We're doomed! The errant message from peak-oil documentaries - Windpower Engineering (press release) (blog)
com, search on “peak oil documentary,” and you’ll find dozens of apocalyptic videos detailing an impending world crisis that is certain to befall us any day now. The crisis is the downside of peak oil. This is a period that defines when the world’s oil fields have provided the maximum monthly rate, leaving us an ever-decreasing flow rate. Consider: Oil apocalypse , The End of Suburbia , The End of Fossil Fuels , and my favorite: There is no tomorrow. Even in the more subtly titled Fuel, a serious commentator insists that hurricane Katrina was made by the oil industry. If you were born yesterday, these videos might be scary. The second message is that we cannot learn, we are scientific and engineering idiots, and today’s state of technology is the best anyone can do. Look closer and you’ll see many of these videos are getting long in the tooth. If you were not born yesterday, you’ll recall The Wealth of Nations or have read The Population Bomb (1968), excellent examples of end-of-days authorship. In both cases, authors Thomas Malthus and Paul Erlich, respectively, predicted exploding populations that would devour the earth’s resources and lead to mass starvation and chaos. But Erlich could have easily checked the population trends of the day to see he was likely to be. Source: www.windpowerengineering.com
