Posted by
Gene on Thursday, July 03, 2008 5:43:11 PM
July 3rd, 2008
The New York Times, long a bastion of pessimistic liberalism, which is redundant, was peddling its negative petroleum wares and scares soon after 9/11: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9401E2DC123FF937A25753C1A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=4. The Times has never retracted its fearmongering view that the only recourse for America’s oil woes is to curb our insatiable lust for oil, in effect to cut back on our industrial production and lifestyle, to conserve ourselves into Third World status since there just ain’t no more oil to be had because of our limited “proven reserves.” That’s poppycock.
Whether the Commissioner of the U.S. Patent office ever said in 1899 that, “Everything that can be invented has been invented,” the sentiment nevertheless is aptly applied to that NYT article which reflects the narrow point of view of that former “Paper of Record.” It’s tantamount to believing that if you can’t see something then it isn’t there, such as available petroleum resources.
Granted, that story was published before the cost of oil hit the stratosphere on its way to the mesosphere. However, it still ignored the facts of unproven but far from unavailable oil reserves.
In 2006, the grand poobah of the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, said:
‘We are looking at more than four and a half trillion barrels of potentially recoverable oil. That number translates into 140 years of oil at current rates of consumption, or to put it anther way, the world has only consumed about 18 percent of its conventional oil potential. That fact alone should discredit the argument that peak oil is imminent and put our minds at ease concerning future petrol supplies.’ ” (http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/oil/. ) That article concludes with the admonition that “misinformation about future oil supply is something the media and government have the responsibility to correct” and incorporates great detail on the truth about oil reserves.
Another piece of significant interest is this item of information, http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news2.13s.html, which details a single source of oil deposits within our borders which could multiply ten-fold available domestic reserves, news that has gotten little attention from the Times or from anyone else.
Each for its own purposes, Big Oil, Big Government, and the NYT would have us believe that oil is in short supply when ...