The Oil Drum

19 comments on Bloomberg: Goldman's Murti Says `Peak Oil' Risks Sending Prices Above $105

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Rick on December 19, 2005 - 3:25pm

Glad you've see the light, Dave. Life is much simpler when you put aside that annoying depletion argument. The Delphic oracle is appropriate for several reasons:

"New evidence for the geological origins of the ancient Delphic oracle"
J.Z. de Boer, J.R. Hale, J. Chanton
Geology (2001): Vol. 29, No. 8, pp. 707-710.

Ancient tradition linked the Delphic oracle in Greece to specific geological phenomena, including a fissure in the bedrock, intoxicating gaseous emissions, and a spring. Despite testimony by ancient authors, many modern scholars have dismissed these traditional accounts as mistaken or fraudulent. This paper presents the results of an interdisciplinary study that has succeeded in locating young faults at the oracle site and has also identified the prophetic vapor as an emission of light hydrocarbon gases generated in the underlying strata of bituminous limestone.

Other descriptions of these hydrocarbons refer to them as "hallucinogenic." So, based on good science, we have evidence that proximity to hydrocarbons can lead to wild prophetic statements. This may explain quite a lot.

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Francois on December 19, 2005 - 4:22pm

I think this is a startling insight - the lack of proximity similarly leads to agressive behavior and intense rapturious expectations

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Dave Cohen on December 19, 2005 - 5:51pm

Hydrocarbon fumes "intoxicating"? "Hallucinatory"? Leading to delusions of grandeur, imagined abundance and revelatory prophesy?

It is rare, indeed, when I receive an insight of the magnitude of what you have delivered here for all of us today, Rick. My humble thanks.