The Crash Course

December 1, 2011 1:22 AM

Economic analyst Chris Martenson explains why he thinks that the coming 20 years are going to look completely unlike the last 20 years.
posted by mhjb (68 comments total)

Ugh, Goldbuggery.
posted by delmoi at 1:28 AM on December 1, 2011 [6 favorites]

That's interes.... oh, gold.
posted by atrazine at 1:34 AM on December 1, 2011 [12 favorites]

Well, given that 1991-2010 looked nothing like 1971-1990, which looked nothing at all like 1951-1970, which was mind-boggling different than 1931-1951, which didn't look anything like 1911-1930, well, all I say is "Duh."

Full Disclosure: TMG;DR.
posted by eriko at 1:39 AM on December 1, 2011 [8 favorites]

Peak Gold.
posted by three blind mice at 1:39 AM on December 1, 2011

Dmitry Orlov talks about the same kind of stuff, but without trying to sell you shit.
posted by biddeford at 1:50 AM on December 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

Ha ha ha... I've got news for him, information is the new gold. He's just as much in the dark as everyone else, and completely unaware of when the next black swan is going to land in his pond. With accessible information compounding at exponential rates, his guess is no better than mine, or yours.

Here's my advice for what you need to do in the next 20 years: get yourself educated (as much as possible, as cheaply as possible); learn to cooperate with others in new ways; be kind to yourself, and others; eat well; find a meaning in life that resonates with who you are, but doesn't violate the kindness concept, stated prior. Any real wealth you make on top of that will be gravy.
posted by Vibrissae at 1:52 AM on December 1, 2011 [40 favorites]

"First of all, I am not an economist. I am trained as a scientist, having completed both a PhD and a post-doctoral program at Duke University, where I specialized in neurotoxicology." Being a trained scientist makes you a trained specialist in *everything*, dontchaknow. I have social science training, and do experiments in anesthesiology on the side, since I read all the relevant lit and went through comprehensive exams and specific research methodologies and whatnot for fun, on my own.
posted by raysmj at 1:58 AM on December 1, 2011 [8 favorites]

But guys! It's OK! The YouTube commenters tell me that we can use Magnetic Energy to fix our energy needs.
posted by Zarkonnen at 2:04 AM on December 1, 2011

Being a trained scientist makes you a trained specialist in *everything*, dontchaknow.

Now, if you'll just bear with me for a moment, this handy hockey stick chart here shows that we're dangerously close to Peak Science.
posted by daniel_charms at 2:10 AM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm relying on the coming primacy of the underpants standard
posted by KokuRyu at 2:10 AM on December 1, 2011

I'll be trading in Glenn Beck relics. Them Lucky Toes won't come cheap!
posted by biddeford at 2:17 AM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

things will get worse

things may look like they are getting better; they are doing that to fool you.
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 2:25 AM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

I wish I owned gold. I'd be selling it now, and buying it back again in a few years after the bubble collapses.
posted by -harlequin- at 2:27 AM on December 1, 2011 [4 favorites]

Around forty minutes in he gives a really great recipe for cup-cakes.
posted by From Bklyn at 3:04 AM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

He says some other interesting stuff too. I'm always game to listen to some doom-n-gloom that's reasonably well thought out and presented.

The cup-cakes though, really caught my attention.
posted by From Bklyn at 3:05 AM on December 1, 2011

I have a electrum-plated reliquary containing the fingernail parings of L. Ron Hubbard. Come at me, Dunwich Cow.
posted by clarknova at 3:06 AM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

I wish I owned gold. I'd be selling it now, and buying it back again in a few years after the bubble collapses.

But why bother buying it back?
posted by explosion at 3:16 AM on December 1, 2011

I've got news for him, information is the new gold.

I don't think gold was mentioned in the entire presentation, aside from a response to a specific question from the audience.

To give a short summary, this was about peak oil, limits to growth, and the lack of informed discussion on the topic which according to him should affect every decision made today, from building a parking lot to a highway off-ramp to choosing how and where one should live.

On the other hand, the title of the video has the word gold in it, so there's that.
posted by romanb at 3:31 AM on December 1, 2011 [6 favorites]

He talks primarily about Peak Oil, he hardly mentions gold. The presentation and questions that follow are quite good.

Personally, I think his analysis is quite good.
posted by j03 at 3:34 AM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Peak Oil

Peak oil is a tough one because it seems to relate more to oil investment than actual quantities of dinosaurs in the ground. There is plenty of oil -- as we are demonstrating with tar sands and tremendous new off-shore deposits, new drilling techniques, etc.

I thought the concept of peak oil was recoverable cheap oil -- that which made economic sense given present investment. Tar sand oil -- whilst expensive now -- will have a learning curve and come down in price over time, with scale. The same for other technologies, like deep water drilling and all the rest. Thus, perhaps we have reached the peak of what has been conventional oil extraction, yet it doesn't seem like we are having trouble finding new deposits.

It's just that those deposits will take time to get to price parity.

Granted, based on the overly dramatic comment often heard "we will run out of air before we run out of oil", a combination of cleaner fossil fuels and renewables seems to make the most sense in the long run.

As for the rest of the presentation, there is some interesting thinking in there. Especially the idea of how quickly the stadium of water fills up with exponential growth. Is similar to Dimond's theory that societies collapse very quickly after their peaks.

I don't believe the gold argument is an economic argument as much as a marketing argument. For a long time, gold was a value store -- a flight asset that operated under the belief there was a limited quantity, and thus it could have a more intrinsic value than any fiat currency. As we've seen in the gold run up, it doesn't have an intrinsic value beyond simple market demand.

Perhaps it is one of the least distorted markets because central banks cannot print more gold, but I've never understood the apocalypse value of gold, as one can imagine many commodities that would be tradable in that scenario. Food, oil, copper, to name a few.

Overall, like the rest of the market at the present moment, gold seems to be a place for speculators. No one knows where to put their money anymore, so gold seems quite good. I wouldn't qualify that as the attractiveness of gold as much as the perceived lack of stability in pretty much everything else.

That said, it's hard to argue that the current global economic system is not fundamentally broken after watching something like this.
posted by nickrussell at 4:12 AM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Chris Martenson isn't an economist. Perhaps a more apt description would be "scientist". Perhaps the mods could correct.
posted by humanfont at 4:14 AM on December 1, 2011

I traded my gold for something else.
posted by louche mustachio at 4:26 AM on December 1, 2011 [5 favorites]

If we're at peak cats, I am done.
posted by louche mustachio at 4:29 AM on December 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

But why bother buying it back?

Because those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
We might as well make a buck off them as they do so.
posted by -harlequin- at 4:39 AM on December 1, 2011

Caveat - this is really not a new story - see the Club of Rome's 'Limits to Growth' in the 1970s, for instance. (CoR were accused of neo-Malthusianism, which they denied, but that's another story. Martenson would also probably disavow a neo-Malthusian tag).

The economic system is not connected to oil in the foundational way he suggests. Oil consumption and oil production are epiphenomena of capital; relatively enduring ones, but epiphenomena nonetheless. The real driver of exponential growth is capital itself as a system, and has been for centuries (see all the previous bubbles that have occurred).

In an oil industry perspective, oil has a serious predicament. In global perspective, oil has a serious predicament, but capital only has a problem. The problem for capital is to continue to increase the velocity of capital in circulation, and to reduce times of return, and if it can't get that from oil and an oil-based economy it will go elsewhere.

While this is not a new story, it doesn't mean that it is not an important story. I'd argue that any 'peak' happened, in global terms a while ago. This is a very US-centric presentation. Even more important than the hockey stick: the US, with 5% of the world's population, uses about 25% of the world's resources. To get the rest of the world to where the US is, right now, with no further global population growth, would a roughly 500% increase in existing resource consumption, obviously not possible, and obviously a disaster.

At the bottom line, his implications are right in the end: use less stuff. If you believe in investing, invest in people who help us to do things with less stuff. They will be important in the future.
posted by carter at 4:39 AM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

And he talks about Mathus at 49:00 on (in response to a question).
posted by carter at 4:50 AM on December 1, 2011

It's just that those deposits will take time to get to price parity.

As someone here pointed out, we'll pay any amount of dollars for a barrel of oil, but we will never ever pay a price of two barrels of oil.

It's not just the case that conventional oil is easier to get, it's that the physics of the situation mean that unconventional oil requires more energy to get. As technology improves, we can shed some inefficiencies at our end, but the fundamental reality is that once you discard abstractions like dollars and measure in energy, the problem becomes apparent.

It also brings massively accelerated emissions. Where once it took one barrel of oil to extract ten barrels, eventually it takes four barrels of oil to extract five barrels, that means that each gallon of gas pumped into a car releases FORTY TIMES more carbon than it did back in the good old days when we were only changing the composition of the atmosphere at unprecedented rate.

Technological advancement can't solve peak oil, it can only make it worse. The best that technology can do is make alternative energy sources more viable.
posted by -harlequin- at 4:54 AM on December 1, 2011 [18 favorites]

What a disappointing thread. It's an interesting talk - the stuff starting around 26:30 about the low energy returns from tar sands and shale oil is particularly pointed.

I thought the concept of peak oil was recoverable cheap oil.

You'd like the talk, I think. He discusses that at length.

The economic system is not connected to oil in the foundational way he suggests.

Really? This iteration sure seems to be.
posted by mediareport at 5:03 AM on December 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

The economic system is not connected to oil in the foundational way he suggests.

Really? This iteration sure seems to be.

I'd agree with you here. It just depends on the macro-scale you're looking at. In a wider/longer term sense, I'd argue probably not.
posted by carter at 5:21 AM on December 1, 2011

Actually, maybe I'd put it this way: currently, oil is really important commodity (for various reasons) in the current economic system. This is not going to last in the long term.
posted by carter at 5:24 AM on December 1, 2011

Yeah, that's kind of *exactly* Martenson's point.
posted by mediareport at 5:33 AM on December 1, 2011

I realise that people in America have some kind of Ron Paul/Glenn Beck = People that buy sell gold blah blah rah rah. But that general guilt by association is just a variety of ad-hominen attack against people that are talking about and believe in fundamental resource constraints. It's an interesting discussion and ignoring it is small mindedness of the worst kind.

These 'gold bug' conferences attract really interesting speakers and the attendees are genuinely interested in what is going to happen next. That's the whole point, they are trying to form a model of what might happen next. It's not some kind of libertarian axis of evil.
posted by aychedee at 5:48 AM on December 1, 2011 [4 favorites]

Recent TOD article on the net energy cliff mentioned in the presentation.
posted by Bangaioh at 6:46 AM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

I see Bitcoins are up 10% over what they were trading at a few days ago.
posted by flabdablet at 6:55 AM on December 1, 2011

That said, having now watched the presentation, I found far more to agree with than not.

I especially liked the part where he said he would prefer to engage in reasoned arguments based on information available today than to waste time talking about what somebody without access to Google may or may not have written in the mid 18th century.
posted by flabdablet at 8:19 AM on December 1, 2011

Another crazy thought (they're coming to me lately):

It's not "peak gold". It's not "peak oil". It's "demand outstripping resources, in many sectors" - but that's not a pithy two-word sound bite.

Zinc. Indium. Niobium. Uranium. Oil. Natural gas. Fresh water.

The economy of this century, or at least the latter part of it, will be dominated by supply-curtailed civilization changes, instead of supply-and-innovation-fueled growth, I believe.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:32 AM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's not "peak gold". It's not "peak oil". It's "demand outstripping resources, in many sectors" - but that's not a pithy two-word sound bite.

This is also a big component of the guy's talk. It's good, reasonable and worth a listen.
posted by From Bklyn at 8:38 AM on December 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

The US just became a net exporter of petroleum products for the first time in decades. We also have seen the percentage of foreign to domestic sources of just crude oil shift towards the US for the first time in decades. US crude production has diverged from peak oil orthodoxy.
posted by humanfont at 8:49 AM on December 1, 2011

Any real wealth you make on top of that will be gravy.

No. You just beautifully described real wealth.

get yourself educated [...] learn to cooperate with others in new ways; be kind to yourself, and others; eat well; find a meaning in life that resonates with who you are, but doesn't violate the kindness concept

The gold standard etc is just the illusion we all buy into that helps makes a pre-1970 scarcity based economic model work. Supply vs demand and all that stuff.
posted by philip-random at 8:54 AM on December 1, 2011

humanfront that article is talking about refined petroleum products, not oil. We still import crude oil like crazy;

when you add up both crude oil and refined products, the United States continues to import a net of 9.4 million barrels per day. That's 3.4 billion barrels per year.

So, in the future, let's remember that the WSJ brought relevant information on actual trends, but left the average reader with the very wrong impression that the US is a net exporter of oil, which it sure as hell ain't. Bad WSJ, no hookers for you, though that better paying job doing PR for some industry is a distinct possibility.
posted by dglynn at 9:22 AM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

humanfront, watch the section starting around 19 minutes in.
posted by mediareport at 9:54 AM on December 1, 2011

@dglynn Hence my second statement about "just crude oil" vs my first sentence where I said petroleum products.
posted by humanfont at 10:29 AM on December 1, 2011

Sorry, humanfront. That article is just such a perfect example of the facts not matching the impression people will be left with. I'm fairly certain that I will now have to explain to certain members of my social circle that yes, we still import 9 million barrels of crude oil a day in the US, and they will stand agog in disbelief, because they read it in the WSJ
posted by dglynn at 11:37 AM on December 1, 2011

the future will be like now except you will be older, poorer

the dead know one thing: it is better to be alive
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 11:37 AM on December 1, 2011

Wow is it just me or is the 'commented on presentation' to 'watched presentation' ratio of this thread particularly low?
posted by mhjb at 11:48 AM on December 1, 2011

Mhjb, I for one totally appreciate your posting of this video and no, it's not just you. As mediareport stated above, I also find this discussion completely disappointing. WTFV people before commenting. So many comments here read like they did not watch the video. Goldbuggery? Doom-and-gloom? These are such glib comments of dismissal it makes me wonder why I even come here. As Martenson CLEARLY states a number of times, he's not looking for blind acceptance of his ideas merely consideration. And if you disagree, bring something worthy of discussion to the table.

I'm upset by the lack of thoughtful comments on here because I think this stuff is really important, like one of the most critical topics of discussion people should be talking about. I happen to agree with pretty much everything he said so I don't have much to offer in the way of a different perspective on the issues. I came here to see if anyone else did and found very little. Oh well.
posted by umamiman at 12:08 PM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

At the beginning of this talk he uses debt charts - a problem with these charts is that it doesn't use a those numbers as a percentage - which looks something like the bottom chart of this graph and is a whole lot less worrisome.
posted by Brent Parker at 12:26 PM on December 1, 2011

That article is just such a perfect example of the facts not matching the impression people will be left with. I'm fairly certain that I will now have to explain to certain members of my social circle that yes, we still import 9 million barrels of crude oil a day in the US, and they will stand agog in disbelief, because they read it in the WSJ

It is a very complicated issue. Don't underestimate the significance of this. We have not reached this milestone of being a net exporter of fuels in almost 62 years.

To avoid confusion while we import a large quantity of crude oil. Increasingly we are dependent upon the income from the re-export of that oil as fuel, plastics, agriculture and food.

We are currently entering a period of increased domestic crude production. While not sufficient to meet domestic consumption, it is on track to reach 8-10 million barrels per day by 2015. This is a production level not attained since the 1970s.

Absent a carbon tax other caps on usage of oil, we are now much more likely to cook ourselves with global warming than to run out.
posted by humanfont at 12:43 PM on December 1, 2011

I will say that while I have similar views he seems to play a little loose with the scales on his graphs. I also worry that he is talking at a gold and silver conference and that he has a book to sell me. Also he is also pretty charismatic and that always worries me. It was like listening to Alton Brown.

But is he correct?

I can't find a significant flaw in his reasoning. The only problem I can see is one of when not if. Malthus may not have been wrong so much as way to early.
posted by The Violet Cypher at 12:46 PM on December 1, 2011

I wish I owned gold. I'd be selling it now, and buying it back again in a few years after the bubble collapses. "But why bother buying it back?" Because those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We might as well make a buck off them as they do so.

I buy gold, in small quantities, at crappy margins, on the grounds that if I'm going to go on a binge of buying crap on eBay, I might as well buy things that I can potentially resell later (a small loss because the market dropped is better than a total loss because no one wants what you have).

There are a lot of people so caught up in OMG GOLD that don't have anywhere near the capital to make a meaningful investment (e.g. enough that any profit made isn't eaten up by trade / commission / paypal / shipping / taxes / etc) but still want to hold it in their hot little hands. I've made far more buying an ounce of raw placer gold and selling it off one gram at a time, than I would ever expect to make selling bullion coins at the few dollars over spot serious buyers are willing to pay. It's still a piddling sum in the grand scheme of things, but enough to make it an enjoyable hobby, and pay my subscriptions to an online service or two.

But yeah, I'm doing basically what you said - selling stuff at $1700 that I bought at $685, and sat on for 5 years. The trend is good enough that I still buy a little here and there when I see some thing that looks like a negative bubble (versus a full-on pop/crash) and I can catch it before it rebounds. But that requires more routine attention than I can spare for a hobby, because I don't have huge capital to play with either.

And yes, I got bit when silver dropped from $40 to $30 overnight, but I lost dinner and a movie, not my house.

As we've seen in the gold run up, it doesn't have an intrinsic value beyond simple market demand.

The Indian wedding season has as much influence on the price of gold as some political upheavals do.

posted by CyberSlug Labs at 2:12 PM on December 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

8-10 million barrels per day by 2015

Source? Because that figure is as pie in the sky as it gets. Even EIA's traditionally optimistic predictions don't go that far:

It is always the same story. Sure, production has fallen in the U.S. for the past 35+ years, but starting next year things are going to turn around. You can see this same graph in every recent Energy Outlook. Then production falls for another year, and they move the line forward and forecast that the next year will be the turnaround year.

Related: A Reality Check on Oil Supply for Newt Gingrich
posted by Bangaioh at 2:28 PM on December 1, 2011

what's that "GROWTH" equation he throws up at the start got to do with his talk? If you're going to put an equation up, then please explain what each term in the equation is supposed to represent and how it connects with your argument, don't just use it for decoration
posted by moorooka at 11:22 PM on December 1, 2011

The equation in question is just the binomial formula, which has bugger-all to do with either the "differential calculus" he makes mention of while it's onscreen and very little to do with exponential growth. It is essentially being used there as a purely decorative gimmick.
posted by flabdablet at 12:15 AM on December 2, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I thought as much
posted by moorooka at 2:41 AM on December 2, 2011

Oil production has risen in the US the last 6 years. Perhaps we've seen trough oil.
posted by humanfont at 10:03 AM on December 2, 2011

This talk has far too much emphasis on exponential growth, if you took any one of those charts and cut off the data at 1900 or 1950, set the scale accordingly and you will see exactly the same hockey stick shape.

Also he shows an oil rig and states that *shock horror* all its production would only last for maybe 24 hours worth of global consumption. Well theres 365 days in a year and about 3,700 oil rigs worldwide, so thats about 10 years worth. The world is a big place, much bigger than one oil rig, this doesnt tell us anything very useful.

Saying all that, I don't think it really matters whether the growth is exponential or linear, when oil supply starts to get tight the results will be much the same - prices will go up and growth in the economy will disappear. This is not all bad, limited energy will prevent us from boiling the plant with global warming but it will lead to 'interesting times'.
posted by Lanark at 7:32 AM on December 3, 2011

Exponential growth is forever! Cut the data off at 1900 or 1950 and it's just exactly the same, except that oil comes out of the ground when you accidentally shoot your rifle at it.

Also you missed the point about the deepwater horizion bit. His point wasn't that it would literally last for 24hrs... it was that it was an extreme, billion dollar engineering effort for what amounts to a relatively tiny amount of energy given the growing energy needs of the world economy.

TLDR; His point was that cheap and easy liquid energy is behind us and the energy return on new oil finds is a fraction of what we've been accustomed to for the last 100 years and is very likely to fall even further.
posted by j03 at 10:37 PM on December 4, 2011

Also the binomial theorem is used in economics frequently in the calculation of debt risk and monetary policy.
posted by j03 at 11:13 PM on December 4, 2011

Sure, but it's got nothing to do with differential calculus, which is what the speaker was asking the audience if they remembered anything about as he presented the equation, and nothing to do with exponential growth, which is what he specifically claimed it was about.

What it does have is a great big impressive-looking Greek symbol and a bunch of pretty subscripts and superscripts, which are the main things you need if you're looking for an equation to put on a PowerPoint slide.
posted by flabdablet at 6:35 PM on December 6, 2011

I don't think it really matters whether the growth is exponential or linear

The speaker's main point is that this actually matters a great deal, because people don't have anywhere near as good an intuitive grasp of the consequences of exponential growth as we do for linear growth.

If any kind of growth is heading toward some kind of natural limit, we are far more likely to act in time to compensate for the consequences of that if the growth is linear than if it is even approximately exponential.
posted by flabdablet at 6:41 PM on December 6, 2011

The universe is enormous and we are very small. Thus it is quite possible that the natural limit is quite high.
posted by humanfont at 6:56 PM on December 6, 2011

That's not even wrong.
posted by flabdablet at 6:36 AM on December 7, 2011

IANAM - Binomial theorem has to do with calculating the area under a curve. If your curve is exponential, it has everything to do with calculating exponential growth. I can't think of an example of a simple curve that isn't exponential. I mean, if you have a simple curve that isn't exponential, I'm pretty sure that's called a line or a circle or something.

Differential calculus is used to describe points on a curve and is closely related to the binomial theorem which describes the area beneath the curve. Both were invented by Newton. His work on binomials in fact led to his discovery of calculus.

TLDR; Both the Binomial Theorem and Differential Calculus can be used to describe different aspects of exponential curves. For example, curves describing exponential economic growth.

---

We don't live in the universe. We live on Earth and occasionally the moon, which is very small indeed. Unless you're planning colonization of Kepler 22b sometime in the next 15 years, we're going to be bumping up against some very real (local) natural limits RSN.
posted by j03 at 1:43 AM on December 8, 2011

IANAM

Me either. But now I'm thinking I must have paid more attention in school than you did. Could you give me a precise example of how you'd use the binomial theorem to calculate the area under an exponential curve such as y = ae^x?

As far as I know, the binomial formula just gives you the expansion of (x + y)ⁿ as a sum of terms of the form kx^ay^b; the thing you need to calculate area under a curve is its integral, which will have a different formula for every curve and certainly looks nothing like a binomial for an exponential curve.

The only thing the binomial formula and the definition of the integral have in common is a big impressive-looking Sigma, which is just what you want on a PowerPoint if your aim is to bamboozle the ignorant with your superior mathematical skillz.
posted by flabdablet at 2:41 AM on December 8, 2011

That's not even wrong.

Thus:
-Odd Wrong
-Odd Correct
-Even Correct

Therefore 2/3 chance it is right.
posted by humanfont at 2:04 PM on December 8, 2011

Using this form combined with binomial expansions, Newton wrote down
progressions of expressions which calculated the area under curves in particular
families.


Newton determined the area under a curve by first calculating a momentary rate of change and then extrapolating the total area. He began by reasoning about an indefinitely small triangle whose area is a function of x and y. He then reasoned that the infinitesimal increase in the abscissa will create a new formula where x = x + o (importantly, o is the letter, not the digit 0). He then recalculated the area with the aid of the binomial theorem
posted by j03 at 12:34 AM on December 9, 2011

Anyway, he probably screwed up that one slide in his hour long presentation, therefore we will never run out of cheap oil. Yay!
posted by j03 at 12:42 AM on December 9, 2011

Using this form combined with binomial expansions, Newton wrote down progressions of expressions which calculated the area under curves in particular families.

I expect he added a few things together, and maybe multiplied one or two as well; he might even have used the letter x. The curves he was investigating are all of the form y = xⁿ, so it's not a surprise to find that a formula for expanding (x + a)ⁿ might find some use; however, to conclude from that that the binomial formula ====> GROWTH is quite obviously bogus.

Anyway, he probably screwed up that one slide in his hour long presentation, therefore we will never run out of cheap oil. Yay!

The fact that he opens his argument with an egregious piece of worthless handwaving is probably a good indication that we should take him at face value when he says that his aim is to make us go and look at the data and draw our own conclusions.

Having done so, I find far more to agree with than not, as I believe I said earlier.

And saddened though I am to see an interesting presenter cheapen his argument with PowerPoint-based math abuse, I am sadder still to see people treating this presentation as if it were something appropriate to take sides on and barrack for. If we as a species can't get past petty tribal squabbling in order to reason together about the circumstances we find ourselves in, we're pretty much fucked.
posted by flabdablet at 2:25 AM on December 9, 2011 [2 favorites]