[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dorlomin', '
')Were smallpox girl around I may have been able to elicit a conversation on human cognition based on this... actualy it is probibly worth a thread of its own in the psychology forum.

[dorlomin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I') think seeing things as one thing may be cultural, not innately human. I suspect those researchers were only looking at civilized humans, and not at non-civilized peoples also.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '
')you can prattle on about the US housing crisis in Cleveland, but you have yet to explain what caused the German and Japanese recessions that predated it.

[Ludi]

For what it's worth (nothing) my household was not affected one bit by expensive gasoline. But we would have been very strongly affected by a sudden jump in our mortgage payment!

[copious.abundance]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'G')ermany and Japan went into recession before the US real estate crash or the financial meltdown.

[copious.abundance]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'O')ne more time Mos, or should I call you short.

Every major postwar US recession was preceded (not just correlated with, but preceded by) by oil price jumps.]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'T')his is what I found. Oildrum and Jeff Rubin's assertion $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nother issue is timing. As mentioned previously, Eurozone and Japan entered a recession in the second quarter of 2008, which was before the spike in LIBOR rates that is associated with the current financial crisis.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'O')ne more time Mos, or should I call you short.

Every major postwar US recession was preceded (not just correlated with, but preceded by) by oil price jumps.]

[shortonsense]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', '
')Perhaps you should actually read the thread to educate yourself.

[copious.abundance]

You said:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'T')he evidence becomes stronger every day. I am so tired of hearing that a housing boom in the "Inland Empire" or Cleveland, Ohio caused this world economic contraction. Germany and Japan went into recession before the US real estate crash or the financial meltdown.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'W')hy in God's name would I read your crap Oily? I am not a fan of your humor, much less your disinformation.

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bratticus', '
')But wasn't the super-spike just an inevitable consequence of world peak oil?

[TheDude]

Get a load of the countries which were showed negative GDP on an annual basis for 2007:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'Fiji
Zimbabwe
Tonga
Micronesia, Federated States of
Comoros Islands
Congo, Republic of (Brazzaville)
Puerto Rico
Kiribati & Tuvalu Gilbert Islands
Chad
St Lucia
Brunei')

[mos6507]

This is the state of peak oil movement circa early 2010...



Pstarr and those like him are still desperately seeking to rationalize peak oil as the cause of the credit crisis in order to keep the peak oil meme alive considering that threats of imminent zombie doom by the likes of Matt Simmons and company did not materialize on schedule. (In fact, didn't Matt Simmons say, after oil prices tanked, that "rust" would create a superspike in 6-9 months? Still hasn't happened. Chalk up another massive fail to the master debater.)

We went through an extended period starting in the fall of 2008 when oil prices tanked in which peak oil completely fell off the radar in favor of the credit crisis.

The Pickens Plan failed. EV projects exist only because of government handouts. SUV sales have at least partially recovered. Happy motoring (for those who have jobs) is back.

It was necessary to superimpose peak oil as the "grand unification theory" to explain the credit crisis to attempt to keep the issue in the public eye.

It failed.

It failed despite the fact that Obama issued his best catchphrase "shock to trance".

It failed because the public has extremely short-term memory, but it ALSO failed because peak oilers' main theory prior to the credit crisis was too simplistic. Peak oilers overstated their case and therefore opened themselves up to "boy who cried wolf" criticisms by the likes of Michael Lynch.

The reason I'm playing whistleblower on this issue is that I was NOT just looking at peak oil and only peak oil at the time. I was tracking both peak oil AND the housing bubble. I knew the bubble was going to pop, and peakers did not. Despite that, I did buy into the Matt Simmons doomer scenarios, and I'm ashamed that I did. You know, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

My feeling is that the need that peakers have to point at charts and "call" inflection points just causes them to look like idiots again and again.

And the past year HAS had an unusually large number of oil discoveries. Are these "easy oil"? No. Are these going to start pumping tomorrow? No. But peakers should concede these discoveries.

Peakers harm the movement by trying to build a simplistic straight-line narrative about doom, and of constantly ret-conning the narrative every time the real flow of history throws them a curve-ball.

Someone could write a War and Peace novel with all of the failed predictions over the last 5-6 years. Peak oil doom is always "imminent" or in the past tense, awaiting shockwaves.

I say this not to disprove peak oil, but to call in question the over-eager peakers who are always slinging dates and predictions out of their *sses that don't match up with reality.

The trucks are still delivering to wal-mart. Airline travel is still feasible to the masses. You can still get your plastic pumpkins. Despite "Obamavilles" and such, Toecutter and his band of mutant zombie bikers are nowhere to be seen.

Yes, we're in a recession, but a recession != peak oil doom. The dot com crash was not peak oil doom. the S&L crisis was not peak oil doom. The Great Depression was not peak oil doom. Apples and oranges!!! The recession is probably indicative of the larger narrative of the collapse of the US that perhaps started to gain momentum when US oil peaked in 1970, but it is not a function of global geological peak oil, aka the 2005 date that TOD posits, nor the $147/bbl peak pricepoint. I despise this intellectual crossing of the wires between $147 oil and the US oil peak of 1970.

People like Jeff Rubin are merely higher profile names that use much the same rhetorical argument as Pstarr and the like. I do not defer to their authority on these matters because they too are blinded by peak oil glasses. You can tell, you can just tell when you read or listen to Rubin that the guy is freaked out along the same lines as Ruppert. He's gone the way of Charlton Heston. "Soylent Green is Peeeeple!" They see doom in the mirror as many of us do, and you know what, they are flawed human beings just as we are. They can connect the dots wrong just as, let's say Michael Lynch at the WSJ can. I'm telling it as I see it, as an independently minded thinker who doesn't have to be TOLD what to think either by deniers or uberdoomers.

Look, I understand how being a strident Cassandra makes sense given that people feel the need to boil in the pot before they try to jump out of it. But I do not support cooking the books. I believe in looking at the facts that we have, even if it doesn't add up to the doom we were all expecting.

The Hirsch report et. al. indicated that we have to begin transitioning off oil a few decades at least before peak oil happens. Well, human nature being what it is, even if everyone on the planet conceded that peak oil was 2020 or 2030, they WON'T begin transitioning until oil prices permanently recede into the stratosphere.

THAT is what makes me doomer. I don't have to bash the IEA for setting a peak date at 2020 or 2030. To me, 2020 is already too close for comfort. I'm not going to knee-jerk accuse the IEA of fudging the numbers because I still have that magic 2005 date from The Oil Drum burned into my skull. It's about trying to find some happy medium between overly doomer peakists and overly corny energy experts.

But no, peakers have to gather this warchest of cherry-picked datapoints in order to push their agenda and to try to hide, conceal, or discredit any data that runs counter to their narrative.

And God forbid anyone claim that doom isn't literally hours away or they will be accused of heresy and burned at the stake.



Look, I'm worried about peak oil. I had (what I think) was an anxiety attack last week and was in the ICU with an IV in my arm over cumulative stress and worries over how I'm going to get myself and my daughter through the combined sh*tstorm of the US economic collapse, peak oil, and global warming. So I am not some kind of shortonsense denier when it comes to the big picture. But if I don't tow the party line about "peak oil caused the credit crisis", then stuff it. It doesn't make me a troll for not bobbleheading in a thread like this.

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'A')nd the past year HAS had an unusually large number of oil discoveries. Are these "easy oil"? No. Are these going to start pumping tomorrow? No. But peakers should concede these discoveries.