checks and balances project

Update 6/3/2011:

In a hastily written post, I erroneously conflated the difference between ‘oil shale’ and ‘shale oil’ and incorrectly thought that the report mentioned below was referring to ‘shale oil.’ Had I been more careful, I would have noticed the end of the report where the author meticulously differentiated between the two. As written, the post below is mostly useless now as I criticize claims that weren’t made. The phrases ‘laughably naive’ and ‘willfull ignorance’ would seem to be more appropriately directed towards my own writing in this case. I apologize to the authors, and thank them for politely pointing out my error in a personal e-mail. Mea culpa.

Unedited, original post below:

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So says The Checks & Balances Project.

As evidence for a shale oil boom being science fiction, the report cites a bunch of newspaper articles in the past (seriously, some from the early 20th century) where oil shale is mentioned as a potential future energy source. So, because analysts or politicians (or journalists) thought shale oil would come around sooner than it did, present day shale oil production is apparently science fiction. How about a current newspaper article that actually shows companies using fracturing techniques to get shale oil out of the ground, wouldn’t that disprove the whole ‘science fiction’ notion? The New York Times, Oil in Shale Sets Off a Boom in Texas, from late May: [click to continue…]