RE: Peak Oil?
November 10, 2021 at 6:23 pm
(This post was last modified: November 10, 2021 at 6:37 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
This threads got me going all the way down the borehole. I was wondering how it was that people came to believe that this place or that place had hit peak oil and as I was googling it I found no end of articles to that effect..and also, ofc, the raw numbers showing it to be wrong in each and every instance. So what gives? Then I found a study...about the peak oil movement.
Turns out it was largely the effect of a single organization, now defunct. ASPO. Founded by petroleum geologist Colin Campbell who, with Jean Lahererre, published an article in scientific american called "the end of cheap oil", in 1998. They were using a version of a model by a man named Marion King Hubert, produced in 1956, that predicted peak oil in 2000. They were using a pretty shoddy definition for oil (blamed on their editors but they later attempted...and failed..to make a correction) and it wouldn't really have mattered if they hadn't, since they massively underestimated the role of non conventional sources in both their initial and adjusted formulation. It went from gospel fact to prepper advertising copy to just plain wrong by 2012, with their last set of failed predictions..and it's been doa pretty much ever since. One thing that had killed the idea dead (before they reproposed it) was that the bell shaped curve used by the model was thought to reflect the underlying geology of oil production - but when the soviet union collapsed and the idea was floated that part of that had to do with peak oil and their production numbers -did- match the bell curve model.....russia inherited most of their oil fields and then blew through their numbers. Obviously, a change in politics doesn't change geology. The curve represents something else.
However, like so much else, it still lives on in our minds. It's sound in principle, and many of it's underlying predictions can be said to be accurate or at least not completely balls out wrong, and I have no doubt it was the earnest product of a great many well meaning people.
The next obvious question....why hadn't I heard it, why didn't it creep into my mind? Well, turns out, I was out of country and busy with other things at the time.
Turns out it was largely the effect of a single organization, now defunct. ASPO. Founded by petroleum geologist Colin Campbell who, with Jean Lahererre, published an article in scientific american called "the end of cheap oil", in 1998. They were using a version of a model by a man named Marion King Hubert, produced in 1956, that predicted peak oil in 2000. They were using a pretty shoddy definition for oil (blamed on their editors but they later attempted...and failed..to make a correction) and it wouldn't really have mattered if they hadn't, since they massively underestimated the role of non conventional sources in both their initial and adjusted formulation. It went from gospel fact to prepper advertising copy to just plain wrong by 2012, with their last set of failed predictions..and it's been doa pretty much ever since. One thing that had killed the idea dead (before they reproposed it) was that the bell shaped curve used by the model was thought to reflect the underlying geology of oil production - but when the soviet union collapsed and the idea was floated that part of that had to do with peak oil and their production numbers -did- match the bell curve model.....russia inherited most of their oil fields and then blew through their numbers. Obviously, a change in politics doesn't change geology. The curve represents something else.
However, like so much else, it still lives on in our minds. It's sound in principle, and many of it's underlying predictions can be said to be accurate or at least not completely balls out wrong, and I have no doubt it was the earnest product of a great many well meaning people.
The next obvious question....why hadn't I heard it, why didn't it creep into my mind? Well, turns out, I was out of country and busy with other things at the time.
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