by Doly » Sat 22 Jan 2022, 15:08:34
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')s there are no facts in the future, we cannot declare the estimate itself a fact, but we can say that it is a fact real live experts showed that there is no falling off a cliff going on today, or expected to happen by these experts in the near future.
Sure. And that's an argument that has been made in this site lots of times, and with the few posters left here, it's fair to assume we are all aware of it.
I'll repeat the typical counter-argument: there are other experts that think otherwise. It's fair to ask how good are those other experts, but I don't actually want to get into the credentials battle, because it's an observation I've made countless times that most people are unable to evaluate the relative merits of various experts. Unless you are at a level that is only a bit below those experts, you can easily be confused by irrelevant factors.
So, if you aren't the sort of person that can evaluate by yourself the relative merits of experts, what do you have? There is always circumstantial evidence. In other words: if the "peak oil is coming soon" experts were right, what sort of things would you expect to see happening that would not happen otherwise? I can list a few:
1. Wars in oil-rich countries that appear to be focused on gaining control of oil.
2. An increase in electric vehicles, vehicles that use non-oil based fuels, and an increase in ethanol in the gasoline mix.
3. Profit-based oil extraction (as opposed to oil extraction by nationalized companies, that isn't driven primarily by profits) going through aggressive boom and bust cycles: when oil gets more expensive, investments increase and projects that are complex from an engineering point of view get going, but as the results of these projects disappoints, they go bust.
4. People claiming that peak oil is in fact going to happen soon. Talking about "peak oil demand" is after all, claiming that peak oil is going to happen soon, just giving an alternative explanation for it.
5. A change in the way central banks and interest rates operate. We know from the 70s oil crisis that oil has a big effect on the economy overall. While you'd have to be an expert on finance to understand the best financial response to an oil crisis, you don't need to be an expert to know that there needs to be one.
We have seen all of these happening. Some of them may have alternative explanations, but the combination of all of them I don't find easy to explain in a world that doesn't find itself rather constrained in terms of available oil.