Report Blasts "Peak Oil" Theory 640
Rei writes "Today, the Cambridge Energy Research Associates released a report dismissing the Peak Oil theory, suggesting that world oil production will continue to increase for the next 24 years, and then only level into a plateau. The report, which suggests that world reserves are enough to last 122 years at our current rate of consumption, also blasts Peak Oil theorists for repeatedly making unscientific predictions and then shifting them whenever their predictions fail to materialize."
Who pays their bills? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot like... (Score:1, Insightful)
You mean like global warming theorists?
I personally don't care (Score:4, Insightful)
No increase in oil demand? (Score:4, Insightful)
And, if our demand for oil increases?
Oh, I see. They assume our demand for oil will never increase. The developing world's demand for oil will never increase. China's demand for oil will never increase.
I'm usually not this blunt, but this seems like a good time: are the authors of this report FUCKING IDIOTS?
Public perception. (Score:2, Insightful)
I got news for these people (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternate energy sources and fuel conservation are a good idea under any conditions.
Just delaying the inevitable (Score:3, Insightful)
(Oh, well, nevermind that we really are going to run out sometime, and that all this means is our children or grandchildren will be stuck with the problem instead of us, or that this now gives us more time to think up solutions that we should take advantage of immediately. You're still a conspiracy nut and you're wrong. So there.)
I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
I say there's been so much doom-and-gloom about oil, every prediction I can remember about oil running out has been proven wrong time and time again. As our technology increases, we will find ways to get more oil out of existing locations and find new ones. Hmm. Go figure.
Hell, in 1879 Edison invented the light bulb. Who would have thought after 100+ years, the only thing a house from 1890 and 2006 would have in common is a lightbulb? And now the idustry is changing with LED bulbs for just about everything these days. I bet the next advancement doesn't take 100 years.
In oil, there's money. And a ton of it. So, advancement will happen much faster. We will use it more efficiently and get it from places we never thought possible.
Peak Impact More Important (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is that if the United States were cut off from foreign oil we would last 2.87 years at our current consumption.
But we wouldn't remain at our current consumption. Rationing and hording would be quick, which we got a taste of in the 70's IIRC.
Very little new oil is being found, but consumption is going up very quickly in countries like China and India. The rest of the world wants to live like Americans, and as they do there simply won't be enough. Period.
That may not happen today, and it may not happen in the next few years, but it will happen in the next few decades. And in my opinion that will be the cause of WW3 if it hasn't already taken place and no alternative energies fill the vacuum.
Re:No increase in oil demand? (Score:4, Insightful)
Statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
I smell an agenda. Of course much of the Peak Oil writing can be exaggerated, but my feeling is that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The statistics have also been reasonably accurate, and with so many oil companies over estimating reserves, how exactly are we to know what is cost effectively extractable?Hubbert estimated using the tried and true "what gets taken out of the ground" numbers. Saudi Arabia has not been able or willing to prove that they can draw more.
Like global warming it's an argument taking away from the real issues. With a bit of attention and care with most resources we can do just fine. We are simply not respecting our general environment.
Re:From the first link (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, the scarcer oil seems, the higher the price goes, and the more money the oil companies make.
Re:No increase in oil demand? (Score:5, Insightful)
"world oil production will continue to increase for the next 24 years, and then only level into a plateau."
Yeah, a plateau is NOTHING like a "peak". Oh, they expect it to ever again INCREASE after 24 years? It sounds like the wonks that pegged the peak as far off as 24 years, [which seems unlikely due to their constant demand criteria which we know is wrong] can't even twist the numbers into something that means my kids will live to the age I am now before their world is shattered by transportation and energy crisis.
Re:Peak Impact More Important (Score:3, Insightful)
Correction. Very little of the new oil that has been found is being allowed to be drilled for.
You think conservatives are big oil? The liberals ban oil exploration and than claim a shortage. Methinks the liberals must have lots of oil stock.
Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
And when we use up those, we'll find more, right? And when we use up those, we'll find more, right? And when we use up those...
The fact that at some point we will run out of oil is obvious (after all, how many times the mass of the planet can we possibly burn in oil?) People are just really bad at guessing when.
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing that really matters is whether what people say holds up under scrutiny. Is the data they use accurate? Are their conclusions valid? Do their theories agree with their data? Can their theories be falsified? Did they use proper methodologies when testing their theories and collecting their data? Did they cherry-pick?
What's that you say? That's hard? Tough shit. If you can't handle a rigorous discussion, shut the fuck up. You're not contributing. No matter what your mom or your school teacher told you.
In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don't like what they're saying. Is there a way we can slur them with a phony conflict-of-interest implication or some other kind of ad hominem? Dealing with arguments on their merits is too hard."
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't imagine why an energy research organization would actually seek out and listen to national energy secretaries in developing energy analysis - can't they just publish some near-term doom-and-gloom conclusions with only selective data like everyone else?
Re:Well, let's take a look at the speakers (Score:4, Insightful)
Steve
Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the price is predicted to increase (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hardware? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No increase in oil demand? (Score:3, Insightful)
There have been no new discoveries of major fields since the 1970s, despite of near continuous exploration by all the major oil companies and many smaller explorers.
That is the whole point of the "peak oil" prediction. No one expects the oil supply to run dry completely, merely the mismatch between demand and supply to result in prohibitive prices, which in turn will make production of plastics, international transportation and local commutes impractical from the cost point of view. This of course will result in a huge cascade of events since so much of the Western economes depend so foolishly on oil for nearly all of their transportation and manufacturing needs. The resulting economic upheavals is what "peak oil" is all about.
Re:Well, let's take a look at the speakers (Score:2, Insightful)
In other words, people with a REASON to LIE.
Sure, environmentalists would be biased as well. However, since there are going to be none present, it's going to be biased entirely the other way. +5 + -5 = NO SPIN ZONE! No but seriously, the point is that there's no balance, and that is damning evidence on its own.
Re:In other words (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case it seems to be estimating peak oil at 24 years out, instead of the now - 25 years out peak oil people are saying. They assume a clean shift away from oil at the "plateau" is all. There isn't a whole lot to dispute or refute. Their undulating plateau actually looks like it heads down quicklike around where the graph cuts off as a matter of fact. The best that can be said for it is that it is an optimistic peak oil aligned estimate.
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:5, Insightful)
The past has proven time and time again that reports provided by people backed by certain corporations, such as Cigarrette Manufacturers, Oil Firms and both the RIAA and MPAA are filled with half-truths, straight lies, clear misrepresentations of data (once the data is brought out into the public space), as well as a number of other "Dirty Pool" tactics.
Simply because of who is backing this report, the publishers of the report have a tremendous amount of work that they must perform in order to be taken as anything other than what any "corporate shill" will say.
If they are not 100% open with the methods they used, the data they collected as well as with the stastical analysis they performed, their work is going to be suspect. Perhaps their first line would be to see if they can get their report published in a peer reviewed scientific journal.
Personally, I would be far less skeptical of a piece that could make it into a peer-reviewed medical journal.
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even Slashdot does. For example why was this story classified as HARDWARE and not Science or Politics?
The people that say oil will run out have an agenda. They have a world view that colors everything that see. They may believe everything they say or believe that they must put everything in the most dramatic way so everyone so that they can move people to action.
The people that say that we have a lot more Oil feel exactly the same way and act exactly the same way.
The truth is that the "Peak oil" group is probably wrong.
Oh and these people are probably being overly optimistic as well.
In other words they are probably both lying but believing every word they say.
Then you don't understand (Score:2, Insightful)
Oil companies are evil. Their objective is to hurt people no matter how much it costs them.
Some of them are motivated by money. They are still evil. They are also extremely stupid and less informed about the oil business than your average Internet message board poster. The Internet message-board guys and the bloggers know more about how much oil is available than the oil company executives.
The oil price is going to skyrocket in the very near future because of Peak Oil (tm). The oil companies have oil in the ground. They could just stop pumping it for a year or two and sell it for $300 a barrel at that time. But they don't, because they're stupid and evil, unlike us message board posters and bloggers.
Now do you understand?
Re:Well, let's take a look at the speakers (Score:2, Insightful)
Mod parent +1 Funny!
Oh, wait, were you serious? You've heard of the government giving money to people and corporations for environmental causes, maybe? Hmmmmm.
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:5, Insightful)
>energy analysis - can't they just publish some near-term doom-and-gloom conclusions with only selective data like everyone else?
So when a single company with stated links to oil-producing countries comes up with the conclusion that we should continue to rely on oil, that's "seeking out and listening... in developing energy analysis", but when "everyone else" (and that does include pretty much everyone) comes to opposite conclusion, that's "doom-and-gloom... with only selective data"? That's some good, objective critical thinking skills you got there...
Re:No increase in oil demand? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:From the first link (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:5, Insightful)
These guys are legitimate. I'm quite sure their client list includes big oil, coal, etc, but their business is selling information to these companies, not shilling for them. The energy companies have plenty of alternatives for that.
That's not to say that CERA is right, but they certainly are worth paying attention to.
How does this "blast" peak oil theory? (Score:4, Insightful)
This report claims that after 24 years, an extraction plateau will be reached which will never be exceeded.
This reports idea is slightly different from that suggested by peak oil in that the "peak" in peak oil refers to the idea that production will actually fall at some rate, while this report suggests a plateau, but that doesn't really change the fundamental dynamic is that increasing demand for energy and other products of the oil industry (plastics, etc.) cannot, whether with a peak or a plateau (which is merely the "best-case" limit of a peak) be met with increased production, but instead higher prices.
While it certainly diverges sharply from the timeframe predictions of many peak oil theorists, it fundamentally confirms that principal problem envisioned by peak oil: a production limit that will be reached in a fairly short time.
(Of course, since the supply of oil is finite, unless the rate of extraction is lower than the rate at which geological processes create oil, it is clearly impossible for a plateau to hold in the longest term, so it seems unlikely that any "plateau" will be a long-term state rather than merely a transitional period before a decline.)
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which of those stakeholders will tell the public that the oil is running out, and they've planned their geopolitical economies around that curve for decades? Which of those people would avoid lying, manufacturing fake pseudoscience and cooked statistics, in the interests of truth, rather than their corporate profits?
Maybe if CERA were to say something contrary to the petrofuel industry's vested interests, they might be worth listening to - to investigate their facts, logic and conclusions. Until then, they're about as reliable as an oil slick.
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
b) People are tricksy things - some of them will find ways to clear the oil of the wells more efficiently.
I know that many of you out there are young, and you probably find the prospect of the mundane existence that we all share to be terrifyingly bland. Many of you are hoping, in your secret hearts, that *something* changes and the world becomes a much different place, where a 9 to 5 existence in a cube farm is no longer a possibility. So you latch on to disaster scenarios, like Catastrophic Global Warming and Peak Oil, because they offer the kind of dramatic "world-changing" catastrophe you hope to bear witness to - to be one of the survivors, one of the pioneers of the new, simpler Earth.
(and for those of you who read this and say "That's not me", that's fine. I'm not talking to you)
But Peak Oil is not the catastrophe you might hope it will be. It will result, at worst, in a gradual increase in oil prices, causing people and countries to shift slowly away from oil-consuming technologies. It might be messy, and there might be shortages (although virtually all shortages will be caused by government price caps), but the fundamentals of the market have not changed just because Peak Oil is capitalized.
Many people criticize CERA, and claim they are industry shills. Fair enough, I make no claim as to their veracity and ethical fiber. However, don't forget that the Peak Oil advocates are also receiving money and attention for their claims, and the more catastrophic a picture they paint, the more money and attention they receive. For a professor or a scholar, notoriety is as valuable as cash in terms of book deals, speaking engagements, etc.
Let's review:
- Demand for a good causes the price to rise.
- The rising price gives businesses the incentives to supply that good to the market.
- As the supply increases to meet the demand, the price levels off, reducing the incentives for new entrants.
- Changes in supply may cause existing suppliers to fall short.
- This causes other businesses to enter the market, and provide supply, possibly in a variety of new ways. Many of the world's paradigm shifts happen because a businessman discovers a novel and unusual way to solve a problem.
- This causes the supply to increase, or causes the demand to fall.
There is nothing about the oil industry that does not fit this model. We know that we don't capture all the oil from the existing wells. We know there are lots of alternatives, both in terms of oil-like solutions and solutions that are completely unrelated to oil (solar, nuclear, telecommuting). We know that as the price rises, people will drive their cars less (we saw that after Katrina, for example) *You* know that if the price of gas was $10 a gallon, you would find ways to reduce the number of trips you took, take public transportation, carpool or walk, or find other ways to reduce your personal gas costs.Well, everyone else can take those options as well.
There is no catastrophe here. It is not going to happen. If you want to fret about a catastrophe, contemplate supervolcanos and asteroid strikes, and how much the survival of every living thing on earth depends on humanity's ability to advance technologically as rapidly as possible.
WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
Like, for example, the report pretty much dovetailing nicely with Peak Oil theorywith the only majot difference being when the peak happens?
Or how about that he report talks about ALL know oil sources, when in fact Peak Oil theory is based around EASILY recoverable sources, basically making this report an apple and oranges thing.
This is what Peak Oil sceptics don't get: Yes, we have a shitload of oil, but when you eliminate the stuff that's a PITA to recover, it doesn't leave a whole lot. It will probably take us a few decades at least to run out, but that downward slide is going to be a bitch.
I will believe this .... (Score:5, Insightful)
/. proves at least one point (Score:2, Insightful)
1) This article is about oil production, not oil consumption. We could very well be heading for the collapse of oil-based civilization, due to Hummers and China's booming thirst for oil. That doesn't mean this report is wrong, because it is about supply, not demand.
2) Contrary to the article's (somewhat) misleading title, the report isn't disputing that there will be a global peak in oil production. Instead, it disputes the (oft-rescheduled) temporal location of that peak, and the shape of the resulting down-turn (predicting a plateau and gradual decline, rather than a rapid drop-off).
It seems to me the root questions debated by the report are whether or not hard-to-extract oil should be included in our oil reserve estimates, and how much new technology will delay and soften the inevitable oil decline. Agree or disagree, we could all use a little more "rational and measured discourse".
Oil company ads in 1973, (Score:4, Insightful)
Fifteen years later, during the 1987 oil crisis, they ran a similar ad but this one said "at the current rate of consumption we have 200 years of oil left".
Amazing. In 15 years we lost 400 years worth of oil!!!
Both statements were right, of course, but what the oil companies were COUNTING on was that most folks would NOT understand that "at the current rate" doesn't mean that the rate wouldn't INCREASE. It seems that most folks STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND.
Now, we have politicians running for office with the promise that they will "replace oil fields with corn fields". To make matters worse, the US government is subsidizing corporations who make and run Ethanol plants, which immediately begs the question "If Ethanol is capable self-sustaining energy production sufficient to replace oil, why does it need subsidies?"
Independent studies by academic agricultural and environmental experts report that Ethanol requires an input of 54,725 BTU more for each gallon produced than you'd get by burning it. On the other hand, Ethanol industry sponsored studies claim Ethanol has a net energy of 17,058 BTU per gallon. Whose right?
Let's look at the problem in another way. Assuming pro-Ethanol groups are correct, how much Corn will it take to replace gasoline as a source of energy?
From http://www.farmdoc.uiuc.edu/marketing/grainoutlook
1) The USDA's January estimate of the size of the 2005 U.S. Corn crop came in at 11.112 billion bushels.
2) Planted acreage of Corn in the U.S. in 2005 totaled 81.759 million acres, with a calculated yield of 135.9 bu/acre.
From Ethanol industry sources we find that the more efficient Ethanol plants can generate 2.68 gallons of Ethanol from each bushel of Corn. Therefore, 11.112 billion bushels of Corn can supply 30 billion gallons of Ethanol.
A fact of chemistry that economic theory cannot change is that Ethanol supplies 76,000 BTU/gallon and gasoline supplies 120,000 BTU/gallon. In other words, it takes 1.5789 gallons of Ethanol to replace the energy in 1 gallon of gasoline. That COULD mean that 30 billion gallons of Ethanol will replace 19 billions gallons of gasoline. But, in reality, Ethanol produced from Corn replaces even less. From a pro-Ethanol website, http://www.ethanol-gec.org/corn_eth.htm#concl [ethanol-gec.org]:
"We conclude that the NEV of corn ethanol is positive when fertilizers are produced by modern processing plants, corn is converted in modern ethanol facilities, farmers achieve normal corn yields, and energy credits are allocated to coproducts. Our NEV estimate of 16,193 Btu/gal can be considered conservative, since it was derived using the replacement method for valuing coproducts, and it does not include energy credits for plants that sell carbon dioxide. Corn ethanol is energy efficient, as indicated by an energy ratio of 1.24, that is, for every Btu dedicated to producing ethanol, there is a 24-percent energy gain. Moreover, producing ethanol from domestic corn stocks achieves a net gain in a more desirable form of energy. Ethanol production utilizes abundant domestic energy supplies of coal and natural gas to convert corn into a premium liquid fuel that can replace petroleum imports by a factor of 7 to 1."
That "7 to 1" is 7 gallons of Ethanol are needed to replace 1 gallons of gasoline! Here is how it is figured: about 58,942 BTUs must be supplied from external energy sources for each gallon of Ethanol produced. To be self-sufficient Ethanol must return that energy, leaving only 17,058 BTU/gal available as excess energy. Or, dividing 120,000 by 17,058 shows that it will take 7.0348 gallons of Ethanol to replace eac
Re:WTF (Score:2, Insightful)
------RM
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:2, Insightful)
Often scientist are funded by someone with an axe to grind. Or funded by someone that presupposes they know the answer to the question at hand. Does that then mean all their data and their science is bunk? Can not someone be funded by an oil company and do real science? Are you implying this is not possible and does not happen. There ideas are inconvenient so let us just paint them as paid shills? I don't doubt that many of these industry funded scientists and environmentally funded scientist are trying and in many cases doing real science with honorable intentions. And it is reactionary and completely unfair to assume anyone you don't agree with a is a paid shill.
They are supposed to be debunking peak oil theory? (Score:5, Insightful)
Both theories look equally valid, as presented, and both have pretty much the same implications, with a 20 year time difference. Short term thinkers are the only ones that will be impressed by this.
OPECs reserves are all overexaggerated (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, did anyone notice the graph? Supply plateaus around 2030. Yet the demand curve goes straight up. Hello? Doesn't that mean oil will peak in 2030?! (And the graph even included alternative sources like liquid coal).
what exactly is meant by peak oil (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WTF (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the case of global warming, you have a set of scientific questions which have been asked and much progress has been made on answering them. The scientific findings have been willfully distorted by outsiders, but nearly all credible climate scientists agree that human activity is an important driver of climate change. Disagreers include a few credible scientists and a lot of shills, hacks and some journalists brazen and arrogant enough to claim to know James Hansen's argument better than Hansen himself (paging Mr. Crichton...). A settled scientific consensus about the facts on human impact on warming does not answer exactly what pathway that warming will take, much less presume to decide what the best policy for addressing that will be. And the debate has nothing to do with Earth making up its mind how much to warm - the warming is reactive to the activity, not the activity itself. So scientists are answering a question about a system that is basically independent of them and their activities. They want to be right, but they don't directly affect its functioning.
In the case Peak Oil, there is still considerable disagreement among reputable oil geologists, industry analysts and academicians. Not only that but the amount of produceable oil is a direct function of how industry behaves - the activity itself directly governs how the phenomenon plays out. CERA and its clients directly affect the functioning of oil extraction. So the right question is not whether CERA has an interest in presenting the data a certain way, but whether they are credible industry analysts. Despite the fact that what I've read leads me to believe Kenneth Deffeyes over CERA, I don't think it's fair to suggest that they're trying to take an established conclusion and misrepresent it. And to understand their biases, you need a pretty thorough understanding of how the oil industry and oil markets work.
The only question I've ever seen presented that comes close to the question of misrepresentation is about proven reserves. There have been a number of claims of Saudi Arabia and other vastly overstating their claims. If that's true, should CERA know that? If they do know are they misrepresenting what they know? I don't know CERA, but I know that those are heavy accusations to make, and I'm not ready to make them.
Re:WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless we discover a source of oil that is infinitely-renewing (and renewed in a time period that is useful to our society), we _will_ eventually hit the "Peak Oil" doom-and-gloom scenario. It's inevitable no matter what kind of oil-recovery technology keeps on getting developed.
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's the fun part of this oil shenanigan. Who benefits from the perception of an oil shortage? "left wing" environmental crowd and "right wing" oil companies. Who funds all of these he-said, she-said studies proclaiming the oil shortage? Same groups.
Who gets screwed? That'd be you and me, compadre.
Does that mean that there's not an oil shortage? No. But I certainly doubt the integrity of the research.
Re:WTF (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe we will; but public policy should not be based on asumptions that a technological deus ex machina will come forth.
Re:OK... (Score:3, Insightful)
Peak oil is a theory regarding future rates of conventional oil extraction. It is not a prediction of impending doom or a crude oil price forecast, nor does it have anything to do with unconventional oil or alternative energy. Should some futuristic technology make petroleum obsolete, that would neither contradict nor prove peak oil; it would simply make it irrelevant.
Many people use peak oil as a foundation for their predictions of impending doom. Those predictions may or may not be nonsense. But debunking such predictions, as you seem to think you have done, hardly contradicts peak oil theory.
A plateau not good enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying that you should blindly trust anything that a tobacco company says about the effects of smoking. What you should do is not blindly trust anybody, and instead verify what's being said. Sadly, that seems to be too much work for some people.
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with that theory is that "everyone else" doesn't uniformly come to the [near term] "doom-and-gloom" conclusion that Peak Oil advocates do. Estimates vary (wildly) as to exactly how much oil remains that is extractable economically at current prices - and even more wildly when it comes to the amounts economically extractable as prices rise.
Pot, kettle...
Re:WTF (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like that old tube of toothpaste. You keep squeezing carefully and yeah, you'll get the last bits out only slightly slower than when you started... but when it's gone... it's really gone.
But on the other hand, the sooner it's gone the better right? I'm not scared of peak oil (or whatever the daily hand-wringing is about)... when the price of energy gets high enough other things will replace it and maybe my company will stop leaving the damn air-conditioning on 68 degrees ALL THE DAMN TIME.
Re:Who pays their bills? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying that you should blindly trust anything that a tobacco company says about the effects of smoking. What you should do is not blindly trust anybody, and instead verify what's being said. Sadly, that seems to be too much work for some people.
I believe his point was that people can't be experts on everything, and thus can't form properly reasoned opinions on everything by purely rational, scientific means.
There's lots of information out there. I can't verify the accuracy of all of it myself. I can try to rely on as little unverified information as possible (and manage to do so fairly well in my every day life), but when I need to make a decision (like a political decision, who or what to vote for or otherwise support) about which there is relevant information which I am pragmatically unable to verify myself, I've got to decide whose word to trust on that information.
I'm not interested in smoking at all, just because smoke bothers me and I find it a disgusting habit. So for me, I can just ignore the whole "does smoking cause cancer" issue and not trust anybody's word, because the answer it doesn't affect me. But if I was a smoker, then it would be very relevant to me whether or not smoking causes cancer. I can't conduct a vast and statistically relevant controlled study of smokers myself - I just don't have the time, money or knowledge to do so, and while I could probably get the knowledge to do so fairly easily, the time and money problems are pretty insurmountable.
So if I want to know about that, I've got to trust someone else's study. Whose am I going to trust? The tobacco companies? You seem willing to say 'no' there - why? Because they may be a biased source? Because they have financial motivations to fudge the data or even outright lie if they can get away with it?
That's the point. You're right, don't trust anybody if you don't have to. Verify everything you can. But when you *can't* verify something, and it's still relevant to you, and you need an answer... whose answer do you trust, and why?
Re:Check peakoildebunked.blogspot.com (Score:1, Insightful)