I Explain A Few Things

Climate writer and Guardian (UK) newspaper columnist George Monbiot has written an interesting piece on peak oil. It's called We were wrong on peak oil. There's enough to fry us all. On that subject, George is all wrong of course because in the narrow sense he knows diddly squat about the upstream oil industry. Or as the Brits would put it, he knows bugger all. He is wrong in the broader sense because he knows even less about people than he knows about oil, as I will explain.

First, let's look at his misguided take on Leonardo Maugeri's crazy oil forecast. I wrote about this report in Optimistic Lunatic Says We'll Soon Be Swimming In Oil.

Among environmentalists it was never clear, even to ourselves, whether or not we wanted [peak oil] to happen. It had the potential both to shock the world into economic transformation, averting future catastrophes, and to generate catastrophes of its own, including a shift into even more damaging technologies, such as biofuels and petrol made from coal. Even so, peak oil was a powerful lever. Governments, businesses and voters who seemed impervious to the moral case for cutting the use of fossil fuels might, we hoped, respond to the economic case...

Peak oil hasn't happened, and it's unlikely to happen for a very long time.

[My note: crude oil production (no natural gas liquids) has been on a plateau for about seven years now.]

A report by the oil executive Leonardo Maugeri, published by Harvard University, provides compelling evidence that a new oil boom has begun. The constraints on oil supply over the past 10 years appear to have had more to do with money than geology. The low prices before 2003 had discouraged investors from developing difficult fields. The high prices of the past few years have changed that...

The country in which production is likely to rise most is Iraq, into which multinational companies are now sinking their money, and their claws...

[My note: Iraq—no kidding! That's why America invaded the place. Iraq has the world's last remaining easily exploitable oil reserves, and those reserves are substantial. The Empire would not have invaded Iraq if it were the world's biggest cabbage grower.]

When I deconstructed Maugeri's report, I honed in on the most important factor which discredits it—Maugeri is a wild-eyed optimist, which is a form of mental illness as far as I'm concerned. My reasoning is simple: the more removed you are from Reality, the more psychologically damaged you are.

For me it is sufficient to point out the exaggerated positive bias, so that's what I did. (We might call it Glass Half-Full Disease.) Everything else follows from that, but you also need to know something about the upstream oil industry to understand the details. In essence I was making a psychological argument, which one reader viewed as ad hominem, which is an attack on the man, not his reasoning.

Of course it was an ad hominem argument! I was saying Leonardo is crazy, so why should you believe anything he says? I then demonstrated this premise (to my satisfaction) by examining his over-the-top projections for shale oil production in the United States. Do you recall the phrase consider the source? Considering the source is a fundamental Rule of Life. Do not simply evaluate the content of what somebody says. You must also evaluate who that person is, what special interests he represents, whether what he says is self-serving, and so on. That rule applies to me, too.

I also said the following in the introduction to that post—

Optimism is a natural tendency of the human mind, and is expressed through various positive cognitive biases which researchers have discovered over the years. It should not surprise us then that this tendency is exaggerated in some individuals whose brain chemistry causes them to overdose on optimism all the time, much like thrill-seekers who get "high" on excessive risk-taking. Unfortunately, there is no antidote in either case, and even more unfortunately, humans are so dense and undiscerning that they can not see what's really going on when it becomes all-too-obvious that some person's Big Brain has gone completely haywire.

I often wonder if readers simply gloss over stuff like this without giving it a second thought. I was setting the context for what followed in my Maugeri post. The important part reads unfortunately, humans are so dense and undiscerning ... which brings me back to George Monbiot, for George literally can not see the excessive positive bias in everything Maugeri, who is a former industry executive, writes about oil. Maugeri's oil glass is not merely half-full, it is brimming over! The fact that Monbiot takes what Maugeri says at face value because George is an environmentalist who does not understand the upstream oil industry is secondary.

In short, Monbiot is not psychological, and the vast majority of human beings aren't either. Being psychological is a mode of perception. Considering the source is one way of getting around this unfortunate limitation. Look out for conflicts of interest, hidden agendas or people with axes to grind. You don't actually consider what Glenn Beck or Michele Bachmann say, do you? You don't have to if you are able to see that Glenn and Michele are crazy. Extreme optimists like Maugeri or the rational optimist Matt Ridley are crazy in a more subtle way.

Remember, we are dealing with human beings here. We are not dealing with rational beings. Rationality is merely a veneer. It is a human conceit.

However, Monbiot rallies somewhat at the end of his column. I found these remarks very interesting.

There is enough oil in the ground to deep-fry the lot of us, and no obvious means to prevail upon governments and industry to leave it in the ground. Twenty years of efforts to prevent climate breakdown through moral persuasion have failed, with the collapse of the multilateral process at Rio de Janeiro last month. The world's most powerful nation is again becoming an oil state, and if the political transformation of its northern neighbour is anything to go by, the results will not be pretty.

[My note: take this "enough oil in the ground to deep-fry" us all with a grain of salt, as just discussed.]

Humanity seems to be like the girl in Guillermo del Toro's masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth: she knows that if she eats the exquisite feast laid out in front of her, she too will be consumed, but she cannot help herself.

I don't like raising problems when I cannot see a solution. But right now I'm not sure how I can look my children in the eyes.

If I didn't "like" raising problems for which I can not see a solution, I would never say anthing on this blog!

But the important point here is that Monbiot is moving toward the DOTE position on global warming—the problem has no solution in the realm of human action. He has undergone a psychological shift. He has moved from an earnest writer of books like Heat: How To Stop The Planet Burning to a hand-wringing quoter of Pan's Labyrinth. Now he is wondering how he can look his children in the eyes. In short, George has gotten a clue he didn't want and doesn't know what to do with. Well, it's a start.

In the future, many more people will undergo the radical shift in their thinking George is experiencing. In fact, I might be so bold as to predict that in a mere 10 years, and certainly in 20 years, most "intelligent" people will hold the "negative" views I have expressed on DOTE. In 10 years it should be abundantly clear to anybody who isn't brain-dead that human beings do not have the cognitive wherewithal to solve the global warming problem, or any other global problem. In short, these people will become resigned to on-going human failure. Some of them might see, as if for the first time, the Human Condition for what it truly is (to paraphrase T.S. Elliot).

Most of these "intelligent" people will of course continue to blame governments and industry, as Monbiot does. They will never blame themselves. In this sense, they will never see The Big Picture.

I hope you found this post helpful. I wanted to explain a few things.

For you Americans, enjoy your July 4th holiday.

Comments

[Screech]

Mr. Cohen:

You wrote: "Considering the source is a fundamental Rule of Life. Do not simply evaluate the content of what somebody says. You must also evaluate who that person is, what special interests he represents, whether what he says is self-serving, and so on."

Let me suggest that if you have evaluated the content of what someone has said and have found it to be true then considering the source is simply not needed.

Indeed, information from an idiot can still be true. Rejecting data because the source is not trusted closes doors that should not be closed.

Thanks and Happy Fourth.

[rumor]

Some people sure do like to miss your point a lot, Dave. I thought you made it well, myself, over the last couple days.

[Graham Hardy]

Look. It doesn’t matter that our leaders do not ‘get’ the climate disaster we have made for ourselves. Man has been an awful custodian of our beautiful planet. With all the wars, hatred, cruelty, pollution and greed, man is not worth saving, in any just sense. If we kill all those species that we are indirectly responsible for, and if we, indeed, kill ourselves, then it will be only one more mass extinction event. The Earth has had them before, and will have them again.

Lovelock is right, humans are too stupid to prevent climate change. My only regret is that, at the age of 58, I will not live to see the full extent of the catastrophe that awaits mankind. I do take solace, in the fact that the Earth will recover, after many many years.

[spynetkilla]

"Rationality is merely a veneer. It is a human conceit." Academics at several think tanks on both coasts are planning long-term studies of the phenomena. The resulting report will give us a glimpse of what may happen many years from now, if we don't take the necessary precautions. Following calm, rational-sounding discussion on NPR, leaders will spring to action. Because they are in full control of their conscious minds, and follow their innate goodness.

Thankfully, the Planet Stupid Project of the George Carlin Center for Delusional Thinking and Human Affairs issues their own studies on a daily basis. This is the future! It just didn't turn out exactly like Star Trek, did it?

[Wanooski]

@spynetkilla, and yet, there are still people that think the future will turn out like Star Trek.

[Mike Roberts]

Screech,

Whilst it's possible that a crazy person might accidentally hit upon something that bears some vague resemblance to reality, that is no reason to seek out, or consider, the opinion of all crazy people. The only reason to possibly do so is when you know that other people are actually unaware that the crazy individual is crazy. In this case, deconstructing the crazy bloke's ideas might be useful. But for the aware person, there is no need to do that for any self education.

On another note, it seems that the National Ocean Service saw fit to issue their opinion, that mermaids don't exist, following a Discovery Channel fictional program. Apparently, "at least two people had written to the agency asking about the creatures." At least? Can't the National Ocean Service count beyond two?

[Dan]

"In fact, I might be so bold as to predict that in a mere 10 years, and certainly in 20 years, most "intelligent" people will hold the "negative" views I have expressed on DOTE."

Given our remarkable ability to (a) adapt to new realities and (b) be optimistic about the future, I think that's unlikely. Even now, the climate changes slowly enough that the shifts aren't (for most people) noticeable or obvious which means that it's relatively easy to adjust expectations about the future. I think it's more likely that in 2030, unless something really awful happens, people will look at the climate in 2050 and say, "Oh, it's only going to be 1 degree hotter in 20 years. That's fine - this article says we'll have fusion by then." Obviously what they ought to say is, "In 2050, it'll be 3 or 4 degrees hotter here than it was in the pre-industrial era and fusion is always 20 years away and even if by some miracle it does turn up, it's not going to make any difference anyway." But unfortunately we're just not made that way and our collective inability to speak the latter sentence in place of the former makes our fate a racing certainty.

[John Theodorou]

In a way, the world-view of the party imposed itself most successfully on the people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding, they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just like a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

George Orwell, 1984

[russell1200]

Take these two generalized statements:

The "new" methods of fossil fuel extraction cause a lot of pollution. The fossil fuels themselves cause global warming.

The world is getting short of fossil fuels.

A Republican who believes in endless expansion, might deal with these issues by disbelieving the first one, and pushing for an expansion of drilling.

A Environmentalist Democrat might choose to do the opposite:
believe the first and disbelieve/ignore the second.

You could see the split between the old school Democratic leadership in North Carolina with its base over the recent fracking bill. Leadership knows that the economy wins elections. The base has a lot of envirnomentalists.

[Robin Datta]

George Mobus, in his blog Question Everything, reviews Craig Diwoth's book < a href="http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2012/02/what-is-a-smart-species-like-us-doing-in-a-predicament-like-this.html">Too Smart For Our Own Good that addresses some of the issues you mention. In brief, thinking focuses on short-term advantages, neglecting long-term consequences.

[White Indian]

Most people need hope—however false that hope may be—to function, not being made of tougher stuff like Dave and other cynics; hence the rise of Salvationist religions, promising a heaven from the hell on earth we've created.

With the veneer of rationality a little thicker these days, the Salvationist religions are more secular, but nonetheless still religions of false hope. Catton calls them Space Age Cargo Cults in his text "Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change." http://www.ecoglobe.ch/overshoot/e/overcarg.htm

The human species' shipload of fail has indeed arrived.