Reply to comment

Hi, Eric -- or is it Mr. Leaf? :)

I realize you're trying to stir things up, but in doing so, you've managed to dredge up the overstated science of global warming and the oversimplified picture of Peak Oil.

One of the big problems with the otherwise outstanding "Inconvenient Truth" presentation is the cutesy polar bears, which are only a small part of the ecological concern, and the connection of global warming with hurricane frequency and intensity that may not be there.

Politics plays havoc with science by oversimplification and misrepresentation. As such, people come to think that everything is scientifically unambiguous and there is only one political solution to global warming.

I would hope readers of Science Blog are looking for a little more sophistication.

I think we need to look at Peak Oil in the same way. We need to discuss the interplay between economics, politics, and science. We need to understand the limits of our knowledge of the supply side before we can devise policies that reduce demand in a rational way.

Just as I have been pointing to books that discuss various policy responses to global warming while treating the science with respect, so too do I hope that this blog can provide opportunities to explore the various responses to peak oil.

The difference between peak oil and global warming is that (as I think you are implying) we have much more robust scientific data sets, and better developed theoretical and practical approaches in climate science than we do for looking at oil supply and production.

That means the global warming scenarios have a much stronger scientific foundation than do the peak oil scenarios. Yet there is no doubt that peak oil is going to become a critical issue at the interface of science and politics/policy before we have fully figured out how to handle global warming.

The two issues will become more intertwined in the future and may even produce a synergy for technologies that allow societies to advance without depending on large supplies of cheap oil.

We need better information about oil reserves and production before we can have full confidence in any peak oil projections. Since that information will be hard to come by, our science will be weaker than we would like even as the problem becomes more apparent to us.

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)