[lbo-talk] Output Falling in Oil-Rich Mexico, and Politics Get the Blame

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 3/13/07, Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> Doug Henwood wrote:
> > As I recall the finance literature, there's not enough of a history
> > to state authoritatively that stock returns are significantly
> > different from zero over the long term. Since we've had stock markets
> > for several centuries, that's a lot of data that still falls short of
> > significance. So how can we generalize from Hubbert's n=1?
> >
> > Doug
> > ___________________________________
> >
> Two points:
>
> 1.  "n = 1" is misleading.  In a time series, the n is the number of
> time samples; thus n is large here, not 1.  Moreover, every year
> provides another opportunity to test Hubbert's model, and every year U.
> S. oil production provides further data that is consistent with the
> model.  --Yes, despite all the political and economic pressure for the
> U. S. to become "energy independent", despite all the tax breaks to oil
> companies to subsidize domestic oil production, despite all the gee-whiz
> new technology to exploit existing oil fields and find new oil fields,
> U. S. oil production continues to drop, just as Hubbert predicted.

The problem is that the "peak oil" theorists extrapolate from the US
data on its existing oil fields to the USA in general and, worse, the
rest of the world, seeking to have people believe that we are running
out of recoverable oil everywhere.  That won't fly.  People who
understand the US record and yet are NOT committed to conversion to an
ecological system of production and consumption -- just about all US
capitalists, and a majority of Americans -- simply think, "OK, we then
have to get more oil somewhere else."  The greediest among them think,
"OK, we'll drill in wildlife refuges here and get foreigners to remove
their nationalist barriers to our investment -- and we'll go to war*
for that if we must -- while re-investing in coal, building more
nuclear power plants, and subsidizing ethanol."

Really, if you want eco socialism, you just have to get people to
support eco socialism without resorting to a factually baseless and
politically useless fantasy of crisis.

* <http://www.theonion.com/content/node/34132>
Counterpoint
Exactly How Much Oil Are We Talking About?

By Kenneth W. Parton
Americans For
Non-Alternative Energy
Kenneth W. Parton<br>Americans For<br>Non-Alternative Energy

I keep hearing the anti-war protesters chant, "No blood for oil! No
blood for oil!" But what they never seem to say is exactly how much
oil we're talking about. Don't you think that's pertinent information?
Are we talking a gallon of oil for every 10 gallons of blood? Or is it
more like 30 gallons of oil for every pint of blood? Because if it's
the latter, maybe a blood-oil exchange would be a good idea.

In the first Gulf War, roughly 300 brave Americans lost their lives.
Assuming that each of these soldiers shed an average of eight pints of
blood, that works out to roughly a pint of American blood shed per 60
million barrels of Kuwaiti crude saved from the clutches of Saddam. If
you ask me, that's a pretty darn good deal. If we can manage to swing
a similar trade this time around, then I say, "Bombs away."
-- 
Yoshie
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