"10 Pieces" Decade Overview: USGS Hiding, IEA Fudging

This is a short article that seems to be a listing of what Steve Andrews considers important factors and developments of the past decade--http://www.aspousa.org/index.php/2010/01/top-10-pieces-of-the-peak-oil-puzzle-during-the-2000s/.  Two of his "pieces" in particular shed light on topics I had wondered about.  Piece 1 is the USGS World Oil Studies, that inexplicably stopped after 2000.  Apparently before that they came out every 4-5 years.  Then see his Piece 10, an article in the Guardian from November 2009 that  reports that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's International Energy Agency was pressured by the US (who exactly?) to underplay the rate of oil production decline from existing oil fields.  The stated justification for the pressure was avoiding a panic which would affect financial markets and damage America's access to world oil.

Unfortunately taken together, these pieces reinforce the sense that we're seeing around us is the aggregate of lots of denial.  I've discussed this with my psychologist friend Brian who specializes in anger management.  He thinks the dominant psychological mechanism at work in our society relative this issue is denial.  When forced to deal with the problem directly, the natural tendency for people in denial is to become angry, followed by depression and a sense of hopelessness.  Not very productive reactions.

As with the financial crisis (which was triggered by the first spike in oil prices), denial until the situation deteriorates to the point of collapse guaranties a much worse collapse when it comes.  Along these lines, I read a couple of days ago in Morgan Downey's blog that American cars buyers are no longer considering fuel economy as a top factor in vehicle purchase despite the recent history of high fuel costs.  Actually, in my experience, many people claim lack of knowledge of the prospect of oil decline, although part of the denial mental mechanism can be not attempting to investigate a topic if you're afraid you might learn something unpleasant.   Brian thinks he'll need to put on workshops for depressed, angry people when denial no longer works.  He may need to work pro-bono.