The Oil Drum

Bravo !
Correct and further more even the best data we have has errors far greater than the reported error ranges. The number of times its adjusted should indicate how poor we know our own oil production. My rule of thumb is we basically lose the entire production of Iran in the world totals. This sounds like a lot but its only a few percent plus or minus.

I'd love to see some of the number crunchers on the site extract a plausible error term for some of the numbers we rely on. Next I agree with Robert that these intrinsic errors cause the HL methods to themselves have a confidence range it would be nice to get a handle on what this is.

Overall it would be beneficial for everyone to understand what we know and don't know. Statistical error analysis is sorely needed.

Next looking at the size of the problem we face which was shown recently as a cube of oil measuring over a mile points out that the time of peak oil is not that important if its 30 years away all the better for us.
In hindsight we should have moved away from oil when production in the US peaked in the 70 and Europe should have done a far better job managing production from the North Sea.

Africa and the Middle East would have been far saner places if oil was viewed as a national resource to help create a real economy. The same for Russia. But as the saying goes don't cry over spilled milk. Recognize that we have had ample time to address this issue and valid and compelling reasons have existed for 30 years. Even now we can see that the failure of Jimmy Carters initiatives has resulted in a world thats not a happy place.

The possibility that we may have already peaked and the number of scenarios that point to a peak in the near future should only spur us to act on converting our economies from oil. The chance of a peak now or in the near future should not be required for us to act.

To compare to another overriding issue facing us. It looks like we may be too late on global warming lets not do the same for oil. We as a world are facing a increasing number of major worldwide problems if we continue to fail to act on some of them doomsday scenarios have a much higher probability of becoming reality. I'd be happy to see the world proactively do one thing right in my lifetime. Here is a list.

1.) Global Warming
2.) Population
3.) Water
4.) Food
5.) Other resources depletion ( oil water etc)
6.) Efficient cheap housing/transport
7.) Globalization and economic equality.

And more these are in order of relative importance notice that oil is not our biggest problem but they are not unrelated since all our other problems result in our inability to solve the Global Warming one.