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In my lifetime I have learned that the only prediction I can believe regarding peak oil is that there will always be another prediction about peak oil. I'm not

by magoon 10y ago

In my lifetime I have learned that the only prediction I can believe regarding peak oil is that there will always be another prediction about peak oil. I'm not saying it's not gonna happen (or hasn't), just that it's been said so many times before.

hpjules 10y ago
He was talking about demand and not about the supply.
- taneq 10y ago
  You say that like the two aren't interdependent.
crpatino 10y ago
PeakOil-the-movement shares the same strenghts and weaknesses of many other engineering spawns: The stuff they predicted got all the technical details correct to a remarkable degree, yet they failed to grasp the economic and political implications, and made a communication fiasco out of it. I find it very sad and ironic. I'd urge you to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I can share that I have taken life decisions under the assumption that resource depletion will be a real socioeconomic force during the second half of my life; yet you will notice that ditching my programming career and moving to an organic farm in the middle of nowhere were not among those decisions (yet).
- ux-app 10y ago
  mind sharing the decisions you have made and followed through with?
  - tbihl 10y ago
    Not who you asked, but the two biggest questions that I ponder along this line: (1) How can I preserve some of my savings in real assets so that they won't evaporate when the bond market finally crashes and takes the dollar with it (probably a few crashes from now)? (2) Given the nature of just-in-time logistics and our complete dependence on trucks, will I be somewhere that I can limp along once oil hits a price that makes that all infeasible? Or will I be a sitting duck, waiting to die of hunger, thirst, or heat exhaustion? And (3) am I preparing myself with skills outside of work that will help me sustain myself when I have to work a little bit lower down Maslow's pyramid (first and foremost, maintaining fitness?) I don't work in programming at the moment, but my job ceases to exist if we lose our ability to have high-precision manufacturing and logistics chains spanning an entire continent.
    - pjc50 10y ago
      "Be a Westerner" is quite a good place to start for all of those, nonetheless. I suspect the "decline" looks a lot like the intermittent de-industrialisation we've already been seeing. There are plenty of towns which have lost their key industry without replacement, so they're just kind of limping along. The burden of decline will fall mostly on those already at the bottom.
  - crpatino 10y ago
    Basically... avoid indulging in a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption, be very conservative with the debt I allow myself to take on (used strategically, not just to prop-up expenses), and choose the machines I bring into my life with an eye towards energy efficiency and repairability. Careerwise, I have avoided going with the pull of migrating to our industry's big centers (the most known being Sillicon Valley), since I consider those places to be unsustainable. If I were young and single, I may have gone for a couple of years to gain a quick buck, and then get out; but I am a middle-aged father or two now, and don't think it is worth it even today to subject your family to that kind of pressure, just for the sake of being one of the cool guys. This will not save the world at all (not that it is the world that needs any saving), but hopefully puts me and my family in a less exposed position for the consequences of resource depletion.
    - antisthenes 10y ago
      It's quite ironic you chose to have children, despite being so concerned for resource depletion.
      - crpatino 10y ago
        Yes, I understand that sounds odd. The keyword you probably are missing is middle-aged. I brought those guys into this world before I had any awareness on these issues. But even if that had not been the case, I think in spite of the very hard challenges ahead of us, there's much reason to go ahead and take on the future with a positive attitude. Not wishful thinking, but recognizing that there's both good and bad in this life. And the good makes it worth living, even if the bad makes it harder and more bitter. It is one thing to live your life under the assumption that your every wish is going to be magically granted, and that you are entitled to as much stuff as you want. It is another to turn all crazy and suicidal over some paranoid apocalypse fantasies. I wish more people would understand there's a lot of middle ground between those 2 extremes.
ThomPete 10y ago
This is not a prediction about peak oil but about peak demand. It has ties to fear about converting to solar and battery powered economy too fast, when more than 3 trillion dollars of debt is tied up into fossile fuel economy. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-18/batteries-may-trip-death-spiral-in-3-4-trillion-credit-market http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-18/batteries-...
pcurve 10y ago
I hear you on peak supply, which has always been a moving target due to discovery of new source or method of extraction. But projecting oil consumption has been fairly stable. In fact, it's basically been a straight line for the past 50 years, with couple of temp spikes. And based on that, predicting peak-demand might be a bit easier, though 5-15 year sounds overly aggressive given the fact that much of the world is under developed. But who knows... there could be a miraculous discover7 in alternative energy (or battery tech)
- kev009 10y ago
  I would speculate about it more in terms how under developed countries went straight to 3G/4G cellular, perhaps skipping earlier radio tech and maybe even some degree of wireline tech (this part is grossly oversimplified in journalism, but there is some validity to needing less lowband wireline infra). Maybe that second caveat delivers further insight, i.e. I would expect diesel to outlive gasoline by 20-40 years. Diesel is like a capacity 3.5" enterprise disk while flash underwent yield, density, and longevity development.
77pt77 10y ago
Kind of like strong AI.
VLM 10y ago
The problem, if you want to call it a problem, is all Hubbert extraction curves are fractal self similar. So some field in Pennsylvania decades ago looks like Texas the state decades ago looks like Mexico production "now" looks like world production estimates... may as well just publish one graph for them all. That unusual self similarity of all oil production graphs at all scales and all locations on the planet is kinda the whole point of the topic.

by magoon 10y ago

hpjules 10y ago

He was talking about demand and not about the supply.

taneq 10y ago
You say that like the two aren't interdependent.

crpatino 10y ago

PeakOil-the-movement shares the same strenghts and weaknesses of many other engineering spawns: The stuff they predicted got all the technical details correct to a remarkable degree, yet they failed to grasp the economic and political implications, and made a communication fiasco out of it. I find it very sad and ironic. I'd urge you to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I can share that I have taken life decisions under the assumption that resource depletion will be a real socioeconomic force during the second half of my life; yet you will notice that ditching my programming career and moving to an organic farm in the middle of nowhere were not among those decisions (yet).

ux-app 10y ago
mind sharing the decisions you have made and followed through with?
- tbihl 10y ago
  Not who you asked, but the two biggest questions that I ponder along this line: (1) How can I preserve some of my savings in real assets so that they won't evaporate when the bond market finally crashes and takes the dollar with it (probably a few crashes from now)? (2) Given the nature of just-in-time logistics and our complete dependence on trucks, will I be somewhere that I can limp along once oil hits a price that makes that all infeasible? Or will I be a sitting duck, waiting to die of hunger, thirst, or heat exhaustion? And (3) am I preparing myself with skills outside of work that will help me sustain myself when I have to work a little bit lower down Maslow's pyramid (first and foremost, maintaining fitness?) I don't work in programming at the moment, but my job ceases to exist if we lose our ability to have high-precision manufacturing and logistics chains spanning an entire continent.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    "Be a Westerner" is quite a good place to start for all of those, nonetheless. I suspect the "decline" looks a lot like the intermittent de-industrialisation we've already been seeing. There are plenty of towns which have lost their key industry without replacement, so they're just kind of limping along. The burden of decline will fall mostly on those already at the bottom.
- crpatino 10y ago
  Basically... avoid indulging in a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption, be very conservative with the debt I allow myself to take on (used strategically, not just to prop-up expenses), and choose the machines I bring into my life with an eye towards energy efficiency and repairability. Careerwise, I have avoided going with the pull of migrating to our industry's big centers (the most known being Sillicon Valley), since I consider those places to be unsustainable. If I were young and single, I may have gone for a couple of years to gain a quick buck, and then get out; but I am a middle-aged father or two now, and don't think it is worth it even today to subject your family to that kind of pressure, just for the sake of being one of the cool guys. This will not save the world at all (not that it is the world that needs any saving), but hopefully puts me and my family in a less exposed position for the consequences of resource depletion.
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    It's quite ironic you chose to have children, despite being so concerned for resource depletion.
    - crpatino 10y ago
      Yes, I understand that sounds odd. The keyword you probably are missing is middle-aged. I brought those guys into this world before I had any awareness on these issues. But even if that had not been the case, I think in spite of the very hard challenges ahead of us, there's much reason to go ahead and take on the future with a positive attitude. Not wishful thinking, but recognizing that there's both good and bad in this life. And the good makes it worth living, even if the bad makes it harder and more bitter. It is one thing to live your life under the assumption that your every wish is going to be magically granted, and that you are entitled to as much stuff as you want. It is another to turn all crazy and suicidal over some paranoid apocalypse fantasies. I wish more people would understand there's a lot of middle ground between those 2 extremes.

ThomPete 10y ago

This is not a prediction about peak oil but about peak demand. It has ties to fear about converting to solar and battery powered economy too fast, when more than 3 trillion dollars of debt is tied up into fossile fuel economy. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-18/batteries-may-trip-death-spiral-in-3-4-trillion-credit-market http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-18/batteries-...

pcurve 10y ago

I hear you on peak supply, which has always been a moving target due to discovery of new source or method of extraction. But projecting oil consumption has been fairly stable. In fact, it's basically been a straight line for the past 50 years, with couple of temp spikes. And based on that, predicting peak-demand might be a bit easier, though 5-15 year sounds overly aggressive given the fact that much of the world is under developed. But who knows... there could be a miraculous discover7 in alternative energy (or battery tech)

kev009 10y ago
I would speculate about it more in terms how under developed countries went straight to 3G/4G cellular, perhaps skipping earlier radio tech and maybe even some degree of wireline tech (this part is grossly oversimplified in journalism, but there is some validity to needing less lowband wireline infra). Maybe that second caveat delivers further insight, i.e. I would expect diesel to outlive gasoline by 20-40 years. Diesel is like a capacity 3.5" enterprise disk while flash underwent yield, density, and longevity development.

77pt77 10y ago

Kind of like strong AI.

VLM 10y ago

The problem, if you want to call it a problem, is all Hubbert extraction curves are fractal self similar. So some field in Pennsylvania decades ago looks like Texas the state decades ago looks like Mexico production "now" looks like world production estimates... may as well just publish one graph for them all. That unusual self similarity of all oil production graphs at all scales and all locations on the planet is kinda the whole point of the topic.