On Fri, 14 Oct 2005, Alex Cockburn was quoted as saying
> The Virtues of Gas Guzzling
> ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>
> Since I don't believe in "peak oil"...
By itself, not that remarkable a belief. What's remarkable is why: it's because he accepts without reservation the very interesting but extremely speculative view that everything we know about oil is wrong. While at the same time he categorically rejects the idea of global warming with a firmness that makes Bush look like a waverer. He seems to be going out of his to embrace every extreme minority scientific view, to put it kindly. Is he just being impish?
<quote>
So fill up at Citgo, at least until the price of oil drops and Chávez
decides to sell the chain to the Chinese. And what of "peak oil," the
theory that oil is about to run out? Since we're all supposed to die
of avian flu in the near future, who cares?--as there'll be no one
around to work the pumps or even drive up to them. I don't believe in
any effective role of man-made CO2 in global warming, a natural
cyclical trend. I think the mad rush to throw money at the
pharmaceutical companies for an avian flu vaccine is ridiculous. And
increasingly, I don't believe we're about to run out of oil. I hang my
hat on the views of Dr. Thomas Gold (founding director of the Cornell
University Center for Radiophysics and Space Research) as outlined in
his 1999 book, The Deep Hot Biosphere. Gold's view, supported by many
well-qualified people, is that oil doesn't come from dead dinosaurs
and kindred organic matter. Gold argues strongly that oil is a
"renewable, primordial soup continually manufactured by the Earth
under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance
migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by bacteria, making it
appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs." Oil,
Earth's renewable resource!
<end quote>
Full at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051031/cockburn
Michael