Carnot wrote:Their cornucopian beliefs that mankind will always be able to find a solution is indeed even more polemic than Peak Oil believers belief in peak supply.
Not all who rejoice hold this belief. In fact I think you're strawmanning.
Carnot wrote:Peak Oil proponents only need to be right once.
The problem is that chicken-little syndrome winds up in causing the general public to permanently tune-out. This is ultimately counter-productive to the cause of advocating a shift away from fossil-fuels. At present the main impetus to do so is climate-change and fossil fuel depletion has moved to the background (although Elon Musk sometimes hints at it).
Therefore anyone who sees themself as concerned about PO should a) own up to being wrong and b) check methodology before fanning the flames of short-term doom once more.
Right now I am not seeing what I would consider "good methodology" applied to peak-oil. I continue to see a sort of continual straining on the part of die-hards to find a vector for short-term collapse of one sort or another. ETP was one, and current talk about debt bombs is another. The more it seems as though peak oil advocates are starting with a conclusion and working back to justify it the less credibility they appear to have. This doesn't register to the already-converted who are happy to be told what they want to hear, but it falls on deaf ears beyond the echo-chamber.
This is why, on any given day when you come here, the doomiest headlines that are aggregated on the homepage almost always originate from a small group of of perma-doomers who have been spewing daily doses of doom for a very long time. Ugo Bardi, Zerohedge, Gail, etc... and then a few random no-name bloggers who, by virtue of "blogging" are considered de-facto citizen journalists.
The credibility of the most pessimistic predictions is therefore very low.
It would be nice to see someone who doesn't seem to be harboring some massive chip on his/her shoulder or is merely interested in internet fame or hawking books to come around and really say something new and informative. The old guard of Colin Campbell, Matt Simmons and the like are gone. Those people at least seemed to have credibility from having logged lots of years in the oil industry itself. That kind of direct expertise is lacking. In its place you just have various flavor of low-level demagogues, crackpots, and attention-whores.
At least ASPO gave off the illusion of academic seriousness, but with even them gone, the movement has hit rock bottom.