Crisis Energética Foros

Os hago un copy&paste de un mensaje enviado a energyresources, acerca de la terminología más adecuada para difundir los conceptos de cima del petróleo, etc. La reflexión nos puede ser útil a la hora de escoger las palabras adecuadas.

Hi Marvin,

Charlie Hall's well-intended letter to the NY Times illustrates a common, serious mistake we are making when trying to alert ordinary people to the energy problem:

COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE TERMINOLOGY

Lately I have been concentrating a lot on strategy for getting the message through more successfully. I would recommend we reduce our use of the term 'peak oil'.

It is fatally misleading terminology, because it (subliminally, but strongly) suggests

(a) Some kind of wonderful maximum of prosperity. Peak is associated with good/best things. The words suggest an 'arrival' at success, a maturity, after which everything will be perfect and look after itself.

(b) It carries zero suggestion of negative consequences, even though the decline will bring enormous disruption and hardship.

(c) The peaking is happening without any effort from the reader. So things are going well, and we should certainly not interfere with oil if it is peaking so nicely.

SUGGESTED BETTER TERM FOR MOST USE: "ENERGY DECLINE"

These days I mostly talk about 'the energy decline', which is a simple term.

It's handy because it instantly covers the principle that shortage of one kind of energy always will cause more demand for the other kinds. 'We're not just running out of oil and gas. When they get scarce, we'll be short of the other forms of energy too." We're running out of "energy". People can't so easily fob you off by switching to talk about alternative energy sources, because your terminology already includes those, where "peak oil" does not.

Energy decline is also less hysterical and panic-making than "oil crash", which I use less these days, (even though I still head my introductory two-page briefing, "The Oil & Gas Crash and You" so that people will get the size of the problem the moment they read the headline.).

Oil crash, oil and gas decline
Oil crash, oil and gas crash
Oil shock, oil and gas shocks
Collapse of oil and gas
Oil fall, oil & gas fall
Oil famine, oil and gas famine

Petroleum decline
Petroleum crash
Petroleum shocks
Petroleum collapse
Petroleum famine
Expiry of the oil fields, gas fields
Final emptying of... same...
Exhaustion of the ...same...

Imminent decline of...
Imminent shortages of...
Oil & gas scarcity
Oil & gas rationing

Oil and gas cuts, restriction
Ending of oil
Collapse of oil

IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF PERSUASION

Scenarios of impacts

There is much better emphasis these days on the specific effects of the energy decline.
In the past, our own minds were struggling to validate the fact of oil and gas decline, and after that, to investigate the likely impacts on agriculture, transportation, regional and global economy, etc. We now have an impressive collection of scenarios that we can suggest to the public. The scenarios are formidable, but interesting, and backed with good authorities and references

'Best practical measures' for dealing with decline

We can greatly improve our list of suggested practical responses to the energy decline, on a local level (city council, regional council, central government, business, institution). Until now our suggestions have been too vague and generalized, even to a hopelessly global level. I think we'll get much better results by carefully tailoring our suggestions to the reader or listener's actual situation, to 'bring it home' in a way that they can actually deal with practically.

Achieving personal 'adoption' of the problem

I've realized recently that is an area where we can greatly improve. Basically it's a matter of getting a listener to see specifically how they themselves can actively 'take charge of' the situation rather than being passively subject to it and useless.

SUMMARY

I suspect our failures up till now have been partly because we've 'dumped' a vague or horrible problem onto people, without simultaneously balancing it with meaningful recourses to deal with it, and, even more important, without showing them the way they can enjoy being useful and important dealing with it.

Regards,

Bruce

En cuanto a terminología, creo que hay una muy extendida, y que tiene un gran efecto sobre la percepción del problema: se habla casi siempre (incluidos, a veces, estos foros) de producción de petróleo, cuando creo que sería mucho más ajustado hablar de extracción. Producción sugiere un proceso de creación, haciendo olvidar que el petróleo no se crea cuando sale del pozo.

Saludos.

Ignacio

Estimado Iarinyo:

Tienes toda la razón. Es extracción, no producción, pero el problema es que ninguna entidad de relevancia aplica el término "extraction" en sus tablas, aunque sí hablen de extracción en casos concretos en que se extrae petróleo. El término utilizado es. efectivamente, el equívoco, pero la avalancha de datos viene toda deformada y para hacer las obligadas referencias, habría que estar aclarando que donde decimos "extracción", la fuente citada habla de "producción".

En fin, lo veo complicado.

Saludos