Re: Jim & Eric tell it like it is.
in response to
by
posted on
May 26, 2008 12:43PM
The company whose shareholders were better than its management
Jim and Eric are two of the best in the iindustry.
Did you listen to Jim Dines rant from last week?
Yeah, pretty grim stuff.
I know exactly how he feels too. Just last night I had an argument (a discussion really, I don't argue anymore) on the very subjects Dines talked about in the interview.
Old friends, mostly Greens, are convinced we're going to get through this crisis on good will and solar power. The really forward looking ones have hydrogen in their sights, but they still don't understand that it's not a fuel. That you have to consume something to produce it. Or you're just going to plug in your magical electric car at night and problem solved. No reference to where the electricity will come from. If you mention nuclear power as one source...well, you know the reaction (pardon the pun).
What these conversations reflect is a profound ignorance of how things actually work. You really can't have a meaningful conversation on these topics with people who don't understand basic science. I'm not talking rockets here, these people don't even get Newton. You try to explain things like T Boone Pickens did - 85M bbls produced, 87M bbls consumed - basic arithmetic - and their eyes glaze over.
I don't think my friends are that stupid. They have the capacity to understand and yet they won't. If you make a rational argument, they counter you with mystical proposals and feel-good rhetoric. None of them have the faintest idea how bad our situation is, and yet it's been staring them in the face for the last 30 years. This can only be denial. I think deep down they understand, but that it reflects a basic failure of their own beliefs that they just can't come to grips with.
I understand that too. It's hard to recognize and accept personal error and even harder to set about changing it. I had to discard years worth of my own youthful delusions to arrive at the point I'm at now - 180 degrees from where I started. Now that I'm here, what? Like Dines, Puplava, Noland et al, I'm just another voice in the wilderness. The best I can do is look out for myself and my family, and try to help others who've made the leap, like right now on this board.
Ah, goddammit - everytime I talk about this stuff it turns into a rant. You'd think I'd know better by now...