[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AirlinePilot', '
') I find it actually quite amazing that the price of gasoline has been so well absorbed as of late. I can recall a time not long ago when the thought of paying more than 2$/gal here in the US was startling to me. Now I would welcome that price gladly!

[C8]

2008 - man, has it been that long? Where did the time go?

In any case, I learned about PO @ 2006 and got into it a lot by 2008- thought we were headed for $200 barrel go for sure! Read Twilight in the Desert, Long Emergency, etc. pretty scary stuff. Felt things were going to be very desperate by now. Very concerned about PO back then.

Now I find myself really wanting PO, Peak Coal, etc. and wishing they did happen as I thought they would. I never felt the PO world would lead to a massive die-off, I thought it would just lead to more conservation and green tech., urban redevelopment, canals, etc. -in other words- good stuff! I thought we would be seeing thousands on bikes, shipping return to glory, low energy fun, hand made stuff, local produce.

But that never happened.

Humans are above all else- champion diggers. Digging is what we do best, we are always in the dirt digging; we would rather dig for energy than develop renewable sources or conserve. Humans love to burn shit. Ever since we got fire and burnt our first sticks we have fallen in love with burning things. So we just responded to the crisis by doing what we love most, not redesigning our lifestyle but by getting better at digging shit up so we can burn it. That's our progress in a nutshell- call it horizontal drilling, fracking, whatever- its just digging better so we can burn more shit. Man we love setting things on fire- we should be called homo-pyros or something like that.

Meanwhile- our whole climate is shifting into a state that really will cause massive die off- maybe extinction. People are being picked off one by one right now in this or that weather disaster but its going to start hitting a lot more people soon. The volume of energy required to change a climate is incredible but the ball is definitely rolling downhill a little now and I don't think we will have the amount of energy needed to reverse it when we decide to. By then PO will really kick in.

In other words, PO wasn't there when we needed it to reduce CO2 emissions, but it will be there when we don't want it and need the energy to attempt some last ditch geo-engineering.

For me the fundamental fear of PO has been totally flipped:
1. I used to worry about us finding too little fuel
2. I now worry we can keep cheap FF's going for decades and totally burn the planet beyond hope

So, my vision of the future is now generally worse than 2008. Then I saw a crisis that could be met with human behavior changes and new tech. Now, I see a brute tidal wave of physics that will snuff us out for good probably. Unlike many Peak Oilers even, I do not see any humans surviving this past 200- 300 years. There will be no romantic world made by hand- just starvation and the return to life forms that existed long before we came along. I still hold some hope of a nano solution to pulling CO2 out of the air cheaply, but what will it matter if we are still burning FF's like mad? And a nano solution on CO2 will not stop the albedo feedbacks, deforestation feedbacks, methane release feedbacks, etc. The end of PO is actually the biggest disaster to hit mankind- IMHO. We are too f*cking excited about digging up shit and burning it- this was fun 2000 years ago- but with 7-9 billion people doing it- ah what's the point anyway. I don't expect many to understand how I feel- but there it is.

2008 was actually the good old days.

[SeaGypsy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('C8', ' ')The end of PO is actually the biggest disaster to hit mankind- IMHO..

[ROCKMAN]

This might type cast me as a megagloomer but I see the POD and climate change both heading in the same bad direction hand in hand. IMHO the POD will drive us to utilize energy source, such as coal, that will worsen our carbon footprint. And this process will be made worse by the growth of the lesser developed economies. Great to hope for the alts to save us but IMHO we don't have nearly enough time for that to happen. The POD has been effecting us for at least 30 years and we've done little to change course. Even with the info in front of today I still see no serious efforts being made. Lots of talk but still no meaningful action IMHO.

[sparky]

.
It doesn't matter , all the problems are reaching a climax from food production to
acidification of the air and water , to ressources price rises
to food riots in poor countries
to Peak Oil ,
because there is one problem only ,.. 7 Billions people
and there is only one solution ,........... 500 millions

[SeaGypsy]

Even 500 million, living as voraciously as the average modern westerner, would quickly chew through the remaining FF's. (Are you a NWO plant Sparky?)

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'E')ven 500 million, living as voraciously as the average modern westerner, would quickly chew through the remaining FF's. (Are you a NWO plant Sparky?)

[Shaved Monkey]

The only thing that has changed is timing.
But that was just my miscalculations.
Pretty sure as the world crawls out of recession it will crawl back into it and it will get deeper.
The capitalist system is doomed to fail due to its success,it will probably take nearly everyone with it.
You cant print resources.

[kuidaskassikaeb]

I can't say I changed my mind because I never actually came to a conclusion. In my mind the test of peak oil was weather the price of oil would go back above $100, after the price collapse in 200 before the economy improved, and it did. Then the fracking revolution showed up and I doubted for a while, but now oil is back above $100 a barrel, so now I am leaning back toward the peak oil position.

What I think you would expect from the "oil production revolution" is a stable slowly decreasing price as technology improves. That doesn't appear to be happening. The price appears to be slowly increasing.

Basically, the peak oil prediction seems to me to have been that after "conventional" oil peaked things like tar sands and fracking wouldn't be able to keep up with the decline, and that they would be too environmentally destructive to use. They seemed to think that environmentalists have some power they don't have. The extreme methods have proved to be destructive, but they have kept up production so far.

[Timson]

We are exactly on course for the post peakoil -which, by the way, occured in 2012-,scenario as predicted in the book "the end of oil" by Paul Roberts in 2004.
I think it's resumed somewhere between page 30 and 40. Just reread it this holiday (read it the first time in 2006). Unbelievable how accurate his predictons were. Only difference: all economists predicted an economic collapse with prices above 60 usd/barrel. That has been proved terribly wrong. Our economy has much more stretch then thought before, even though 145 usd proved too high. (see the housing crisis that started it all, and that was in turn started by too much of the household budget going to gasoline because of oil prices.)
But you can hardly deny something going on with prices over 100 usd from 15 usd a decade ago.
So I still think the same. It might occur that we find something else, but I don't count on it. The shale gas is just a frenzy to make the plateau phaze a bit longer. Or do you think you can built a worldwide economy on wells that are virtually empty after 1 month....?
And as long as we fill the gaps in the economy with fake money (thanks Bernanke) we can keep up appearances.
But you better be prepared I'd say.
Massive die-offs and going back to the stone-age are bullocks of course. We'll just have to do with much less...

[ROCKMAN]

Ibon - I think you have the answer to your question today: they are already responding to the sqz by going to dirtier fuel. And despite the hypocritical rhetoric from our politicians with the help of the US coal industry. The US has become the 4th largest coal exporter on the planet fueling much of China's rapid expansion of coal fired power plants. Despite their lying whining the US coal industry is making record high revenue. The future you describe is here today. Will probably get worse IMHO but the game is already afoot.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Timson', 'W')e are exactly on course for the post peakoil -which, by the way, occured in 2012-,scenario as predicted in the book "the end of oil" by Paul Roberts in 2004.

[dashster]

I would have expected a terminal decline by now, based on the predictions of others that started with 2005 plus the sideways movement for several years after 2005, but I still feel the same regarding a tremendous problem looming.

What amazes me is how the Peak Oil Deniers have changed their thinking and yet remained publicly 100% confident that there is no problem. Their narrative used to be that production would continue to meet demand well into the 2030's. Then the price of oil went up significantly and stayed up. So they had to modify the story. We started to hear their optimism about "plenty of oil" hedged with one of the theories of the great scientific profession of economics - that if something becomes scarce, something else will then emerge and take it's place at equal or lower cost - avoiding any problem from the scarcity of the original item. And we heard more about having strong faith in technology. That it will most assuredly - 100%, bet on it and take it to the bank - save us from any problem with oil.

And there has also been some evidence that their confidence that there will be no problems regarding oil or lack thereof - is waning somewhat. At least that is what it appears to me when I see articles crowing about the "Peak Oil Theory" being disproven or "mostly disproven" by the oil coming via fracking and tar sands and deepwater, with the fracking oil exciting them the most. I think that they are having to not just convince others that there is no problem, but with oil at $100 a barrel, they are needing to convince themselves as well.

[Alcassin]

Peak Oil was a small rock which begun avalanche in my life. As a topic it has shown me that belief can be very contrary to the mindset or views we represent. It was the first time I have discovered a topic that was something out of ideological spectrum (but it can be seen as on). It was 2007, and the conclusion I learnt then is still the same:
Earth is finite. Economy is about producing and consuming alas changing nature into products into waste. Growth of demand and supply only amplifies economic activity and produce more waste. Even when recycling at the maximum there are basic laws of physics and diminishing returns we cannot ultimately win. You never do one thing, there are externalities (such as CO2). Our civilization is solely built on industrial revolution built upon dense organic material stored in the ground, like batteries, and we suck it up to make us more efficient. While I love the fruits of industrial revolution I absolutely think that we are going to be victims of our own success. I admire western way of life, which is more benevolent than it has ever been, I love politics of full-stomach, and just like every Miss World candidate I'd like to see world without wars and hunger. However the reality is other than we think...

I have started not to explore the single topic of peak oil, because I would be preaching to a convert. I wanted to get a broader vision and look for science behind it just to see if there is anything else like that possible - and I have found Club of Rome and "Limits to growth", Diamond's and Tainter's books and articles, and I think that was a really good approach, I didn't like political evangelists like Heinberg. I just wanted to know what can happen to a system left for growth in an unlimited time scale. Peak oil also pushed me out of many political debates as I don't treat laws of nature to be negotiable. This also pushed me to change my MA thesis and go for PhD to get enough preparation to understand the world I live in. I'm totally not prepared for zombie apocalypse and the four horsemen because there are few things that I consider this vision to be American-centric, and even if the most gloomy future is going to come then the world wouldn't be worth living or dying for. Also I don't think it's going to be the same for all of us. It's not westerners who would be hit hardest or fastest. The real stuff is going to be down the chain, in the world that is not televised unless they are hitting hard themselves with machetes...

I have always abstained from evangelizing others on Peak Oil, I don't do that. I think it provides so huge cognitive dissonance that you risk too much in the process. People also tend to make their beliefs stronger, deny everything, neophytes believe to the absurd and other rationalize very deeply, so no, I'm not a priest.

However I could pick few people from the crowd and peak oil happened to win me few dimes with FOREX trader from one bank and I bet few times on prices of oil (both up and down). I have predicted on Polish peakoil board that the price falling is imminent (got 2-4 months span) and the world is going to be in deeper recession when the price of oil was on the rise in June 2008. But it didn't sound that "the end is nigh", Poland lost 30% of GDP in 2 years and we have lived through, it was tougher for many for sure, but it wasn't biological end.

I rather see the whole environmental problem (peak oil, global warming, deforestation, extinction of species, loss of wild habitats, urbanization, pollution of water, depleting the resources) as single issue - we are trying to industrialize every scratch of this planet profitably so the ultimate cost will be unbearable. We are going to pay for it, but as long as we think that measures of our industrial success should be applied then the ultimate cost will rise. But it will take some time, that's why I can bet with any express-doomers "the end is nigh" on almost everything

[Pops]

Lets debate elsewhere and leave this thread just for stating how our individual views have changed, it's a pretty good thread.
thanks

[ROCKMAN]

Pops - Yes...good thread. Stepping back from the trees to look at the forest even the title makes the point: how would most have changed their view of PO, say from 10 years ago? Trick question IMHO: most didn't have a view of PO 10 years ago. It was a concept that didn't exist in the minds of the vast majority of our citizens. Just existed for we few but proud geeks. LOL. Even few of our smarter than average folks at this site probably did have PO on their lips when oil was selling for $30/bbl. Whether one is a cornucopian or a doomer we wouldn't be having this conversation not that long ago. Regardless of which side of the fence one sits today that fence didn't even exist for most folks just 10 years ago.

[godq3]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alcassin', ' ')Poland lost 30% of GDP in 2 years and we have lived through, it was tougher for many for sure, but it wasn't biological end.

[Beery1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', '.')..Regardless of which side of the fence one sits today that fence didn't even exist for most folks just 10 years ago.

[ROCKMAN]

Yes beery...I've long suspected you had more than a bit of the geogeek in you. Now you and I are just two tiny voices in this vast horde of newbies. LOL. And in truth a lot of folks in the oil patch, from upper management to floor hands, didn't really have their eye on the ball until more recently. Back to that compartmentalization. Some of the very best drilling engineers I've work with today have never heard the term "peak oil".

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alcassin', ' ')It was 2007, and the conclusion I learnt then is still the same:
Earth is finite.