Yes, but if Gale poses this as an either/or question: as in, are we seeing "Peak Oil" or are we seeing "Limits to Growth"? Then we need a good set of representative models that we can run against each other. Might as well die trying.

Interesting how mention of a deep "technical analysis" gets all the financial types hyperventilating with excitement, yet the same thing applied to a deep problem such as oil depletion is met with a relative thud.

I can one up the Homer Simpson reference:

Professor Frink: [drawing on a blackboard] Here is an ordinary square....
Police Chief Wiggum: Whoa, whoa - slow down, egghead!

I am sure you have seen Ace's projections that show based on a field by field analysis of what companies are saying about when new fields are coming on line. He also takes into account expected decline rates of existing fields. Ace's forecasts were higher before the financial crisis hit. Now that oil prices are lower, companies have pared back their plans for new projects.

The reason that even after the next few years a rebound is unlikely is that base production is dropping rapidly, because of the decline rate on existing fields. Once we fall behind in adding new production, it will be virtually impossible to catch up again.

We know many of the biggest fields, like Ghawar, are getting closer to the end of their life. Surprises on the downside are much more likely than on the upside.

We would really need some upsurge caused by low-priced improved technology to get more oil out. At this point, we don't see any signs of this being at hand. Most of the possibilities seem to be high priced, and will set the economy into a tailspin if oil prices are high enough to support them.

I have succesfully convinced some people, but some others are hard to convince.
One person replied: "I prefer to live in ignorance"
When trying to convince someone, ask him/her: why the oil companies have not invested in new refineries?
Tell people that in one TOD survey, 81% of the participants believe Peak Oil already happened, is happening now, or will happen before 2013.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5186
http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=Up5DUIASuWiOv4TyiyK6SBwfqHaAMra5q...
The following video is very convincing:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-596805984521272213

And if a person does not have 33 minutes, ask him/her to watch these other videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=xT-ZpYgaHgc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=l0MWDQ6JPTo&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xT-ZpYgaHgc&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=l0MWDQ6JPTo&feature=related

Also, ask them to see the following OIL REPORT:
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/Reports.24+M5d637b1e38d.0.html

and to read this: http://www.energybulletin.net/primer

tonyp:

I'd like to convince some friends that 'peak oil' most likely took place in 2008. Of course I can give links to ASPO and other predictions but then they can say 'why should I believe that?

Don't rely your case on what people are asserting/predicting. The facts to date speak loudly enough (to those with functioning ears). Firstly in any productive engagement you have to lead them with questions rather than preach to them: "Are you envisaging to be alive in 5 years time?", "Where can you get sound information from?" (etc.) Flatter their delusion of being rational inquiring minds! (and respect them as equals who might surprise you by showing you to be in error yourself; why should you expect respect if you don't give it?)

Then just observe how (a) the production growth has stalled since 2004. Note how (b) the financial/credit/economic system is crucially dependent on continued growth. Note that the implication of (a) plus (b) is that some sort of economic crisis right now is inevitable, and is indeed taking place. Note the failure to invest in future production, due to faulty market. Producers squealing that they can no longer produce at the current prices. Exporter countries relentlessly turning into importers.
This isn't rocket science and it does not depend on blind faith in some incomprehensible 'ace' etc expertise. Rather it's the denial position that is the act of blind faith.

I'd like to convince some friends that 'peak oil' most likely took place in 2008.

Why?

I don't mean that rhetorically, either, but as an honest question: for what reason do you wish to convince them of this particular proposition?

If you want them to engage in a particular behaviour, such as consuming less oil, then directly addressing that behaviour is almost certainly a more productive approach. For example, simply noting that: (a) oil production seems to be struggling to keep up with oil consumption; (b) that led to high prices in the last few years; and (c) prices are still relatively high and likely to rise in the near future is much less controversial and uncertain, but should have much the same effect in terms of raising awareness regarding oil consumption.

By contrast, if you want to induce a particular mindset, such as believing that civilization is ending, then the timing of peak oil is only one tiny fragment of what you'll need to convince them of. In that case, you're not merely trying to convince people of a physical fact, but of your interpretation of that fact, which is a much harder task. Your interpretation likely relies on a hundred assumptions and leaps of logic you've made, and getting your friends to accept those may be no easy task.

So ask yourself whether you want to convince them of the idea that oil availability is permanently dropping, or of your particular beliefs about what that will mean for society. The first of those is pretty easy - show them a few graphs of prices and rig counts - but the latter is something that will be extremely difficult to provide an evidence-based argument for.

Anytime the Federal government "gets behind a public relations effort" the result is sure to be a public firestorm of suspicion, ridicule and political protest. With good reason the American public is suspicious of, and hostile toward, government bearing giant, complex agenda items. Exhibit A would be, "Global Warming". Unfortunately, both the political Left and the political Right have sacred cows which will be gored by Peak Oil.
The only hope I can see is a much more bottom up, grass roots, small activist centered current of change. People will adjust (and I believe already ARE adjusting) to the world as it changes. This isn't going to happen according to any "Grand Plan" that I can see coming from any quarter, but more likely, IN SPITE of the status quo of entrenched, institutional paralysis and incompetence.

And I second that!

Well, every time in the last 40 years that the real price of oil has jumped, USGDP has gone backwards; with an average lag of 5 quarters, mid OP rise to mid GDP fall. It's now a near perfect five point correlation. It's trivial to calculate that the direct effect of the 2006-08 oil price spike is a 2% fall in USGDP, just due to the import cost increase. The total USGDP fall so far this recession is 3.3%.

Nah, couldn't be, it's all just coincidence...

G.

That work [in systems engineering] has lead to one key insight: that when it comes to complex engineered systems, no one knows how they actually function.

So very true.

Makes you wonder what Ben Bernanke could ever understand about our financial system when taken as a whole, or what President Obama could ever understand about our national system when taken as a whole, or what some guy at the UN ...

Makes you scared to realize they are all "tampering" with things they clearly cannot comprehend. On the other hand, there is no outside systems expert available to whisk in by helicopter or otherwise, to save the day.

Start readying the body bags.

Bop,

Excellent comment. I wish we had two flags. One as inappropriate and another as very appropriate or worthy or whatever.

On complex systems.

I worked in the area of machine language programming. This has all been glossed over and covered with a sheen of highlevel languages. C itself for the most part is the same but one can jump into machine language with C...

So what is my point? Almost no one now understands real machine language. Its incredibly dense and complex yet if one wishes to really fix,instead of 'tampering' or what I called a bandaid, then they had to fix the source. The bottommost level , the machine language instruction.

So I understand fully your views on complex systems.

Much of what is created in programming for say todays Desktop environment is full of errors. They are so small most don't notice them yet they are there. The reason then for thousands of virii and trojans infecting millions of PC. Why many of our business and government systems are compromised. A firestorm just waiting to happen.

Yet no one cares....well so it goes.

Thanks for your personal details on this subject,
Airdale

"They didn't have to predict it. They created it. They profited from it. And they profited a second time when all those people wearing their jeans and shoes longer, and substituting beans for vegetables, spent a couple trillion dollars to bail them out and pay their bonus and their mortgage. Don't expect them to return the favour. You want to understand how that happened."

This quote in particular, should resonate with those TODers who have been here long enough to remember a discussion fostered a year prior (perhaps more) by our very own RR wherein, Robert had asked us if to assume instantaneous and global, benevolent dictatorship with the task of mitigating the coming crisis (or as I call it, our energy event horizon).

And although I did not respond at the time, the logical answer would appear to reside in multiple stages -the first of which unfortunately- is total destruction.

BOP,

Your response is a little too simplistic, imo. The primary issue is that you are mistaking brainstorming and investigation with repairs. Gail's work here, and most of the work here with regard to main posts, appears to me to be either A. informational or B. exploratory. There is little in the way of absolutist "This IS the problem and THIS is how you fix it." I would say this is particularly true of Gail's work. In fact, I think Gail has some strong opinions about certain issues or points in her writings, but actually softens the rhetoric to reflect the uncertainty and that her perspective is as yet unprovable.

Secondly, you are taking the same tack that the climate denialist crowd does: we don't know everything, so we can't act. In the area of policy, of course, this equals death. I like to point out Einstein's E=mc2 was only proven a couple years ago. Had we waited till it was proven the world would be a very different place today. (On second thought, I think that supports your contention!)

There are (relatively) benign actions that can be taken which don't require certainty of cause and effect. Reduce, re-use and recycle. Power down. Garden. Spend time with friends and neighbors. Learn skills. Localize. Etc. Waiting is foolish. The consequences of waiting are incredibly bad. Risk assessment says we must act, even without perfect understanding. We can start with the least bad alternatives, no?

Specifically, the idea that oil prices had no effect on the current economic crisis is wrong. It doesn't pass the sniff test. My back-of-the-envelope estimate is for 1 to 1.5 trillion in additional drain and strain on the economy between 2003 and 2008. And that was when a trillion was still an an exceptionally large number. Was it causative or a cumulative stress? I say it was cumulative. There were crazy, systemic problems in the system. In fact, the system would have crashed in either case: stable economy with fuel costs strain or unstable economy with fuel costs strain. However, the timing, depth and breadth would likely have been different.

My guess is that a healthy economy stressed by energy decline would have happened much more slowly and gradually, with energy then being the immediate cause of collapse. A bubble unstressed by energy descent would have been no more than a recession. We wouldn't be discussing a Greater Depression. As it was, we had the worst of both worlds with a massive bubble popped early by the stresses of historic energy prices.

Don't ask me to quantify it. The analyses have been posted here, or can be found elsewhere on the internet. Personally, it's self evident. I don't see why anyone would question it except to, as you say, try to understand as clearly as possible the mechanics of what has happened. That is, forensically.

There's going to be a chicken and egg argument about that for all of recorded history any and every time anybody, scholar or layperson, dares broach the subject. This is the final error in your comments. It is impossible to know the results of human actions on a global scale. The system is so vast and complex it will never be known. Even God (if a believer) had to throw up his hands and say, "Alright! Alright! Knock it off! Here, take this free will and get out from under my feet, will ya? Go play outside."

If I am understanding you, you are asking the impossible.

Cheers

Sweet Jesus, I just spent an hour typing a response witjh one finger and xxxxing lost it somewhere trying to go back and look at your response.If responses were numbered, it would be easy to find a given one scrolling thru a couple of hundred.Could it be done?This one is not nearly so well organized.

Allow me to apologize for being sarcastic about your prosperity, but you Imply that Gail and I think the primary cause of the current crash is the preceding runup if ff prices.I certainly believe that ff prices were a major contributing factor, but I did not say or imply that I thought they were the primary cause. Your post however ,seems to imply that you think ff prives played only a very minor role at he most.I can't speak for Gail.I simply intended to state in strong terms that when people have to give up certain goods for others as prices rise that there can be and in this case there was a strong ripple effect.I have read a good many pieces by various economists and business pundits supporting this argument, but as I am only commenting as an amatuer, I haven't kept a list of sources.

As a matter of fact,I tend to agree with you with concerning the primary causes of the current crash, but I believe that had bau lasted for a little longer, oil prices could have indeed played a much larger role,perhaps even the primary role.

I believe also that you are intellectually blinded by you training as an engineer into thinking that since you can RUN an oil refinery or RUN a factory, then you can also run or control or at least measure all the inputs and so forth of an economy in such away as to be able to conclusively prove this proposition or that.Such is not the case in the real world of people interacting in uncountable and sometimes probably unknowable ways.Economists are winning Nobel prizes these days doing basic research on why people and markets and governments behave as they do,and they apparently still have a long way to go.

My initial comments about mixing in a little common sense concerning ff prices and the ripple effect above referenced were intended to be interpreted as a little sermon about interpreting economic data as if it were engineering data. That You can be pretty sure you know what is going on in an industrial plant if you are a good engineer and have studied all aspects of the plant I do not doubt, but when it comes to the business world,you would do well to remember the quote from Twain I believe about
"lies,damned lies,and statistics".Take a few minutes to read his short story about the little town where the game of seven up is legal because for every witness who said the game is gambling, the defense found one who said "skill".

You missed my point entirely in my last paragraph. What I WROTE was that all the govt analysts,economists,and bankers, with all thier technology,and all thier access to inside info,FAILED TO PREDICT THE CRASH.Sort of proves that in the world of people as opposed to machinery that you can't necessarily prove diddly with the charts and graphs that you insisted Gail shpuld produce to prove HER POINT, doesn't it?? The fact that they are largely responsible for the crash(I actually mostly agree with you on this point)is not a refutation of my argument.

If I were God,all engineers would take at least four semesters of biology with labs, and at least a year of economics.Good medicine for hubris in my opinion.Most of us cow college types are required to get at least two years minimum in basic and organic chemistry, and a basic course in physics, and a couple of courses in business fundamentals.Depending on our area of specialization, we often spend more time in hard science (as opposed to econ, political science,etc)classes than any where else.I like to think that we are thereby vaccinated against both the dogma of unlimited growth, which MotherNature will tolerate for only so long, and the pessimism of the doomers who think Mother Nature is a hot house flower in eminent danger of extinction.

You are locked into the engineering paradigm to the extent that you insist that a systems approach is defined as what you do as an engineer.There is a larger box(envelope)wherein you can be a systems analyst that uses your engineering analysis as a single component of a much more comprehensive analysis that takes into account history, accidents,political factions,and on and on .

Gail is such an analyst.I'm just a crabby old farmer with too much time on my hands.don't take me too seriously.

The problem may not be with Gail. Or you. Or those folks who are happy with whatever she writes up. The problem may be with me.

I can appreciate your logic when it comes to tampering with complex engineering systems where peoples lives are directly at risk. I have been in the same situation where the best course of action is to not touch it even thought the temptation is great. But Gail is not tampering with anything. She is writing on a blog on the internet which doesn't carry the same gravity as say the Chernobyl control room! As you have pointed out, nobody understands how the system really works, nevertheless we find oursleves confronted with the reality that we live within and alongside complex social, political, finacial and physical systems and seeking to understand them and our context within them must start from somewhere. Gails assertion is just as good as anyones elses and if that gets the deabte started and advances understanding then it must be good. If you feel that Gails assertion is going to kill someone, then by all means speak up.

Pitt- I explained in the cited link why "testable predictions" cannot be a valid criterion for dismissing a theory.

Furthermore I have elsewhere explained how the reasonably useful concept of conceivable falsifiability has been perverted by professional career "scientists" into an occupational ideology of "testable predictions", ie, that the admissibility of a theory supposedly depends whether it creates more research jobs for them rather than solving real problems (thus making them redundant).

Not the least objection is that a theory's status as scientific would then depend on whether or not people had carried out a particular experiment before, or only after, the theory was proposed, which is absurd.

As for your preoccupation with how often that theory has been cited-- You must equally deride Mendel's pea studies for being ignored for decades. And Wegener's continental drift being derided for decades. Plenty more such historical examples in Genius by HJ Eysenck, pp 148-157: http://www.futurewise.info/gen.htm.

And by the way, does it not occur to you that it is very rare for a paper to be cited by someone else 16 years after its publication, let alone when its author is not some "distinguished" celeb of the establishment (giving motivation for flattery) but only a near-penniless invalid whose ideas prosper on their unchallenged excellence alone. (By the way, it was also twice positively cited by Bernard Rimland in ARRI, and also cited in a book by Temple Grandin; there's more to life than google.)