Matt Simmons is also a Friend Of Bush, even if he's a critic of the administration now.
Matt Simmons is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Care to comment on what that means, Don? (Don was the previous poster -- p!)
Okay, let's back up a little.
First and foremost, personal political allegiances are bullshit, and if we really think this is one of those "our tribe vs their tribe" things, we're deluding ourselves. Both tribes are dependent on cheap energy. Oil. And without that cheap energy, desolation and ruin await.
Screw Yergin's affiliations -- screw the affiliations of all of us, for that matter. Where are they getting these numbers, and how do we know we can trust them? ANY of them?
Almost all energy sources are privately held, and their owners are under NO compulsion to report honestly. Richard Heinberg highlighted this in
The Party's Over and
Powerdown. That's why Shell and Aramco -- most of the oil industry, in fact -- has dramatically
inflated oil reserves estimates over the past decade. Even Hugo Chavez has gently massaged his heavy-crude industry's estimates just a tad. We could be far past Peak Oil, though production has seems to be at its peak
now, around 86 Mbbl/day; we may never even reach 90 Mbbl/day, let alone the 120 we'll need by 2010 (so sez the EIA).
If that's the case, then they'd better come up with the One True Solution to efficiently cracking rock-bound petroleum out of its stony matrix, and do it
tout de suite, or we won't have nearly enough time left to build windmills, nukes, and to snark ourselves red in the face over which we'll use (we guilty parties know who we are), because the crisis will be upon us too quickly.
Yergin, at least five years ago, seemed to be honest, even if he was wildly over-optimistic. But I don't put too much stock in guilt-by-association (except among politicians and businessmen). However, this isn't a problem for which we'll get a "do-over", and we've shrugged off every decent opportunity we've had since M. King Hubbert's famous paper hit the academic press in 1955.
Fifty one years ago.
Sometimes I wonder what life will be like in 2057. I'll turn 99 years old that spring -- maybe.
--p!