{"id":57172,"date":"2021-03-18T14:32:23","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T19:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57172"},"modified":"2021-03-19T06:55:49","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T11:55:49","slug":"the-tunnel-vision-problem-how-mineral-depletion-became-completely-incomprehensible-to-the-public-and-decision-makers-alike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57172","title":{"rendered":"The Tunnel Vision Problem. How Mineral Depletion Became Completely Incomprehensible to the Public and Decision Makers Alike"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tunnel Vision Problem. How Mineral Depletion Became Completely Incomprehensible to the Public and Decision Makers Alike<\/a><\/h3>\n
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A few days ago, I sent a comment to a blog where the author had cited\u00a0the “abiotic oil” hypothesis by\u00a0<\/b>Thomas Gold.<\/b>\u00a0He had read Gold’s book “The Deep, Hot Biosphere<\/a>” and, not being an expert in the matter, had believed that Gold’s ideas were correct and that the author had been unjustly ignored by the scientific community and by the oil industry.<\/p>\n

In my comment, I briefly discussed the matter and cited\u00a0an article that I had written<\/a>\u00a0together with other authors where we discussed Gold’s ideas, showing that they are\u00a0incompatible with what we know about the geosphere\u00a0<\/b>and the processes of formation of fossil hydrocarbons.<\/p>\n

Some of the commenters seemed to be completely clueless about the matter, and that was already worrisome. But the surprising thing was that one of the answers I received was that\u00a0I should avoid discussing political issues such as “peak oil” in a scientific discussion.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

So, after 20 years of scientific studies on the concept of oil depletion — in itself a necessary consequence of the fact that oil resources are finite —\u00a0the idea of “peak oil” has been transmogrified into a political slogan\u00a0<\/b>that has no place in a serious discussion.<\/p>\n

And that’s not just the case of peak oil. Try to mention “mineral depletion” in any discussion about the current economic situation, and\u00a0you’ll be treated like a slightly feebleminded person who is completely out of touch with reality<\/b>. Our problems, right now, are completely different as everyone sane in his\/her mind knows.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n

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The Tunnel Vision Problem. How Mineral Depletion Became Completely Incomprehensible to the Public and Decision Makers Alike Image source A few days ago, I sent a comment to a blog where the author had cited\u00a0the “abiotic oil” hypothesis by\u00a0Thomas Gold.\u00a0He had read Gold’s book “The Deep, Hot Biosphere” and, not being an expert in the […]<\/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":[4,6],"tags":[1453,22034,31054,2692],"class_list":["post-57172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-resource-depletion","tag-the-seneca-effect","tag-tunnel-vision","tag-ugo-bardi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57172","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=57172"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57174,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57172\/revisions\/57174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}