[shakespear1]

I just had a read of what is suggested by Tetlock's book.

To a point I agree with him. There are stock experts forcasting many scenarios of the future, there are photo reconnaissance experts trying to predict future moves of an adversary etc.

However oil/gas wells and fields are a bit different. You can get close to them and you can monitor what come out of them allowing you to make predictions on what will happen to them in the future. They Do eventually get to the point of being "empty". We are speraking about a physical substance that either appears at surface or it does not. No wishfull thinking is involved.

There were experts warning about global warming decades ago. Tetlock would like us to think that in general listening to them would make no sense as they on the average could be as right as anyone else. Well the results are in. THEY WERE RIGHT. Why? They had data and with time even MORE data.

So I for one am not ready to go for this fuzzy argumentation because then everything will be left loose and left to the argument that you can not listen to "experts". Being from the Oil/Gas industry I for one can say that we are on rather firm ground arguing that a problem is approaching.

I do not wish us to run out of oil but the sad fact is that the fields I have seen do go "dry" and no new technology that I have seen in our office makes me believe that this will be reversed in the near future.

[katkinkate]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AmericanEmpire', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')f course, not everyone looks into a mirror when they consider the PO issue

[galacticsurfer]

The light(idea of peak oil or whatever) will go through the same prism or lens(personality) regardless of what color that light is. Did I really change due to peak oil knowledge? Hardly. Obviously doomers/depressed people or losers flock to this concept or similar concepts as it confirms their world view or promises to overturn the current order to their benefit or to the destruction of their enemies(see the Russian and French revolutions with their massacres of nobility by poor and farmers(in Russia) by landless lazy people). Does that mean we are all revolutionaries or losers or depressives with a chip on our shoulders? Not necessarily. Perhaps in part all people have gripes and the harder times get the more people are dissatisfied. However Peak oil and general resoruce depletion with global warming and overpopulation are fast approaching realities. Every so often a new analysis which brings everything together comes along and the people waake up from their old concept(pardigm). Some people catch the train early. Others learn about it later. Soon it is taken for obvious by everyone. When the revolution is over the winners and losers have been sorted out again and after a generation or two there are again people dissatisfied with their private and personal or professional life again who hang on to some crazy ideas. If the reality corresponds to this idea things will change. Otherwise it will go the way of aliens and the X files. No alien invasion. All alien cults commit suicide. Do we do that en massein the peak oil scene? No way.

[biggav]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')lduvai theory uses EUP or energy use per capita as the basis of the theory. It says NOTHING about the type of energy. If you read carefully, which you did not, you will notice that the graphs measure EUP in barrels of oil equivalent i.e. he takes the total energy use of the planet in Joules and divides by the number of Joules per barrel of oil. He does this to make the theory more "accessible". In my mind, that ends up being a huge mistake because people jump on it stating that the theory has something to do with Peak Oil. It doesn't.

Olduvai theory states that we can best describe industrial civilization as a one time pulse of Energy Use Per capita (EUP) and that EUP peaked between 1970 and 2000 and will forever decline afterword.

Now you can disagree with that statement, but relating it to peak oil just shows you that you don’t understand the theory.

[entropyfails]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('biggav', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')lduvai theory states that we can best describe industrial civilization as a one time pulse of Energy Use Per capita (EUP) and that EUP peaked between 1970 and 2000 and will forever decline afterword.