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Did it predict them all? What was their rationale? Their methodology? Do you believe they overlooked anything? A lot of things? Is oil even going to peak in the next 20 years? Clearly you think so... but that's because you think newly discovered and undiscovered supplies of liquid oil won't be usable in time. Deep sea oil fields are hard to get at, but do you really think we've discovered them all (after all, that was the point of this thread), and why do you pretend they simply don't exist? Duh. The solutions to large problems are always multifaceted conglomerates of microsolutions which add up to a global supply? How about converting coal into diesel? Biofuels? Converting natural gas into petroleum? And, of course, oil shale. None of these are "silver bullets", but what about ALL of these solutions, and ones I haven't listed because I don't know about them, and ones we haven't even thought of yet COMBINED? Will they equal a solution? You say no, I say yes. Well you heard it here first folks: they've unequivocably predicted the future and there is no solution whatsoever. Oh wait, appeal to authority... Sorry Peak Oil Man... I can't share your pessamistic outlook on the situation. As more money becomes available to solve the problem, the solutions will be more creative, and will includes ones that haven't yet been predicted by any of the projections you cite in your gloom and doom analysis. Technology and market forces will solve the problem. You don't think so because you have absolutely no reliance on human innovation whatsoever. You're predicting a static future based on conditions unchanging from the present. This methodology is flawed. The market will force humanity to innovate. Solutions will be found. System will transition and evolve. A multitude of solutions are in the pipe already, you just think they're all unworkable. And therein lies the problem of trying to predict the future without accounting for things which will change from the present...

Okay Peak Oil man, I already told you about this, but let's go through the story again. I used to live in Grand Junction, Colorado. During the '80s Exxon started the Colony Oil Project, in which they planned to convert oil shale using the exact method you outlined above. During that time there was an enormous boom in Grand Junction, with the prospect of oil dollars being funneled through a nearby project and Grand Junction being the place where all of those oil dollars would be spent by all of the workers needed for an elaborate operation where shale is mined, pulverized, and the oil extracted. An oil refinery was constructed to process the anticipated extract, and housing projects went up everywhere to house the influx of workers. Exxon began donating money to the local schools, and everyone was giddy over the entire prospect. Eventually, Exxon did a cost-benefit analysis, and determined that the project was not going to be profitable. They pulled out. The local economy collapsed, and all those new houses remained empty. The oil refinery shut down. Things looked grim. The Shell showed up a few years ago. What they offered was something very, very different from what Exxon had in mind. Shell's plan, in situ conversion, tapped the hundreds of natural gas wells in the same area to cook the oil directly out of the shale. It was a radically different approach which required substantially fewer workers, bringing down costs while also offering an extremely positive energy input:energy output ratio (3.5:1) Only time will tell if in situ conversion will work. Right now they're testing the process to determine if their projections are accurate. They've been cooking the oil shale for a little over a year now, and anticipate the oil will begin to flow in the next few years. Will it work? Only time will tell. Still, your dire predictions don't account for any of this. What if in situ conversion is successful and Shell is able to tap an estimated 800 billion barrels of oil that sit right here in North America? Things like this are why static analysis doesn't work. You assume that newly discovered oil will simply continue to decrease while demand only continues to increase. As oil grows increasily expensive the market will seek alternatives, and the growth in oil demand you see now will begin to peter out. This is the "s-curve", an economic pattern you see in virtually every market where previous patterns of growth eventually taper off as intrinsic limits are reached. So, really, that's the crux of my argument. There are sources of oil (undiscovered deep sea oil fields, oil shale) which aren't being counted in your present estimates, which will become increasingly cheaper to discover and tap as technology improves. As the cost of oil increases, demand will taper off in the s-curve pattern. So, again, there's the same answer I've given you over and over: the problem will be solved by a combination of technology which allows us to tap sources of oil which don't even figure into your projections, and market forces which gradually moves us towards alternatives as the cost rises with a shifting supply/demand curve. You're attempting to forecast based on present market trends which, of course, are based on a continually increasing oil supply, with the only basis of your arguments being a trend of decreasing oil discoveries. My argument is that technology will reverse this trend, to where the pattern we see is one of fluctuation and not the smooth decrease that static analysis predicts.

What if that stoner was Carl Sagan?

Yeah, we really kind of jacked up the whole planet didn't we. Oh well, me likey. How about you?

Peak Oil Man, I grow weary of responding to you. To start with, can you knock off the composition fallacies? Citing of 3rd party sources: What you're looking for is here: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Citizenship/Imports/EnergyOutlook05/index_full.html And finally, the continuing barage of FUD. You're presenting far more editorial than actual information. Fear: Uncertainty: Doubt: Pull out the relevant facts you wish to present, and stop relying on uncertainty to make your point. The approach of juxtaposing fact with an open ended yet skewed question (or questions) is one used by conspiracy theorists to justify their position. This approach shields you from actually having to justify those statements, because they're framed in the form of questions. This is a classical case of the shifting the burden of proof fallacy. You clearly believe OPEC is misrepresenting their numbers. Fine. Stop shifting the burden of proof onto me and asking me to show how they aren't. You're the one making the claim. You have to justify it. Furthermore, I say again: you are wrong that oil production in non-OPEC countries has peaked. Oil shale deposits in Colorado and neighboring areas of Utah and Wyoming are estimated to contain 800 billion recoverable barrels, three times larger than Saudi Arabia's proven reserves of conventional crude, and the equivalent of 40 years of U.S. oil consumption. Several companies are working on methods to extract oil from oil shale, particularly Shell with their in situ conversion process, which they claim has a 3.5:1 positive energy balance. You can read about it here: http://www.rand.org/news/press.05/08.31.html

The server bandwidth required to serve [math]n[/math] clients

Well, here's something you probably haven't seen around here for awhile: a real computer science thread. I'm working on a client/server streaming file transfer system which provides [math]O(log(n))[/math] scalability for n clients transferring a given file, as opposed to [math]O(n)[/math] for typical file transfer systems. It does this by leveraging all clients grabbing a file in a combined peer-to-peer network which offloads the file transfer process onto the peer network. It's called DistribuStream, and you can read about it here: http://pdtp.org/

No you're not, you just have a problem with it and no desire to get better. Nobody likes doing something they suck at, but unfortunately that's the only way to get better. GET OUT OF YOUR HOUSE AND MEET PEOPLE. That same degree of openness leads to exploitability. MySpace is a marketing platform, and it is being exploited en masse by purveyors of pornography who set up fake identities for the sole purpose of selling porn. These people are essentially spammers and have overrun MySpace to the point that it makes the extreme instability/bugginess a negligable problem in comparison.

So, thank you for reiterating everything I've already said, Peak Oil Man. The USGS has provided optimistic static analysis. You are providing pessamistic static analysis. Neither of these are a particularly accurate way to obtain projections.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_davies/2006/10/faking_the_physics.html Harry Collins, a sociologist, managed to convince a panel of physicsts that he knew more about gravity waves than a gravity wave physicist. From the article:

Peak Oil Man, I don't know. Why don't you read the USGS report, find the method they used, and criticize that? You like to argue with only questions. Your refusal to make statements regarding your position, but instead throwing up a smokescreen of questions, is the same approach used by conspiracy theorists who don't actually want to advance their position, but merely confuddle the issue with uncertainty. I asked, I believe, a fairly good question about the projections you're advancing, and you've come back with a red herring. Can you please stop trying to make your argument in the form of questions, and instead start making statements which can be evaluated for factuality?

I think the crux of the argument comes down to this: Yes, it is the wrong approach. Static analysis is based on the assumption that conditions are fixed and unchanging. The above statement assumes we will not discover new oil. However: 1. Conditions are constantly changing 2. We will discover new oil I don't think I could find a better example than the graph you presented: There is a very stark disconnect between the real world data and the projections on this graph. The projections show a smooth decline into nothingness, while the real world data illustrates a high degree of variability. My question is: why should we assume the trend will continue as projected on this graph?

Here's a couple questions for you Peak Oil Man: 1. Has oil already peaked? 2. If so, why does oil production continue to increase, and if not, when do you believe the peak will occur?

I watched the ABC segment here: http://www.abc.net.au/science/broadband/catalyst/asx/oilcrisis_hi.asx No mention of USGS or OPEC. I don't have the answers but then again I don't have the burden of proof. You are the one claiming their methodology is flawed. Can you find specific problems with it, or are you just going to continue to attack it with unsubstantiated generalizations? If you're going to play the "My government is better than your government!" game, can you at least link to your government's web site rather than providing unattributed quotes or paraphrased information from your web site? The Four Corners special is available here: http://abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20060710/ I'll watch it when I get some time.

I already linked the DOE site which provided this answer: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/feature_articles/2004/worldoilsupply/oilsupply04.html I refuse to dignify #2 with a response.

Oil is obviously a finite resource, and at some point oil output will start to go down rather than up. But for now, oil production continues to increase, and several government and international agencies don't predict a peak for 20 years. Here's a Christian Science Monitor article that, like the Reason article, juxtaposes peak oil theorists claims with some sensible responses, both from the USGS and from international agencies and oil analysts: http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0129/p14s01-wogi.html Personally, I don't see peak oil happening for at least another 20 years, and in that time I expect massive technological advances. We're seeing massive advances in fuel economy (The Honda Insight and Toyota Prius will both see models with 100+MPG in the next few years), moves towards non-petroleum based fuels, and other advances which will work to mitigate the problem.

The article you linked reiterates what I'm saying Peak Oil Man: projections of several reputable agencies place peak oil around 2025-2030. You continue to ignore oil shale: http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/publications/reports/ser/shale/shale.asp We discovered the oil that was easy to discover at roughly the same time because it was easy? And again, you're asking us to come to conclusions based on static analysis. I refuse. Static analysis is not an accurate means to assess future trends. You're using the most pessamistic of projections to raise alarm. The Australian government is simply making the same criticisms of the USGS methods that I'm using to criticise your methods. There's both optimistic and pessamistic projections, and the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. However, the most reasonable projections would seem to indicate that we have at least a decade to move towards solution voluntarily before market forces really begin to drive it in that direction. In the meantime, you're giving us nonstop fear, uncertainty, and doubt. That's all I see out of you: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt What you're doing is just fearmongering. You ignore all evidence to the contrary, or claim it's unreliable. The USGS data comes from static analysis of trends, the same methodology you are using to give the most dire of predictions (i.e. that we are at or have already passed peak oil). The same methodology can be used to give optimistic projections as well. It all depends on what the person doing the analysis wants the numbers to show. You can fit any number of equations to an existing set of data and project them however you want. For example you could extrapolate on the recent upturn in oil discoveries and say that oil discoveries will be infinite by 2015. Static analysis doesn't give reliable projections due to unpredictable factors. You are still yet to demonstrate why market forces as well as present and future voluntary steps by governments are insufficient to resolve the problem. And there's much, much bigger world issues to be overzealous about. HIV/AIDS kills 4,000 people EVERY SINGLE DAY. Why aren't you concerned about that?

That graph wasn't created by an oil company What sources are those? The three sources I cited claim peak oil is at least 20 years off. Yes, static analysis. If you apply the same to razor blades, then Schick will release an infinite-bladed razor by 2015. Strawman. We're just staying the estimates being presented by peak oil alarmists are, at best, extremely pessamistic. Furthermore, static analysis has repeatedly lead people to the conclusion that we're exhausting the world's oil supply. However, by USGS's estimates, we've consumed some 20% of the world's oil supply. Who's right? Peak Oil Man is not citing his sources or linking to reliable web sites. He's also providing boiled down versions full of editorializing (and even then, he provides no sources for those) See: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/feature_articles/2004/worldoilsupply/oilsupply04.html See also: http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/oil/2worldoil.mideast.html I think perhaps the funniest part is: Here Peak Oil Man attacks the USGS because their estimates are based on static analysis (also, he doesn't cite where this argument is coming from. I'm guessing his web page?) Yet all of his arguments are based on static analysis.

What exactly was your response to all the agencies Reason quoted who claim that oil won't peak for another 20 years, including United States Geological Survey, the International Energy Agency, and the Cambridge Energy Rearch Associates? I'm wary of trusting your presentation of data when the source you claim it's from doesn't match what the graph is labeled. And furthermore, none of these predictions take into account the enormous potential oil bonanza that lies underneath the southwest US in the form of oil shale... That's an example of why static analysis doesn't work. What potential sources of oil aren't getting included in present estimates? How can we possibly know what those are?

Who did the projection? Regardless, I'd consider it unreliable because it relies on static analysis which doesn't compensate for practical consideration or unpredicted factors. Also, according to the graph it's based on ExxonMobil data, not BP data

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/08/korea.nuclear.test.ap/index.html How does this alter the world landscape?

Bitch about my ad hominem and come right back with a category fallacy? What specifically makes "the left" "anti-freedom" and "anti-American"? I would argue things like suspending habeas corpus and arresting someone who criticizes a prominent politician are "anti-freedom" and "anti-American"

Science magazine has an entire section on computational neuroscience in this month's issue: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;314/5796/75 One of the articles is on a neuroscience researcher from right here in Boulder: http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=376

Wouldn't you expect bands of complete destructive interference out of this, but only in the uncollapsed wave? I think if everything were properly lined up what you'd see is a cool pattern on the wall.

If you're going to make accusations of logical errors, you're generally expected to state what those logical errors are. Can you give a link to a credible site, rather than your home page? Fear! Uncertainty! Doubt! Hooray! My bike is already my primary form of transportation