Hmm ... my antivirus software reports an avatar here as contaiing a Trojan ...

http://peakoil.com/forums/images/avatars/gallery/gallery/037.gif
Firefox Denied:
Trojan.JS.Ramif.a

The reason it is called the "Peak Oil Theory" is because when it was first formulated that is exactly what it was... A theory

Since the 50's however it has been proved no longer a theory but a fact as a result of oil peaking in America, North Sea, Mexico, Australia and many other countries and regions.

So peak oil is a fact, it is just that at the moment is is regional. It is when it is global that things will really change

Carlhole,

SCIAM also, within the last 2 years did an article about how we could produce 50% of our energy by 2030 if we were to invest 30 to 50 billion in collection, HVDC, and compressed gas.

So, which SCIAM is right? The point is that SCIAM is not the revealed truth, it is a popular science magazine that publishes a range of views.

As I recall the article you cite does not in any way address in any way the obstacles to creating that kind of energy. Switching to a completely electric power society would be an incredible job, can you imagine an all electric Freightliner? Or Air Bus?

Peak Oil will happen, no doubt. The questions are many but a few are:

1. Are we smart enough to use our remaining fossil fuel to build a completely electric society? (I bet NOT!)
2. If fossil fuel does NOT run out sufficiently fast will we cook the planet? (I bet YUP!)
3. How can we feed 9.xxx billion people for the next 200 years or so?

Articles like the one above are deliberately spreading misinformation to a gullible public who wants to hear that they can continue to party like its 1999 forever. Selective hearing.

Ah well, I guess I'll jettison my healthy lifestyle and whoop it up on the smokes, booze and food. Chances are just as good theres a fix all capsule will turn up to fire up my engines before I croak it.

What the heck you doin on a doomers board? I suspect folks like you have such empty lives, you gotta come on places like this to attract some notoriety. We wouldn't, the rest of us long termers, be here, if we were convinced by the BAU meme. Marketwatch has a great forum for the eternally optimistic.

Would that be Kaspkersky A/V by any chance? Recent def updates have generated a bunch of false positives on a number of stock forum avatars, specifically reporting them as being the Trojan.JS.Ramif.a ...

+1

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-- Aristotle

The tired old "deniers" accusation is the refex of a lazy, intolerant mind. Dull people attempt to overlay an Us vs. Them groupthink mentality onto every subject that might require more than a tad bit of perspicuity and reflection. This is why particular memes have become viral throughout human history: because they oversimplify a given subject, allowing a simple but false resort to certainty and conclusion about some perhaps controversial but head-hurting subject. Those who engage in this practice believe that the truth-of-the-matter is always lent merely by the sheer numbers of its believers - a totally wrong-headed assumption.

As far as memes go, Hubbert's Peak Oil Theory is a helluvalot easier to grasp than the complex reality of what oil producers have always had to manage. Predicting oil supply and extraction is exceedingly complex. And predicting future supplies beyond a few short years is perhaps just this side of reading goat's entrails.

Hubbert himself admitted as much. The curve-fitting approach he used was arbitrary. The fact is, oil petroleum production is affected by innumerable factors, (geological, political, economic, technologic) which make fitting it to a neat bell-curve merely theoretical, and only under a set of unique assumptions. There is no way I can do justice to this complicated, involved subject other than by referencing perhaps the best book written on oil with the Peak Oil community itself in mind:

The Age of Oil: The Mythology, History, and Future of the World's Most Controversial Resource. (Google Books link)

Read some of the reviews of it on Amazon.

That I find the Peak Oil debate interesting doesn't mean that I no longer read what Deffeyes, Campbell, Heinberg and all the rest say about our energy problems. But what good does it do me to shut myself off from one side or the other of the debate?

I always like to quote a former poster here on PO.com - FatherOfTwo. He always had good questions, always tried his best to sort the truth of any given matter. It was probably from absorbing the kinds of counter arguments to Hubbert such as Maugeri has provided in Age Of Oil that FatherOfTwo finally bid us farewell in November of 2008:

FatherOfTwo's Last Post

Arbitrary perhaps, but overall accurate. It's a matter of scale, and maybe a certain amount of selectivity when choosing what data to examine. One can probably take any limited sampling and argue based purely on that restricted picture whichever position on wishes, but as one increases the size of the sample, the data increasingly indicate a bell-shaped curve. One simply has to 'step back' far enough from the image.

I see people doing this constantly with regard to the climate change issue. There's been a spate of articles lately nattering on about how global temperatures have been cooling for the last few years now, so GW must be false. They ignore the fact that if one examines the larger data set, one sees regular short-term oscillation in average temperatures, but that the overall long-term trend is clearly upward.

That is something I have always wondered about... the Europeans govs and their "thought police".

Of all the atrocities attributed to Europeans be it imperialism, genocide, etc, the worst foisted on the world is probably their perfection of political correctness.

People seem to have real trouble with staying in the middle area of the pendulum swing.

On the other point, I like what Reverend William John Henry Boetcker (1873-1962) said in "Ten Carrots" to that:

* You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
* You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
* You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.
* You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.


Some peak oilers have made key mistake by acting like peak oil occuring was some event that would immediately trigger a collapse, when in reality peak oil was the PEAK.

Maybe Hirsch should do a study on how long it will take for the effects of peak oil to be felt and how bad they will be.

OK, enough with the hitler crap. if AD and DrO want to duke it out I suggest you do it via PM.

This is the last thread you muck up, you with me?

Very true, each one. The thought police in the EU, and especially in the UK, is growing in power. People are worse sheep in the EU than in most places. They've been perfectly brainwashed to believe that every intrusion into every orifice is for the common good and to "prevent farmer Jones from coming back."

To put a man in jail for his words is among the most contemptible of crimes, and, if we ever do get to a stable and decent world, of which I hold out little hope, it seems to me inconceivable that they won't look back on the laws we have now criminalizing disagreeable speech as a severe retraction of basic human liberty that occurred at the end of the 2nd millennium, AD.

Not sure what you mean by "the Hilter crap."

Are you saying that any discussion of the Jewish experience in WWII is not permissible?

Or are you saying that any discussion of Jews and/or Jewish culture and/or Israel that can be construed by those predisposed to such construing as negative is not permissible?

The reason I'd like clarification, Pops, is because Israel and Jewish culture in general is critical to the next 20 years.

Or were you just referring to a specific thread?

The thought police work both ways ofelatti. They can also send you to places you shouldn't go which leads to destabilisation of those places, refugees in Europe, the rise of political correctness and the very disempowerment you feel. We are advised to let others be so as we may be, in our homelands. The major reason Europe is overrun with ME refugees is due to the fact that the ME is overrun with oil intrigue, stooge (read pro EU and US) leadership, mismanagement and war.

If we can get used to the idea of paying them market prices for their commodities, letting them elect leaders they want rather than what we want, I think we will quickly find them staying at home and a quick resolution of all problems you encounter. The USSR had strict population movement for good reason. Why migrate when conditions at home are as good as the place you wish to migrate to.

It is up to us to encourage our governments to get out of the habit of trying to make the world as they want and to also abide by the rule of the market. Don't intervene, even if it means you pay top dollar for the commodity.

I'm referring to you and AD having a running argument from thread to thread throughout the site.

Refer to the title of the thread if you need clarification of the topic at hand.

IOW, stay on topic.

Yeah I know pops. It ain't good the way this dude and I have been arguing. Sorry. Holocaust denial fires me up big time.