Peak Curiosity

Predicting the end of oil era has been a venerable (albeit fruitless) pseudo-intellectual pursuit for most of the 20th century. This Nostradamian pastime regained new vigor during the late 1990s when (mostly retired geologists) Colin Campbell, Jean Laherr
Kenneth Deffeyes, an experienced petroleum geologist and a former professor at Princeton University, has been the most puzzling member of the peak oil cult. As a scientist he must know that the real world is permeated by uncertainties, that complex realities should not be reduced to simplistic slogans aimed to gain media attention, and that (as even a brief retrospective will demonstrate) making precise point predictions is a futile endeavor. Yet he set all of this aside and proceeded to write about the peak of global oil production in a way that leaves no room for any doubt (“no initiative put in place starting today can have a substantial effect on the peak production year”), that portrays the world’s energy use merely as a matter of supply (utterly ignoring demand) and, most incredibly, he went farther than any of his confr