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Page added on July 13, 2013
Peak Oil Peters Out: Neo-Malthusian Cult Website The Oil Drum Shuts Down
Neo-Malthusian group’s website ‘The Oil Drum’ shuts down
The Oil Drum (TOD) was founded and frequented by believers in the theory of peak oil, the hypothetical point at which the world’s oil supplies go into irreversible decline. Peak oil devotees typically predict that apocalyptic economic consequences would follow hard on falling crude supplies. In a note to readers TOD contributor and co-founder and former President of ASPO Netherlands (Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas Netherlands) Rembrandt Koppelaar explained:
A few weeks ago the ISEOF board (The Institute for Energy and Our Future that facilitates The Oil Drum), Euan, Super G, JoulesBurn, and Myself, met to discuss the future of The Oil Drum. A discussion we have had several times in the last year, due to scarcity of new content caused by a dwindling number of contributors. Despite our best efforts to fill this gap we have not been able to significantly improve the flow of high quality articles.
The folks over at Marketwatch at the Wall Street Journal speculate:
With news of record-breaking North American oil and gas production seemingly every day, maybe it just got too hard to maintain a site devoted to the notion that the world’s oil production was at or near a peak.
You think? As long as people remain free to benefit from their creativity, then Malthusians will always be wrong.
For more background see my post, “Remembering ‘Peak Oil’ Madness,” and my articles, “Political Peak Oil,” and “Peak Oil Panic.”
11 Comments on "Peak Oil Peters Out: Neo-Malthusian Cult Website The Oil Drum Shuts Down"
BillT on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 2:05 pm
Well, as we bounce along the plateau, it is difficult to keep the sheeple’s interest, but I suspect there is a new shock coming before long, this year, that might wake them up.
Newfie on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 2:22 pm
The Malthusians will be wrong until they’re right.
dashster on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 2:29 pm
“The Malthusians will be wrong until they’re right.”
Yeah but it can be maddening listening to the Cornucopians crow in the meantime.
Mike in Calif. on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 5:43 pm
The most troubling belief of the optimists is:
“As long as people remain free to benefit from their creativity, then Malthusians will always be wrong.”
It implies, no, it states emphatically that we are smarter, wiser and better than those who preceded us into collapse. It declares history, and our understanding of human nature through history, obsolete. There is an arrogance in it that proclaims we can do everything for everyone with nothing if only we put our minds to it.
But then, why aren’t we? Why aren’t solving all our modern problems through this miraculous agent? Hunger and poverty should not exist if this human magic is real, should they?
DC on Sat, 13th Jul 2013 7:38 pm
That WND website is little better than a right-wing gossip mag. Though I hardly am surprised that the ‘new’ and improved TOD died, it was largely a self-inflicted death. That WND site has nothing to offer on the topic, unless flinging poo counts as insite.
Dmyers on Sun, 14th Jul 2013 12:00 am
This article originates from Reason.com. The viewpoint is libertarian and should be considered along with all others.
By taking a very narrow view of the issue at hand, the article spins the story to the writer’s own preferred conclusion. The changing of TOD is not a product of the shale oil boom and refutation of peak oil. It’s much more complicated than that. For example, the people involved just want to concentrate on some other things. The subject matter has been well explored to the moment. Some of the best articles, by the likes of Colin Campbell, Matthew Simmons and Richard C. Duncan were written in the late 90’s (see dieoff.org bibliography).
I don’t believe it is contrary to history to say where there’s a will there’s a way, and many an inspirational speaker can lay down the facts. Libertarians typically point to the “Green Revolution” to hammer down the Malthusian spirit and prove that human innovation is always a missing ingredient in the Malthusian outlook. The fact is, they won their case on that.
But only because of the “an ear of corn is an ear of corn” presumption (also applies to wheat and other agricultural products). The truth is, modern mass-production agriculture does not produce the same ear of corn as its doomed predecessor. The new ear has a lot more bad stuff than the old ear, and it has a lot less good stuff (i.e. nourishment). Wheat has been described as “poison” by some nutritional researchers, and our food is increasingly devoid of anything but calories. The essence of this is that we are starving but on a full stomach.
With oil, as well, shale and tar sands oil are treated as though they are the same thing as conventional oil when in fact they are a down-graded version, which takes a lot more energy to extract and gives a lot less energy in return.
These additional complications and many more must be incorporated into the analysis of what our technological innovations have really produced. If we’re starving on a full stomach but starving nonetheless, does that refute Malthus?
BillT on Sun, 14th Jul 2013 1:22 am
If an alien visitor from an advanced race in another solar system were to come here and observe our antics, they would either think that we had no real intelligence and/or that we merited extermination to save the rest of the ecosystem. I would have to agree.
We have the techie religion that believes that they can do anything with nothing. The God Complex? Then we have greed that allows millions to die every day for profit. 15% of the world lives in luxury and 85% exist on what they can scrape together.
If, in the 50s, we had read a novel that correctly portrays our civilization, we would have placed it in the fiction or fantasy section of the library.
jimmyhealth on Sun, 14th Jul 2013 6:28 am
Peak Oil can’t be real cuz T.O.D. shut down……… idiots!
Yes, the world is a magic oil filled poridge pot cuz the T.O.D. closed it’s website.
mike on Sun, 14th Jul 2013 7:20 am
Author is talking about doomers and preppers that think “peak oil” will happen over a few days and leave billions dead. John Micheal Greer has about the best grasp on the situation of anyone I’ve read, a painfully slow collapse of attrition that people will deny until it’s at their front door, and even then they will blame politics and other races or religions before they even contemplate the energy angle. Peak oil will never be accepted by the masses folks, just deal with it and get busy living.
PrestonSturges on Sun, 14th Jul 2013 4:56 pm
>>>This article originates from Reason.com. The viewpoint is libertarian and should be considered along with all others.
Reason.com or WND, the Libertarians have the same right wing masters as the neoconfederate bible thumping goobers.
Bob Kraus on Sun, 14th Jul 2013 6:59 pm
But I still wonder what it means, the end of TOD. It was the great origin. The Big Bang. It set the stage for everything. We are all its children. It was the center and fount of peak oil knowledge. It had the unmistakable stamp of authority and wisdom. That’s all gone. The light has gone out. Who do we turn to? Oh, woe!