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I can think of two.

1) Ghawar is tapped out and (2) technology couldn't help us get past peak oil.

What other bad assumptions did the peak oil doomers make?

mmasters wrote:I can think of two.

1) Ghawar is tapped out and (2) technology couldn't help us get past peak oil.

What other bad assumptions did the peak oil doomers make?

1. Ghawar isn't tapped out YET, but eventually it will be tapped out. That is inevitable.

2. Technology has indeed helped us get past peak conventional oil. But that same technology is resulting in ever more CO2 and CH4 going into the atmosphere, creating more and more global warming.

So its still doom. Its not precisely following the schedule that M. King Hubbert or Matt Simmons or Prof. James Hansen predicted, but the doom train is still coming down the track.

Cheers!


The doom train is coming
Get on board get on board
The doom train is coming
Its coming down the track

Yet another post pitting Chicken Littles against BAU Chickenshits who can't make it through another day without pointing out how wrong so-called doomers are. Really?

Get a grip.

GHung wrote:Yet another post pitting Chicken Littles against BAU Chickenshits who can't make it through another day without pointing out how wrong so-called doomers are. Really?

Get a grip.

I guess I need a score card.

Is it better to be a Chicken Little or a BAU Chickensh*t? Or figure the truth is somewhere in the middle, but at some point doom is coming as long as BAU is the dominant theme on planet earth? Or are you saying since we're all doomed, let's quit fighting about the details? Or something else?

If you jump from a skyscrapper, any pessimistic claim you could shout while falling will stay bad assumptions as long as you don't hit the ground.
Same thing with peak oil. There is no such thing as bad assumption with peak oil. It's only about TSHTF's time that we can argue.

Or the converse Cornies and Doom must be here Now.
Yes some people have made bad predictions relative to timing. But, let's be real, the fundamental nature of 8 billion people living to various degrees modern lifestyles with the attendant pernicious to the planet technologies is not remotely sustainable. So, its really the opposite the Doomers have the assumptions right and all Cornies can say is well Doom may not happen because of so and so . Or doom will not happen too soon

Sys1 wrote:If you jump from a skyscrapper, any pessimistic claim you could shout while falling will stay bad assumptions as long as you don't hit the ground.
Same thing with peak oil. There is no such thing as bad assumption with peak oil. It's only about TSHTF's time that we can argue.

However if the rescue squad gets the big bag deployed before you hit and it cushions your impact you still get to walk away pessimistic or not.

Tanada wrote:

Sys1 wrote:If you jump from a skyscrapper, any pessimistic claim you could shout while falling will stay bad assumptions as long as you don't hit the ground.
Same thing with peak oil. There is no such thing as bad assumption with peak oil. It's only about TSHTF's time that we can argue.

However if the rescue squad gets the big bag deployed before you hit and it cushions your impact you still get to walk away pessimistic or not.

....but if 20 people jump and the rescue squad only has 5 bags ......

Too many humans. Not enough bags.

GHung wrote:Yet another post pitting Chicken Littles against BAU Chickenshits who can't make it through another day without pointing out how wrong so-called doomers are. Really?

I think BAU chickenshits would be less inclined to rib doomers if doomers would express even an ounce of humility and own up to their bad calls. Instead we just get name-calling.

BTW, we're now only a few days away from one faithful doomer having to follow through on his promise (see sig).

I would just point out that for all intents and purposes the "chicken littles" have been wrong on every prediction seen on this site since I got here a little more than a decade ago and the "BAU chickenshits" have been completely correct (i.e. no world-destroying disasters).

Eventually the "chicken littles" might get some traction (apparently in 500 - 1000 years according to some of the forecasts) but until then it seems that the "business as usual" approach hasn't proved wrong in the short term. And I should point out that is basically the IPCC best guess going forward for climate change.

Of course, we could always get hit by a huge meteorite from space or Yellowstone could suddenly rationalize its name as "supervolcano". I'm sure the "chicken littles" here would be the first to say "we told you so" if either were to happen.

asg70 wrote:

GHung wrote:Yet another post pitting Chicken Littles against BAU Chickenshits who can't make it through another day without pointing out how wrong so-called doomers are. Really?

I think BAU chickenshits would be less inclined to rib doomers if doomers would express even an ounce of humility and own up to their bad calls. Instead we just get name-calling.

Ding ding ding ding!

rockdoc123 wrote:Of course, we could always get hit by a huge meteorite from space or Yellowstone could suddenly rationalize its name as "supervolcano". I'm sure the "chicken littles" here would be the first to say "we told you so" if either were to happen.

To be fair, if internet searching were possible after the big event some of us chickenshits (if we're going to use that term -- as ASG says, name calling seems to be a key refuge left for the persistently wrong doomsayers), when we make calls for more BAU for decades, we sometimes explicitly point out that such forecasts specifically exclude things like giant meteors hitting the earth.

Not that this chickenshit thinks such things are likely, but at least he's not too arrogant to admit his forecasts could fail dramatically, since randomness is certainly "a thing".

About the most accurate guide I have found is to take the middle point between the bad assumptions in the IEA forecasts (ie the demand will go up in a consistent linear fashion, which year after year they had to revise down) and the more pessimistic forecasts.

Maybe the doomer part of me reacts to all the bad assumptions the government funded agencies make about the future.

(Disclaimer: I do use the government funded agencies as a source for historical data for - which I have a much much higher degree of confidence than I do in their forecasts).


ps. sorry if this goes against the intention of the thread which assumes that Cornies don't make bad assumptions.

To restate my thesis again, the problem has to do with the psychological phenomenon of fight or flight syndrome and what it takes to sustain an ongoing daily discussion group.

Take a look at the homepage. How many of those news items seem to be intended to conjure up a sense of imminent dread? The vast majority.

How many of those implied threats actually caused TEOTWAWKI?

None.

The whole raison d'être of doomerism is to conjure up that fear of short-term collapse. Without it, well, there's not much reason to participate in a daily discussion group. Maybe a monthly or yearly checkin, but not DAILY. You just run out of things to talk about.

And so that's why when ETP ran out of steam people started broadening the thread to talk about stock market corrections, debt-bomb, etc... There was this mental fishing around for any and all sources of existential dread to take the place of ETP.

That's really all being a doomer is. It's trying to latch onto a news story and posit the idea that this or that starts a domino effect towards TEOTWAWKI, and then to get locked into the usual battle of fast-crashers vs. "BAU chickenshits". Then the source of the fearmongering dies down and a new one is found. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I really think doomers feed off of dread, both for themselves and for the high of instilling it in others. I also think they attempt to harness dread in order to push an ideological viewpoint. It's sort of a coulda-shoulda-woulda attitude of "if only MY ideology were adhered to, we wouldn't be in this mess!" Very blamey wamey to the point of misanthropy. I don't find that people are really interested in teasing out the truth at all, because it just isn't enough instant gratification and doesn't provide enough ammo to get on the ideological soapbox.

"Without it, well, there's not much reason to participate in a daily discussion group. Maybe a monthly or yearly checkin, but not DAILY. You just run out of things to talk about.", To some degree that is true and for some people. However, I for one also believe that some of us are truly looking to flesh out some of what is happening in the world and get closer to the truth. I feel some here are about that. As for the emotional impetus of doomers that works both ways. I get the sense some of you are genuienly afraid of the future and thus reluctant to admit to certain trajectories and possible short term doom scenarios. To expect any prediction relative to timelines to be correct is patently naive. Whether a particular doom scenario did not occur at some given time does NOT annul the basic tenents of the argument that something is going terrible wrong and will reach a breaking point. More important than timelines is the trajectory and that firmly, I believe backs up more doomerish or realistic assessments of the unsustainable nature of the economic, political, environmental and social alignment and trajectory of humanity. Oh and I am owning up to a pet peeve based on yes just a hunch that the Etp may have been correct. Come Sunday, I will officially disavow this model. To err is human.

... wrong on every prediction seen on this site ....

Its not true that the boomers have been wrong on every prediction, and its not true that the cronies have been right on prediction.

Predicting the future is a tough business----just ask Cassandra.


The gods gave Cassandra the gift of seeing the future....and then cursed her by having no one believe her

But on the timing of conventional peak oil---doomers were right on. And on the idiocy of the EtP model---again give the boomers full points. And just look at climate change....my prediction that the Paris Accords wouldn't do a thing to stop CO2 emissions was 100% right, and the main global warming predictions---accelerating sea level rise, accelerating ice loss, heat waves, forest fires, drought---are all right on schedule as advertised.

The big thing the boomers missed on the peak oil side was the importance of fracking and unconventional oil from tight shale. That was a big miss, true that. And that goodness they missed it, or the world would be #ucked right now.

Cheers!

PS: This is the 20th anniversary of the first slick water frack job. The WSJ has written a nice bit on Nick Steinsberger---the man who invented the FIRST SLICKWATER FRACK JOB and changed the world.

the-texas-well-that-started-a-revolution-

Yes, I may have been a bit rash with the 6 months , just a sense that they are rigging the oil price so much that the MAP cannot be adhered too. So a facet of Etp may have been wrong but maybe the rest of it is right afterall. I really don't know. I do believe the Economy one way or the other is due soon for a major downturn. I frankly am simply admitting I don't know it all

Plantagenet wrote:But on the timing of conventional peak oil---doomers were right on. And on the idiocy of the EtP model---again give the boomers full points.

First, please correct the multiple places where you called doomers, boomers. I think of my age group, and it gives me a headache.

Second, I disagree completely.

First, oil is oil. Fracking is now a conventional oil production process. Moving the goal posts and pretending fracked oil isn't really oil doesn't make the doomers right.

Second, the ETP was a fast crash doomer prediction. It was a fast crash doomer piece of nonsense. Pretending like the doomers predicted it is contrary to reality, IMO. It was the moderates and the cornies who were fighting it the hardest, and pointing out it was just another form of doomer nonsense.

Plantagenet wrote:And just look at climate change....my prediction that the Paris Accords wouldn't do a thing to stop CO2 emissions was 100% right, and the main global warming predictions---accelerating sea level rise, accelerating ice loss, heat waves, forest fires, drought---are all right on schedule as advertised.

Yes, the doomers got ONE right. If they are predicting that virtually any potential issue is doom, then naturally, any serious doom issue becomes fait accompli, a correct prediction by them. Kind of like how a stopped analog clock is right twice a day. However, that doesn't mean their overall score is any good at all, re predictions. (Things are getting worse and expensive and inconvenient on the scale of decades. But that's not doom.)

Also, we're talking long term doom, on the scale of centuries. Not the next week/ next month / next year predict and re-predict on failure nonsense the short term Cassandras love to engage in for many years on end.

Should we really hang our hats on a box score of well under one percent correct, and only if we ignore timing?