With the arrival of Peak Oil, the curtain has closed on Act 1 of the drama Petroleum Man. What will happen in Act 2? Chekhov said, "If there's a gun on the wall at the beginning of the play, by the end it must go off." In the world's nuclear arsenal are many guns on the wall. If life copies art, will there be an Act 3 in which the players, having learned their lesson the hard way, live sustainably? To explore these and other questions... FTW's Act 2 Blog. Read, comment, take heart! Orkin
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The critically acclaimed new film featuring Michael Ruppert.
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10 comments:
Is this a new edition that contains improved and objective research that the original lacked in its rush to romanticize an acquaintance of questionable character and judgement?
no.
for someone who despises us as much as you profess to, you certainly pay acute attention.
DESPISES you? My dear Jenna, studying a topic, person or group in order to better understand an issue from the perspective of the advocates has nothing to with despising anyone or anything. If there is anything I despise it is deliberate misrepresentation, advocates without knowledge, picking their position based on comfort, preconceived and ill conceived notions, all the while claiming they arrived at their position because of how well informed they are, how studied, how popular their opinion is.
To me this desire to avoid honest questions and understanding is like pilots conspiring to hide evidence of what happened during a plane crash because they don't like a bright light being shone on their actions, correct or not. Second guessing their every move for hours, a move they had only seconds to make. But this type of HONEST introspective happens for a reason, and that is to properly understand what went wrong, and make sure future pilots are trained to avoid mistakes, if in fact any were made.
Mike was once a current event, using FTW to publish spectacular claims on a topic he had neither training nor experience with. These are facts. It was entertaining to watch, but I have no interest in entertainment when it comes to the serious business and study of resource depletion and economics. Mike has figuratively and literally passed into the annals of peak oil history, no different than J.P Leslie or David White.
So the question was honest, is this an edition that contains more than the original romanticized view of Mike? I have no more interest in fluff and a girl friend's adulation than I do those pilots trying to make themselves look better during the investigation. Conclusions are only as good as the facts and objective analysis that goes into them, and if you cannot bring yourself to honestly include both sides of any issue, to discuss the credibility that others have who were then when mike's computers were smashed, what really happened in Venezuela according to Carlos, the reality of his character that required him to say one thing (all debts are paid!) when Wes Miller and a young lady named Lindsay have factual evidence to the contrary, then what is the point of buying and reading the book?
my dear reservegrowthrulz,
clearly you have not read the book. nor my original answer which was no. but thank you for going to such lengths to construct a most entertaining response.
If I am asking questions about the value of buying it, of course I haven't read it yet. But I have been through every blog post on your experience with Mike when he was in New York with you. I have read your intro on the back cover, and we have previously discussed the implication contained therein, as opposed to a perspective allowing for, daring to even MENTION who actually might have smashed Mike's computers.
And I am glad you are entertained, but my sense of humor with regards to my professional dissection of the peak oil movement is nil. The scope and importance of the topic is too important to be left to only ill-informed amateurs.
But I do understand the pilots, or their girl friends, trying to evade the objective and critical examination of their cherished beliefs or actions. Few are capable of undergoing an examination of their belief system without experiencing the dread of what such a scientific analysis might reveal, and fewer still are capable of performing one without prejudice or bias and concern only for the truth of the matter.
Your desire to not even answer the original question, let alone participate in a conversation on the topic, is completely expected, and really the norm in my experience. In your case there is the added complication of a personal relationship that can be expected to interfere with your ability to openly discuss the issue. Evasive behavior on the part of someone desperate to maintain a belief system when confronted by facts and reality has probably been examined extensively within the field of psychology. My professional interest isn't in the psychological gyrations that people employ to avoid the reality of their world however, so thank you for your response, such as it is, and maybe in time it will become easier for you to discuss the entirety of Mike's career, and how your conclusions, when they include the totality of the evidence presented by others, might change.
I did answer the original question. for the third time, the answer is no.
of course I'm unwilling to engage in a conversation with one who displays an agenda such as yours. I wrote this book - which has been criticized with at least equal vigor by readers who, unlike you, felt I was too harsh - as well as another one on peak oil and related subjects: The Moron's Guide to Global Collapse. and having mc'ed the first peak oil conference in nyc which hosted james howard Kunstler and the science advisor to congressman roscoe Bartlett, among others, as well as a conference on the subject at left forum 2014, I don't have time for further debate here. call it evasion or whatever demeaning psychobabble you wish, please do so on your own time and your own blog.
Agenda: Historical accuracy…yes..such folks must not be engaged in conversation, lest they immortalize the truth we don't want to be seen. Got it.
Harsh in your selective remembrance of Mike? Based on what, dipping a toe into the issue of his mental issues, validating one minor critique among the myriad of others that you avoid like the plague? It stands out in retrospect only with regard to how everyone around him now claims he was the psychologically damaged goods his detractors were claiming all along. So fessing up to something that was common knowledge to anyone who could read the historical documents from his website is considered harsh is it? How stupid must those feigning outrage over this tidbit be? And what does that say about your vision of what is a fair treatment?
I've got a daughter Jenna, and letting her get within a mile of that man knowing what we know now makes me feel the same way you might about your son going out and playing in the lingering clouds of the freshly pulverized Twin Towers, knowing what you know now.
re the lingering clouds of 9/11, I knew it then, felt it then and said it then. the problem was the suppression of data such that the handful of people asserting as I did were dismissed.
fair enough about your daughter. but mike's personal shortcomings, many of which were well-known to the people who worked closely with him, do not detract from his accomplishments nor those of fromthewilderness.com.
One day perhaps it will be worth a conversation of its own, how low you appear to set the bar for "accomplishments", but until then, I await the passage of time, that someday you might be able to answer the original question in the affirmative.
there is a brief final article in the printed version of the book which doesn't appear in the blog but I doubt it would meet your criteria.
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