If there is one thing we’ve got a surplus of these days it is rhetoric. We get extra loads of it during the election season.

We also have a lot of realities around. Those who enjoy the rhetoric sometimes ignore the realities.

Here are a few examples.

Oil. The rhetoric is that we have reached peak oil production in this world. Oil production is going to fall, fall, fall. We will run dry. We must develop other forms of energy in a hurry. If we don’t we will freeze. And we will have to walk. And we will starve. And all that stuff.

The reality is that there are immense parts of the world that contain oil that we have not tapped. There are hundreds of billions of barrels of oil that we won’t allow ourselves to search for. In our coastal waters. In Alaska. On government lands. There are vast quantities that we could not retrieve in years past. Modern technology allows us to do so now.

In addition, we have oil shale. Technology will gradually allow us to extract oil from shale at reasonable prices. Geologists estimate the U.S. has enough oil locked up in shale to fill almost 2 trillion barrels. That should keep us going for a while.

Global warming. The rhetoric is that there is a consensus among scientists that global warming will devastate our earth. And that humans caused it. And that humans can stop it.