The Oil Drum

And contrarily, two rules for a cornucopian regarding oil forecasts by dissidents:

(1) Generally assume the opposite of dissenting opinion, ie, if dissidents are predicting permanently lowered annual production YOY, assume ceaselessly increasing production;

(2) If they declare that demand is going to go down because of massive price increases, assume that demand will double because things are inversely twice as good as the pessimists say.

WT, I think were seeing the sea-change when the powers that be start to admit to our long term supply problem. They're not going to admit to a peak-we've been labeled as cultists-but rather that supplies will be fine in the long term, we just need more money invested to straighten out the logistical problems. Yergin's not going to admit he's wrong, he's an expert. Exxon-Mobil and Cevron aren't going to admit that their reserve figures are not what they seem because they are including b.s. like the Venezuelan heavy oil, that would affect stock prices. Instead, they're going to blame environmentalists and political above ground factors.
And yes, we're going to get smeared because we're the Cassandras pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.
Bob Ebersole

To map this to another ongoing crisis we have brewing. The world wide housing bubble thats now popping in the US and I think New Zealand/Australia. The powers that be admitted that their was a problem but have claimed its contained next they apply remedies that in general will exacerbate the problem by tightening credit at the wrong time. The real situation is fairly easy to ferret out by reading the numerous blogs and website that use facts and reasonable theories to project a much worse situation unfolding for housing as the bubble deflates. Finally these sites made predictions in advance and to date the facts have supported the projects of the "alarmist" websites over the proclamations of the authorities.

So in my opinion the combination of a reasonable amount of information and a lot of fairly sharp people arguing a problem beats the hell out of anything that comes out of our public news sources as far as both truth and reliability esp in projections. When the powers that be finally take a position which is generally the least threatening of the results generated by the web bloggers I tend to believe the web model.

This web developed meta models approach seems to have accurately predicted all our current problems and how they will unfold. Its a probabilistic sort of answer and thus a bit hazy crystal ball but in the case of the housing bubble it seems to be following a fairly alarming consensus opinion that fits the facts. Not the more benign outcomes that are also presented.

The main reason that the more tragic outcomes seem to be the ones that are coming to the pass is that the government/business's seem to always act in such a way to ensure that the worst situation becomes unavoidable. This this one of the key requirements for the more dire outcomes and its seems to have held with flying colors with the housing bubble and Global Warming. I see no reason it won't for peak oil. The only way to get the more benign projects is for governments to pro actively and aggressively combat the problems that they are just now beginning to acknowledge.

The number one failure across the board is thus the attempt to maintain business as usual at all costs by our current governments and ignore the increasing number of serious issues our world is facing which is in reality a choice for the more dangerous outcomes.

(1) Generally assume the opposite of what they are saying

(2) If they admit to supply problems, assume that things are at least twice as bad

If you assume the opposite of what they say shouldn't supply problems = glut?