Peak oil — nevermind
One way to remain popular as a hip, iconoclastic media brand in America is to reinforce the conventional wisdom — in a hip, iconoclastic way, of course. I've learned this from Freakonomics. Take the recent blog post entitled, "Has 'Peak Oil' Peaked?" Author Stephen Dubner asserts that with oil prices way down from their 2008 highs, the media "frenzy" over peak oil has faded away — but without the media doing a reality check on this hysteria they were peddling to a gullible public.
Huh?
My memory of that time is quite a bit different. The mainstream media did little on peak oil and Freakonomics' partner, The New York Times, was nearly silent on the issue. All the air in the media bubble was being taken up by shrill blaming of the major oil companies (even though they were delivering a commodity prized by the world to American gas pumps with no lines or interruptions). Or it concerned sinister futures traders somehow gaming the market. Most of the discussion on peak oil was confined to sites such as The Oil Drum, the "doomer blogs" — and inside the oil industry itself.
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