[TheAntiDoomer]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-En ... 2-802.html

I began seeing the handwriting on the wall about a year ago. It eventually caused me to cancel the module on peak oil in my College Writing class in the Fall of 2010. Advocates of peak oil apocalypse may be thinking that this sounds like the testament of a born-again Cornucopian who has seen the Light. No such luck.

This revelation was vouchsafed to me by Jonathan Fahey, via the Associated Press, in a recent article titled "US gas demand should fall for good after '06 peak." It contains a brilliantly-executed, if largely-unspoken, rhetorical strategy: Peak Oil is dead. Long live peak demand.

[Xenophobe]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-End-of-The-End--How-t-by-Mike-Bendzela-110102-802.html

I began seeing the handwriting on the wall about a year ago. It eventually caused me to cancel the module on peak oil in my College Writing class in the Fall of 2010. Advocates of peak oil apocalypse may be thinking that this sounds like the testament of a born-again Cornucopian who has seen the Light. No such luck.

This revelation was vouchsafed to me by Jonathan Fahey, via the Associated Press, in a recent article titled "US gas demand should fall for good after '06 peak." It contains a brilliantly-executed, if largely-unspoken, rhetorical strategy: Peak Oil is dead. Long live peak demand.

I'll be darned. Someone else noticed the obvious. All the wiles of the peak oil movement, the endless propaganda, continuous predictions which didn't come true, Twilights and Apocalypse and hindsight financial side effects, censored discovery charts, but best of all, someone simply watching the reality of the post peak world unfold.

Long Live Peak Demand indeed. Happy New Year everyone!

[Xenophobe]

Did you read that cr@p? Awful!

Spot on Anti. Good stuff. Based on the decline of membership on peak oil forums over the years, you can see these legions of converts, the wool removed from their eyes, educating the world around them as to the scare mongering they once bought into.

Long Live Peak Demand!

[thuja]

And while the cornies try to refute peak oil, the price keeps rising to near 100. In a world filled with limitless oil and humans ability to easily shift to an electric based planet, why would that ever happen?

[Lore]

When things start to get serious, there are always those that like to express it in a Baghdad Bob moment.

[Xenophobe]

And while the cornies try to refute peak oil, the price keeps rising to near 100.

Nobody refutes peak oil, thats a peaker strawman. Its already happened, the revisionists are in full scramble trying to pretend they really didn't MEAN it would cause rationing, shortages or a dieoff and such, and those of us who don't use gasoline much anymore could care less what the price of crude is. $100 after 2008? Childs play. Go look at the picks for crude price in 2011, nearly all the Doomers in this joint are predicting more of the same for crude prices, 6 years after peak oil now and THEY don't believe its any big deal anymore.

The point to the entire article is that demand destruction is much more powerful a force than field declines. Darn straight. The guy must have read some of my posts!

In a world filled with limitless oil and humans ability to easily shift to an electric based planet, why would that ever happen?

Because OPEC likes MORE money for their product rather than LESS. As do we all.

[Xenophobe]

When things start to get serious, there are always those that like to express it in a Baghdad Bob moment.

Peak oil was supposed to be THE serious. Happened 5 years ago. Maybe we need to wait another 5? A decade? Or this more of a Malthusian scale prediction, and we need to wait a few centuries?

[mos6507]

OpEd News isn't news. It's just a website where anybody including you or me can dump their opinions.

[Xenophobe]

OpEd News isn't news. It's just a website where anybody including you or me can dump their opinions.

Makes it the equivalent of someplace like ASPO or TOD then. Works for me! I'm just glad that people are pulling the wool from their eyes and noticing what us keen observers of reality already have.

I do have a question though, what was the purpose of the peak oil "movement" in the first place? Informing (scaring) everyone they could find? Reinforcing each other so they wouldn't feel as out of touch with reality as the world as they obviously were? They appeared to be co-opted by the green movement a few years back, a flavor that didn't persist long, certainly the last ASPO meeting didn't have near the green veneer that past meetings did.

Or was it more like a group of friends telling campfire stories with a common thread?

[Keith_McClary]

Imagine the energy that could be conserved if we simply clamped down on non-essential, recreational uses of gasoline and diesel. With the phenomenal success of the Internet and related technologies, we can now stay at home and do most everything we used to have to drive somewhere to do--shop, watch movies, work at our jobs, go to the bank, get a degree, etc. Imagine the possibilities.

Some would consider that TEOTWAWKI.

You would need internment camps in the desert:

[thuja]

And while the cornies try to refute peak oil, the price keeps rising to near 100.

Nobody refutes peak oil, thats a peaker strawman. Its already happened, the revisionists are in full scramble trying to pretend they really didn't MEAN it would cause rationing, shortages or a dieoff and such, and those of us who don't use gasoline much anymore could care less what the price of crude is. $100 after 2008? Childs play. Go look at the picks for crude price in 2011, nearly all the Doomers in this joint are predicting more of the same for crude prices, 6 years after peak oil now and THEY don't believe its any big deal anymore.

The point to the entire article is that demand destruction is much more powerful a force than field declines. Darn straight. The guy must have read some of my posts!

In a world filled with limitless oil and humans ability to easily shift to an electric based planet, why would that ever happen?

Because OPEC likes MORE money for their product rather than LESS. As do we all.

You've been saying for how long that Peak Oil has had no effect? Then why does that darned price keep rising? Something is happening. I can't put my finger on it. Ahhhh...its probably nothing. Go back to sleep.

[thuja]

More reasons xeno is wrong...

"Dramatic spike in gas prices forecasted"
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... orecasted/

"Rising oil prices poses another problem to recovery"
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Risi ... 931712.php

"Rising demand should push up crude oil prices in 2011"
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/96738/2 ... utlook.htm

Why is this happening? Peak Oil doesn't matter right?

[Keith_McClary]

revisionists are in full scramble trying to pretend they really didn't MEAN it would cause rationing, shortages or a dieoff and such

I read the article as a tongue-in-cheek poke at Cornie revisionists who are in full scramble trying to pretend they really didn't MEAN we would be exponentially awash in cheap oil for decades.

"We can't reach that high-hanging fruit, but it's probably sour anyway".

[Pretorian]

And while the cornies try to refute peak oil, the price keeps rising to near 100. In a world filled with limitless oil and humans ability to easily shift to an electric based planet, why would that ever happen?

does it rise in yens or swiss franks

[Pretorian]

i mean it could be a sort of a capital escape/injection just like the case with AG and AU

[thuja]

And while the cornies try to refute peak oil, the price keeps rising to near 100. In a world filled with limitless oil and humans ability to easily shift to an electric based planet, why would that ever happen?

does it rise in yens or swiss franks

Yes.

[thuja]

From the INternational Business Times...
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/96738/2 ... utlook.htm

"J.P. Morgan expects oil will cross $100 in the first half of 2011 and surpass $120 before the end of 2012.

"I believe the age of cheap oil is over," said Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency (IEA).

"There may be zigzags in the future according to the economy, this and that, but the general trend is we will see higher oil prices."

Of course the flip side of this is that the world cannot handle extremely high prices of energy and you may see another round of demand destruction and recessionary behavior due to Peak Oil. From the same article...

"The eternal irony is that if energy prices rise "too high" it would sap demand, which would then start declining again."

And on and on it goes. But this recession is teaching us one thing. Oil prices are remaining stubbornly high even in the face of a deeply damaging economic meltdown. That is a bad sign for a civilization based on cheap energy...

[Rod_Cloutier]

Was there ever a 'peak oil movement'? There have been various websites such as peakoil.com, the oil drum, life after the oil crash and so forth, but I don't recall a formal 'movement'. Where are the leaders, the agenda, the policy prescriptions, the membership cards, the million man marches to Capitol Hill?

I personally can't wrap my head around this new concept of peak demand? What is that really supposed to mean? Demand may be falling in America, but it is rising exponentially in countries like China and India. This growth in consumption will eventually overtake any decline in consumption in the US, and then overwhelm the world's productive capacity. You can't have 10% annual growth in consumption for 1/3 of the planet's population and not face a day of reckoning at some point.

As a Canadian, I think other non-Americans on this site will agree with me, that all this 'America first', or 'America-centric' attitudes seem bizarre? Why does it only matter what happens to the US? Peak demand, even if it is true in America, does not mean global consumption of fossil fuels is dropping. Also, climate change is a global issue, one cold winter for the US or the UK represents such a small area of the planet as to safely be ignored.

I also find that all the bigotry, the hate and blame game, the anti-Semitism, and so forth undermines all the principal claims. Is there really a formal movement?

[Xenophobe]

Was there ever a 'peak oil movement'? There have been various websites such as peakoil.com, the oil drum, life after the oil crash and so forth, but I don't recall a formal 'movement'. Where are the leaders, the agenda, the policy prescriptions, the membership cards, the million man marches to Capitol Hill?

Small religious movements like Peak oil don't do these things. Without the courage of their convictions, and with most geoscience and eco-socio reality stacked against them, when they venture out into the open, get a light giggle going from the audience, they tend to slink back to some dark corner of the internet, where they do some self esteem building exercises with some other congregation members. A couple of hymns, some reading of parables from the Prophets, maybe a small uptick in prices, give them a year or four to build up their nerve and they'll gingerly venture back out from under their rock.

As a Canadian, I think other non-Americans on this site will agree with me, that all this 'America first', or 'America-centric' attitudes seem bizarre?

The originator of the peak idea was American. Admittedly, the first Pope of Peak was born in Germany, but his decades of poor predictions show why, if you want it done right, you make sure you have an American in charge.

And we're the best crude hoes in the world, so of course solutions will start here, as they already are. Here's the best solution so far, don't worry, we'll ship them to our buddies in Canada before most everyone else probably.

I also find that all the bigotry, the hate and blame game, the anti-Semitism, and so forth undermines all the principal claims. Is there really a formal movement?

Yes. This thread is about how it failed. The scare mongering has ended, we can now hustle people down to the Chevy dealer to collect the solutions to the peak oil hysteria just as fast as Chevy can build them.