There is no Peak Oil. Its all in your head

Specop_007 · Expert Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 6267

Trust the government. They will save you. Rest assured technology will come to the rescue. Go back to your lives.
There is no Peak Oil. Its all in your head.
[repeat 50 times]

Shocked

BabyPeanut · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 7:21 am Post subject:

The part about Peak Oil that makes me wonder is the fact that there have been artificial oil shortages created in the past. The motivation is very simple: make the price of oil go up so that if you are vested in oil you will get rich quick.

Couple the motivation for an artificial shortage with the phenomena of media deregulation:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104810/

http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums/04/05/pre04014.html

http://www.outfoxed.org/

allowing a very small number of media outlet owners to create the impression of consent.

Oil will eventually run eventually, notwithstanding, the question should be "is it happening now or are victim to yet another artificial oil shortage?

cyotha · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 10:35 am Post subject:

Yeah, that was my husband's response when I first brought up peak oil. He immediately thought it was hype by the energy execs so they could rake in the dough as the price went up.

I think it is true, but I don't buy the most pessimistic scenarios. They remind me of the panic over the year 2000 bug.

davidyson · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 12:35 pm Post subject:

I don't buy the "there is no peak oil" either.

Even Shell and the IEA acknowledge that there will be a peak - though they say it will be only in 2020 or so.

So it just seems to be a matter of who has the better numbers and the most realistic model.

Hey, even if peak oil is in 2020, in terms of a transition (20-50 years) it's still very close.

Y2K bug: Being a software engineer, I can tell you that the only reason why we did not see a major problem was that the panik went off in time to mobilize millions of software engineers to check out the software and correct the bug where necessary. There is hardly any sign of the appropriate panik about peak oil yet to spark a similar effort (only 1000 times larger).

Davidyson

Falconoffury · Expert Joined: May 25, 2004 Posts: 1471

It is well documented that individual fields collapse never to produce any more oil. That's all the proof you need that eventually the whole planet will run low on oil. It's much more obvious than other doomsday theories like Y2K or a comet because it's truly a matter of "when" and not "if".
_________________
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Coolman · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 30, 2004 Posts: 223

Indeed, Peak Oil makes Y2K look like a joke. Peak Oil is real, serious and it will impact everyone's life. The the doomsday parts of Peak Oil are very possible. Its not the end of the world, just the end of the modern world. If anything the doomsday would probably come from endless wars for oil, and famine from having a over populated world.

BabyPeanut · Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 8:02 am Post subject:

Specop_007 · Expert Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 6267

entropyfails · Moderator Joined: Jun 30, 2004 Posts: 608

fred2 · Tar Sands Joined: Aug 26, 2004 Posts: 96

The problem with the 'dieoff' predictions is that to most, who know nothing of peak oil, they're just laughable. It just gives them an easy way to dismiss peak oil as a mad theory. That too was my initial impression.

People who wish to seriously get their governments to sit up and consider this problem need to rid themselves of the barmy 'the end is nigh' brigade. Focus on the facts as we know them, not on the dire predictions. They're interesting to contemplate, but promoting them is counter productive to trying to get a rational world response to the problem.

BasPer · Coal Joined: Sep 16, 2004 Posts: 2

One of the good things about peak oil is that it requires no amount of expertise to realize that there is a problem. The only requirements are common sense and the ability to at least momentarily glimpse past your preconceptions. Might prove difficult enough though...