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Complex idea - we're running out of easy to reach oil, the amount infrastructure, labor, and energy required to extract a barrel of oil out of the ground will e

Complex idea - we're running out of easy to reach oil, the amount infrastructure, labor, and energy required to extract a barrel of oil out of the ground will eventually make it counterproductive to drill new wells. Strawmen used to cut the idea down: Oh, you're talking about climate change The price will just go up Oh, that's just politics, you don't know the truth Technology will solve the problem etc., etc. We here at HN are specialists at picking apart examples. It's a feature when it comes to weeding out con artists and crackpots. It's a bug when it comes to actually discovering new things that haven't been communicated perfectly. We need to keep this in mind, and try not to be too blind to new facts or ideas.

speedping 4y ago
You articulated it perfectly. I felt exactly what you're describing now while reading the comments to a post about mindfulness a couple of days ago, but I didn't know how to phrase it. Thank you!
cs137 4y ago
This. The other issue with peak oil is that people have been predicting it since 2005 (if not earlier) and the general picture has been, and still is: * we don't fully know when oil production will peak, because it's based on human behavior. * when we do pass peak oil, we won't know for a few years that we have. (It's possible that the 2019 local max was "the peak"; it's also possible that it was related to COVID-19 more than oil scarcity.) * very few of the issues caused will be attributed to "peak oil" at the time. Instead, they'll be blamed on state collapses, policy failures, economic depressions, and resource wars that will all be indirectly related to peak oil. * peak oil is not necessarily a bad thing (although it probably will be, because the global system is already fragile and nearly universally despised) if we can find replacements in time--unfortunately, we're decades behind where we should be with nuclear energy, which for all its flaws is nevertheless the greenest energy source we've found thus far. To the outside observer, "peak oil" seems like one of those things people have been worried about forever but that has not yet come to be and thus "never will".

speedping 4y ago

You articulated it perfectly. I felt exactly what you're describing now while reading the comments to a post about mindfulness a couple of days ago, but I didn't know how to phrase it. Thank you!

cs137 4y ago

This. The other issue with peak oil is that people have been predicting it since 2005 (if not earlier) and the general picture has been, and still is: * we don't fully know when oil production will peak, because it's based on human behavior. * when we do pass peak oil, we won't know for a few years that we have. (It's possible that the 2019 local max was "the peak"; it's also possible that it was related to COVID-19 more than oil scarcity.) * very few of the issues caused will be attributed to "peak oil" at the time. Instead, they'll be blamed on state collapses, policy failures, economic depressions, and resource wars that will all be indirectly related to peak oil. * peak oil is not necessarily a bad thing (although it probably will be, because the global system is already fragile and nearly universally despised) if we can find replacements in time--unfortunately, we're decades behind where we should be with nuclear energy, which for all its flaws is nevertheless the greenest energy source we've found thus far. To the outside observer, "peak oil" seems like one of those things people have been worried about forever but that has not yet come to be and thus "never will".