Violently opposed...

Climate change and peak oil bear many similarities. Both began as minority ideas, passionately held by those who knew and believed, and little mentioned by the media (who usually classed both theory and supporters as batty, appealing to screwballs or conspiracy nuts).

Rather like oil discovery and production, the two theories have followed a similar path, separated by a number of years. Climate change began to be discussed on the media, first as an idea and then with more support until it was eventually became accepted by almost all scientists, politicians and the public. Peak oil is now at that stage where it is now being mentioned on the media, and scientists and politicians are beginning to discuss it. It has maybe five or ten years left before it reaches the stage that climate change is now at but that will depend on when the price of oil restarts its upward trend.

But one factor that is common to both theories is the 'denier'. (I know this term has negative associations but I shall use it for want of a better term.) I am not talking here about the scientist who studies the subject and comes up with well-supported arguments, nor those who agree with the theory but have doubts about the timescale. I am talking about the ill-informed layman who refuses point-blank to accept the idea.

While I consider myself to have a reasonable knowledge of peak oil, when it comes to climate change, I don't claim any expertise. I am not a climatologist or a geologist. My specialist knowledge ended with my geography 'O-Level'. So when most of the world's scientists say that the world is warming due to human activities, I am not in a position to gainsay them. If the debate was evenly split between scientists, it would be different, but when the Royal Society, World Meteorological Organisation, Federation of American Scientists, and so on (see Wikipedia) accept the premise, then it would be foolish of me with my single O Level to argue against them. Yet the number of (presumably) non-experts who write letters falling back on sunspots or even the fatuous "if you melt ice, it doesn't raise the water level" argument (with the assumption that climatologists had never thought of this) is staggering.

A similar thing occurs with peak oil. There are many people who dispute when the peak will occur or how steep the decline will be, and that is fine. There is still much uncertainty even among the experts. But those who flatly deny that oil production will peak at all strike me as obtuse. We know that oil is finite so, at some point, it must reach a high point and decline. We can all see the example of the US-48 where, despite decades of money, technology, expertise and political will, production has relentlessly declined. There seems to be a certain type of person who perversely decides to take up the opposing view of the majority, just to be different. But there's not much we can do about them - rather like Creationists or UFO-believers, no amount of evidence or persuasion can change their minds.

(The title, by the way, comes from a quote by Arthur Schopenhauer: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."