Feedback

During the past year or so, I have received a number of comments from D Carroll, mostly disputing my assertions about peak oil. (S)He has sent me evidence that fossil fuel production in this country has in fact stepped up recently due to advances in extraction methods such as "fracking" and the pursuit of less accessible sources such as oil shales. I dispute the wisdom of pursuing those courses.

In response to a more recent article on climate change, I received this comment and counter evidence. I wanted to share it with you because you deserve to know the opinions of other intelligent people that disagree with my viewpoint. I haven’t always responded to these emails, but I chose to this time because I wanted to express that, ultimately, our decision to change will rest not on the words of one or another, but on the preponderance of historical and scientific evidence, and a deep reflection on our role on this planet and the constraints that life itself places on us.

On Jun 19, I received this email from D Carroll:

"Switching from lack of energy to climate change as the bugaboo of the future?

James Lovelock=>

"The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened," Lovelock said. The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," he said. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that," he added. He pointed to Gore’s "An Inconvenient Truth" and Tim Flannery’s "The Weather Makers" as other examples of "alarmist" forecasts of the future.

"Back in 2004, Thomas Sowell was interviewed by the American Enterprise Institute:

"There’s something Eric Hoffer said: ‘Intellectuals cannot operate at room temperature.’ There always has to be a crisis–some terrible reason why their superior wisdom and virtue must be imposed on the unthinking masses. It doesn’t matter what the crisis is. A hundred years ago it was eugenics. At the time of the first Earth Day a generation ago, the big scare was global cooling, a big ice age. They go from one to the other. It meets their psychological needs and gives them a reason for exercising their power."

My reply:

Actually, both peak oil production and climate change have always been the drivers.

It’s incredibly difficult to decipher what the truth is nowadays because you can always find a source to back up practically anything you want, either on your side of the picture or mine. It comes down to each person’s sense of what is the best approach for humans on this planet within the web of life that we utterly depend on. Ironically, in this case, I am the conservative and you are the progressive. My deepest sense is that we have created a homocentric world overlaid on the natural world and that it will not stand the test of time.

I take the conservative view that we need to be very cautious about how we alter the balance of life on this planet, that we are not in control, and that we will simply be eliminated if we fail to live within the framework that billions of years of evolution have established. The ideal of man as the central purpose and reason for the earth, although deeply ensconced in our religious and philosophical heritage, is really a radical idea and unsupported by anything other than simple belief.

We can argue about the time frame, but the fact is that we are intent on mining all the easily available resources, including all fossil fuels, until they are solid gone with no regard for the welfare of the generations to come. We are even using renewable resources faster than the planet can replenish them. The sad part is that we are not only using them, we are frivolously wasting them on inefficient transport, heating overly large houses, making stupid playthings, and the end result is it is turning us into a bunch of soft headed, soft bodied, useless and clueless animals ripe for extinction. Our past is filled with examples of our failure to be humble in the presence of a life system of which we are a small part and only a very recently arrived part.

If peak oil and climate change turn out to be much farther off and more benign than the preponderance of evidence I see predicts, I would see it as both good and bad. It would be good to know that we have more time to make a controlled transition to a wiser course, but bad in that it would mean we have more time to dig ourselves deeper into the hole we are already in.

You and I are both using the facts as we see them to try to raise the awareness of people around us. In the free marketplace of ideas, we will just have to let people make up their own minds. I urge everybody, as I’m sure you do, to explore the issue on their own and arrive at their own conclusions. If people are inspired to think on our situation, find out what is really going on, and to act according to their best instincts, I don’t care if it is because they agree with me or because they don’t.

Let’s keep the discussion going. terry@vashonloop.com