[Aaron]

Since we all love making predictions around here so much...

This is an overview of this site's page views since launching.



Does interest in peak oil have a maximum limit?

When will interest in PO "peak", and will it decline afterward?

How did these monkeys get like this?

So let's have it peakers... What will this same graph look like this time next year?

[Pops]

A, you're just full of surveys now aren't ya?

[Soft_Landing]

USGS method.

Hmmm.

I think we can be almost certain that hits will reach 350 000 at some point. Therefore, we'll call the P95 case 350 000.

On the otherhand, I think it would be quite unlikely to ever reach 200 000 000 hits in a month. Therefore, I'll call 200 000 000 the P5 case.

Of course, of interest to us is the least biased prediction. For that, we'll need to P50 case. To get that, we'll just add up the P5 case and the P95 case, and divide the result by two.

P50 = 100 175 000.

[Soft_Landing]

Cornucopian Method.

This whole question is based on a misunderstanding of interest. Cornucopian pundits have long understood interest to be infinite. As site traffic increases, this sends out a relevance signal which gives people more incentive to be interested in a given topic. As this process continues, interest in a given topic rises toward infinity. Scientists have oft-predicted the end of peak oil interest, indeed, since the first peak oil thesis ws raised, people have been saying there would be an immanent decline in peak oil interest. However, this has not yet been the case, and there is no evidence to suggest that peak oil interest will not continue to increase in the future.

[Andy]

Good work Soft Landing. Explains USGS peak methodology perfectly.

[Soft_Landing]

SSA method. (self sampling assumption)

Firstly, we take June to be the most recent completed month, with a total monthly hits of 248 858.

Secondly, let's assume that our point of observation is typical.

Then, with 95% certainty, we can estimate that the peak of peak oil interest will be no less than (1/39 * 248 858) + 248 858, and no more than (39 * 248 858) + 248 858.

Hence, we can estimate that peak oil interest will peak at between 255 239 and 9 954 320 hits per month.

[ObiWan]

Any chance the stats in this thread can be updated so we can determine how few people are left now that the fast crashers have been discredited, run off, banned, converted to Christianity, whatever? It seems that interest in peak oil would coincide with price (July/2008) but maybe not.