con job and the man for it

With Mobjectivist’s critique of Michael Lynch and friends fresh in my mind (ponies), I listened to Lynch debate novelist James Kunstler on Open Source radio. (Skip past the beginning where the host interviews Kunstler.)

James “Rolling Stone” Kunstler ripped MIT’s Lynch a new one on points, even as Lynch maintained a façade of calm competence throughout the show. Lynch variously claimed that the pessimist geologists referenced by Kunstler were “afraid” to debate him (bullshit), and Oil Shale is likely profitable now that oil costs more than 40$ a barrel. (I have your shovel ready, sir. Please start with the kaka.)

I can easily understand why the likes of Colin Campbell would generally avoid debating an oil consultant duck fart like Lynch; for starters he is apt to attack the arcana of statistical models as a means to sidestep discussion of the reality of oil depletion.

Listening to Lynch, my imagination probably got the better of me, particularly at the very end of the interview, when Michael Lynch stated, with an edge in his voice, that he would be “very interested” to see what the price of oil would be next year, seeming implication being that the steep rise in prices since 2000 in energy is to be naught but a temporary flutter.

To me it is “very interesting” that he would bring that up, in the sense of things unsaid, or things known but explicitly not stated. Lynch is using a future anachronism to argue against peak oil. It will certainly be a non-sequiter looking back at this moment from the future; but many uninformed listeners might simply remember that Lynch said crude prices will be lower…

Confused? Hurricane Katrina enacted a certain level of demand destruction for CRUDE oil, (not gasoline, which the USA is presently borrowing from European reserves.)

That’s what happens when heavy weather knocks over refineries; one can’t refine as much crude. So it just floats around.

So, certainly, expect the world to be awash in crude next year. Also expect the American Economy to be in shambles, thus enacting more demand destruction.

Peak averted? Cheap oil is back?

Very clever, Mister Lynch. You ride that Peak Pony.
You’ve fooled ‘em all, except them who know.