Lol, the "peak oil debunked" guy was SO wrong

[Sixstrings]

I've seen this guy's blog before. Someone just posted one of his entires from 2006 over in the IEA thread. I'm going to highlight the things that HAVE come to pass or are underway:

The reality just isn't matching up with the rhetoric. Where's the die-off? And the marauders? And the sky-rocketing prices at the supermarket? And the implosion of Walmart? And the death of Phoenix? And the shootings at Gas-n-Go? And the national temper tantrum? And the failure of oil-intensive agriculture? And the mass migrations from the suburbs? And the endless depression? And the collapse of the dollar? And the collapse of fiat money? And hyper-inflation? And deflation? And the nuking of Iran? And the popping of the housing bubble? And the reinstitution of the draft? And China and the U.S. nuking each over Campbell's soup cans?

Kunstler's got it right calling peak oil the Long Emergency. It's going to take so long that it's not even worth paying attention to. Now I know what the doomers say: "You wait, man.. You just wait..."

My response: No, sorry, I'm tired of waiting. I'll be doing something more constructive with my time than playing we're-going-to-collapse/no-we-won't/yes-we-will with peak oil burnouts and neurotics.
http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2006/05/300-moving-past-peak-oil.html

My my how times change. Now he sounds like the loon, saying in 2006 "SO WHERE'S THIS SUPPOSED POPPING OF THE HOUSING BUBBLE?"

Ok, let's summarize all the ways he was wrong; these thing have or are coming true:

And the sky-rocketing prices at the supermarket? -- they're goin up pretty fast folks.

And the implosion of Walmart? -- profits fell for the first time in the company's history. They reduced inventory and have fewer aisles now. They're also cutting back more on employee bennies, like profit sharing.

And the national temper tantrum? -- I'd say the Tea Party and all the voter anger out there counts as a national temper tantrum.

And the endless depression? -- That's a BIG miss for him. An endless economic depression is exactly what we're in right now.

And the collapse of the dollar? -- Another big miss. The dollar is undergoing serious devaluation; that's fact, can't be denied.

And hyper-inflation? And deflation? -- Yup Nostradamus from 2006, that's just what we have. A nasty stagflation, inflation in what we need and deflation in what we want.

And the popping of the housing bubble? -- The biggest whopper in his list. I wonder what he thinks now, with his home being worth so much less because of this "popping of the housing bubble" he said would never happen?

[eXpat]

I've seen this guy's blog before.
...

That´s good old JD, aka John Denver, trollum extraordinaire!!!! , living in Japan and champion of the concept "we need to adjust a bit here and there and we are gonna be just fine". He is an old timer, but doesn´t troll anymore here, mainly because all his dear paradigms have been proven wrong, and now he is holding to the last one remaining in his wonderful trick bag, it is "PO happened and I´m just fine, so that´s proves the doomers were wrong".
He may be lurking though and could show up in this thread to show off his mastery in the use of ad hominem and red hearring, rather that discuss real data. As usual.

[Oakley]

Denial is the first defense. Apparently this fellow is so frightened, he can't even get past denial.

He also seems to be driven by the need for immediate gratification. The crumbling of the industrial age for want of energy to fuel it is a slow process from the perspective of one human lifetime. But the entire industrial age when viewed from all of human history, or even from all of human civilization is just an aberrant blip that will never again occur.

Human effort to deal with the effect of declining net oil will forestall the dieoff till the last minute, but when the pressure become just too much to hold back, lives will be swept away in mass, and this fellow, if he is alive himself to see, will be eating crow, both literally and figuratively.

[KingM]

But he is right to a certain extent. If Walmart has imploded, I haven't seen it. They made a profit of 3.6 billion dollars in the second quarter of the year. How is that imploding? And I'm sorry, if you think we're currently suffering hyperinflation, you don't know what that word means. All the rest of that stuff is pretty weak broth. A national temper tantrum is storming of the Bastille, man the barricades. It's not an election that returns the party of big business to power with a few token libertarians thrown into the mix.

I'm not a Peak Oil denier, but at this point we either haven't reached any sort of peak or the effects are modest, at best. If this is what Peak Oil means, I think we can all breath a sigh of relief that the doomer predictions haven't come true.

IMO, the proof will be in how the next 10 years unfold but for now the jury is still out.

[Sixstrings]

All the rest of that stuff is pretty weak broth.

So you agree with "housing bubble, what housing bubble?"

Old cornie predictions like this are a good example of what cornies like to do.. they only deny doom that's four years out. And then four years later, they don't argue with what's become reality but just shift their arguments to denying the next wave of doom four years out from there -- so they get to always be right that way, they keep redefining the definition of "doom."

I first noticed this back when Oilfinder suddenly shifted from total cornucopian to a new prediction of "sideways" economic growth.

[KingM]

Yes, there was a housing bubble. In fact, I still think it's a bubble. Vast sums of money have been keeping it inflated rather than letting the bubble work itself out of the system.

As to your other remark, the doomers have done exactly the same thing. Go back to posts from 2004-2006. How many of the doomers would have said that you could still walk into a Walmart at the end of 2010 and buy tons of cheap plastic crap from China? This was all supposed to end within 12-48 months, depending on the doomer.

As someone who is moderately pessimistic about the future, I find it aggravating that instead of using the last several years to rebuild our rail, build nuclear power and renewables, we've instead carried on like we have for decades, but the fact is, nothing even remotely approaching a true collapse has occurred. We've got a crappy economy, much like they did in the 1970s, but other than that...

[Timo]

I'm not a Peak Oil denier, but at this point we either haven't reached any sort of peak or the effects are modest, at best. If this is what Peak Oil means, I think we can all breath a sigh of relief that the doomer predictions haven't come true.

King, you hit the nail right on the head. No one really knows what the heck is going to happen in the future. We can extrapolate all kinds of current trends and make some assumptions, but one person's doom is another persons utopia. Walmart put thousands of small businesses out of business over the years. What's doom for those small businesses is heaven for Walmart. Now, i hate to borrow tired sound bites from people, but i really think Kunstler has it right when he talks about the long emergency. We likely won't have any single event that causes a societal crash, but rather, lots and lots of smaller craches that collectively indicate that our system is fundamentally broken. That said, i seriously doubt anyone is going to leap into any state of anarchy as a way of life. Some system of governance will continue. Most people will still have jobs, and cars will still be in the streets. A lot of other not-so-pleasant stuff will happen, too, but the world will not come to a screaching halt no matter what the nature of any emergency happens to be.

[eXpat]

Yes, there was a housing bubble. In fact, I still think it's a bubble. Vast sums of money have been keeping it inflated rather than letting the bubble work itself out of the system.

As to your other remark, the doomers have done exactly the same thing. Go back to posts from 2004-2006. How many of the doomers would have said that you could still walk into a Walmart at the end of 2010 and buy tons of cheap plastic crap from China? This was all supposed to end within 12-48 months, depending on the doomer.

As someone who is moderately pessimistic about the future, I find it aggravating that instead of using the last several years to rebuild our rail, build nuclear power and renewables, we've instead carried on like we have for decades, but the fact is, nothing even remotely approaching a true collapse has occurred. We've got a crappy economy, much like they did in the 1970s, but other than that...

That is because PO is a process, not an event, is the process by which, as less cheap oil is recovered, when it comes to our society and civilization, the standard of living goes down, collectively, what today is cheap, tomorrow will be more expensive and worst quality, infrastructure breaks down, every year we are worse than the year before, but is something that takes time, and it accelerates as the time passes by, but is not like you are ordering a pizza today and barbecuing your neighbour tomorrow.

[Pops]

JD is a peaker, just one that got tired of the endless fantasizing over the Great Slate Wiper.
He makes good corny arguments (sometimes at my expense) against Overnight Armageddon as opposed to the shallow, flippant bs or endless re-posting of PR fluffery like we see here most often.

BTW, my prediction in '04 was for peak in '12-'15

[TheDude]

It's called catabolic collapse, a term coined or popularized by John Michael Greer, who JD ridiculed of course. Had manys the entertaining head butt with Mr Rocky Mountain High in the past, his blog often was throwing technofixes at the wall to see what would stick but he did plenty of solid research in there too. Oh, those technofixes, though - VAT GROWN MEAT, anyone?

Doubt JD would like being in the company of Greer or Kunstler. The US is likely headed into our own Lost Decade, after which the Kumbaya starts I guess. So that's supposed to be happening now in Japan? Important thing is that you don't have those icky starving hordes. JD even had a quite tasteless thread here monitoring his starvation, which of course wasn't happening, a joke that probably wouldn't go over well in, oh, New Dehli, Darfur, etc. VAT GROWN MEAT, wither thy sting?

Think I'm MAKING THIS UP? 105. VAT - GROWN MEAT

[mos6507]

I'm not a Peak Oil denier, but at this point we either haven't reached any sort of peak or the effects are modest, at best. If this is what Peak Oil means, I think we can all breath a sigh of relief that the doomer predictions haven't come true.

IMO, the proof will be in how the next 10 years unfold but for now the jury is still out.

That's exactly how I feel. Most of the doom we're experiencing is not a direct result of peak-oil, and it still doesn't elevate itself to doomer-porn levels.

Peak-oil doom has been characterized as the death of "happy motoring", for instance. Well, it's still alive and well! Gas is still well under the pain threshold. Too many doomers conflate the recession with peak-oil doom. In the end you have to navigate through all these problems regardless of their root cause, but attribution is still important if you want to take credit for or get dinged for a prediction.

[mos6507]

We've got a crappy economy, much like they did in the 1970s, but other than that...

In other words, just because something bad happens after global conventional oil has peaked doesn't mean peak-oil caused it. Too many doomers strike that tone, which just comes off like the Church Lady saying "could it be.... SATAN?"

[Xenophobe]

He may be lurking though and could show up in this thread to show off his mastery in the use of ad hominem and red hearring, rather that discuss real data. As usual.

Isn't that the guy who decided to eat no foods subsidized by fossil fuels and we were all going to wait and see if he starved or not? No wonder we haven't seen him recently!

[mos6507]

JD may be a troll, but he's an entertaining troll. I always liked it when he posted. It's a matter of taste, I guess.

[Ludi]

If you check the "Bold Predictions" thread and the "Predictions" tally thread, you'll see that most predictions made here on po.com are just plain wrong. 95% fail rate. So "debunkers" if they aren't just attacking strawmen, might be quite accurate.

The screaming DOOOOOOOM does get a tad strident here from time to time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoCZ07hw ... re=related