[asg70]

Here's a thought experiment for you (and this is subject to change of course if this thread remains active).

How many hardcore peakers are there left in the world?

This forum has been bleeding off engagement for many years now. As of now by my reckoning there are only two highly active hardcore peak-oil doomers left. Armageddon and Short. Beyond them, there are only a handful of semi-regular posters who I'd classify as sycophants like Yoshua and Onlooker. They don't have much original to say, merely parroting the party line of others.

This is also why the appeals to authority come from a very small pool. I could statistically track this, but I'd say Zerohedge is 90% of the linking, followed by your usual suspects like Ugo Bardi, Chris Martenson, and Gail Tverberg. Actual MSM citations are very rare, and usually doomers misrepresent what the article is actually trying to say.

I used to think that the very last active poster we'd see would be PStarr. But he's gone for one reason or another. Not that other posters don't exist, but they rarely talk about peak oil per se. They talk about politics, technology, and global warming.

So that's really it. Just TWO posters left driving the discussion, one of which suffered a ban in the past and who has little credibility due to a failed model and bet and the other a hysteric who spams threads with 5-6 back-to-back uncited posts a day who thinks he's witty by terminating his posts with fake hashtag punch-lines.

That's...it.

Life After the Oil Crash...gone, Matt Savinar turning to Astrology.
The Oil Drum...gone.
ASPO...gone.
Matt Simmons...dead.
Mike Ruppert...dead.
Dieoff.org guy...dead.
Kunstler...rarely ever mentions oil anymore.
Greer...rarely ever mentions oil anymore, just a fantasy author now.

At what point should we stick a fork in it and call it done?

[Cog]

As long as oil is a finite resource and we really haven't found anything to replace it, then I suppose its useful to talk about the impacts and mitigation strategies.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Well, we could stick a fork in the "Peak Oil" name, I suppose. But I think of this as an energy and economics topics discussion board. And I joined over a decade ago with the idea of getting news and information about oil, energy, and investments related to those.

I still get useful input -- just not from the peakers.

In fact, I'd say the peakers lost the argument (re real world short term peak causing anything remotely approaching short to medium term economic armageddon) and their input isn't even at the core of this site any more.

Especially given the content, predictions, and track records of the remaining peaker community you listed. (They're welcome to their opinion, and we have an ignore function if their input drops to a value of zero.)

[Ibon]

Peak Oil, like climate change , has been a symptom from the beginning of the greater topic of human overshoot which is what keeps me loosely engaged here.

[jedrider]

From the systems engineering viewpoint, the "peak' is the maximum functioning of the system.

We are probably past that point already, but that was a composite function representing the EROI peak, which we have already passed.

Peak Oilers originally thought that the system collapses at the first contraction of extraction and that may be happening right now IMO,

so that bet is still ongoing, but they obviously confused the two (I didn't even know they were different).

The Environmental Peakers (which I am one and have always been BTW), I think, are about to have their heyday!

[Outcast_Searcher]

Peak Oil, like climate change , has been a symptom from the beginning of the greater topic of human overshoot which is what keeps me loosely engaged here.

That's a fair point. I have noticed that while many posters here don't agree with the fast crash doomers, they find long term resource issues (too many people, not enough planet, little sign of population sanity) very concerning. I place myself squarely in that "long term doom" camp, given my lack of confidence in human nature to fix things in time.

OTOH, I think a lack of willingness to acknowledge technology and adaptability as tremendous mitigating factors (at least in terms of buying time) is the main thing that causes the fast crashers to be so wrong in their forecasts, again and again. The never learning that obious fact -- that's on them.

[Plantagenet]

Shouldn't we define what a "hardcore peaker" is? You can't really determine how many are left without defining what it is that you are counting? People who post here come at "peak oil" from a lot of different directions, and like most things, there probably is no single correct way to think about it. After all, discussions of peak oil are basically predictions of the future, and nobody really knows what is going to happen in the future.

I can think of five different kinds of peak oil discussions that go on here.

1. There is a scientific approach, i.e. Some people think finite resources like oil really are finite. As we use up a finite resource (like oil) inevitably there comes a time when production peaks and then got into decline. With a finite resources there really isnt any other possibility once you start producing it and using it up.

2. Then there is a utopian approach, i.e. other people who think oil production will start to drop as the world shifts to a post-carbon economy to stave off climate change, and someday we'll all be zipping around in EVs and riding HSR and traveling in Elon Musk's tubes underground.

3. Then there is a dimmer vision, i.e. Some people think oil production will stop as a by product of a global civilization collapse that will happen for financial reasons or overpopulation or famine or due to nuclear war or due climate change induced mass migrations or whatever you've got that might cause global civilization to collapse. Peak oil as a byproduct of global economic collapse is still peak oil.

4. Then, in what I would characterize as an odd pseudo-scientific "cult", Some people believe in the EtP theory. Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

5. And finally, some people still think M. King Hubbard was right and the peak in oil production has already happened, or is imminent.


I think accepting scenarios 1,2, and 3 as possible predictions of the future is sensible and reasonable, but I don't accept scenarios 4 and 5.

Cheers!

[Ibon]

Peak Oil, like climate change , has been a symptom from the beginning of the greater topic of human overshoot which is what keeps me loosely engaged here.

That's a fair point. I have noticed that while many posters here don't agree with the fast crash doomers, they find long term resource issues (too many people, not enough planet, little sign of population sanity) very concerning. I place myself squarely in that "long term doom" camp, given my lack of confidence in human nature to fix things in time.

OTOH, I think a lack of willingness to acknowledge technology and adaptability as tremendous mitigating factors (at least in terms of buying time) is the main thing that causes the fast crashers to be so wrong in their forecasts, again and again. The never learning that obious fact -- that's on them.

Agree and if there is anything to learn about peakoil it is the importance to not focus on any single overshoot consequence as the kingpin that takes down civilization or threatens fullscale extinction. You can see how many of us did this with peakoil and how many still are doing this with climate change. We can name many other similar examples from the past; Y2, Ebola, collapse of US$ as global currency, gold,
The 2nd coming of Jesus Christ etc.

Having said that peak oil, climate change, globalization, financial cycles are all intertwined forces that will be major catalysts....

We just made the mistake with peakoil of seeing it as THE factor happening NOW instead of a factor happening throughout the coming decades and being a driving force during the 21st century

[KaiserJeep]

People keep expecting some dramatic event. IMHO we "peaked" - meaning the human population grew to the limit of the planet to heal itself - about 1800AD. The human species has more or less existed for 200,000 years, so reaching peak took a while.

The true sustainable population limit is also highly debateable. Given high productivity agriculture using powered machinery and fertilizers/herbicides/insecticides/genetic engineering/etc. we could support a lot more than the 1 billion or so that the unmolested Earth could tolerate. Especiallly given the food preservation and waste treatment tech we have. Ultimately the limit is probably a function of the non-polluting energy you can collect and use, as are most things.

The missing ingredient is a sense of peril IMHO. People have to sense approaching Doom, with no doubt about it. But the time frame is the thing. Like I said, I think we have been in population overshoot for 2+ centuries. When the cumulative environmental damage becomes apparent to all is likely a couple of more centuries. Getting ourselves organized and responding in a beneficial way is probably decades in the making after that.

Nothin' much happening in the few decades any of us have left. The late great Planet Earth, circling the drain.

[Newfie]

“Peak Oil” is our name, more like a trademark. It’s does not define who we are as a group, it merely notes how we came to being.

It is probably true that we see peak oil as a less emergent issue, and we turn our attention to seem more immense than dangers. That is completely natural.

Maybe we should rename it:

CONTEMPLATIONS UPON OUR DEMISE AND CORRECTIVE STRATEGIES.

[Ibon]

The late great Planet Earth, circling the drain

Do you share this view with your kids and if you do how do they react to your assessment?

[KaiserJeep]

Ibon, my kid and her husband are deeply immersed in family life with her twins (they just turned 4), paying a mortgage on their first detached home, and healthy eating/education for the twins. They will start their first public preschool classes in August this year.

I HAVE shared my concerns about peak oil and economic matters and the environment with them. However I have never been excessively Doomish with anybody I interact with, including them. One of their two cars is a Prius, the other is a medium Jeep SUV (a 2005 Jeep Liberty).

Aside from a brief period in 2013 when I myself was deeply immersed in fear of Peak Oil effects (I had just viewed Ruppert's film Collapse) I have slowly been developing the opinions about the various forms of Doom we discuss here, and the timing.

I think we passed the Oil Peak, and are playing games now with shales and tar sands. But I still think M. King Hubbert was right about that milestone - half the oil resource remains, some few decades of increasingly expensive petroleum fuels (due to high fuel demand), followed by what is effectively unavailability. I now have one residence that is heated by natural gas, another by fuel oil, both conventional structures without wind or solar supplements. I'll see what I can do about that, within reason.

If I personally buy another vehicle, it will be 100% EV. However, gasoline will remain available and affordable for 2-3 decades IMHO, which is why I did not protest too much when the wife bought a gasoline-powered Jeep Grand Cherokee last month. I did make sure it was E85 capable and of course we are now living in the MidWest, where corn is still king and alcohol fuels cheap, the nation's largest dairy farms exist, and we are surrounded by the largest bodies of fresh water in the World (i.e. the Great Lakes). My present plans say I will acquire a more modest EV this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t--JGQhvvlo (I know you have trouble with links sometimes, it is a video review of an electric conversion of an adult recumbent tricycle in the "tadpole" style, meaning two front wheels, and offroad capability.)

I find I don't have to be the strange family member obsessed with Doom. I honestly think nothing much Doomish will happen in my remaining lifetime. Since reading Kuntsler's The Long Emergency, I have believed he got things right. Parts of the world are in collapse already, while other places like China and India are obsessed with acquiring newish Middle Class lifestyles.

Like I say about all the forms of Doom I see: It's a process, not an event. TEOTWAWKI began about 1800 when humans surpassed the sustainable population and began destroying the planet. Within two centuries more, most of us will be dead, and (I really believe) the techy humans will be colonizing space, and those less fortunate will remain on the Earth's surface. For a nightmarish glimpse of what that means, try viewing the film Elysium.

[asg70]

Maybe we should rename it:
CONTEMPLATIONS UPON OUR DEMISE AND CORRECTIVE STRATEGIES.

You can't rename the domain, though, and that really establishes the theme to the outside world. That's the reason why there are so few posters here and why the discussion has gone off on tangents.

This site is more of an open archive. The value of the oil-related discussion here in 2019 amounts to little more than the usual game of whack-a-mole with Short and his long-disgraced ETP theory. But if Short were banned then the oil content of the site would drop to just about zero.

So it's kind of sad that the only way to keep an oil discussion going is to allow someone to spread misinformation.

[Plantagenet]

I've maintained for years that it was a mistake to "hide" some of the political, economic and other non-oil-related threads at this site from people who aren't members.

This is even more true today, when the amount of oil-related content is minimal.

If we want more people to join and post here, then we should more transparent about what kinds of things are actually being discussed. Some of the more interesting discussions here are actually hidden from visitors.....why the heck does this site do that?

Personally, I think the domain name is fine. The Peak Oil concept is very well known now to the general public, and that kind of name recognition is invaluable in marketing. You can see how valuable it is by looking at politics these days......our leading candidates are either people who were TV stars (Trump) or people who have been in politics since the Pleistocene (Biden). Name recognition is very very valuable and the site name PeakOil.com has invaluable name recognition.

Cheers!

[Ibon]

I agree with Plantagent about opening up the currently locked out non related threads. I was always for this when I was asked my opinion,

If I recall the reason way back then was because we had a lot more traffic and a lot more trolling and divisive thread topics that would go off the rails and so the decision to limit non member viewing to just oil related topics was to hide from non members all the snarky trolling bullshit that was going on. We had a lot more traffic back then.

Today there is so little traffic that it would be helpful to open those threads.

Besides the most interesting threads are exactly those that have more controversial points of view.

my 2 cents

[Ibon]

I honestly think nothing much Doomish will happen in my remaining lifetime.

We probably both share the long emergency opinion regarding how drawn out the correction will be.

Where we are quite different though is that this process for me does not kill the planet or take it down the drain. The very moment the human footprint recedes is when the planet starts to heal.

I never give my kids false hopes regarding the long term trend as I see it but I do present silver linings and I do not believe the planet is going down the drain or is dying as you frequently post.

The silver lining for our children is that the correction provides opportunities for those early adapters who learn how to consume less, recycle and reuse. Whose value system generates well being not from materialism but from serving others and holding nature with reverence. Early adapters are also those who take no meal for granted and who do not hide from hard physical labor. Those who are frugal.

If our children witness increased death rates of human beings because of consequences there is a real silver lining in that as well. Those who survive are more appreciative of their existence. All the indulgences of opulence you take for granted disappears and a sense of gratefulness returns for the basics.

Right now the focus is on all the negative feedbacks when contemplating the correction; climate change disruptions, loss of biodiversity, fresh water constraints. crop failures, disease, etc etc. The positive feedbacks happen actually parallel to the negative ones and the greatest positive feedback will be seeing the return of natural ecosystems as nature reclaims former human landscapes.

Young people want to confront honestly the hardships ahead, but also see through those hardships to some ideal to strive for. When you simply state that the planet is going down the drain this is not only false but also squashes any sense of purpose for moving through the consequences.

That is why I asked if you discuss this with your offspring.

[Newfie]

Well we had the Hillary/Donald election, that was during my lifetime.

[KaiserJeep]

Ibon, the one inescapable problem is that the ecological diversity is disappearing at an ever-accelerating rate. That means that the consequences of human overshoot (which took a scant few centuries to kill the ecology) can only heal in a few million years. Because that is how long evolution takes.

Of course, that might be reduced from millions of years to decades if we retain genetic engineering capabilities after the ecology crash.

[Ibon]

Ibon, the one inescapable problem is that the ecological diversity is disappearing at an ever-accelerating rate. That means that the consequences of human overshoot (which took a scant few centuries to kill the ecology) can only heal in a few million years. Because that is how long evolution takes.

Of course, that might be reduced from millions of years to decades if we retain genetic engineering capabilities after the ecology crash.

Your ecology knowledge displays the same ignorance as all the AGW Fanboys you used to rally against. You sound oddly just like them.

The planets ecology is not killed.
The accelerating loss of biodiversity means the cup us still over 90% full
Consequences are not monolithic, not spread evenly across the whole planet. Your claim of a planet going down the drain is exactly the same bullshit as climate change activists saying that all life on the planet will be extinct in the next 100 years.

You guys got some warped shit going on in your heads

[gollum]

Nothing has changed about peak oil except we've gotten a temporary reprieve from unconventional and generally more expensive sources. In the end we'll still peak and we'll still collapse as a civilization. I personally think a lot of the political upheaval we see in the world is a result of resource scarcity. Traffic is down because oil prices are temporarily down and production is up for a while, and social media is stealing peoples attention but I think it's days are numbered.