In the Mar. 15 Journally Speaking column, "Oil market uncertainty," the issue of frustration over the lack of precision in price forecasts was raised yet again (OGJ, Mar. 15, 2010, p. 16). This has been a cry from the industry ever since the first forecast was attempted.
However, this cry is really disingenuous when we accept uncertainty in the physical components, such as pay thickness or projected decline rate in project evaluations and other decisions. The uncertainties noted in the column are a part of the real world and are best accounted for as a probability distribution. After all, the recognition of uncertainty is not only intellectually honest, but maximizes information and minimizes unwarranted detail.
John Tobin
The Energy Literacy Project
Evergreen, Colo.
CO2 and life
Now that Obamacare has been jammed down the throats of angry Americans and signed into law, the Democrats will be emboldened to impose even more tyranny on all of us in the form of cap and trade. Isn't it a coincidence that the Environmental Protection Agency just happened to declare carbon dioxide an endangerment to human life a week before President Barack Obama's speech in Copenhagen?
In reflecting on the insanity by which they have put the very gas that is essential for growing all of our crops on earth in the regulatory crosshairs of the government, I came up with the following phrase that puts the role of CO2 in proper perspective: Carbon dioxide is the currency of life.
This is a somewhat poetic way of stating that CO2 is the medium of exchange between people and plants, without which both would quickly die. To think that Obama, Congress, and the EPA would denigrate life-giving CO2 (with the enthusiastic complicity of the media) borders on the absurd.
David L. Sponseller
President, OMNI Metals Laboratory Inc.
Ann Arbor, Mich.
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