[Rune]

I believe peak oil will be a demand peak. But it is not certain.

So I follow news, read both sides... Always have. I have read a bunch of peak oil books and hundreds of articles about it over about 15 years. I follow what happens in alternative energy with interest.

I don't pretend to know what will happen in the future.

If you positively demand that everyone agree with you, you are a child in the way you approach any discussion.

[SeaGypsy]

Your manners are appalling, reminiscent of those of a Daintree Jungle leech. You show up here spouting unicorn economics etc, deriding peak oil like anyone who is here believing it is a real problem must be an absolute idiot- then when called out for it- slander whoever calls you as 'childish' etc. Screw you, screw your self justification. Peak oil is real, it is now, it is having a huge effect on the world economy right now already. If you call that idiotic childish chicken little doomerism- on peakoil.com- you have it coming fool.

[Rune]

Your manners are appalling, reminiscent of those of a Daintree Jungle leech. You show up here spouting unicorn economics etc, deriding peak oil like anyone who is here believing it is a real problem must be an absolute idiot- then when called out for it- slander whoever calls you as 'childish' etc. Screw you, screw your self justification. Peak oil is real, it is now, it is having a huge effect on the world economy right now already. If you call that idiotic childish chicken little doomerism- on peakoil.com- you have it coming fool.

Well, not a whole lot of mainstream economists believe that. David Stockman doesn't mention it in his "The Great Deformation".

Tyler Cowan was interviewed at OilPrice.com and stated that peak oil would not be an issue for 30 years if at all.

Here at PeakOil.com, there are only about 50 regular posters who bother with the topic as one that threatens the entire civilized world. Why? If it were all that concerning, why are no more people becoming aware, talking about it, preparing and getting involved?

Around here, you only ever see the same old collection of usernames. Only a trickle of new arrivals pop in from time to time. Only a few ever stick around for any length of time.

No one besides the Kurt Cobbs of the world, who are very few compared to the total number of observers of energy markets and technologies, seems to notice that there is any great threat or give much of a shit about it. Most of the peak oil sites from the noughties have shut down.

The subject is still brought up, but it doesn't send shivers like it used to in the Bush years.

Not everyone thinks the same as you do. Nor should you expect that they do.

[SeaGypsy]

So piss off already, help kill peak oil instead of trolling your b/s here whydontcha? Maybe come back in 5 years and see if it's just Pops and me arguing with John A and Rockman lol.

[Rune]

I think I will just continue to do what the hell I want.

[pwallmann]

Hope, if you will, that the fracking phenomenon will shortly peter-out and we can all get back to imminent doom-as-usual. But you will be hoping for that for a very, very long time - at least 30 years - IF no alternatives to fossil fuels are found.

Rune, are you agreeing with Cowen then on his energy outlook?

From what I gather, he's taken the more mainstream claims of energy independence, and all that good stuff at face value. He's a pretty skeptical guy by nature, so I would assume he simply doesn't buy into what (in my opinion) are significant short term downside scarcity risks, and/or assumes that we'll be able to simply figure things out (thus avoiding any doomsday type of scenario) if any real scarcity issues arise in the short term.

I think I'd agree with you on the mid-long term trends, in that, I find Kurzweil pretty persuasive on the direction of things (i'm a bit agnostic on the specifics) and Cowen incorporates alot of the same directional development in his future outlook.

[Rune]

Cowan says its just a matter of time before Russia, China. Afghanistan and other geographical locations duplicate the American fracking thing. Sure, its more expensive to extract than conventional oil, but there is an awful goddamn lot of it.

But then, there is an awful goddamn lot of heavy oil too.

So the deposits of sweet, really cheap stuff was relatively small compared to the harder-to-extract stuff.

Stockman doesn't even suggest at all that energy prices had one iota of anything to do with the 2008 financial crisis. Its just a non-issue as far as he is concerned.

But both books don't have much to say about energy; they are both talking about the reasons behind the economic stagnation of the middle-class - why there has been no robust job growth to accompany the productivity gains.

Stockman's is more of a polemic about the irresponsibility of the Fed and Wall Street, etc.

[Rune]

As for me, I quit wondering about the validity of imminent peak oil in 2008. I saw that the financial crisis had more to do with irresponsibility than energy.

But I still read all about energy and whatever strikes my fancy. I just finished Cowan'ls "Average Is Over"which said much about the advent of machine intelligence and the future of economics. Now, I'm reading "Superfuel":

Superfuel: Thorium The Green Energy Of The Future

By Kirk Sorensen

The story of thorium as a planetary energy source is almost too incredible to be believed. To think that for almost seventy years we have known about a source of energy that would last longer than the Sun will shine and we haven't exploited it? One has to wonder why...

I've known about the vast potential of Thorium for a while but I haven't read any books about it until now, just articles and websites.

I quit worrying about any impending energy doom when I learned how easy it would be to construct and build small mod thorium reactors. Unfortuntely, even though the US developed Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors, it will be the Chinese, Indians and Swedes that bring them to market first.

I generally believe that conventional and unconventional oil cannot last, but they will be with us for a very long time -- plenty of time to build these things. Peak Oil just isn't scary for me like it was when I first read Ken Deffeyes "Hubbert's Peak". The problems of fossil fuels are more about entrenched economic interests than about supply. But they are SO problematic now that its only a matter of time before a whole raft of replacement technologies comes online. And this is pretty much the opinion of current economists.

You never see the Matthew Simmonses of the world on TV anymore.

[Rune]

And look, everyone knows I am "Carlhole", my original username, which I used for years until a mod decided she didn like it. Then, I became "Schadenfreude" for about 6 months, got banned for two weeks for calling someone a "moron" and then couldn't log back on - so another mod let me log back on as "Rune".

Otherwise, I would still be "Carlhole".

I think I have been temporarily banned twice since 2004, each time for a week or two, both times for calling someone a moron. I don't really care about usernames though. I have always identified myself.

[SeaGypsy]

Just calling someone a moron? Talk about revisionist. Last time around you were asking me where I lived so you could come and knock my block off or something to that effect (pretty disturbing reaction to someone you don't read). If I'm a child, you are a baby. "Lest you become as these children... " now where did I read that?

[Rune]

Just calling someone a moron? Talk about revisionist. Last time around you were asking me where I lived so you could come and knock my block off or something to that effect (pretty disturbing reaction to someone you don't read). If I'm a child, you are a baby. "Lest you become as these children... " now where did I read that?

That"s a laugh. You;ve never said anything adult enough for me to get mad about. Link?

The fact is, peak oil doomers like to cluster. So those with that predilection are the only ones who really stick around here. If you go outside into the real world of opinion on all things energy, hardly anyone nowadays is a PO doomer. The idea had some currency back in the Bush years for a while, particularly as people watched and wondered about the Iraq War.

The subject of peak oil is still brought up but only a very, very few commentators still tack on ideas to it like the accompanying end of civilization or a great die-off.

And if the implications of impending doom still carried any resonance, there would be a whole lot more usernames cramming on their posts here at PO.com -- but there is not; you only ever see the same old small crew log on.

Try as you might, you can never seem to get those 600 - 700 "guests" to speak up about anything, ask a question or respond to a poll. It's just the same old 50 people, all the time.

[lowem]

And if the implications of impending doom still carried any resonance, there would be a whole lot more usernames cramming on their posts here at PO.com -- but there is not; you only ever see the same old small crew log on.

Try as you might, you can never seem to get those 600 - 700 "guests" to speak up about anything, ask a question or respond to a poll. It's just the same old 50 people, all the time.

Seems to me sometimes it has more to do with, not so much as oil prices themselves, but a rapid rise in oil prices that spur people into action and thinking about energy issues, and some of the crowd will spill over into looking at peak oil, resource depletion, etc. Or rather, a sharp rise in gasoline prices (aka petrol in the rest of the world), as folks who aren't into peak oil or trading or finance etc. probably wouldn't take a second look at crude indices anyway. If crude were to hit $150 or $200 in the next couple weeks (or whatever), we'd probably have much more than 50 people discussing what's going on.

Right now everyone is comfortable sitting around nicely at $100 oil and getting rather used to it, though it did seem like a big triple-digit number not that very long ago.

[Rune]

Yes, but then India and China really started to use a lot more oil. They took on a lot of the world's manurfacturing and their consumers started using a whole lot more.

So the demand went way up and therefore, so did the price, quite rapidly. Also, exploration and R&D by the oil companies had lagged during the 90's because oil was so cheap - it wasn't worth exploring or developing extraction technologies.

But then, when the price rose, of course, those extraction technologies came online, and after a few years fracking became all the rage, natural gas prices tumbled and the US production of conventional plus unconventional began to climb.

This can't go on forever, but it is going to go on for another few decades. In the meantime, the high price of oil (and its attendant problems) clear the way for other energy technologies. Its interesting to watch these things develop.

Oh well, maybe an asteroid will hit us. Cheer up.

[SeaGypsy]

Just calling someone a moron? Talk about revisionist. Last time around you were asking me where I lived so you could come and knock my block off or something to that effect (pretty disturbing reaction to someone you don't read). If I'm a child, you are a baby. "Lest you become as these children... " now where did I read that?

That"s a laugh. You;ve never said anything adult enough for me to get mad about. Link?

Whichever Mod suspended you can easily supply that information. Also you seem to have forgotten last time you were accused of moderator evasion and told to pull your head in was for doing the same crap you are doing again now: deriding this site, it's subject and it's posters with sweeping generalizations and dismissal. IMO you are due for another holiday.

[Rune]

Just calling someone a moron? Talk about revisionist. Last time around you were asking me where I lived so you could come and knock my block off or something to that effect (pretty disturbing reaction to someone you don't read). If I'm a child, you are a baby. "Lest you become as these children... " now where did I read that?

That"s a laugh. You;ve never said anything adult enough for me to get mad about. Link?

Whichever Mod suspended you can easily supply that information. Also you seem to have forgotten last time you were accused of moderator evasion and told to pull your head in was for doing the same crap you are doing again now: deriding this site, it's subject and it's posters with sweeping generalizations and dismissal. IMO you are due for another holiday.

It's as if you are crossing your legs and holding your pee til you just can't stand it!

"Ooooooo...if only he would call me a ______!"

And I'm not deriding PO.com. There WILL be a peak - probably a demand peak. And following developments in oil markets, oil geopolitics, etc. is just as interesting as following developments in other energy technologies.

I've read a lot about the subject and I simply do not believe that peak oil doom has any validity whatsoever. You seem unnecessarily intolerable of people with differing opinions to your's.

[SeaGypsy]

Is English your second language? It's 'intolerant' and it's of idiots- not people with differing views. I have friends on here ranging from commies to tea partiers so whatever you reckon- I'm confident my mind is far more open to reality than yours.

[Rune]

Excuse me. I should have typed "intolerant". And you are.

[SeaGypsy]

Of you, because you are a total goose.