Thanks Robert for the summary and meta-reading.

Why is there such a divide, and how do we address it?" Because I don't believe we can just afford to write off people who think peak is a long way off. We have to look at our position and their position and figure out what the problem is.

I think there are at least two discussion of position here: public and scientific.

1) Public debate: their position ("late peak, no peak, undulating long plateau") vs various other PO positions, which are often clumped into one group although they are not one ("peak soon", "imminent decline", "unmitigated disaster")

This is public debate that is very difficult to "win" (and public discussion are mostly won/lost, there often no attempt at arriving at shared truth).

For every sane "let's look at PO risks, date & mitigation" point of view, there'll be tons of extreme viewpoint survival opinions "it's all going to hell in a hand basket, it'll be Mad Max everywhere" to make the WHOLE PO camp look silly. Even if it's not a single homogeneous camp and regardless the fact that the extreme viewpoints could also have some truth in them (nobody can fully disprove it, its all a matter of belief).

So, finding some common ground on this public debate will require:

- lots of more compromising & politicizing (is that a verb?) from the PO vocals, in order to be able to become presentable, acceptable and prime-time friendly with their message. I cant foresee contrarians trying to to come closer to the PO position - at least not in public.

- waiting in the trenches and seeing if PO will push the contrarians towards the "peaking soon" position or accept that fact that as time goes by, PO peakers will be pushed towards the position of the contrarians.

2) Scientific position on the peak date (probability), shape of peak, decline rate, risks of oil availability.

This is about finding the truth and subjecting all analysis and data to open scientific peer review, which requires public disclosure.

Its not about winning the debate, its trying to find the real data and drawing the most sound scientific conclusions from it. And then making it a debate about political response to peak - if any (i.e. back to public debate domain).

However, I don't see real scientific discussion happening.

Reasons:

1) CERA, ExxonMobil, API and other contrarians only give their position, but refuse to divulge their data, calculations and models.

2) AFAIK, no contrarian has come forward and tried to prove scientifically that either the data or the calculations from the "peak soon" camp is incorrect. Contrarians have again stated their position: "peak oil believers are wrong", but given no tangible proof that would enable one to verify their position.

As long as this continues, the scientific discussion will continue as it is: one side trying to calculate, ask for peer review and admit the incompleteness of data. The other side basically hand waving and denying peaking soon, but refusing an open scientific debate.

Please note that my analysis does not assume "peak now" or "late peak" or even "no peak" position.

This is just my reading of the discussion as it has been unraveling now for some years.

As such, I remain a little skeptical about addressing the divide, esp. in the public view.

However, progress can be made on the local level, municipal level or a in limited scientific circles.

I think people should consider concentrating on those, if they are interested in continuing the debate (in addition to actually responding through actions like ELP).