The Oil Drum

72 comments on Midweek Open Thread

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Rick on October 27, 2005 - 11:27pm

Sorry to offend, but we are accepting peak oil in spite of an absence of good evidence. Nobody knows what the OPEC reserves really are. We don't even know good production figures. Matt Simmons puts fixing bad data as a major top-priority problem. Even Colin Campbell won't show his data.

I have no problem accepting peak oil as a near-term reality. But I also know the data to date only partially supports that, and it is far from irrefutable. We in the peak oil community are assembling scraps of information, and putting it together in a qualitative, value-laden way that reflects our outlook. I happen to agree with most of it it. But don't think that this is rational, unbiased inquiry. We're partisans, and we are constructing our world view to fit our partisan leanings.

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MikeTor on October 28, 2005 - 1:46am

Peak Oil doesn't need good data to be proven. It is a fact for a finite resource that there will be peak extraction. Period.

You probably meant "we are accepting Peak Oil in the 2005-2010 timeframe despite not knowing what the OPEC reserves really are".

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mikeB on October 28, 2005 - 5:15am

No offense at all.

You're saying exactly what I'm saying, in a sense.

"Belief" is irrefutable; peak oil, on the other hand, being subject to crappy data, is provisional, changing, irritatingly difficult to pin down.

It's that word, "belief," getting thrown around a lot that I don't like. See the crappy blob "Debunking Peak Oil," and you'll see what I mean. It's the idea of peak oil being a belief system that critics are seizing upon.

Again: peak oil does not require faith, which is what belief is all about.

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GreyZone on October 28, 2005 - 11:54am

What you are objecting to are irrational beliefs. Many of our beliefs are based on past facts as baseline data and then extrapolated into the future and which have various probabilities assigned to them by us.

When I encounter cornucopians, I tend to think of these as people with data sets less complete than my own. Their extrapolations are valid and have been valid historically yet they are lacking the additional data that transforms the expectation of continued oil availability into oil depletion.

The problem that occurs in human beings is that many, perhaps most, of us strive to not change beliefs even when the data set is expanded to include new data (or correct erroneous old data) that yields a different conclusion.