[This piece, which originally appeared in the (Canadian) National Post, can be read in conjunction with MasterResource posts on “peak oil” here and here. A brief bio of Mr. Foster appears at the end of this post.]

The great petroleum geologist Wallace Pratt famously said that “Oil is found in the minds of men.” Discoveries depend on visionary theory, technical innovation and commitment to risky drilling. Plus luck. Peak Oil theory, by contrast -which asserts that global oil production has, or soon will, peak, and that this has powerful policy implications — is found in the limitations of the minds of men. It is less geological theory than unevolved intellectual shortcoming, although it certainly has its political uses.

The fruits of the “greatest resource,” as economist Julian Simon dubbed the human mind, appeared yet again this week with the announcement by BP that it had found a “giant” field at unprecedented depth in the Gulf of Mexico, an area that twenty years ago was regarded as played out.…

“For a long time now, science reporters have been confidently told the science is settled…. But I am confused [by recent developments]. Four years ago this all seemed like a fait accompli. Humans were unquestionably warming the climate and changing the planet forever through their emissions of carbon dioxide.”

– Eric Berger, Science Writer, Houston Chronicle, September 6, 2009 [SciGuy Blog]

In his post at MasterResource last week, Ken Green spoke of a potential “death spiral” for climate alarmism, in that the failure of the political process would make it less politically incorrect to challenge climate alarmism. “As hopes for a Gore-style ‘wrenching transformation’ fade,” wrote Green, “more mainstream scientists and opinion-makers will become more ‘practical’ toward the issue, meaning that alarmism may give way to sensible assessments of mitigation, adaptation, and geo-engineering.”…

[Editor note: Ken Green was a Working Group 1 expert reviewer for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001]

For weeks now, we’ve been hearing an odd refrain from the Democrats who are pushing hardest for the Waxman-Markey climate bill. They are determined, it seems, not only to have such a bill drawn up before Copenhagen, but to have it signed into law. At the same time, the EPA is widely expected to issue its endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, triggering what will undoubtedly be a hotly disputed regulatory process.

President Obama, it is reported, wants to sign climate legislation before the critically important Copenhagen climate conference in December. And Senate Majority leader Harry Reid wants the President to sign a climate bill this fall as well.…

I have lamented how the editorial board of my hometown Houston Chronicle long ago took a hard left position on the “problem” and “solution” of anthropogenic global climate change. Not even the U.S. House of Representatives’s Waxman-Markey climate bill–labeled a “monstrosity” and “less than worthless” by NASA scientist and Al Gore mentor James Hansen, and “out of control” by UN Foundation head Tim Wirth–has loosened the grip of climate alarmism and policy activism at the Chronicle despite an opposite view by the paper’s popular business editorialist Loren Steffy.

Last week, an estimated 3,500 Houstonians, the large majority working for oil and gas companies, gathered at the Verizon Theater downtown to protest Waxman-Markey’s carbon-dioxide cap (cap-and-trade, correctly identified by Tim Wirth as a carbon tax).…