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Slate: "So We're Running Out Of Oil. Big Deal."

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Slate: "So We're Running Out Of Oil. Big Deal."

Unread postby Grimnir » Thu 03 Feb 2005, 01:53:40

I'm sure you'll all have fun with this. ;)

http://slate.com/id/2112806/
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Unread postby 0mar » Thu 03 Feb 2005, 02:11:25

crap in crap out.
Joseph Stalin
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Unread postby Jack » Thu 03 Feb 2005, 07:13:21

Ahh, yes. Oil is a mere 40% of our energy pie. And besides, we can use electricity...much of which is generated by natural gas...which seems to have peaked in North America...Oops!!! 8O
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Unread postby NeoPeasant » Thu 03 Feb 2005, 10:26:02

Consider the source. Peter Huber works for a major right wing propaganda engine called the Manhattan Institute. Look them up in the Disinfopedia.
Do they actually believe this crap themselves? Of course not. But it serves their purposes to have the masses believe it.

"Reality is bad for business" - Richard Heinburg, in "End of Suburbia", explaining the media silence on oil depletion.
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Unread postby khebab » Thu 03 Feb 2005, 10:56:47

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')or all practical purposes, energy supplies are determined not by the planet but by how ingenious we humans are at finding and seizing the energy we crave

That's a common argument among PO opponents: we have a limitless reservoir of ingenuity available and we can find solutions as fast as new problem arise.
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Unread postby stu » Fri 04 Feb 2005, 10:35:46

Sometimes I just wish that we were writing the articles instead of these one sided misinformed rants that give the impression that everything is ok and there is nothing to worry out.

At what point are people going to realize that this way of life is no longer sustainable? :(
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Unread postby TrueKaiser » Sun 06 Feb 2005, 05:21:03

:roll:
not surprising considering who owns slate.
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Unread postby Laurasia » Sun 06 Feb 2005, 13:33:59

Quote: "All the fastest growth sectors of the economy—information technology and telecom, most notably—depend entirely on electricity. More than 85 percent of the growth in U.S. energy demand since 1980 has been met by electricity."

And we all know that we get electricity from those mysterious wires in the walls in our houses. So relax, everything is going to be O K A Y.....

I feel so much more secure having read that article.

Regards,

L.
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Unread postby Whitecrab » Mon 07 Feb 2005, 22:39:55

Could someone not just write an article and submit it to Slate? I've vaguely considered doing so once or twice. If you want to try, go for it.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')url=http://slate.com/id/117519/]Frequently Asked Questions[/url]

How do I submit an article to Slate?

Unsolicited articles should be e-mailed to letters@slate.com with "article submission" in the subject line. They may also be snail-mailed to Slate, 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052; mailed submissions must be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Poetry submissions—please, no more than five at a time—should be mailed to Slate, Robert Pinsky, Poetry Editor, Boston University, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA, 02215.
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Re: Slate:

Unread postby AdamB » Wed 21 Jan 2026, 22:11:16

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Grimnir', 'I')'m sure you'll all have fun with this. ;)

I just had to bring this thread to the fore. It being SO apropos. And yes Grimnir, it is a fun one. Particularly as an after the fact, you are EXACTLY right kind of thing.
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
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Re: Slate:

Unread postby mousepad » Thu 22 Jan 2026, 09:09:14

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AdamB', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Grimnir', 'I')'m sure you'll all have fun with this. ;)

I just had to bring this thread to the fore. It being SO apropos. And yes Grimnir, it is a fun one. Particularly as an after the fact, you are EXACTLY right kind of thing.


You're on a roll with digging up stuff, ain't you?

It's easy to predict that tomorrow will be just like today. It's much harder to predict it won't. I don't understand why you keep beating up people who dared to predict stuff yet got it wrong. Heck I open a news feed online and half the articles are prediction of "this COULD happen, that COULD happen, more COULD happen". Nobody has a clue about the future.
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Re: Slate:

Unread postby AdamB » Thu 22 Jan 2026, 22:11:52

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', '
')You're on a roll with digging up stuff, ain't you?


Hey, these chuckleheads provided so much material how can I not? All the other websites erased all the posts, not wanting their words to come back to haunt them.

I wish Monte hadn't erased my old posting history though, I think I was a bit conservative in what the shales were about to do, and wanted to check my own contemporaneous words.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', '
')It's easy to predict that tomorrow will be just like today. It's much harder to predict it won't.


Nonsense. Tomorrow won't be like today. Because it is the future....and there are no facts in the future, just probabilities of occurrence. So call tomorrow a stochastic answer designed to express degrees of similarity to today. Peak oilers can barely add on their fingers and toes, asking them to calculate probabilities is like asking a toddler to run the mile in under 4 minutes. Both lack the capability.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('muosepad', '
')I don't understand why you keep beating up people who dared to predict stuff yet got it wrong.


Because they couldn't be bothered to learn anything prior to predicting stuff. It is easy, you just learn...stuff....test the ideas logically, mathematically, do some critical thinking, apply what you know, etc etc.

But it really is worse than just getting something wrong. I specialize in being wrong. And then figuring out why. It is called learning. Like you building a catapult out of your truck! Never done it before, it is an interesting exercise, you do it once...afterwards you now know everything you learned in the first doing...and do it the 2nd time better!

Peak oilers never even reached the point of understanding how to build the system to project into the future. The answer is easy, the doing of it...well...anything but. And it costs money.

I'll provide just a hint. Peak oilers solved for A peak oil. Got it wrong, used the same method, and then kept doing it until they embarassed themselves off the stage.

The phase change required was to build a system that calculates when ALL peak oils might occur.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', '
') Heck I open a news feed online and half the articles are prediction of "this COULD happen, that COULD happen, more COULD happen". Nobody has a clue about the future.


Indeed. Because there are no facts there. Only clouds of probability.
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
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Re: Slate:

Unread postby mousepad » Fri 23 Jan 2026, 09:16:27

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AdamB', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', '
')It's easy to predict that tomorrow will be just like today. It's much harder to predict it won't.


Nonsense. Tomorrow won't be like today. Because it is the future.

You know what I meant, right? You are just trolling me again, right?


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')...and there are no facts in the future, just probabilities of occurrence. So call tomorrow a stochastic answer designed to express degrees of similarity to today.

I'm not quite sure this is correct. On the 24th of February 2022 Vladimir started his expedition. On the 23rd of Feb I (and probably many others) would have assigned a very low probability to this event happening. And yet, from Vlad's point of view it was going to happen with a very high probability.
The disconnect comes from lack of information on my part. And that is always the case when predicting the future. Lack of information.



$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Peak oilers never even reached the point of understanding how to build the system to project into the future. The answer is easy, the doing of it...well...anything but. And it costs money.

How wrong are peak oilers? A couple of decades off? Centuries? Doesn't seem to be that bad in the grand scheme of things. How accurate do you need the peak prediction to be to demonstrate sufficient thinking/learning capacity?
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Re: Slate:

Unread postby AdamB » Sun 25 Jan 2026, 18:42:13

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AdamB', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', '
')It's easy to predict that tomorrow will be just like today. It's much harder to predict it won't.


Nonsense. Tomorrow won't be like today. Because it is the future.

You know what I meant, right? You are just trolling me again, right?


I don't think so. However, based on my professional specialty I can get REAL specific in terms when discussing certain concepts, uncertainty and quantifying it being one of them. So when someone says "its easy to predict that tomorrow will be just like today" I rise to the challenge of the non-specificity of the concept.

Just to give a practical example of how wildly particular folks who think this way can be, as a hobby me and a couple PhDs would spend our lunch hours trying to predict the odds of one of us getting hit and killed by a meteorite, walking between the office and our cars in the parking lot, on our way to lunch. Seriously. It is a perfectly interesting thought experiment for folks who do what I do for a living, you just happened to hit a particular button. I meant no offense.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')...and there are no facts in the future, just probabilities of occurrence. So call tomorrow a stochastic answer designed to express degrees of similarity to today.

I'm not quite sure this is correct. On the 24th of February 2022 Vladimir started his expedition. On the 23rd of Feb I (and probably many others) would have assigned a very low probability to this event happening. And yet, from Vlad's point of view it was going to happen with a very high probability.
Quite true. Demonstrating that there are no facts in the future. Vlad was getting ready....but maybe he could have delayed another day. Or two. Certainty was high across a small time frame, but as I said, there are no real facts in the future. We can talk physical properties....like it is HIGHLY likely that gravity will exist tomorrow. And it highly unlikely that a GRB will exterminate mankind tomorrow. Most people have difficulty with questioning fundamentals...but GRBs are real. Vlad changing his mind is real. A snowstorm interfering with the day Vlad DOES decide to invade is real.

It makes for excellent thought experiments. And it requires this kind of thinking to solve peak oil.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', '
')The disconnect comes from lack of information on my part. And that is always the case when predicting the future. Lack of information.


Maybe. Bayesian Inference designs are how such things are approached. I've seen these systems built for government calculations of probabilities for things like a terror attack. The analysts themselves would all rank which cities were most at risk of an attack. But when asked, "Tomorrow or next week or when"? would balk at the specificity. So you interviewed them. Why is is this city more at risk than this one, what makes a better target than another, so on and so forth. Then you built your own distributions of factors that contributed more, or less, to their overall evaluation. And built out your distribution of probability of when, ease of, and possible consequences of. Do it through time, different perspectives, analysts with differing level of experience, and presto. A probability model of outcomes, severitity, and locations. From folks who themselves couldn't quantify it, but knew things that allowed others to.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Peak oilers never even reached the point of understanding how to build the system to project into the future. The answer is easy, the doing of it...well...anything but. And it costs money.

How wrong are peak oilers? A couple of decades off? \Centuries?


Based on the first documented claims of running out, it is currently in the century range. The modern peak oil era, beginning with Colin Campbell's 1990 claim of global peak oil, seemed to guess mostly in the 1990-2013 or so...before the idea began to wear thin. I use 2013 specifically because it was when, at national geologic/engineering confernces keynote speakers were making fun of these amateur hour folks publically...and TOD imploded, they wrote up why, and most slunk away in shame.

I presume there will be interest in the topic at some point, it is just SO much better and cooler and believable than the PlanetX or gold bug and Yellowstone exploding nutters.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', '
')Doesn't seem to be that bad in the grand scheme of things. How accurate do you need the peak prediction to be to demonstrate sufficient thinking/learning capacity?

Excellent question. Define "accurate". There is no disputing that peak oil will happen, Hubbert wrote it up fine in 1956. And as I said, the issue isn't picking "A" peak oil.....you need to predict ALL peak oils.

Once you have an intergrated system to predict any number of peak oils...then you can talk about the "most likely" when.

Supply in terms of oil volumes is completely technical. The question then becomes what is the price for a given demand expectation? Alternatively, what is production (supply) possible for a given price? Feed in one as an expectation (demand or price) and the other is an output. Do it 100 times with differing inputs (growing prices, lower prices, more demand, less demand) and you have a range of answers for any given year. Update information as you get it, feed new information in regularly and you have a Bayesian inference scheme. Predicting peak oils under any scenario you might like.

Easy Peasy. :)
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
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