‘The false threat of disappearing oil’ has brought about a mad scramble for renewable energy schemes, as well as imposition of ‘unnecessary and expensive conservation measures on a public already struggling through tough economic times.’
The ‘peak oil theory’ states that ‘geological scarcity will at some point make it impossible for global petroleum production to avoid falling, heralding the end of the oil age and, potentially, economic catastrophe.’
Some headline-grabbing scientists, economists, and energy spokespeople have come forward to put some shape and size to such a theory. One of these newfangled analyses is that peak oil shall happen within 10 years, or ‘a decade sooner than most previous predictions.’ The more pessimistic of the lot have already pronounced peak oil as currently happening.
The peak oil theory has really been promoted by interest-protecting scientists and business people, and fashioned out of ‘poor analyses of data and misinterpretations of technical material.’ Add to that is media trumpeting the alarmist propaganda, and you have one supposedly alarmed world.
Peak oil alarmist agitprop has three major claims: ‘that the world is discovering only one barrel for every three or four produced; that political instability in oil-producing countries puts us at an unprecedented risk of having the spigots turned off; and that we have already used half of the two trillion barrels of oil that the earth contained.’
These arguments, however, have been based ‘on anecdotal information, vague references and ignorance of how the oil industry goes about finding fields and extracting petroleum.’
Two of the vaguest and most misleading arguments of peak-oil advocates are: that the existence of “easy oil” is no more, thus making extraction now more difficult and cost-ineffective; and that ‘the earth was endowed with only 2 trillion barrels of “recoverable” oil.’
What is clear, however, is that the peak-oil alarmist propaganda harks back to one common message: that oil is a fast-approaching finite resource and must, therefore, increase in price.
Posted by GSerrano on September 3, 2009 in Energy, Environment · 0 Comment
