all places. Dr Jerome Corsi writes:
A key argument of "Peak-Oil" and "Fossil-Fuel" theorists is no new giant oilfield discoveries have been made in recent years. Oil "experts" such as Matt Simmons and Ken Deffeyes are locked into the belief that oil is a fossil fuel, and pretty soon we are bound to have found and drilled all the oil that ever was. What about Brazil?The experience of Brazil's offshore drilling is proving that giant new oil fields are out there, waiting to be discovered, just off shore along the continental shelf. Petrobras, Brazil's largest oil company is moving Brazil from being nearly 100 percent dependent on foreign oil imports only some 50 years ago, toward becoming a net oil exporter in the next few years. How? Brazil has realized spectacular results by developing the technology to drill ultra-deep offshore wells in Brazil's Barracuda and Caratingua oil fields, in the Campos Basin some 50 miles into the Atlantic Ocean east of Rio de Janeiro.
While the geology suggests the Campos Basin oil-rich deposits formed when the sea level was lower than today, the deposits suggest that the area was most probably still underwater when the sand and mud deposits flowed into the area.Of course he's wildly misrepresenting the fossil-fuel theory. Oil comes from marine or lake algae, (or river algae in the case of deepwater oil) not dinosaurs, and there need not be any close relationship between the age of the source rock and the age of the reservoir rock.With the geological description of the rock, "Fossil-Fuel" theorists are going to have a hard time positing that ancient dinosaurs and decaying prehistoric flora were the cause of the oil. The geological description sounds like the area was already well underwater when mud and sand run-off from the shore deposited sediment. The abiotic theory of oil seems more consistent with the geology, arguing that this type of deposit was sufficiently porous for upward-seeping hydrocarbons naturally formed in the Earth's mantle to pool in reservoirs.
Dr Corsi concludes his thesis with this barb:
Looking at the experience of Petrobras in Brazil, we are led to wonder why the United States is leading in ultra-deep oil operations. Few countries in the world have the extensive offshore territory enjoyed by the United States. Why aren't we resolved to become oil independent by exploring offshore oil with the aggressive resolve demonstrated by Petrobras?If you were wondering which esteemed engineering school Dr Corsi graduated from:Our problem seems to be that the current coalition of radical environmentalists, "Peak-Oil" and "Fossil-Fuel" pessimists, and the political Left are unwilling to step down their rhetoric long enough to look rationally at some real world empirical results.
Jerome R. Corsi received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972 and has written many books and articles, including co-authoring with John O'Neill the No. 1 New York Times best-seller, "Unfit for Command - Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry." Dr. Corsi is an expert on political violence and terrorism and founder of the Iran Freedom Foundation.While the technical achievements of Petrobras are indeed considerable, it doesn't take long to refute the main point: proven reserves in Barracuda are 867 mb, while those in Caratinga are 362 mb. Given that annual global consumption is 30gb, total reserves in these fields represent 11 and 4 days of global consumption, respectively, suggesting we might not want to get too excited about the giant-ness of these fields. Compared to giants of the past, we could consider:
- Ghawar (60-131gb, depending on who you believe), 70-150 times larger than Barracuda
- Burgan (66-72gb), 81 times larger than Barracuda
- Samotlor (20gb), 23 times larger than Barracuda
- Kirkuk, Iraq (16gb), 18 times larger than Barracuda
- Prudhoe Bay (13gb), 15 times larger than Barracuda
- East Texas (6gb), 7 times larger.
- etc, etc
For those wondering, here's the problem of declining field discoveries:
Source: Jean Lahererre.
Secondly, given Dr Corsi's recent history of involvement with well-funded extreme right-wing causes, are we seeing the start of a comparable campaign against peak oil? I wonder is he acting alone here? Besides the Swift-boat attacks on Senator Kerry, the Asia Times reports on his work attempting to undermine the Iranian government (not that I'm any fan of that regime), for which he was thanked by both President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
Media Matters for America documents some of Dr Corsi's past public opinions:
On Islam and Arabs(This is just a small selection - there's a lot more of the same flavor, and they extend over several years). Media Matters also has an interesting audio clip of Dr Corsi apologizing for these comments, and claiming they were all jokes, which was covered in the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and elsewhere.CORSI: Let's see exactly why it isn't the case that Islam is a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion? Where's the proof to the contrary? (04/24/2004)
CORSI: Islam is like a virus -- it affects the mind -- maybe even better as an analogy -- it is a cancer that destroys the body it infects... No doctor would hesitate to eliminate cancer cells from the body. (11/26/02)
On Senator John Kerry:
CORSI: After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal gradparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry? (03/04/2004)
CORSI: Kerry has a long history of Communist supporters. (03/12/2004)
CORSI: Kerry offers a clear choice. Anti-American hatred. (02/08/2004)
CORSI: John F*ing Commie Kerry and Commie Ted [Kennedy] discuss their plan to hand America over to our nation's enemies. (02/04/2004)
On Senator Hillary Clinton
CORSI: HELL-ary loves the Arabs so much (kiss, kiss Mrs. Arab*RAT) -- wonder how she would look in a Burkha? (05/21/2002)
CORSI: Mullah Ali'Gore-ah is very proud of his new Bin Laden beard and he hopes others in the Democratic Party will follow his lead. Hell-ary is disappointed she cannot grow a beard, but her press secretary reminds us she can still enroll in flight school. (01/07/02)
CORSI: Did the Journalist see Chubbie Chelsea among the wives. Little Katie Communist [Katie Couric] on the NBC Today show interviewed Hillary this morning and mom is worried sick about Chelsea. She was last seen in Kandahar at a Starbucks. But now, as Little Katie Communist sighed, "Who Knows?" Even British disinformation planted reports such as this grocery crap will be useful. Anyone with information about Chubbie Chelsea's whereabouts should post it now. Mom wants to know her daughter is out of harms way. Mom also wants to be at the center of the story. (11/29/2001)
Part of Dr Corsi's agenda seems to be to suggest that Peak Oil is a left wing movement (a point he expanded on last night). This simply is not the case. While there certainly are left wing peak oilers such as Richard Heinberg, believers in peak oil include the conservative republican Roscoe Bartlett, good capitalist economists such as James Hamilton, republican investment banker Matt Simmons, and that's not to even start on the neofascists. Peak Oil totally crosses the political spectrum, and I don't think Dr Corsi is going to make that particular framing of the debate stick, though I think we can expect him and whoever his allies turn out to be to make a vigorous effort.
If indeed the Swiftboating of Peak Oil is beginning, it is striking that the arguments are so very weak, and the champion so lacking in credibility. Is this really the best they can do? If so, it suggests things might be about to get very ugly, as mud is thrown in all directions in a desperate attempt to disguise the paucity of their position.
So it would be the right thing to keep trying to educate people on the issue, but if we really were fighting a concerted attempt by "the powers that be", including the main stream media, then what would be the right strategy?
Personally, I am pessimistic that our society will do much of anything in anticipation of this coming crisis, so I'll look at this as just another test of my opinion. Didn't Matt Simmons participate in Cheney's energy policy? From this and most of the actions, clearly they know about peak oil. If letting the public in on the idea was something they wanted, it could have happened long ago. And if that line of reasoning is logical, then clearly these types of tactics should show up as soon as the issue gains any public traction.
So my conclusion is that is the swift boat stuff is happening, then we know at once that PO is real, that a certain group does not want it to be publicized, and we know who that group is.
However, if PO is real (and I am afraid it is, but I hope it is not), then no amount of rhetoric will solve it.
There is a big difference between Swift-Boat-lookalike-talk about policts on one hand, and Swift-boat-lookalike-talk about PO. The biggest one being: The price of Gas and or NG.
Pity is though that talks like this influences people and keep them from taking action. Although even that is not as strong as I would have guessed: SUV sales are down significantly (al-be-it for multiple reasons)
So perhaps Corsi thinks if someone in denial about PO wants to buy a book to reinforce their opinions, why shouldn't he be there to sell it to them?
Otherwise, just another extremist hatchet man for hire I think.
The poll numbers suggest they will succeed. The recent Pew Poll showed that 57% of the public feels that energy is more important than the environment.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
- 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 :-)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?
I am sure that we will be forced to take these two paths anyway and better soon then later. BUT I am perfectly aware that both of them represent some kind of compromises. We are buying time not to face the fact that we are slowly cutting the brach we sit on, and this is the much more important issue in the long run. Indeed there are some extremists that would rather see our whole system collapsing (and the sooner, the better) but I do not tend to join... After Rome the dark ages continued more than 10 centuries; without easily reachable fossil fuels how long will the next dark ages last? Will there be a way out of it? I can not be sure...
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.
Godwin's Law - even though you're right, you lose, LevinK
I personally think that you could have made the same point with Attila the Hun or Jabba the Hut, or, for that matter, Judy Miller
But if you take a deeper look you will see that I did not make a comparison. Just the opposite - I was arguing against frivolous comparisons and associations put outside of their context.
Honestly, I get your point, and your further point - it's just that this thread is now over 100 comments (on an article pulled off the source site, no less), much of it OT rambling, and surely it proves Godwin's Law as well as Corsi's argument proves abiotic. (Godwin's Law includes factor n, and I think we're at n+ on this topic.)
A classic statement of the extractionist/suit approach to peak oil. We need rigs to put a dent in peak oil.
Peak oil (and global warming) require a demand response, not a supply response, and the sooner we realize that, the better off we'll be.
We have more than enough pens in Washington and the statehouses to do the following:
Employer trip reduction
Area-wide ridesharing
Public transit improvements
HOV lanes
Park and ride lots
Bike and walk facilities
Parking pricing at work
Parking pricing: non-work
Congestion pricing
Compressed work weak
Telecommuting
Land use planning
Smog/VMT(Vehicle Miles Traveled) tax
Public appeals to reduce consumption without price effects
Public appeals to reduce consumption with price effects
Ban on motor sports events
Ban on driving by car to large scale events
Speed restrictions
Ban on driving every second Sunday
Ban on driving every second Weekend
General ban on Sunday driving
Restriction on use by administrative degree (public authorities set days on which drivers are banned)
Restriction on use by registration number (on each weekday two final registration numbers banned)
Implementation of fuel supply ordinance (rationing)
Saving Oil In Hurry, P. 27 (IEA)
Yes, conservation is where the effort should be spent, not futile efforts to extend an ultimately doomed supply (whether it be 2005 or 2012) - especially by damaging the environment to do it. You claim to be an optimist - if you can maintain that outlook in the face of all that has happened in the last 5 yrs (I would go back farther than that actually), then indeed you are. I'm not. I'd jump for joy to see some serious national programs to promote conservation and environmental stewardship, but it ain't gonna happen. And that is why I am interested in supply - not because I think we should even try to increase it - but because I'm trying to figure out when the delta between supply and demand will be great enough to cause major problems. And I do not believe significant reductions in demand will happen anywhere near as easily as you do.
BTW, you should not assume that everyone at TOD is a Cheney wannabe or budding neofascist. It's untrue and insulting. If you'd can the attitude, I might actually find your posts to be worthwhile, and you might find you have common ground with more people here than you think (wouldn't that be the optimistic perspective?).
The House killed the republican attempt to drill ANWR last week. How did that happen, if 'it ain't gonna happen?'
The idea that "saving the environment is impossible" doesn't sound like a very good starting point for action on the environment. It's similar to silent collusion -- watching a crime, but not calling for help. There's not that much difference between "we should drill protected areas" and "we will drill protected areas".
One can step back and view the situation from many different angles:
- As a society (or species) should we continue to invest in an energy delivery/ consumption infra-structure that brings us to a dead end?
- Given that no Plan B was started 30 years ago (in the 1970's) when Jimmy Carter warned us, should we not try to stretch whatever we have left as we now finally start to understand Peak Oil and we now start doing something about it?
- Half the Petri dish is now gone with regard to forests, pristine land, etc. Should we finish it off? Pave over Paradise?
There are pros and cons on both sides of the fence. It is not one of those questions with clear answers. We should respect alternate points of view on this issue. Myself, I'm opposed to ANWR based on items 1) and 3) but I can understand where Matt Simmons might be coming from based on item number 2). We need the oil to build the more sustainable infra-structure. But will "we" use it for that?It's hardly over yet. It will now go to committee; where such unpopular things can get put back in without so much public scrutiny. And even if it doesn't happen this time, it will only take another dollar or two per gallon to soften people up enough. We can call it the "Healthy Alaska" initiative.
There's not that much difference between "we should drill protected areas" and "we will drill protected areas".
Bull. Your assumption is that I would give up fighting against it just because I think it is probably hopeless. Look around you - environmentalists and conservationists have been crushed on almost every issue for years. Even the small efforts Clinton took have been largely rolled back. And as people's lives get more difficult, do you think they'll be more interested in the environment? Probably what would be most helpful environmentally would be for change to come slowly, and for people not to get spooked, but since we are not doing anything in that regard I am not hopeful. That does not mean for a moment that I will give up.
But so what?
You don't pick your mates on the Life Boat.
Be glad you're still in the boat.
Tomorrow, after we survive, then we can go back to squabbling over whether the egg is best broken near the big end or the little end.
(As did the Liliputians in Gulliver's Travels)
- Employer trip reduction - doable as it will not truly hurt the economy much
- Area-wide ridesharing - non-governmental, doable, can be organized without "pens" to make it happen
- Public transit improvements - requires capital. Who's paying for this again?
- HOV lanes - requires capital. Who's paying for this again?
- Park and ride lots - requires capital. Who's paying for this again?
- Bike and walk facilities - requires capital. Who's paying for this again?
- Parking pricing at work - doable, but revenue is highly likely to go into general funds to be spent on buying votes simply based on past congressional performance. Also taxes or fees like this drain money from an already weak economy, placing it closer to serious recession.
- Parking pricing: non-work - same as above
- Congestion pricing - same as above
- Compressed work weak[sic] - hurts the economy by removing service revenue from those businesses that support workers in other businesses.
- Telecommuting - hurts the economy for the same reason, cannot be done for many jobs at all
- Land use planning - political death for any politician that attacks suburbia so he can never fully implement such an idea (he'll be gone first)
- Smog/VMT(Vehicle Miles Traveled) tax - hurts the economy, and funds go into general revenue to be spent on more useless pork
- Public appeals to reduce consumption without price effects - history shows that these actually work to limited degrees
- Public appeals to reduce consumption with price effects - same as above but hurts economy
- Ban on motor sports events - doable but could create a huge backlash from ignorant voters
- Ban on driving by car to large scale events - same as above
- Speed restrictions - doable but political backlash again
- Ban on driving every second Sunday - doable but politically unpopular
- Ban on driving every second Weekend - same as above
- General ban on Sunday driving - same as above
- Restriction on use by administrative degree (public authorities set days on which drivers are banned) - hurts economy
- Restriction on use by registration number (on each weekday two final registration numbers banned) - hurts economy
- Implementation of fuel supply ordinance (rationing) - doable but politically impossible
Now, when I say politically risky or impossible, I mean in the current climate. No politician is going to seriously propose your list right now or in the near future. It would be political suicide, and that politician would be out of office unable to do anything about the looming crisis. In fact, it's not until the voters have seen "pro-growth" elected representatives repeatedly fail that they will consider another option. And in some cases they never will consider another option. Because of these social factors, even politicians sympathetic to a position tend to drag their feet on almost any issue in the world that might have even a tiny negative economic effect.So yeah, JD, all those things could be done but do you really expect them to be done without the nation first experiencing a crisis of major magnitude?
This is the frustrating thing about peak oil and even about global warming - we can solve these problems right now. It does require changes in lifestyles. It does require changes in the economy (like beginning to retire the consumer economy). It's all doable. Yet year after year we drag our feet, greenhouse gases continue to accumulate, and global warming's effects grow larger and more obvious.
The problem is not technically solving the question, JD. The problem is socially solving the question. While you can lead the public to water, you can't make them drink. The larger problem is education. Solve that and we're home free. But if you don't, we'll keep sending troops to die in oil rich locations in a vain effort to prop up the current way of life until it just cannot be propped up anymore. As a culture, industrial civilization is behaving like Jared Diamond's Easter Islanders - determined to cut down that last tree and the future be damned. Let's just hope we are not left with the same choices as the Easter Islanders, namely eating one another until no one is left.
The question is not "Can we solve the problem?" Rather, the real question is "Will we solve the problem?" And I remain pessimistic about the real question.
this doesn't require much in the way of money if you turn existing lanes into HOV lanes. what this will cost is political capital. it seems like the political will to get the mentioned list accomplished along with other needed changes is what's lacking. are you telling me that there is not one person in america with the guts and the knowledge and the character to lead this change? or maybe we WILL have to wait until the pain sets into the public in a more really way before true leadership stands up. i think the best we can do is have some answers ready for that day and push for intelligent, responsive leadership- not reactionary dictators.
And that's my point - it's all technically solvable just as we could have been on Mars 20 years ago was a technically solvable problem. The problem almost always boils down to lack of political will to do a thing (regardless of what that thing is).
Look at the simple problems even, such as solving the health care crisis in the US and our inability to address even that. Again, it's not a question of can we but will we? When I see us foundering of the small stuff, I just cannot bring myself to have faith that we'll somehow miraculously manage the big stuff.
There is a sort of chicken and egg problem here. A politician cannot get too far ahead of the people, but can work behind the scenes to prepare the people so that they are ready for something. The lazy and less couragous politicians simply wait for the winds of change to start to blow before doing anything, but even that is an oversimplification. There is plenty of blame to go around without trying to lay blame entirely on the backs of politicians.
I've been a ditch digger before, I can do it again.
So few people even know where oil comes from to make any real difference to western ways of life. I have asked people about Peak Oil and tried to inform them, in almost all cases the average man on the street just doesn't understand either the enormity of the problem OR what part they play in it...! The ONLY thing that will turn their heads is real pain in the form of severe economic problems or worse, I can't see meaningfull change until well after Peak Oil has passed at which time it will be too late to mitigate the fallout to any large extent. That is no excuse not to try but I for one intend making whatever plans I can to reduce the impact on myself and my family.
Politicians cannot help here, they are servants to the public, until the public have realised and acknowledged the problem attempting to make the hard choices required would simply lead to the parties concerned losing control.
(btw someone tell me how that is even possible to reduce our foreign oil dependence, absent a great depression? pols like Hillary use this dependence issue as a generic talking point, as if simply passing some piece of legislation could make this actually happen and thus make all well on the energy front).
This guy Raymond Learsy poo-poo's peak oil; he blames the evil OPEC cartel for creating false scarcity:
http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2005/Learsy.html
His ideas may become very convenient for politicians; it's always easier for pols to play the blame (someone else) game, and implement 'solutions' like windfall profit taxes, make threats to OPEC, etc. as opposed to facing up to actual unavoidable reality.
If gasoline prices reach $8 per gallon in the US, however, it would mean prices in the general range of EUR 2.5 per litre here. THAT would certainly cause demand destruction even here.
I was actually thinking about these 4-5 billion people or so, that live with some 5$ a day or less. Obviously if the world-wide price of gasoline (without taxes) reaches 8$ per gallon we will have to somehow persuade them to live without oil... which will not be that easy I guess. I'd expect some kind of revolution to happen long before that.
BP is out there on the airwaves advertising like crazy
that they are the "Beyond Petroleum" company.
I think blogs like TOD do have an effect.
Companies and politicians do not want to face Blog-Barassment (being embarassed by having been scooped by the blog community the way Dan Rather of CBS went down with that obviously forged letter re Bush & National Guard).
To avoid the appearance of having been caught with their pants down, companies like BP and Chevron are out there, sending mixed messages on how they are the good guys, so people won't blame them when the SHTF (sh*t hits the fan)
I myself have become very interested in the question of how and where petroleum formed and have an open enough mind to allow for the possibility that oil may have been formed in a manner different from that described in geology textbooks. However, and this is the thing that is so hard to explain to people with zero technical background, whether oil was formed from living matter or abiotically has little if any bearing on the issue of declining production and the difficulty in extracting a viscous liquid from a marginally porous rock formation several miles deep.
A main argument of the abiotic proponents is that established petroleum geologists have been so indoctrinated by the biotic theory that they restrict their explorations to sedimentary formations consistent with that theory and refrain from exploring those formations consistent with the abiotic theory. In short, they are saying that we simply aren't looking in the right places.
While this can easily be refuted by a knowlegable petroleum geologist, the discussion gets very technical and that's where you lose the attention of the general public.
I fear these arguments are going to become less technical and more ideological and political. The public will be pursuaded by the party that has the best rhetorical skills and the best PR instincts. Unfortunately, petroleum geologists aren't famous for either.
The reason I'm now focusing mostly on how I will prepare for my family and myself is that I have no faith that the society at large will prepare at all - in fact it seems there are interests that are actively discouraging any attempt to inform the public. There are many reasons this could be happening, but I really don't care what they are, the end result will be the same. I'm just trying to do my best to figure out what the conditions are going to be.
It's not that I don't care what happens to everyone else - I'm not that callous, or foolish enough to think I can survive without a social network. But realistically, getting the truth out will be an uphill battle even without active disinformation.
This is the heart of the problem. Try and converse with people on complicated subjects and you've lost them. Building an argument of data sets supporting hypotheses and then extrapolating to a new conclusion is very difficult with most people. My experience is that very few people can keep track of the facts from beginning to end, or want to make the effort.
Logical arguments don't mean anything anymore. Catch phrases and emotional messages are driving decisions. Many of these decisions are truely irrational, if looked at closely. Having a national education program about peak oil in the face of short emotional messages stating the opposite is doomed to fail. We are a nation ripe for propaganda.