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The only thing that is changing is the amount of energy and money spent on finding, drilling for and delivering that oil to the refinery and that has to be calculated over all the different oil fields in the world from KSA to Alberta tar sands times each ones percentage of the market.

Correct. Brandt studied 40 oil fields around the world and concluded: The net energy return ratios (NERs) examined in this study for global oilfields range from approximately 2:1 to 100:1, with a production-weighted mean of 33:1.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl ... ne.0144141

About Brains and Modeling

For those who don’t already have their minds made up, a short treatise on how brains work and how a model, such as the ETP model, works.

From Barrrett’s book, page 60:
Your brain also uses prediction to initiate your body’s movements, like reaching your arm out to pick up an apple or dashing away from a snake. These predictions occur before you have any conscious awareness or interest about moving your body. Neuroscientists and psychologists call this phenomenon ‘the illusion of free will’. The word ‘illusion’ is a bit of a misnomer; your brain isn’t acting behind your back You ARE your brain, and the whole cascade of events is caused by your brain’s predictive powers. It’s called an illusion because movement FEELS like a two-step process—decide, then move—when in fact your brain issues motor predictions to move your body well before you become aware of your intent to move.

If your brain were merely reactive, it would be too inefficient to keep you alive. You are always being bombarded by sensory input. One human retina transmits as much visual data as a fully loaded computer network connection in every waking moment; now multiply that by every sensory pathway you have. A reactive brain would bog down like your Internet connection does when too many of your neighbors are streaming movies from Netflix. A reactive brain would also be too expensive, metabolically speaking, because it would require more interconnections than it could maintain.

Evolution literally wired your brain for efficient predictions.

My comment about models. Just like brains, human constructed models take a subset of data from the unimaginably large amount of data the world is generating at any given moment. The models try to reduce the moving parts to which one must pay attention to the minimum which is still consistent with useful predictions. The Hills Group model is a compact model which reduces much of the noise to a set of historical curves and predictions. Very similar to the brain.

It’s worth while thinking about why three alternatives which are frequently presented here are either useless or not too valuable in the grand scheme of things. The VT Snowedin approach of burying oneself in data about individual fields is what the brain is designed NOT to do. Scientific models are not designed using the Snowedin philosophy for very good reasons. Alternatively, the Rockman strategy of just looking for good deals which have been overlooked by others, but which can promise a good return on investment over a fairly short period of time is a good strategy for making a living. It’s not a very good strategy for a corporation or government trying to figure out what actions might be rational during a sea change. Third, Ugo Bardi’s criticism that Hill should have used Life Cycle Analysis rather than thermodynamics misses several marks. Life Cycle Analysis is burying oneself in many details, like the Snowedin approach. It has also been shown to be not very accurate. I believe the lack of accuracy is at the root of the finding by Charles Hall and Pedro Prieto that the actual performance of PV systems does not approach what was predicted.

Barrett explains how the brain sometimes creates emotions to help us respond to particular predicted situations.

I see it as a two-sided funnel. There is a tremendous amount of stuff which might come into the funnel on the Input side. Our brain excludes much of that chatter, and then condenses what it does let in down to some concepts in the narrow part of the funnel. Then, on the Output side, the MEANING we deduce can prompt some very complex actions in the real world. Similarly, the ETP model reduces a large amount of chatter to a few curves on graphs, but someone reading the curves has the opportunity to take some strategic actions which are very complex in the real world.

Every model is ultimately wrong. The brain operates by checking its predictions against reality (in wise people) or by ignoring reality (at your peril!). So far, it appears that the predictions of the ETP model are pretty good.

The test of a model is whether its predictions are more useful than some other model. The ETP model seems to me to be the most useful model of the petroleum industry we have at the present time.

Don Stewart

@vtsnowedin
'that has to be calculated over all the different oil fields in the world'

Mr. Hill explains in his document why he chose not to try to do that impossible task. He also explains how he gets his estimates for the global oil business.

Don Stewart

His failure to do that correctly is undoubtedly why his conclusions are false and absurd on their face.

Every model is ultimately wrong. The brain operates by checking its predictions against reality (in wise people) or by ignoring reality (at your peril!). So far, it appears that the predictions of the ETP model are pretty good.

You've illustrated why the human animals is so bad at making accurate predictions. But you've also glossed over what constitutes checking a prediction against reality.

The ETP flavor of checking a prediction against reality is fitting data against a chart and then leaping to a correlation is causation conclusion.

There are MULTIPLE factors that lead to a world with extended low oil prices. Outside of the ETP echo chamber, the reason given for today's prices is a glut, plain and simple. Likewise, the oil price going up outside of the boundaries of ETP's chart can happen due to deliberate supply cuts on the part of OPEC or other above-ground factors.

So that's why the ETP model fails. It tries to oversimplify a complex system and completely rejects the conventional relationship of price to supply/demand.

Supply/demand is the single strongest factor, which is why conventional peak-oil fears were built on top of that foundation. Oil depletion leads to prices going up which leads to collapse. Since the reverse has happened, ETP serves a need by inverting that logic. Because people so often wrap their identities around their belief systems (aka faith) they feel personally assaulted* when their paradigms collapse, hence they clutch at rationalizations. ETP is such a rationalization.

The reason why ETP doesn't want to accept price as a function of supply/demand is that to do so would be to concede that the world is in a glut. Since ETP is an attempt to reframe the glut and low or lowering oil price as an ominous sign, it must go in this iconoclastic direction of saying up is down and black is white. That is why it is ultimately pseudo-science.


* the need to avoid the shame of being proven wrong and protect the time invested in the existing belief system outweighs people's need to understand the truth, hence the denial and ad hominem attacks by the usual suspects. In the old days this blindspot was framed as red-pill blue-pill in which the sheeple were seen as lacking true-sight. Now it's peak-oil die-hards who express the most severe denial. The irony.

The test of a model is whether its predictions are more useful than some other model. The ETP model seems to me to be the most useful model of the petroleum industry we have at the present time.

ROTFLMFAO.

The ETP energy model lives or dies at the refinery gates. It was, is and will forever be DOA.

Is Birkenstock Bollywood Stewart contributing to kublikhan's winnings when Bozo Bunsen Burner Bedford's garbage model flames out in the real world (aka wager*) to the tune of $1250? Start saving your pennies while your autonomous EV drives you to the permaculture meetings.

*Bozo wagered <$43 WTI 2017 average price @5:1 odds. Running on empty...

WTI up over $50 mid day today.
I'll bring this forward from part one to keep it handy.

by shortonoil » Wed 07 Dec 2016, 14:34:15
"According to this chart that has been posted numberous times to support the ETP viewpoint"

Here is the output for the Maximum Affordability function for WTI by year:

2016...$65.94
2017....54.18
2018....46.16
2019....26.88

Start saving pennies? Are they worth anything now a days? Last time I checked it cost the US mint 2 pennies to produce one cent! Something like we are during in the shape oil they are producing!
Anyway, Marmico, who saves anymore? That went out in the 1970's
It's all on the credit card, brother! Just ask your Uncle Sam.
So, shut your face....

Thanks for the great post Don. In the peak oil community, there is certainly a lot of chatter. In central Missouri the local university is cutting 12 percent. Our local City has rising expenses and flat revenue. I read last week that Ford is cutting it's work force by 10 percent. Retail is slowing down. Collapse is occurring exactly at the rate it should and no faster. Remember as Short has said oil price follows the economy, it doesn't lead.

Anyway, Marmico, who saves anymore? That went out in the 1970's

Idiot.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=dKkX

vt - "His failure to do that correctly is undoubtedly why his conclusions are false and absurd on their face." Again, that's rather harsh, buddy.

"Mr. Hill explains in his document why he chose not to try to do that impossible task. He also explains how he gets his estimates for the global oil business."

See, he's only doing the same thing the Rockman does. Of course, the Rockman does it based on detailed first hand analysis of many thousands of wells in hundreds of fields. After all, that's taken him more the four decades. Other then that our methodology is exactly the same. So try to be a little more f*cking open minded, OK compadre. LOL

He who can...does. He who can't...builds models based upon gross and incomplete generalizations because it's all they are capable of doing. You shouldn't put folks down for doing the best they are capable. That's like making fun of a cripple like the Rockman for not being able to climb stairs.

You should be more accepting of the limitations of all the "criples" here. LOL.

The problem with ETP is that it posits an effect prior to a cause. It suggests that the economy slows down so far ahead of the wave of oil depletion that the price actually goes down due to demand-destruction. The demand-destruction wouldn't happen by people grounding their cars due to $10 gas but by greater GDP slowing down, people losing work, etc....

Of course, it's been shown time and again that economic growth is continuing. Maybe it's middling growth, but it's growth nonetheless, and there is plenty of oil demand to justify higher prices if we were in a shortage situation rather than a glut.

In addition to that there are a whole host of factors that could or may conspire to damage the economy. The automation wave that is already making classes of work obsolete is one of them, and this is totally separate from anything remotely related to peak-oil. But in the minds of an ETP zealot there's simply no way for an economic problem to arise without it being a direct consequence of peak-oil.

This is why the ETP stuff is a joke. It tries to simplify a complex system in a way that simply can't be simplified. I understand the appeal of trying to find some grand unification theory, but anyone who has really looked at these issues long enough should have developed some humility in the face of the chaos of complex systems. It's not "noise". It's significant. In wider and wider timescales, then you can make more broad brush statements about LTG. But doing that means you lose the ability to say the sky is falling next year. You can't have both.

pstarr wrote:What confuses you pikers is that these life-cycle measures (impossible from the ground up . . . see above) also rely on . . . . MODELS which are also just calculations and guesses. (Ask Kub about the difference lol Ask him about shapouri lol)

You really want to rehash that again pstarr? After you got the entire conclusion from the Shapouri report wrong? After you flat out admitted you don't have a clue about ETP? After you contradicted yourself on GREET? You are a glutton for punishment.

It tries to simplify a complex system in a way that simply can't be simplified.--- Not really. What it does is it accentuates energy as the core determinant of economic activity. It does it by analyzing the thermodynamic equations that reveal the EROEI of the entire oil cycle from well to wheel. What you are not accounting for is tipping points of complex systems. It is an abrupt change. For now enough net energy is entering the Economy to justify exploiting "marginal" oil plays. In actuality, Short is saying that we passed the point when the energy derived in total from oil is less then the energy needed to access and deliver that oil. So, in fact the Oil Industry is cannibalizing from the rest of the Economy to continue operations. The tipping point is when society recognizes the futility of this and consequently abandons mass scale oil production or when the demand for oil effectively ceases

pstarr wrote:I sucker you in every time.
...
You trolls...

I guess the irony is lost on you.

pstarr wrote:You trolls believe that Etp hasn't been spot on for a years. Wrong on both counts

You just said this thread wasn't about ETP and here you go dragging it back into ETP territory.

Marmico are you one of those....please don't point out the obvious!
Go, name call some place else or Kubbie will post you on the Rogue Gallery of his, he is so proud of...you couldn't make this stuff up...really.