You are incorrect. You are asking me to accept, without any explanation from the person creating it, a figure which contradicts my personal experience. The unemployment method at shadowstats is unexplained. His entire claim is that someone else does something wrong, with no explanation on how he does it right, other than, it must be better than the other guy because look how wrong they do it. And you attribute value to this random claim, above and beyond experience on the ground at the time.



I have many rationale's for doing so, I simply referenced my personal experience.

We got hiring of new grads....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4337472.stm

Hiring right on through the Christmas season....

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/b ... ays26.html

I don't make this stuff up Tony. Hiring was pretty robust during that time period, I simply maintain that if unemployment was actually 15% or so, hiring wouldn't have been near as hard as that number implies.

I know what I'm asking. Why do you think I don't? I'm asking that you not rely on intuition or incredulity to determine how the US economy performed during the period you mentioned. Show where the shadowstats methodolgy breaks down. If you can't then it's possible that the shadowstats figures give a more accurate picture of the US economy than the massaged figures provided by the government.The shadowstats web site concerns the US economy, not the UK economy.That article was actually a year later than the previous article but at least it was from the US and not the UK. It was also at a time that unemployment was at a four year low, even in shadowstats.

Not particularly convincing arguments against the shadowstats methodology.

But more more than you have presented to validate it.

One of the best threads on the whole board, and certainly among the most entertaining!

Nice to see that despite living in a post peak world (we were peaking when I was last here), we've still got enough juice to keep the lights on here, so the whole "powerdown" mass die-off thing was a bit overblown, but I guess in our heart of hearts, we knew that before the fact, yes? (I mean, when it didn't happen in the 70's, or the 80's, or either time in the 90's, or, or, or...)

So...society didn't fall apart on PO+1, server's still up and running, and we're all free to go on preaching the dogma of doom until....I dunno, until something bad happens I guess, at which time, the prophets can come out of the woodwork and give us all a big "told ya so!" (never mind invoking the stopped watch analogy).

Well, don't worry, Dec 2012 will be here before you know it...maybe the Mayans will be right, and OH what a grand day for the cult!

Cheers,

-=Vel=-
(that was a great six month, two week vacation, btw! :D )

You obviously have not learned much in four years. Did you really believe peak oil would be a "over" in a few months.

Geology and empire works much slower. It took the Roman 500 years to screw up. You can't expect us to do it overnight.

Yeah, I know, I know...and nobody here was going on about the insta-dieoff, either, right?

When I was last here, the dieoff was "happening now" and we only had weeks to go before the fit hit the proverbial shan, yet here we are, ~4 years later, having essentially the same conversation.

You know, the more things change....



-=Vel=-
(but yes, clearly I'm the one who hasn't learnt anything in the past span of years...carry on!)

About the only "new" thing within the peaker/doomer mythology appears to be the slant of climate change, the claims of terra forming the planet, versus the older version which encompassed simply polluting it. If you simply call them all "environmental concerns", really, there isn't anything new in the world. Here we are, running out of oil, AGAIN, here we are, running out of natural gas, AGAIN, there still isn't enough water, except, there IS, everyone is going to starve, except they DON'T, its just rinse and recycle.

What tends to irritate me is that there are legitimate concerns buried within the conversation, but any logical discussion of them is generally not considered in the rush.



You've been a member of this place alot longer than I, what was it like back then, when peak was still a "maybe" rather than "just the most recent"? Anything changed in the past years, from your perspective?



I plan on seeing 2012 just to see what all the hoopla is about. Who knows, they might throw a couple of oily references in there somewhere, something about bad humans and how we all deserve it, plus I like disaster films.

Well....at least the WalMart trucks should have stopped running, and we should have massive starvation SOMEWHERE in the country.

http://www.bluegreenearth.us/archive/ar ... -2005.html

No thoughtful analysis would predict such a fast decline. What we are seeing now, historically high oil prices in face of a severe recession plus other economic and financial anomalies, was predicted for the plateau. If you would bother to do your homework, and stop wasting your time disparaging "doomers" then you might have noticed the same thing

@ Short - Sadly, no, and no. It was almost verbatim the same "hold your breath...brace for it...ANY day now, we swear!" mentality. There were a few voices of reason back then, but they were in the clear minority.

The mods seem to have softened a bit though, and that's good. Maybe points to at least the prospect of a legitimate conversation on some of the (as you aptly put it) legitimate issues and concerns to be discussed.

Of course, that's still a longshot, and I think we both realize it. At the end of the day, we're heretics in the cult's eyes, and the prevailing dogma prolly won't allow us to stand for long, but...you never know! Sometimes hope really does spring eternal!

I plan on going to see the movie too! Should be great fun, and hey...we'll have ringside seats in only three more years! Not to be missed.

What I'm most disappointed in...what I have struggled to find here in the post peak environment, is....where are my zombie hordes!

Dayum...I mean, I was all geared up to fight 'em off, too.

LIkewise, with the food riots and Americans freezing in the streets. We had the spare room made up and everything, ready to do our part and take in the flood that never came.

Ah well...there's always the next time oil spikes a dime a barrel, sending this place into the usual frenzy...*sigh*

-=Vel=-

Vel, why don't you and Shorty date. You'd be a fun couple. And you can bring along JD for a tryst perhaps?

P-brain...why don't you go...I dunno, grow and can something?

Don't you have some more stockpiling to do?

For that matter...it's a post peak world, buddy...Why are you still here? Thought you woulda "powered down" by now...no?

-=Vel=-

Lundbergs resume and experience goes back to predicting the 1979 oil shock ( his claim, not mine).

He still goes to ASPO meetings and reports on them.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5892#more

His degree of "thoughtfulness" has more years to it than your posting years at this site.



Any chance you could reference Hubberts paper entitled "Nuclear energy and the Plateau of Fossil Fuels" before you pretend I'm the one with the homework problem?

You remain a waste of time and a distraction to your own thread, which is a distraction here at PO. That makes you minus minus sense, or -_-sense.

You have taught me a valuable lesson in logics here. That fact that you, senseless, are senseless (i.e. without sense) does not necessary suggest a double-negative necessarily turning positive.

I think it is cumulative. Maybe sense2 or senselessless

Obviously, those issues are discussed elsewhere, a disappointment is that they aren't referenced more in arguments here. While I can't get behind firewalls and such, and don't have a subscription, I find enough references to journals like this one to assume that the conversation is taking place without all the chaff of us enthusiastic amateurs getting in the way.

http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences/ ... rnal/11053



Ah yes, the religious component. I suppose the words of a once very famous heretic should cover the idea nicely. "Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do". Although to be honest, does it matter? It strikes me that much of the advancement of humans in the past 2 centuries has been because of a few exceptional individuals rather than any mass response to a situation.....and using history as a map....it seems reasonable to assume that such behavior will continue, and what any particular peaker might think is irrelevant. They are free to conserve, prepare to defend, horde, save, buy gold, become Amish, as fast as they can....and the rest of the world will start driving EV's, peak demand will recede into the past, and will it matter that some chose a different path?



Everyone is pretty comfortable with $80 a barrel now, I think it would take another spike to really attract attention, although there is an argument that if peak demand has happened, we might not see those price spikes for quite some time.