Likely, you haven’t heard much, lately, about peak oil. If you did, it was because it was summarily dismissed as “wrong”. Indeed, as you see in the figure above, peak oil had a peak of interest around 2006, a second one around 2008, then it gradually declined.
Why this decline? You might say that it was because the recent drop in oil prices. Maybe, but note, from the figure, that the interest in peak oil started a steady decline just when oil prices went up to reach a plateau at levels over 100 $/barrel. Then, you might say that the decline is because peak oil didn’t appear when it was predicted. Maybe, but the record of the “peakist” approach is not bad at all when compared with of mainstream oil pundits. Had any of them anticipated such things as the burst of high oil prices that started in 2005? Did any of them foresee that the oil industry would have had to switch to expensive and difficult resources, that they had always shunned before, in order to keep production from falling?
So, why is peak oil fading away from our consciousness? As a meme (a knowledge unit replicating in virtual space), peak oil just doesn’t seem to have a large viral power. Peak oil is not the only case of a loss of interest in some concepts (memes) for no obvious reason. Take a look to the Google trends for “Global Warming.” (“climate change” does a little better, but not so much)
So, the planet is going to hell, but people just don’t care. Not even a blip of interest, for instance, in 2012, when the Arctic ice sheet collapsed to levels never seen before. The last peak of interest in global warming was created only by the climategate story, and then it was flatland all over.
There are many other examples of peaking and successive decline of various concepts. Take a look, for instance, to “communism”
Of course, the fact that a concept shows a peak of interest doesn’t mean that it has to fade away forever. You could identify a peak of interest also in many commonplace concepts such as “electricity.” But, here, the interest never faded away and, indeed, electricity remains a commonplace element of our lives.
Perhaps we could use the concept of “full width at half maximum” (FWHM) as an approximate measurement of the lifetime of these concepts. In this way, we can put together a list of memes and their lifetimes, measured by Google’s trends or Google ngrams. This is, obviously, a very approximate set of numbers, they are there just to give an idea of the spread in the lifetime of some memes.
Meme approx FWHM, years
Nibiru 0.3
Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat 1
Peak Oil 5
Global Warming 5
Cold Fusion 17
Limits to Growth 30
Nuclear Energy 35
Communism 50
Electricity > 100
The FWHM (time duration) associated with these concepts is a strong indication of the capability of a meme to establish itself in virtual space. This depends, first of all, on the capability of the meme to replicate itself rapidly: the meme must be interesting, understandable, and, often, have some relation with reality. Then, if a meme is the equivalent of a gene (or a virus) in biology, then, if there are antigens, there must be antimemes (or, perhaps, “antimems”). This immune response may take the form of “memetic antibodies” which directly fight the invading meme. This is a fight that we see everyday: we call it “debate”. As a result, the meme may go viral and infect the infospace of the Internet, or be rejected. In the second case, it may remain in a quiescent state, infecting only marginal areas.
This behavior can be seen in many examples. For instance, the meme of Andrea Rossi’s nuclear device, the “E-Cat,” flared up rapidly and then practically disappeared, just as rapidly. In this case, there was no need for a strong intervention of the immune system. The meme itself was weak, since the E-Cat simply couldn’t deliver the cheap energy that it had promised to deliver. The same can be said of a meme such as the planet Nibiru hitting the Earth. It rapidly disappeared after that it was clear that no such thing was going to happen.
How about the “peak oil” meme? Unlike Nibiru or the E-Cat, peak oil is a serious concept, backed up by a lot of research. However, it didn’t really get viral enough to become a mainstream meme. The main problem, here, may have been the choice of the term: “peak oil” conjures a specific moment in time when something exceptional should happen, even though it is not clear what. When people saw that nothing special was happening, they lost interest. The decline of the peak oil meme was helped by the anti-memetic system that created effective antimemes such as “they have been predicting peak oil already for 30 years ago.”
About “global warming”, we have problems, too: first of all, we propose a concept that people can’t perceive in their everyday experience. Then, the immune system has generated strong antimemes that turned out to be extremely effective; such as “there has been no warming during the past 19 years”. Indeed, “climate change” has fared much better than “global warming” as a meme. But even climate change is hard to perceive for the public, and it fails to evoke such things as ocean acidification, sea level rise, food supply disruption, and many others.
In the end, it is all part of the game: the memetic immune system does its job of filtering away memes that are silly, useless, and dangerous. However, like its biological counterpart, sometimes it attacks the wrong targets, a true “autoimmune” genetic reaction. There are memes we badly need to diffuse in the world’s infospace: that oil depletion is real and dangerous if we don’t do something about it; that climate change is real and it is dangerous, if we don’t do something to stop it.
Biological autoimmune diseases are common and dangerous; and the therapy is always difficult. In the memetic case, we are in also in a difficult situation. Maybe there are ways to avoid the slaughter of good memes; but it is not an easy task. In any case, I think that at least one thing is clear from this discussion: memes that have already generated a strong immune response have little or no chance to diffuse. “Peak Oil” is basically a dead meme.
We need new memes that describe the same concepts. For instance, we should mention “depletion” rather than “peaking” as a way to describe the gradual loss of high yield mineral resources. Maybe ASPO (the association for the study of peak oil) should be renamed as ASOD (association for the study of oil depletion).Maybe we could develop something more creative, such as “oil senility,” why not? Then, it has been proposed to replace the term “climate change” with “climate disruption,” and that could be a good idea. These are just examples; surely we can think of other possibilities. Just remember one thing: a good virus is a virus that mutates a lot!
rockman on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 7:40 am
“PO” is alive and well as indicated by the recent crash in oil prices. And if one doesn’t understand that statement at this point they probably should give up on this site.
Hello on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 8:18 am
PO is alive, yet its dire effects are postponed by a couple of decades.
Unless of course one is a subscriber to POD, which essentially ascribes ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that happens in the universe to PO. Even me having a salad for lunch.
Boat on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 8:18 am
Of course Peak oil is alive and well and will be for some time. We have not reached it yet.
Rock,
you got your opinion. PO is happening and has been for a long time. Production is up, consumption is up no matter what the price it seems. The world just loves the stuff.
Boat on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 8:20 am
LOL, Hello
paulo1 on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 9:16 am
As Ron Patterson says, (I paraphrase) “Of course oil production at peak will seem like an abundance. We will be at Peak Production”. (That is for Boat)
You just have to take away ethanol, bio-diesel, unconventionals….all produced when people could pay $100+ for oil, and see where conventional leaves us.
Let’s all talk again when shale production is .5 and a few oil sands plants in Alberta shut down or constrain production in some kind of balance. The relentless decline will show its head again but this time there will be no more credit for a new surge.
Observerbrb on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 9:34 am
Peak Oil is here, FT says:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3ba5d0a8-5e29-11e5-a28b-50226830d644.html
(Well it doesn’t say so, but you should read between the lines)
Boat on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 9:38 am
paulo,
You think tar sands are dead? You think fracking around the world is dead? They just waiting on that $100 per barrel. If oil went even higher at some point you would see massive global tar sands and fracking. A chart I saw claimed conventional oil was only 25% of oil available. The price to extract the other is just higher.
Nony on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 10:31 am
TOD is dead and ASPO stopped having conferences. Signs of dying interest in the concept.
Davy on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 10:38 am
The NOoo has spoken. NOo I like how you are eating crow now with oil supply, demand, and the resulting demand and supply destruction. I still recall your happy face comments of how well the economy and the oil patch were. No worries cheerleading from the NOoo. Why are you here NOoo? This is a peak oil site you are obsessively on? Sounds strange to say there is no interest from one here constantly.
SugarSeam on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 11:37 am
$16 trillion in QEs, TARPS and other bailout programs does wonders for Team No Problem’s argument that all is well… Where would the world be today without the printed up debt to paper over the problem thats already arrived? Idiots.
Boat on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 11:44 am
Sugar,
Isn’t 17% of the junk bond business related to oil? Maybe it’s the other 83%.
GregT on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 11:59 am
“$16 trillion in QEs, TARPS and other bailout programs does wonders for Team No Problem’s argument that all is well”
That would be for only one country Sugar. According to the BIS global government debt has grown by 57 trillion dollars since 2008. Almost doubled in 7 years.
Global debt up by $57 trillion since crisis: Report
“The worry for governments is that it becomes increasingly difficult to slow the pace of borrowing—let alone repay it—as the global economy continues to slow down. Curbing spending or raising taxes to reduce public spending can further reduce growth, making it harder to keep up with interest payments.”
“There are few indications that the current trajectory of rising leverage will change,” the report says. “This calls into question basic assumptions about debt and deleveraging and the adequacy of tools available to manage debt and avoid future crises.”
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/06/global-debt-up-by-57-trillion-since-crisis-report.html
shortonoil on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 12:46 pm
“Peak Oil is here, FT says:”
Conventional crude peaked in 2005, all liquids has peaked this year, or will early next year if prices do not recover. A least a third of the world’s producers are losing money on every barrel they produce, and none of them can replace the reserves that they are extracting. The last item seems to get conveniently ignored.
If reserves can not be replaced the world has hit a defacto peak, regardless of how fast those remaining reserves are, or are not extracted. Once the average field reaches it maximum production level total world production goes into decline. Most of the reserves that have been brought on line over the last few decades have been quit small; their duration of higher production will consequently be quit short.
The only thing now preventing an official declaration of Peak is the massive debt accumulation that the industry is now acquiring. The continuance of this practice is now dependent on an already highly stressed, poorly designed artificial financial system. It smooth operation of providing unbacked, and unrepayable funds to the industry is probably numbered in days!
http://www.thehillsgroup.org/
ennui2 on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 1:05 pm
==
Unless of course one is a subscriber to POD, which essentially ascribes ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that happens in the universe to PO. Even me having a salad for lunch.
==
^^^^ This.
The issue has gone underground, that’s for sure. And bad predictions are a big part of it (Chicken Little syndrome). And yet those who remain squacking the loudest just keep issuing bad predictions.
apneaman on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 1:12 pm
Tick Tock corny motherfuckers
http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/
Davy on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 1:31 pm
Sure Enu and you happy face all the world wonders to Econ 101 supply and demand so what’s worse stupid or stupider?
GregT on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 2:08 pm
ennui2 said:
“The issue has gone underground, that’s for sure.”
Still in a complete state of denial I see.
I first heard the term ‘peak oil’ back in or around 2003. In those days it was difficult to find information outside of a small handful of websites, and not one single person that I knew had even heard of ‘peak oil’. A simple google search for ‘peak oil’ today gives 14,700,000 results in .21 seconds, and not only do I discuss the subject on a regular basis with many people that I know, it has now become part of the business strategy in my former workplace.
Many of the hits returned from the above google search talk about how ‘peak oil’ has failed to come to fruition.
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
BobInget on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 2:17 pm
Modern money printing presses require no ink.
Nony on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 2:27 pm
Fracking killed the peaker star.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwuy4hHO3YQ
LTO came and broke your heart…
and now you meet in abandoned forum…
🙂
BobInget on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 2:27 pm
Volkswagen will have electric drive components
in EVERY vehicle by 2020.. That is if they manage to get out of the TDI pollution scandal
with their lederhosen still covering their collective asses.
My family has three late model TDI diesels and have already joined a class action.
GregT on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 2:38 pm
“and now you meet in abandoned forum…”
The ‘abandoned forum’ that you yourself frequent almost daily. 🙂
JuanP on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 2:42 pm
Hello and Boat are schoolyard buddies now! How not surprising! In Spanish we have a saying “Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres.” I believe in English it would be “Birds of a feather flock together”
apneaman on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 2:58 pm
I wonder what the total, yet ongoing propaganda budget to discredit peak oil has been? Not that TPTB actually give a shit about peak oil. It’s getting more sucker investors and preventing fleeing shareholders is what it’s all about. Self preservation 101.
joe on Tue, 22nd Sep 2015 4:37 am
Peak oil was correct, except they kept finding more oil ;p
Peak oil is obvious but the supply is vast and it’s possible that the supply will last well into the old age of our grand children. The downside of that outlook is that most coastal cities will drown if we use that oil. Even if we are not the cause of global warming there is no doubt that mountain glaciers are melting and that itself is enough to drive hundreds of millions out of coastal areas. Our economies are operating at such extremes of efficiency that they are not capable of handling disruptive events. Could the global economy handle the loss of Shanghi, Singapore, and New York? That’s just 3 cities. One freak event in 05 showed us that we are not prepared in the slightest even when we DID build levy systems against the rising tide. That event brought people like Kanye West to our tv saying that ‘President Bush does not like black people’.
Most of Europe’s major cities are coastal, so when millions of Europeans go looking for help, who will be there for them? This is 2015, without major change now the mountain glaciers are to melt by 2100, that only 85 years.
Davy on Tue, 22nd Sep 2015 6:42 am
Joe, it is about oil supply, oil supply quality, and the economy that delivers it. Oil supply is not what is used to be. The resources are there but economic reserves quantity are not at the levels they used to be. This is the area of the greatest disagreements between dooms and corns. The quality of the oil is lower because it is either unconventional and or difficult and expensive to extract. The economy is obviously in a deflationary spiral especially with the China nose dive and the bursting of the commodity super cycle. The economy delivers oil and it is declining so will oil supply.
This is the end game we have talked about so many times here and call peak oil dynamics. Include in that a complex global system at limits of growth experiencing declining marginal increases in productivity. In other words the minimum operating level of the global system is increasingly falling from where it needs to be. It needs to be growing at a growing rate.
That is the inconvenient truth for corns and that is the systematic requirements bumping up to a finite world. This is where econ 101 falls on its face because there comes a point of diminishing returns, irreversibility, and non-substitution of foundational economic inputs. When growth rate declines but the global system needs growing growth. That is when entropic decay sets in.
Population and consumption are clearly in overshoot per carrying capacity as you are well aware of. This all points to a final death spiral of demand and supply destruction that will put our financial system into a recessionary leading into a depressionary decline. It will not recover from this. This process is irreversible and will be the end game.
The time frame is the key for us mere mortals. It matters to us. Do we have some good life left say 5-10 years or is our clock going to be cleaned next year. That answer is unclear. For some reason I see a 3-5-10 year prediction in my head.
Inertia could bounce this bumpy descent out 3 years with 5 being tops. I say that per Shorts ETP analysis and his dead state for oil vital positive contribution to the economy. Knowing that must be discounted and messaged though I would say that we might go into some kind of depression with cannibalization and salvage allowing a few more years of status quo civilization albeit in crisis and turmoil beyond 5 years.
In the 10-20 year time frame I see abrupt climate change and disintegrating economic and social conditions leading to a complete end of globalism and society as we know it. We will be postmodern by then without complexity and energy intensity underlying all we do. We will still have some hybrid applications of the modern world along with pre fossil fuel world we all know well from our history books.
Complete collapse by unlucky circumstances is possible at any time. There could be a serious war at any time or any other of the unknown natural catastrophes. Looking at our systematic economic basis that is the end game for the status quo I predict this will be in decline and collapse over the next 20 years likely in the 3-5-10 time frame. How is that for putting my ass on the line with a rabbit out of the hat prediction?
Boat on Tue, 22nd Sep 2015 8:05 am
Davy,
So when you look at world consumption. where do you see the growth problem.
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/global_oil.cfm
When you talk about the quality of the oil do you realize conventional oil is on the rise as fracked oil is shut down? Isn’t the quality of the oil going back up?
Davy on Tue, 22nd Sep 2015 10:06 am
Boat, you can’t get you thick skull around deceasing growth rate and minimum operating levels. You are also unable to understand oil quality related to cost conventional or unconventional.