There are whacko extremists who believe in evolution and quantum mechanics too. Does that make either of those topics less real just because some whacko extremists believe them? I have no idea why you quoted that part of the article. I can make guesses but none are nice so I will refrain. How about we stick to the facts though? Wasn't that Dave's original intent?

As for IEA predictions, which is the topic of this thread, yes the IEA has a pretty bad track record but it is consistently bad in one direction only. It's not random noise where they are too optimistic one year and too pessimistic another. There is a specific trend here that can be shown from observing their predictions against actuals for several years. And that trend reinforces the concerns of peak oilers while it also discredits cornucopians who rely on those same IEA optimistic predictions that everything will be ok.

Naturally, I read Porter's comments about "believers" who are "polishing their oily chrystal balls". He was all over the map in that December 23rd article (sorry about my mistake about the date), for example

Meanwhile neo-liberal fundamentalists like author Peter Odell tell us that oil will be drilled forever and waste is a good thing. Their party ideology seems to be based on the same logic as the Japanese whaling industry. The more you consume the more you will consume. If you believe that eat all the food in your fridge now, the market will send you more courtesy of the magic oil pixies.

Fundamentally, I agree about the futility of specific forecasts--this is one reason I wrote this post. Now, the IEA is in the "prediction business" but GreyZone has gotten my point that their forecasts seem to go in one direction only and further that they constantly make the same kind of mistakes (and therefore revisions) every year. You would think that they might wake up and smell the coffee but they never do. However, I do believe in the existence of historical trends. IEA's consistently mistaken forecasts seem to ignore supply & demand trends that we should all be concerned about. Extrapolating such trends is risky too but, hey, we can't just pretend they don't exist.

I get the sense that some making comments here think TOD is in the prediction business too (not thinking of you, Halfin). We're not. This tends to be a news, information and analysis site--I think this approach is its principal virtue. To my knowledge, no editor or contributor (including me) at TOD has made any specific prediction about the timeframe for peak oil and the demise of civilization as we know it. Speaking personally, I vacillate on this all the time. There are lots of other peak oil websites you can visit if you want dire predictions of imminent doom but I won't be naming names here. However, TOD is not one of them.

best,