Quote from: TDoS on Today at 10:50 AMPeople of all IQ's make a decision to BELIEVE. If they have low IQs, they stop there. If they have PhD's, they weave a tale, mixing in facts, history, supposition and "what-ifs", with a hint of "and I've got a PhD" and presto!  Dr Colin Campbell...global peak oil...1990. ASPO in Europe with Colin and Ugo. And others. IQ had nothing to do with how they talked themselves into drawing a conclusion so easily known to be a crock.

We are in agreement on this point certainly.  Also true is that having a Ph.D. doesn't necessarily mean you're very smart.  On just about any subject, if you have at least average intelligence and spend 4-6 years plodding through the subject and then slavishly follow your advisor's directions in the lab and get his order for coffee correct every morning, pay your bills on time at the bursar's office, they'll hand you your sheepskin at the end of it.  The really smart people never bother with this and understand that the real value of a college education are the parties, the girls, the drugs and the endlessly flowing booze. 😁  Another truth is that really smart people, like everyone else all have a price.  Offer them enough money and they'll make a very convincing case for just about any insane notion you care to promote, like for instance that smoking promotes longer lasting, harder erections and stronger orgasms.  Or that trannie women should be allowed to compete with cis women in a boxing ring. Or that burning fossil fuels has nothing to do with climate change.  Or that the war with Iran was a good idea because they are all Muslim towel head terrorists stuck in the middle ages.

All of which explains why I don't put any more value on what World Class Experts in any field have to say than anyone else.  Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy that does nothing to demonstrate the truth of an argument.  Far as the various people who had a variety of Peak Oil theories are concerned, some were better than others, some were astoundingly bad, some were quite good.  Guy McStinksion was a clown of course, he had us all dead by 2016.  I've never been a fan of Ugo's belief that Solar can replace fossil fuels in time and maintain the current FSoA standard of living or population size.  Richard Heinberg's work was pretty good, and i've found good information from both Resilience.org & the Post Carbon Institute.  There's good and bad information out there, as in all things.  You have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

RE