Actually his arguments are interesting in the sense of why they are wrong.

I'm fairly confident at least in my work on trying to understand complex systems for which we have incomplete or worse incorrect data that the time evolution is one of the hardest aspects of the system to estimate. Its the variable that has the most error.

The reason is I feel intrinsic in complex systems themselves they can change dramatically to alter the time outline.

However just because time is difficult to determine does not result in the outcome proposed by Positive_Phototaxis that these
countries will continue to export oil in large quantities. In fact its obvious he does not understand either the problem with timing nor the intrinsic nature of complex systems.

Whats funny is there actually exists a example of country thats to some sense operating counter to export land and that Nigeria.
By any reasonable estimate if they cared to support their local population in a decent lifestyle then Nigerian exports would be
falling rapidly given the population. Instead they are relatively high and the population for the most part is mired in deep poverty.
However the result is extensive guerrilla warfare with exports regularly interrupted and collapse effectively always probable.

So and excellent counter point to ELM exists and it shows that anti-ELM policies are not that successful of course given the current political strife in Nigeria one would assume that when Nigerian production begins to obviously decay that the probability of all out war completely interrupting production is high. In fact I'd not be surprised in the least to see total Nigerian exports actually result in the same outcome as the ELM which is a little more then 50% or so of overall production. Its a fairly safe assumption that Nigeria will export very little of its last 25% of reserves and exports will probably fall dramatically in the second 50% either because of collapse or because of a takeover by groups that actually support the local population.

We will see but this is this sort of conjecture you get from complex systems and the greater ELM model using this approach says that in general no country exports much more then 50% of its natural resources that can be used internally.

Indeed although WT does not mention it the US itself went through ELM ceasing oil exports back in the 1950's or 1960's I don't have the exact date. This 50% concept is quite general and broad obviously countries like Kuwait with large resources and a small population or Norway are exceptions but in general if you look I think you will find that internalization of resource usage is very common when it becomes clear the production is in decline regardless of the post peak production policies. It will be interesting to watch Nigeria and even Norway over the next several years to see if the broader ELM concept is as intrinsic as I suspect.

If Positive-Phototaxis had something more then rhetoric to support his claims then he would have been able to at least expand the concept of ELM and maybe potentially show that other viable non ELM outcomes are possible. My opinion is the broader concept of ELM which is really simply a variant of resource nationalism at its largest scale indicate that exports become increasingly problematic as its clear that a particular resource is in decline.

Whats even more interesting if you really think about it the silver bullet or technology will save us group is really a sort of anti-ELM concept. But because they are really just suggestions of alternative evolution models vs ELM then they need to develop their thesis from ELM itself instead of embracing the range of outcomes and debating the probability or requirements to not fall into the two general result either steady resource nationalism or abrupt post peak changes needs a lot of work.

Instead in general from what I've seen most people who reject the problems we face simply take the tactic that timing problems or the natural ability of complex systems to evolve in surprising ways as sufficient to reject the basic model. In my opinion A does not equal B. Fairly small short term timeshifts or reversals are to be expected simply because the system is complex obvious and real changes that indicate the system is evolving on a different path however seem in my opinion to require readily measurable and obvious trends supporting alternative outcomes.

This alone is what makes anti-ELM arguments difficult to accept one would expect that to counter ELM would require some fairly strong trends to become established to overcome the ELM effect in almost all cases either the Silver Bullet argument or the economic one require decades of work to put into place. Thus the real failure is not even in the arguments it seems to lie in the fact that these arguments require a dramatic long term trend reversal over a short period of time and worse in general they need to happen without causing instability. Both the transition of a exporting country to one that limits or reduces internal consumption and the other alternative that alternative energy sources replace net exports without serious economic hardship are difficult to execute over a short time period without side-effects overwhelming the attempt to change the trend.

On the other hand model like peak oil and ELM have relentless and simple models supporting their outcomes and the end result is very robust against short term timing changes in fact reversals lasting years or even decades and a variety of economic models seem unable to stop the the system from following the models.

And finally at the end of the day humans face a massive population collapse in the near future maybe we will find a silver bullet and delay it for a few decades or even a few centuries all this will do is increase the amount of destruction we will do to our planet before we almost certainly see a massive collapse. We as a species need to change and limit ourselves and live within the constrains of our ecosystem and most of all begin the long task of humanely reducing both our population and per-capita ecological footprint.
We still in my opinion have both a chance and a choice to avert what looks like certain doom simply be fundamentally changing the way we live. Real answers show how we solve these problems. WT ELP simply by virtue of the design ensure that local populations become constrained eventually resulting in a constrained world population I've not seen a single proposal from what I call the cornucopian's that actually addresses our real underlying population problem thus not only do they generally dismiss the resource constrain models they repeatedly fail to address the core population issue. Show me how a PV panel or electric car solves the world population problem and I'll take a second look. While ELM and peak oil itself are actually underpinned by the real population growth problem they are secondary results of and ever growing population.

You didn't need a model to tell you that.

Nothing is truly needed. The better question is what is missing that if added to the conversation would help people understand what's going on? Jeffrey's model is doing exactly that. And having a name for it is very handy in discussions because a common vocabulary makes conversation more efficient and effective.

In contrast, my understanding of the last CERA report from others (I do not have a copy) is that it contains nothing about net exports. Nor are net exports a common conversation anywhere I go. People are still trying to get their head around the possibility that oil production is going to decline.

From that perspective, I think Jeffrey is moving the conversation forward, while all it seems to me that you are doing is throwing up obstacles that are only marginally adding to the conversation, at best.