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It's pretty amazing to read someone still fear mongering about peak oil, something that was predicted to happen in 1970. Maybe the author is very old? What's ac

It's pretty amazing to read someone still fear mongering about peak oil, something that was predicted to happen in 1970. Maybe the author is very old? What's actually occurred in practice is that, as the oil price rises other sources become economically feasible like horizontal drilling and extracting tar from oil, but at the same time make competing resources like gas and solar more attractive. So it isn't even a big deal. Rising price naturally increases supply right up to the point where it funds competition. That mechanism is also only even needed in boom times, often as not the economy slows down and energy demands drop through the floor anyway.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
crpatino 9y ago
If you are going to criticize, at least get your facts straight. Peak oil did happen in the 1970s. American peak oil, that's it. The reason we have had the last couple of decades of Middle East adventurism is because the US stopped being the largest oil producer back then. OPEC would not even exist if that was not the case. Conventional Oil has supposedly peaked sometime in the 2005-2010 timeframe, though you are correct that more innovative extraction techniques have compensated the lost of conventional sources so far. However, you grossly overestimate the capacity of price signals to conjure up solutions out of thin air. Instead, what has allowed a more or less sustained living standard on the face of steady per capita oil consumption are countless hours of engineering devoted to efficiency. At the end of day, the tragedy of the Peak Oil movement of the past decade is something that happens to a lot of geeks. They were able to calculate a fairly accurate mathematic model of the raise and fall of production, but their predictions of doom failed to grasp the fact that society adapts to changing conditions. Their economic models turned out to be too simple, and both private and public sector reacted by taking measures that would have been imposible to predict on a quarterly profits only analysis.
- alexey_denisov 9y ago
  The tragedy of Peak Oil movement is its inability to capture collective imagination. Engineering devoted to efficiency faces reduced returns on effort. Let us look at aviation, past certain limit you are restricted by physics and cannot make more efficient airplanes. These enineering efforts can buy civilisation some time for a search of an alternative. And it comes with a cost of putting productive engineering workforce away from searching long-term alternative. All-in-all problem is far from being solved.
drjesusphd 9y ago
Peak oil in the United States did happen in the 1970s. It might have already happened globally, but the market is distorted due to sanctions against one of the world's largest oil exporters.
alexey_denisov 9y ago
Well, you need to try to look beyound economy. There are such concepts as Energy return on Investment, when you start to thi9nk in pure energy terms. Horisontal drilling is much more energetically expensive. So you lower your return from 20:1 from conventional oil, to 7:1 or something like that. After some threshhold you don't have enough spare energy to pay to doctors, teachers and computer programmers. And industrial civilisation starts to collapse. Read Odum for these concepts.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

crpatino 9y ago

If you are going to criticize, at least get your facts straight. Peak oil did happen in the 1970s. American peak oil, that's it. The reason we have had the last couple of decades of Middle East adventurism is because the US stopped being the largest oil producer back then. OPEC would not even exist if that was not the case. Conventional Oil has supposedly peaked sometime in the 2005-2010 timeframe, though you are correct that more innovative extraction techniques have compensated the lost of conventional sources so far. However, you grossly overestimate the capacity of price signals to conjure up solutions out of thin air. Instead, what has allowed a more or less sustained living standard on the face of steady per capita oil consumption are countless hours of engineering devoted to efficiency. At the end of day, the tragedy of the Peak Oil movement of the past decade is something that happens to a lot of geeks. They were able to calculate a fairly accurate mathematic model of the raise and fall of production, but their predictions of doom failed to grasp the fact that society adapts to changing conditions. Their economic models turned out to be too simple, and both private and public sector reacted by taking measures that would have been imposible to predict on a quarterly profits only analysis.

alexey_denisov 9y ago
The tragedy of Peak Oil movement is its inability to capture collective imagination. Engineering devoted to efficiency faces reduced returns on effort. Let us look at aviation, past certain limit you are restricted by physics and cannot make more efficient airplanes. These enineering efforts can buy civilisation some time for a search of an alternative. And it comes with a cost of putting productive engineering workforce away from searching long-term alternative. All-in-all problem is far from being solved.

drjesusphd 9y ago

Peak oil in the United States did happen in the 1970s. It might have already happened globally, but the market is distorted due to sanctions against one of the world's largest oil exporters.

alexey_denisov 9y ago

Well, you need to try to look beyound economy. There are such concepts as Energy return on Investment, when you start to thi9nk in pure energy terms. Horisontal drilling is much more energetically expensive. So you lower your return from 20:1 from conventional oil, to 7:1 or something like that. After some threshhold you don't have enough spare energy to pay to doctors, teachers and computer programmers. And industrial civilisation starts to collapse. Read Odum for these concepts.