{"id":19550,"date":"2016-04-05T12:01:03","date_gmt":"2016-04-05T17:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19550"},"modified":"2016-04-05T12:01:03","modified_gmt":"2016-04-05T17:01:03","slug":"peak-oil-we-all-do-this-but-pt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19550","title":{"rendered":"Peak Oil: We All Do This, But\u2026. Pt 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Peak Oil: We All Do This, But\u2026. Pt 2<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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\"IMGP0361\"<\/p>\n

I ended last week\u2019s\u00a0post\u00a0on the topic of Confirmation Bias*\u00a0with these questions:<\/p>\n

After all, who among us wants to be wrong about important matters on which we\u2019ve staked no small amount of credibility?<\/em><\/p>\n

But what if being wrong about those important matters winds up being the least of our problems?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s human nature to seek out information, evidence, opinions, etc which support positions we\u2019ve taken on a wide variety of topics. Contentious political and social issues provide glaring examples of this from both the left and right sides of the various debates. Climate change is certainly one of the more noteworthy subjects.<\/p>\n

So is peak oil. I\u2019m of the clear opinion that our future energy needs are not going to be based on an endless, forever abundant, affordable, easily accessible fossil fuel supply. I\u2019m not alone, of course. There is an equally vocal, and more prominent contingent on the other side of this debate, claiming we peak oil proponents are nothing more than doom-and-gloom messengers who\u2019ve been consistently wrong in predictions.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the starting point.<\/p>\n

The conflicts arise in part because of what one relies upon to support his or her position. In some instances, there are actual facts in dispute [some shaded to suit one\u2019s inclinations, of course]. But in too many other instances\u2014peak oil and climate change among them\u2014one side has a clear tendency to not just restrict the facts relied upon to a select and duly-massaged few, they also completely ignore a more substantial and substantive body of evidence.<\/p>\n

Offering statements with an assortment of qualifiers [\u201cif\u201d; \u201cpossible\u201d; \u201ccould\u201d; \u201cpotential\u201d, etc] may offer those proponents some assurances that they are essentially correct. But to ignore an entire body of evidence contradicting\u2014or least casting some reasonable doubt\u2014on their staked positions calls into question motivations for disseminating partial truths.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peak Oil: We All Do This, But\u2026. Pt 2 I ended last week\u2019s\u00a0post\u00a0on the topic of Confirmation Bias*\u00a0with these questions: After all, who among us wants to be wrong about important matters on which we\u2019ve staked no small amount of credibility? But what if being wrong about those important matters winds up being the least […]<\/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":[3],"tags":[141,617,11973,10552,12823],"class_list":["post-19550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-climate-change","tag-peak-oil","tag-peak-oil-denial","tag-peak-oil-matters","tag-peak-oil-vision"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19550","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=19550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19551,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19550\/revisions\/19551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}