by dub_scratch » Wed 26 Jul 2006, 11:34:39
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Falconoffury', 'I') still don't like how people use the term "running out". When we run out of oil, then all the oil fields in all the world will be producing nothing. The length of time between the world starting it's oil decline and the oil running out is several decades at least.
"Running out" is an ambiguous term that causes confusion because it means different things to different people. To a Peaker, we started running out of oil with the first barrel. To the average person on the street who has never given oil depletion a second thought, "running out" is a long, far away day when the last barrel is spent. Cornucopians take advantage of this confusion by misrepresenting the Peaker's observation of continually running out (depletion) as the a prediction of immanent running out of the last barrel. This becomes an underhanded strawman technique.
The way to clarify the semantics here is to use the term
"complete exhaustion" and then declare that nobody is predicting that in oil anytime soon. In a debate about peak oil, making that distinction disarms the cornucopian of their favorite weapon. It also helps to explain what PO is all about by stating such an event is so far away that it's too difficult to predict.