Doly wrote:Predicting stuff is hard. You would think smart people would learn this basic fact prior to attaching high levels of temporal certainty to their predictions, wouldn't you?
That would depend on the prediction. A pretty good level of temporal certainty is possible for a surprisingly high number of things.
Yes Doly, those who do it for a living understan that. The Sun will probably rise tomorrow. I'm betting in the east.
Doly wrote:If you mean that peak oil didn't happen when it was initially talked about, it's because the forecasts were based on conventional oil and the amount of shale oil that could be commercially produced was initially underestimated.
Correct. Another way of putting it is, "When I made the prediction, I didn't know how much I was completely ignorant of."
Doly wrote:But let's not forget that so far, the peak of production happened in 2018, and it's unclear at this point that the peak is going to be surpassed.
Indeed. Let us not forget that #6 of just this century still holds. Let us also not forget that some accepted authorities claimed the prior 5.
Doly wrote:If peak oil turns out to be, in fact, 2018, that would be within the range of predictions of those that warned about peak oil.
What range? Folks picked years. One a day, albeit a bit facetiously. The only existing claim not discredited by time, contemporaneous to the time when it wasn't the joke it became, is that of the EIA. And interestingly, they did provide a range, based on initial estimates of volume. Apparently they aren't as ignorant of the basics as all those others?
Doly wrote:Or are unfamiliar with stochastic modeling and can't for the life of them incorporate uncertainty in their inputs and outputs in any other way than doing run of the mill scenarios?
I discussed modelling with ASPO people and most of them had only limited knowledge of the subject.
Obviously. They don't know much about resource economics either. As they demonstrated for the better part of a decade before changing careers, changing the names of their reports, fleeing their websites, or lying low until the next change in geopolitical events allowed them to repeat themselves.
Doly wrote: This said, the logistic curve (which is an easy approximation of a Gaussian curve) effectively incorporates the Central Limit Theorem. So stochastic modelling wouldn't be required.
Yes. It would. The Central Limit Theorem isn't what you think it is, if you think it can apply to some basic geologic based dependencies to distributions that violate the underlying assumptions of the Theoreum itself. One of those details that matter when doing this work.
Doly wrote:[quote="Doly']
All that would be needed is to add some dispersion calculations to indicate bounds of confidence. Which I think some people did at various points.[/quote][/quote]
Just for starters, bounds on confidence...on what? The costs, demand, price or amount of resource? And when it is on all 4, how does it incorporate the uncertainty in the correlations themselves?
I am fascinated with the use of dispersion equations when dealing with 5 correlated physical rock properties though, have you seen that anywhere within the reservoir engineering world, or just top down modelers applying theories without knowing the detail? Are you familiar with Paul and Dennis's book? Paul was always a riot, right on this website. Dennis appears to have a far better grasp on the particulars necessary to solve the problem, but lacks the means to acquire all the necessary information.
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."
Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"