{"id":11178,"date":"2015-08-18T07:45:26","date_gmt":"2015-08-18T12:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11178"},"modified":"2015-08-18T07:45:47","modified_gmt":"2015-08-18T12:45:47","slug":"true-believers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11178","title":{"rendered":"True Believers"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a title=\"True Believers\" href=\"http:\/\/kunstler.com\/clusterfuck-nation\/true-believers\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">True Believers<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">T<\/span>here is a special species of idiot at large in the financial media space who believe absolutely in the desperate and tragic public relations bullshit that this society churns out to convince itself that the techno-industrial high life can continue indefinitely, despite the mandates of reality \u2014 in particular, the fairy tales about oil:\u00a0<em>we\u2019re cruising to energy independence<\/em>\u2026\u00a0<em>the shale oil \u201cmiracle\u201d will keep us driving to WalMart forever\u2026 our wells doth overflow as if this were Saudi America\u2026 don\u2019t worry, be happy<\/em>\u2026!<\/p>\n<p>Such a true believer is John Mauldin, the investment hustler and writer of the newsletter<em>Thoughts From the Frontline<\/em>, who called me out for obloquy in his latest edition. After dissing me, he said:<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>I have written for years that Peak Oil is nonsense. Longtime readers know that I\u2019m a believer in ever-accelerating technological transformation, but I have to admit I did not see the exponential transformation of the drilling business as it is currently unfolding. The changes are truly breathtaking and have gone largely unnoticed<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mauldin is going to be very disappointed when he discovers that the vaunted efficiencies in shale drilling and fracking he\u2019s hyping will only accelerate the depletion of wells which, at best, produce a few hundred barrels of oil a day, and only for the first year, after which they deplete by at least half that rate, and after four years are little better than \u201cstripper\u201d wells. The PR shills at Cambridge Energy Research (Dan Yergin\u2019s propaganda mill for the oil industry) must have pumped a five-gallon jug of Kool-Aid down poor John\u2019s craw. He believes every whopper they spin out \u2014 e.g. that \u201cRight now, some US shale operators can break even at $10\/barrel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>True Believers There is a special species of idiot at large in the financial media space who believe absolutely in the desperate and tragic public relations bullshit that this society churns out to convince itself that the techno-industrial high life can continue indefinitely, despite the mandates of reality \u2014 in particular, the fairy tales about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[8227,331,412,449,8226,617,655,723,786,1358],"class_list":["post-11178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-energy-independence","tag-fracking","tag-hydraulic-fracturing","tag-james-howard-kunstler","tag-john-mauldin","tag-peak-oil","tag-propaganda","tag-shale-oil","tag-technology","tag-us-shale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11178"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11180,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178\/revisions\/11180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}