[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', 'w')elcome back mut, long time no drivel

[AgentR11]

I was kinda thinking about multiple peaks... we always assume the theory requires a simple bell, but all that is really required is that the area under the curve is finite, meaning some peak exists, but there is no guarantee that the peak is a simple top of the bell curve peak. Those dips in between could be quite drastic too, given how unstable prices impact the overall economy, and how that drastically impacts oil demand at any particular point in time.

[theluckycountry]

The peak was always defined as "Peak of oil production" and was based on cheap conventional oil production. The consequences of the "Peak" was that economic growth would plateau and decline along with oil flow, because our economies are Oil. So all we have to do is look around at the World in toto and say "Is it growing still? In the conventional way...

The metric of GDP cannot be used for this, though it is, because it's delusional now. The Market cap Value of Tesla for example is not in any way reflective of the companies actual value. And all the big stocks suffer this phenomena. They pay next to no dividends, float on an ocean of debt, and are prone to instant and disastrous collapses in price, like the NVIDIA collapse the other week. People don't seem to realize the frightful change that has occurred in these markets even though analysts have been pointing it out for over a decade. The same applies to house prices, they in no way reflect the actual value of the properties now, properties that are made out of junk materials, sited on junk land far from water, food sources, and jobs in many cases.

All this implies that we have not been growing in real bread and butter terms, only in perceived terms, in virtual or daydream terms, in oil dependent terms. And that's just the rich West. Go to Bangladesh or Ceylon or Niger, or Venezuela, or Brazil, or any of the former "Developing" nations to see the real effects of peakoil, to see the well entrenched reversal in economic growth. I observed long ago that the ongoing collapse of these nations has been the reason the West has not suffered much as yet from the decline of conventional Oil supply, Their collapse has freed up oil for use by the wealthier nations, not much, but enough to make the decline "Not too bad as yet".

I won't even talk about the non-conventional, the pointless uneconomic oil extractions that have been added to the mix to push the numbers up and obfuscate the decline of oil. The purpose of those were simply to make money for the extractors, aside from a few jobs that came and went they added nothing to the real economic growth of the nations that engaged in them. They are like the EV bubble that promised cheap clean transport as efficient as our Gasoline cars but proved to be anything but! And now there is a shell game underway to include Gasoline burners in these EV numbers so that the figures don't look as bad as they really are. Why the sudden push to include hybrids? Hybrids were around in the early 2000's, long before the first commercial electric car rolled off the floor at Tesla. The Toyota Prius hybrid was never included in the early figures. In fact that technology was seen as being surpassed, that was the "stepping stone" remember, the stage before the transition to Real Electric Cars. So why include them now? Why, because their sales far exceed the sales of all electric cars that's why. They are no longer the stepping stone they are the Go-To. People have tasted the EV and spat it out, but the trillion dollar industry isn't willing to give up just yet! There are still profits to be made, it's just a matter of changing people's perceptions.

Unfortunately there is no going back to conventional oil because all the fields are depleting at furious rates, they are well down on their 2008 figures. The pointless production numbers the IEA and other political smoke and mirrors organizations put out cannot hide the fact that we are off the bumpy plateau now and beginning the long decline on the other side of the bell curve. It's why hundreds of millions are fleeing the once rich oil provinces of north Africa and the middle east, the once wealthier nation of Mexico. These nations have all passed their conventional peaks and modern life there is becoming untenable. You turn the taps off and you're sitting in a favela or barrio twiddling your thumbs and wondering where tonight's meal is coming from. A car, a trip to the beach? Forget it.

[mousepad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', 'T')he peak was always ....

[theluckycountry]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', 'I') mean, your whole rant, from the beginning to the end is pretty much dead wrong. Amazing. How is it possible to be that wrong?

[theluckycountry]

Peak Steel

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here is a saying, attributed to Stalin, that “quantity has a quality of its own”. And if there is an area of life where this is most certainly true it is steel production. This metal is literally everywhere: from cars to kitchen utensils, from computer housing to hard disks, or from bridges and pipelines to tanks and warships. It’s perhaps no exaggeration to say that without steel there would be no such thing as modernity. There is a problem however: global steel production has stopped growing in 2021. Now it’s back to 2020 levels, producing the longest period of zero growth since the early 90’s (the fall of the Soviet Union). Are we seeing a return to the great stagnation of the 1975–1995 interval, when crude steel output barely grew for decades, or is this just one of those hiccups in global production growth? I suggest we are seeing another side effect of plateauing oil production, but let’s not get ahead ourselves just yet.

[theluckycountry]

Back in the 00's, in the early days of mass internet, countless intelligent and qualified people came online and voiced their concerns about the impending peak of global oil production. They had done a mass of research, built up on the work of the Club of Rome, Hubbert, and many others. Now all we have is a bunch of cheeto munching TV addicted naysayers who go to the gas pump, see the price is still the same, and assume it was all BS. They do no research, they just post a few sentences, voicing their opinions

One of the big pushes back in the beginning was to get the world's governments to address the issue. To mitigate, or at the very least, acknowledge it! Early peakoilers grew more and more perplexed and frustrated when all their efforts fell on deaf ears. These were often highly qualified professionals in positions in government too. Well it's obvious now that the ears weren't Deaf. They could hear alright, they just didn't want to change course. That's the nature of corrupt governments. But something had to be done, just to shut these peakoilers and their doomsaying UP! So governments began making pronouncements about great transitions, to electric cars and 'trucks', to the unlimited oil in tar sands and shale deposits. They effectively buried the whole peak oil discussion under a mountain of lies and propaganda. Interest rates were dropped to 400 year lows and people were encouraged to go out and spend on the great transition.

We saw the exact same thing back in the 80's with recycling. people were screaming about all the plastic and other modern packaging that was clogging up landfills and making it's way into the World's oceans. They demanded redress, basically a switch back to products that "Would" be recycled like steel and aluminium cans, paper bags that had served us for centuries. Sorry, Corporate profits, and the Governments gave people recycling bins and told them to get to work cleaning plastic bottles so that they could be recycled. It didn't work though did it. The oceans are full of plastic and so are the landfills. No one hardly recycles it now, we used to send ours to China for them to do it but now they have turned their nose up it all goes into the landfill aside from certain drink bottless with a refund of 10-cents. A scam in itself when you read into it.

The propaganda about oil has been total. It's come to the point now where most people believe we never passed the peak! If they even engage in it hey talk of "many" peaks, not understanding the way data has been manipulated and non-oil products have been included into the oil accounting. Natural gas liquids for example, that are only useful for making plastic bags but are included in oil production figures. Now I can remember when Alan Greenspan famously stated that debt doesn't matter. Only a complete idiot would believe that, but a whole generation went out and bid up the price of houses to the point where the entire market globally had a crash. It wasn't in every city or country, and not all at the same time, the US crash preceded the Australian crash by a year, but that hardly matters. Why mention this? Because it's an example everyone can identify with regarding the Lies that drive our societies now.

But oil is the maker of everything. The master resource that took the average man out of poverty and put him on the road to an abundant life. Imagine the social turmoil when that process reverses (as it is now). So naturally governments had to hide the truth, and they still do! It will probably never be admitted outside of some distant future record of the history of the 20 and 21st centuries. Why do people, who are generally honest, have this pathetic belief that what's said on TV and the other mainstream media must be honest too? That the a politician vying for office must be telling the truth too? It's childish given all the evidence of past lies and corruption. It's like believing in the tooth fairy? But the answer to me is simple. They are basically unwilling to face the truth, to sacrifice anything of their modern lifestyle. They will though, they'll lose the lot in many cases, but until then it's fingers in ears and eyes closed as they cling to the bold lies that promise them a happy future.

Where are all the wise early peakoilers? Did they give up because they were proved wrong as many believe? No, they simply realized that their efforts were being wasted and they went off to do other things, awaiting the inevitable outcome as we passed through the bumpy plateau and began the inexorable slide down the other side of the bell curve. They got tired of being shouted down by the dumb masses on forums like this. Of dealing with the 'Stupid' people that are always the greater mass of any society.

[AgentR11]

The simple reality is that collapse didn't happen as predicted. It turns out it is far cheaper than one might expect to get grain from field to store, as long as there is some sort of economic system functioning. People get their cheetos, there is no risk of that not happening any time in the near future, and predictions 50 years out impress no one.

That doesn't mean that peak oil didn't or won't happen depending on peak of what exactly makes up oil, but that as I said from a very long time ago, Demand Destruction is not the problem, it is the solution, and it proceeds as needed and when needed.

[theluckycountry]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', '.')..We saw the exact same thing back in the 80's with recycling. people were screaming about all the plastic and other modern packaging that was clogging up landfills and making it's way into the World's oceans. They demanded redress

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', 'I') was kinda thinking about multiple peaks... we always assume the theory requires a simple bell, but all that is really required is that the area under the curve is finite, meaning some peak exists, but there is no guarantee that the peak is a simple top of the bell curve peak.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', 'T')he peak was always defined as "Peak of oil production" and was based on cheap conventional oil production.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', 'T')he peak was always ....

[AgentR11]

I don't recall too many of the old abbreviations though EOTWAWKI kinda rings a bell. Looking at the FED EMRATIO chart (employment % of population), I wonder if its more a question that we got used to the relatively brief interval of the tech bubble from the 90's to the 2008 cliff from the real estate collapse, and now things have settled back in closer to historical average. We then look into the past with rose tinted glasses and think, oh but now is so much harder than it was back then, yet the house was 1000 sf, the car was an unsafe killing machine and the one job the family could find amongst themselves was *hard*.

What is the world as we knew/know it really supposed to have been I wonder. Or is it rather just a Return to the World as it Usually is.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', 'I') don't recall too many of the old abbreviations though EOTWAWKI kinda rings a bell.

[theluckycountry]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', ' ')Demand Destruction is not the problem, it is the solution, and it proceeds as needed and when needed.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pilferage', 'W')hy no matter what, humanity will experience peak oil.

[theluckycountry]

Recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that U.S. distillate stocks, which include diesel, have fallen to levels not seen in 20 years. Specifically, on May 23, 2025, distillate stocks were at 103.4 million barrels, the lowest since April 2005. This follows a period of significant stock declines https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/weekly/

You don't get Diesel from fracking, that stuff's light oil. Most of the Diesel's imported oil.

2021- US Diesel Stockpiles Are at a 20-Year Low https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -of-winter

2024- US Diesel Demand Hits 26-Year Seasonal Low in March https://www.ttnews.com/articles/us-dies ... 6-year-low

The stockpiles are low, but so is demand. So is there a problem? Not really. As the US economy collapses (the real economy, not the BS financial economy) less and less people are buying stuff and going places so less fuel is needed. This is how PeakOil plays out, and it's good for the planet! As oil supplies diminish the price of oil can stay the same because the wages go nowhere and the jobs vanish, the cost of housing food and electricity and anything you an name goes up and up and people simply can't afford the fuel they one demanded and companies shipping less stuff use less oil. Supply and demand, real demand as in usage.

It's pretty elementary.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', '
')You don't get Diesel from fracking, that stuff's light oil. Most of the Diesel's imported oil.

[theluckycountry]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AdamB', '[')img]https://i.pinimg.com/236x/b7/9e/75/b79e75d7970d1758fd23268c402e4086.jpg?nii=t[/img]