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DO NOT EDIT OR POST REPLIES TO THIS PAGE. THIS PAGE IS AN ARCHIVE.

This archive page covers approximately the dates between August and November 2005.

Post replies to the main talk page, copying or summarizing the section you are replying to if necessary.

Please add new archivals to Talk:Hubbert Peak/Archive05. (See Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.) Thank you. HereToHelp (talk) 02:10, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


From the article "Oil industry executives, economists, and analysts generally regard Hubbert's peak theory as false", this statement is non neutral and vague. What implications or consequences of a "Hubbert's peak" theory are asserted to be generally regarded as false? Is this stating the the aforementioned groups think in general that oil production will not peak at some time? That seems the most generous way of interpretting this, so unless someone can clarify this and provide some evidence for the general statement, it should be removed soon.

Article needs a major edit

This article is now, at 56 kilobytes, way over the guidelines for article size in Wikipedia. As noted above, it also contains sections that stray well beyond the subject and get into contentious political argument. This needs to be considered in light of NPOV. I've started to edit and would welcome any assistance. I think we could create one or two related articles for the political discussion. Sunray 16:16, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

Every featured article is seemingly over the recommended size limit, though I agree there is much room for verbocity reduction. The external links and further reading sections are 9.5 and 2.5k respectively. I think the hydrogen sub section can be pared down to a one or two sentence mention moved to the speculative section just above it? The sub sections within both "implications of a world peak" and "alternatives to oil" should be limited to a max of two paragraphs which Catastrophe, Market solution, Increased fuel efficiency, Lifestyle choices, Nuclear power, Fusion power, and Renewable energy all currently exceed, this should be fixed. zen master T 16:59, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest paringdown the article to the non-obvious assertions of Hubbert. (hint: the idea that oil wells get depleted at some point is obvious and previously asserted a hundred places - perhaps most notably by Buckminster Fuller) Therefore I created the Article "Alternative to oil" and moved that section out. I would like to see the general problem of oil depletion covered seperately from this particular theory of oil depletion, which while interesting, could be proven false - without disproving the far more general theory that someday oil will run out. Benjamin Gatti

I think the move of content to "Alternatives to oil" was a good move. The "implications" section would also make a find article on its own. Johntex 20:15, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the move of Alternatives to oil to a new article was a good idea, especially since that article is proposed to be merged with alternative fuels, that synopsis section was more important and relevant here because peak oil is only an issue because all currently known alternatives are allegedly not as good as oil energy return on energy invested wise. zen master T 20:05, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
There are several editors who have contributed on the general idea of finite oil "Because there was no other place". I believe we can do Hubbert more service by allowing his article to focus on his theory and if available HIS predictions, and his proposed implications. I would suggest that the public reaction to Hubbert Peak is grist for a different mill. And this is like three days with noone providing a quote of Hubbert himself describing the implications of his own theory - nor has anyone explained how being partially right on a very broad guess buys you clarivoant status. Benjamin Gatti
Benjamin Gatti, you seem to generally not make sense and consistently ignore the point, in this case the point is the article currently lists all the implications of a peak but there are no longer any technical details on why alternatives are allegedly not as good which is the justification for having implications. Your paragraph above seems to have been generated using good confusion inducing algorithmns, are you some sort of language parsing/A.I. bot? I particularly like the mispellings and the nonsensical sentence "...Hubbert Peak is grist for a different mill". zen master T 20:31, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
How about let's keep the personal attacks to a bare minimum. I'm sure the people who agree with you, don't need you wasting bandwidth to point out that I don't (always). With which of these don't we agree?
  1. A Page on Hubbert's theory should inform the reader about Hubbert's theory.
  2. Overloading the article with the "Theory of what happens IF the Hubbert's theory is correct" distracts from 1.
  3. "Alternatives to oil" is an important and worthy subject - independant of Hubbert's Peak theory.

I support any discussion of implications (or the insufficiency of alternative) exactly to the extent that they are written by Hubbert as part of the peak theory. Benjamin Gatti

Hubbert's words were, "a national problem of primary importance." That's from the concluding paragraph of the section on fossil fuels, page 38, from his 1956 paper, which is now linked from the Introduction of this article. Unfortunately, that copy of the 1956 paper is in pdf format so I can't just copy and paste the text here. Nuts, I'm doing to go ahead and type the full paragraph so we can see the above phrase in context.
"This does not necessarily imply that the United States or other parts of the industrial world will soon become destitute of liquid and gaseous fuels, because these can be produced from other fossil fuels which occur in much greater abundance. But it does pose as a national problem of primary importance, the necessity, both with regard to requirements for domestic purposes and those for national defense, of gradually having to compensate for an increasing disparity between the nation's demands for these fuels and its ability to produce them from naturally occurring accumulations of petroleum and natural gas." ((Jkintree 22:40, 27 August 2005 (UTC)))
Ok - that brings a lot more rationale and balance into the discussion. I am Rememinded of the phrase "Lord, save me from your followers" Could I suggest that the hyperventilating rants of me-too peakniks, and those who are "using" a reasoned view of the decline of oil as a foundation for a full-on Chicken Little campaign which takes the message far beyond the direct assertions of Hubbert. My take on the article is that Hubbert, the man and his theory is all but lost by the johnny come latelys with thier constantly updated schedule of doom. I think an encyoclopedia owns Hubbert an article which reflects both his ideas, and his restraint. - which is why I think all the comments from the peanut gallery belong in a very different article. Benjamin Gatti
I'm sorry that we are engaging in name calling here. We all have different perspectives, shaped by our lifelong experiences. I also don't think it was fair to call Hubbert a "charletan." He was a professional geologist who had the courage to stand before his peers, and say something that he knew they would not want to hear. It is not surprising that today there are people who are trying to continue Hubbert's work as well as those who do not want to hear it. Limiting the article to statements only made by Hubbert himself is an extreme and unacceptable restriction. Jkintree 22:40, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
Huh, this new guy Jkintree doesn't make sense either and has even more dramatically and verbosely tried to change the subject. I am not making a personal attack I am accusing Benjamin Gatti of being a bot, and I don't mean sockpuppet, I mean a language parsing/A.I. posting POV pushing computer program. zen master T 01:17, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
So, you think Benjamin Gatti is a bot. How could we test that? If he is a bot, does that diminish the value of his posts? Gee thanks, Zen-master, for keeping us on the point of this discussion. Jkintree 02:50, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
Not making sense or tagenticizing conversations is generally a sign of non good faithed/multiplicitous editing of some sort, why did you bring up "charletan" in this thread as that is completely out of the blue? Technically any sort of bot activity is a sockpuppet and is bannable from wikipedia, why should the lazy man behind the curtain get POV pushing technology and the common man doesn't? It is unconstitutional. And based on my experience I would say that users that aren't what they seem (bot or other) have been a negative influence on wikipedia. zen master T 03:25, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
C'mon let's be reasonable. First - I generally agree with Zen Master, as I understand it (he?) generally supports renewable energy for his own reasons. We're way on the same page, just kinda jousting about what corner we prefer. Accusing people of failing the turing test is really just a kind of an "moronic" insult between geeks (who know what a great machine turing was). Peace? Benjamin Gatti
Please stop interjecting chaos and nonsense into the talk page then and adhere to some sort of consistent and coherent POV as far as editing articles is concerned. zen master T 18:56, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

ITER

From Objectives in ITER:

No mention of electricity. Not worth the trouble of extracting if it runs for only 8 minutes best case. pstudier 23:33, 2005 August 14 (UTC)

is it just me - or is this a silly sacrement to one novelty guessing act (Ponsi anyone?)

If Hubbert guessed once right (within 7%) than the field of other guesses need only be about 15 to have a 50-50% chance at accuracy. Assuming there were more than 15 geophysicists publishing estimates of oil futures in 1965, there is a very low chance that one of them wouldn't have gotton at least the year right. So let's do basic prophetic due diligence - how many predictions did he make? How many came true. What was the reason predicted? Was that the reason.

Answer on all counts is that Hubbert is a charletan. Take for example the reason given: That it would take more than one barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil. Is that why US oil peaked? no. It peaked because it became less expensive to import foriegn oil. The day foriegn oil goes up (ie now) we're going to hear about how the US has oil again (ie ANWAR, Texas Gulf etc ...) Benjamin Gatti

You are not the only one. There are other people who disagree with the ASPO, the current proponents of peak oil, that world oil production will peak in 2007. There is a section in the article for Critiques of the Hubbert's theory. That is where evidence that refutes the theory of peak oil belong.
By the way, it was in 1954 that Hubbert predicted that U.S. production of oil would peak around 1970. He received a lot of ridicule at the time he made that prediction. If you don't know the reason Hubbert predicted that 1970 would be the peak year of U.S. production, you are poorly informed to be pushing your POV here. What Hubbert did was study the production curves of many oil fields over many years of operation, and he aggregated those curves. Another factor is the peak in the discovery of new oil that precedes the peak in production by several decades. You can't keep pumping oil out of the ground if you aren't discovering new oil fields. After the north slope of Alaska, and deep offshore sites, where else do we look? Most oil producing countries have already passed their own peak of production. There are only a handful of countries that have not yet peaked. Matthew Simmons might be wrong about how close Saudi Arabia is to its peak, but one thing Simmons is absolutely right about is the need for full disclosure of the remaining oil reserves. As serious as crossing the peak in global oil production this decade would be, greater care should be exercised in editing this article. Jkintree 15:55, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, I understand the method, but it's not realistic (because politics and global economics influence the decision to look for new oil - not past performance) - and the second prediction is wrong - dead wrong. I'm sure a hundred geologists were predicting when they though oil would run dry, one of them had to be right once, hell, a stopped watch is right twice a day. The peak in oil discovery is like a peak in buying bananas - it predicts that some days from now i will have less bananas, but when i run out of bananas, a price signal will say, hey go buy more bananas, and then i'll go look for more oil. When you realize that global consuption went DOWN in 1970, that is profound, it was a ripple, and it sent negative price signals to the search for oil. Peak oil isn't about the end of cheap oil - its about the rapid end of cheap oil - and there are many reasons that oil cannot run out quickly - Chiefly, we have aesthetic reasons not to drill for oil - those could be dispensed with. We have global competition for oil, as the price of oil goes up, the cost of movinggoods goes up, the relative cost of labor goes down, china/india lose their competative advantage, thus they lose trade, and finally their ability to purchase large quantities of oil - thus the price of oil falls. There is in short a gentle feedback in the system. In addition, we are still buying Hummer II's so we have room to conserve. Car pooling is underutilized, high oil prices would drive conservation, which would lower consumption and lower the price. I think China is the loser if oil runs out before they have a chance to consume their way to a leisure class - and there is probably no chance that there is enough oil for that either way. This article need sto focus on the exact words of Hubbert and nothing else. Benjamin Gatti
Your POV is so strong that you are distorting Hubbert yourself. The reason for the peak in production that you attributed to Hubbert above was, "That it would take more than one barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil." That's a straw man argument. It's not the reason Hubbert gave. Have you read his 1956 paper? The point at which net energy becomes negative has nothing to do with the PEAK in production; it has to do with the END of production. This is an article about Hubbert's peak theory, not his end of production theory. For that reason, I think the efforts by Colin Campbell and the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, to apply Hubbert's theory and methodology with current data, are entirely relevant to this article. Jkintree 03:49, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
Now I understand where this article draws its organizational inspiration - what a dreadful site - and some scanned pdf file? Get real, where's the searchable asci edition? Hubbert is listed like 15th on the list of experts. "Clinton on life after the Presidency" is a feature story. This site is a random fountain of witless and profuse pessimism. This article should have a medical warning its that depresive. And where in the article is the link to this paper - which needs a page of its own, its longwinded enough and apparently important. Why don't you create a page and summarize the article with the quotes you think are relevent? I think you mischaraccterize my argument.
  1. a SINGLE guess does not a prophet make.
  2. The energy required to extract oil is irrelevent as oil is a transport fuel and 10x more valuable than other energies which could be used to extract it.
  3. oil exploration is linked to current reserve levels - lower reserves will trigger more discovery.
  4. There are many factors which could affect oil production aside from depletion including the environment, politics, and lower cost alternatives.
1 - Correct, but there is no evindence Hubberts article was a wild guess. In fact, ALL figures and analyses in the oil industry are more or less guesstimates. The science comes into how far off the guesstimates really are.
2 - It is also totally irrelevant to peak oil theory. Peak oil theory is about world-wide, macroscopic peak of production in history and the implied consequences. EROEI is about common sense, regardless of peak oil theory.
3 - That is an assumption. Current news shows that your assumption does not result in facts. The facts are that Exxonmobil, ChevronTexaco, BP and Shell all know there is not much more oil to be found. That is why BP and Shell have diversified into renewables and hydrogen years ago, instead of searching for more oil or building more refineries. More refineries will simply not translate into more gasoline, just in wasted money. Your assumption is based on market economic ideology, and not on geological facts.
4 Correct. But your assumption that US oil production has peaked because it became cheaper to import oil is not based on facts. Facts are that Saudi production only really ramped up after the 1973 oil crisis. At that time US oil production had already clearly peaked. Also, US oil production didn't improve at all when imported oil became more expensive than US produced oil. The facts are there, and they fly right in the face of your reasoning. Elementary, my dear Watson. Crusty007 22:03, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

The efforts of others belong on other pages - with links here. Benjamin Gatti

Self Referential Language in Article

I removed this language from the article:

The inclusion of these 'implications' is the subject of an NPOV dispute. See Talk:Hubbert Peak. Other factors, such as climate change, Mideast conflict and energy equity, drive the search for alternatives to oil combustion as a source of power. To state these 'implications' as if they were supply-side implications alone is a POV that seems to deny that these other compelling factors exist, and that they will the cause the shift earlier: most scientists agree that burning all the oil presently known to exist would destabilize the climate to an unpredictable degree. Only if they were wrong would these 'implications' follow:

The reason is that articles are supposed to avoid self-referential language. If anyone feels that a caveat needs to be in the article, the proper way to do it is with a NPOV template. Johntex 19:43, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

serious problems with introduction

The Introduction to this article states that Hubbert's theory "predicts the rate of decline for world oil production to be as steep as the rate of increase, and cites 1989 as the peak year." Both of those points are inaccurate. If you look at Hubbert's original paper of 1956 you see graphs of oil production in Ohio and Illinois that peak, but the down slope is not as steep as the up slope. Those graphs need to be included in consideration of his theory as much as the pretty bell shaped curve.

Also, in that 1956 paper, Hubbert showed a graph with the year 2000 as the year for the peak in world oil production. He later modified that prediction to a range from 1995 to 2000. He always recognized that changes in oil consumption rates and other factors could change that curve.

Aside from that, the Introduction also claims that Hubbert "further defines oil depletion as the point at which more energy is reqired to extract the oil than the energy contained in the oil." Hubbert doesn't talk about that in his paper of 1956. If he talked later about the point when the net energy turns negative, it had nothing to do with the peak of production. The point when net energy turns negative is the point at which production ends.

The way the Introduction is currently written creates straw man arguments from which one can later claim that Hubbert's theory has been "proven to be false." I don't have the time to edit it right now, but we have some serious distortion going on here. Jkintree 19:48, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Lengthy Intro

I belive that the article introduction is too lengthy. Wikipedia editing guidelines state the intro "...should establish significances, large implications and why we should care." [1] My last attempt to cut down the intro met with criticism that I took too much out. I will make a second attempt at a short summary that still introduces the main topics. Johntex 20:35, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations. The Introduction is now much more neutral, and a more accurate statement of Hubbert's peak theory. Well done. Jkintree 11:41, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Proposed Article Split to Hubbert peak implications

I applaud Benjamin Gatti shortening the article by creating a separate article for "alternatives to oil". I propose doing doing the same for implications - so I have created Hubbert peak implications. It contains all the content that was here. I propose this section be reduced to:

Main article: [[:Hubbert peak implications]]
It is widely considered that a world peak in cheap oil production would have a substantial adverse impact upon contemporary society.
Economic growth and prosperity since the industrial revolution have, in large part, been due to the use of oil and other fossil fuels. Almost all agree that fossil fuels are finite and must be replaced with alternative energy sources in the future. However, opinions differ widely as to when this will happen, how drastic the consequences would be, how to replace fossil fuels with alternative energy sources, and how difficult it would be to implement such changes.

I'm interested in feedback before making the change. Thanks! Johntex 21:32, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Touche. Some feedback. I suggest that comingling Hubberts theory with the general idea that oil can't last forever only muddies the water, and confuses a VERY SURE THING, with a VERY SPECULATIVE TIMETABLE. Thus any section here which would by definition apply to the end of cheap oil for any of a hundred other reasons belongs in a seperate article (so it can be shared by related references.) I created Oil depletion as a generic article citing a number of scenarios under which the supply of oil may be reduced.

For those who want to march with lucy goosey on this one, removing the generic depletion content will allow the theme of "peak" oil to come through, and I suggest that is very much lost at present. Benjamin Gatti

Thanks Ben, for your feedback. I hadn't visited Oil depletion previously. I'm a little slow today so I want to make sure I understand your view. You agree that this article does not need to contain all the possible scenarios that might happen when oil supply starts to run low. You think a name like Oil depletion is a better article name because it is more generic. Is that right? Johntex 00:54, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
See below - if the article bears a persons's name, then it should constrain itself to that persons ideas, theories, and opinions. IF Hubbert said "the sky will fall in 1989" Than absolutely put it in lights. but if we are taking some of his projections, and adding our opinion of what it means, then we are being dishonest to the reader. The "implications" belong here ONLY if Hubbert wrote them, and they should read like this: (In 1954, Hubbert warned that civilization would crumble and the we should invest in windmills to stave off destruction) If we can't source it to Hubbert, then it doesn't belong. That should make trimming easy. Benjamin Gatti
Just as the article on gene doesn't end with Mendel, Evolution doesn't end with Darwin, and Plate techtonics doesn't end with Alfred Wegener, there is more to be said about Hubbert Peak Theory beyond what Hubbert said or wrote. Wikipedia articles need to explain waht is interesting/relevant about their topics. The most interesting thing about Hubbert's Peak Theory is the question of what the post-peak implications will be. Johntex 17:12, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Grand Challenge

This article looks to be a short essay on Hubbert's theory and a long essay asserting dire consequences.

Here's the challenge: Somebody show me where Hubbert himself asserted the implications and they can stay. Otherwise - all the implications sections get moved to the retirement home for irrelevent POV. Benjamin Gatti 13:33, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I think there is a good deal of validity to your argument that the article needs to be more focused. However, "Hubbert", his formula/thoery, his application of the theory to predict when oil production would peak, different applications of the formula by different people to make different predictions of the peak, and the possible effects of passing the peak are all related. If we look up any major mathematical formula or scientific theory, the information on that topic would not be limited to only the words of the original author/creater/discoverer/inventor. That would be too limiting. Hubbert came up with this theory, but it no longer belongs just to him. Johntex 15:35, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
I propose that there is a general discussion of sustainability which deals with the degree to which future generations will have equal access to natural resources, that oil depletion is a subcategory thereof, and the hubberts theory is but one of several theories as to how when and why oil will be depleted. The effects thereof - and OTHER people's variations on his theory are THEIRs and Hubbert should neither be blamed nor credited with the work of others. Where those effects are predicted with reference to "Oil Depletion by any means" they belong in such an article. Where they are logical extensions of Hubbert by other people, I suggest they get an article such as "The Progeny of Hubbert" or Peakniks or "Works refencing Hubbert's theory. ie: (Benjamin Gatti)
Main article: "Much Speculation by Others"

Benjamin Gatti

I think the article as a whole looks pretty good right now. It has a decent Introduction, a more detailed section on Hubbert's theory, an up-to-date application of the theory, a critique of the theory, and then the long section of implications. It's the implications that make the theory meaningful. It's time to take a deep breath, relax, and watch events unfold to see whose speculations were closest to reality. Jkintree 04:14, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm still concerned about the overall lenght of the article and the length of the section on Implications. Above - I've proposed shortening that section to a couple of paragraphs and directing the reader to the rest of the content at a different page. I'm interested in more feedback on that proposal. Johntex 17:15, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Clean Sweep

Created sub pages for major - indirectly related sections.

I much appreciate the reintroduction of Hubbert's own, personal, and published views regarding implications, political ramifications etc. Every sentence should say or imply that Hubbert said, thought, implied, predicted, or theorized thusly. Sentences which do not meet that criteria will be moved to a more generic article. True, evolution goes beyond Darwin - however, the article "Darwin's theory of ... " does not. Benjamin Gatti

  • Actually, that's not true. The Origin of Species has a fair amount of information beyond just what Darwin specifically said. On the other hand, it does not go into every debate about teaching evolution in every classroom. I think it strikes a good balance and would be a good guideline for us to follow. I also suggest we try hard to build consensus here before makign wide-sweeping changes tot the article. Johntex 21:10, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Well you're removing way too much material. Unless you want to write a separate peak oil article, this article has been used to cover both, including Hubbert's theory itself. You took out an entire critiques section and left it with one small paragraph. That tilts the apparent POV of the article heavily. Hopefully you have many further improvements planned, but where the article currently is is not better than it was before you started. If you have this drastic of edits planned and can defend your changes, please start Hubbert peak theory/Temp, make your changes there and then we all have a place to discuss improvements from. I normally hate reverts, but I feel in the meantime you are harming the article more than fixing. It's all in the history though, so no loss, but making your changes in a Temp page will allow much better cooperation I feel. - Taxman Talk 21:14, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
    • Just to clarify - I was not the one that made the big removal of information. Johntex 21:16, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Sorry, Ideally that would be clear from the fact that my comment was on the same level and yours, meaning I was responding to the same person you were. Responding to you, I indent one more level like this. Ideal doesn't always mean reality, so clarification noted. :) - Taxman Talk 21:56, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • In many cases theories that get named after people evolve way beyond what the person in question ever said, sometimes even into areas that are totally different from what the person a theory is named after was talking about. Usually the theory does not get renamed when this happens. That seems to be the case here; this article is not about "what Herbert himself said" but is about an evolving model of geology which was named after Herbert because of his early influence on its development as a theory. Dalf | Talk 22:23, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Let's take it to Mediation perhaps and Arbcomm, this article is probably the absolute worst article in the scientific domain on Wikipedia (with the unnotable exception of the usual suspects such as evolution I'm sure) The noise is higher than the signal, and that in my opinion is unacceptable. Hubbert existed, he had an interesting theory. A provable theory, and it has proven to be false - end of article. The neo-peakists who choose to resurrect the idea require recognition of their own. Benjamin Gatti
If yuo want to list the article for Mediation and/or Arbcomm - go right ahead. Otherwise, the consensus so far seems to be that the article does not need to focus narrowly on Hubbert alone. I still agree with you that the article is bloated and needs to be trimmed, and I applaud your energy at improving the piece. However, some of your actins, such as your wholesale deletion of information without consensus, your "ChickenLittle" template and your labeling people as "neo-peakists" and other similar actions are not helping us to reach consensus on how to improve the article. Johntex 22:57, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Uhm, no. "Hubbert's peak" is one of the most common names for the general theory that oil production will peak and decline, with unpleasant results. That includes modern speculation on the theory. Just because "Hubbert" is in the name doesn't mean this has to be all about Hubbert. This article might be better off at peak oil (currently a redir), but as someone brought up before, people might think it's a kind of oil (or something like that).
BTW, it hasn't been proven wrong. It just hasn't happened yet. Only predictions of earlier peaks have been wrong.
PPS, arbcom is for inter-user disputes, not article content disputes. ~~ N (t/c) 22:59, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Hubbertism as a perpetually delayed belief system

If Hubbertism is a perpetually delayed belief system complete with visions of apacalyptic doom, than we have a category for that. If on the other hand, we are to take it as uniformly consistent with the scientific method, than it needs to stand up to scientific rigor. Scientific rigor does not play at ponsi schemes, in which in few obvious guesses are irrationally exaggerated into a system of unassailable "prophets" (ie people) and their utterances (gleefully vague when written, but convienently "interpretted" by their self-selecting progeny). Benjamin Gatti
Huh? There are reputable scientists behind peak oil - even if it's not good science, it's not utter bullshit either. Are you professing some POV that you think the article should express? (Like on Pat Robertson?) ~~ N (t/c) 00:34, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
There may be reputable scientists behind peak, just as there are reputable scientists behind the iraqi war - that doesn't make either one of them good science. Hubbert's peak is logistically equivelent to the Ponsi scheme - ie it exists of a few good guesses (many guesses were tried by others - this one guess was self-selected because it was right) after which the Guessor was elevated to the status of a prophet, and his "guess" was expanded to spell doom, gloom, and ensured misery - unless everyone believe in the prophet and conform in their behavior. This scheme has been done a thousand times. Another Hubbard did it as well (ask Tom Cruise).

That's why the article is named for a person - because it needs the person as a crutch to support a lame theory. We are reminded that Hubbert is the guy who was ridiculed for predicting the peak of US oil, and he was nearly right - see we have past successes on our side, our prophet was rigiculed but preservered as an example that we too must preservere; holding fast to the faith that is in us, drawing strength from those who attack our faith... The article is a pinnacle of blind pessimism build on a shred of obvious fact. Benjamin Gatti

Previous statement, "Hubbertism is a perpetually delayed belief system." Actually, in 2003 the ASPO predicted that the world peak in oil production would occur in 2010. Based on more recent information, the ASPO currently predicts that the world peak in oil production will occur in 2007.
Previous statement, "system of unassailable 'prophets'." Actually, Hubbert acknowledged that factors such as oil consumption rates and future technology could change the shape of the curve. It's the proponents of Hubbert's theory who are the strongest advocates for independent audits of oil reserves in Saudi Arabia and other countries, so that the model is based on the most accurate data. Take the blinders off.
Instead of working so hard to remove content, maybe if we could get permission to include in the article one of the graphs that shows the peak in the U.S. discoveries of oil in the 1930s, and the peak in the world discoveries of oil in the 1960s, the article would not seem like such a "pinnacle of blind pessimism." Jkintree 14:53, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
This theory is like Whack-a-mole. What is the theory?
  1. That oil will be depleted?
  2. That oil will be depleted fast?
  3. That oil will be depleted so fast that western civilization will return to the 1800's?

No one will attack 1. so 1 is where peakniks drone on - it's a red herring. It will be fast - unscientific. Tell me how fast, and then be prepared if you're wrong. Oops you were wrong so its unscientific. finally 3. c'mon that a doomsday cult, drink the Koolaid, mass suicide, other side of the asteroid weirdness. As for the explorations, that has to do with the incentive to explore. in the 70's the estimate was that energy growth would be higher than it turned out to be, the result was a drop in oil value, and thus a lack of interest in prospecting because the interest on prospecting accumulates until the oil is sold.If one has adequate reserves, the economic benefit of exploration is discounted. do the freakin econ. Benjamin Gatti

Again, you are making the article worse and not better. Please edit in a subpage so that your edits can be evaluated without making the article worse. You are removing valid, cited information and replacing it with your POV. That is unnaceptable. Repeatedly doing it won't help anything. Please stop until you can justify your edits with reliable references and cite them. Again, use a subpage, as your edits are not helping the article so far. If you do know a lot about the subject and can help the article, great, it needs it, but not what you are doing so far. - Taxman Talk 15:58, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
Counter proposal - you revert in a subpage. This article couldn't get worse, unless it featured Ron Hubbard and Tom Cruise collecting money for their oil ether detector. Benjamin Gatti
The difference is I'm not the one ripping material out and repeatedly failing to bring and reliable sources to bear to back up my edits. You are, so please stop, and edit a subpage instead. - Taxman Talk 18:54, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
First I never removed anything. I refactor the piece with subarticles where I felt it would improve the focus on the subject of the article. Someone removed the links to the subarticles - not my problem. Moreover what is removed in uncited POV parading around with phrases such as "This is true regardless" etc . What crap! Benjamin Gatti
Very clearly from running diffs, you removed a lot from this article. If you placed it in other articles and people removed the links (I didn't see that anywhere) simply replace the links, or place the links here on the talk page. - Taxman Talk 19:44, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
[2] You might try this version, includes links to entire sections squeezed off. Benjamin Gatti

remove Demand oriented Statements

"As of June 2005, OPEC has admitted that they will 'struggle' to pump enough oil to meet pricing pressures for the fourth quarter of the year. It is expected that the summer and winter of 2005 will bring oil prices to a new high; some would say this is a prime example of demand starting to outstrip supply. Others could blame it on various geopolitical forces in the regions where oil is produced. One other explanation for the rising oil prices is that it is a sign of too much paper money and not too little oil. In this view, dramatically higher prices of all commodities and U.S. real estate indicates rising inflation."

Appears to be a statement about rising oil demand. There is no cited assertion that mideast oil production has peaked or is falling, only that it is struggling to keep up with growing demand - a far cry from Hubbert's theory my intellectual friends - a far cry. Benjamin Gatti

It's all related to oil demand outstripping supply, which is highly relevant to the subject of the article. It's been pointed out a number of times that this article is not strictly about the theory of Hubbert himself, but peak oil in general too. I'll agree that paragraph lacks a citation as to who exactly admitted it and where, so it could be made up. But there's not a whole lot cited in the article, so we can't remove it all just because of that. Best practice is to supply a reliable reference that material is false in order to justify its removal. Good sources are critical to improving this article. You repeated failure to bring any isn't helping. - Taxman Talk 18:54, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
  • I have to PROVE that an uncited claim that the sky is falling is false? in what arbcom are you going to win that debate? get real.
    • It's fairly simply and easy, and in fact the best way to resolve a dispute. Get reputable facts to back your assertions. You appear unwilling to do that, so you're just wasting our time. It's very well established that references are required to resolve disputes, and higher quality references trump trash ones. That fact that you jump to formal dispute resolution such as arbcom before even trying to substantiate your position is telling. - Taxman Talk 19:44, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
  • "It's all related to oil demand outstripping supply" BS. Hubbert peak is a theory that the decline of oil is symetrical to the increase - and that because of that fact alone and no other fact, oil will be scarce in the year 2007. Which (unfortunately as far as i'm concerned) is complete nonsense. Far more likely is that China will begin to spend its trade imbalance on oil and create a demand side challenge - which I agree could have a similar effect - but for reasons which are completely unrelated to Mr. Hubbert. and do not belong here. Benjamin Gatti
    • Again you're missing the fact that this article is about more than Mr Hubberts version. And to be honest, your opinions don't matter a bit to the article. Facts do. And if you're not willing to back your opinions up, they matter even less. - Taxman Talk 19:44, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

I see that splitting part of the article to peak oil has been discussed in the past and rejected. What about splitting those parts specifically about demand vs. supply to oil shortage? Gazpacho 19:45, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

If I recall it was more a statement that no one had stepped forward to do the work, so it never got done. I suppose some people felt the topics were intertwined enough that separating them didn't make sense. In any case clearly in a discussion of peak oil the effects of supply and demand are highly relevant. We don't need half the article on demand, but ignoring the reality of its effect on the situation is failing to cover an important facet of the issue. - Taxman Talk 19:49, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the trend here. Demand side pressures are relatively new, and pretending that they are related to Peak production is assinine. I split off most of this article, so those fragments could bbe found - the work was done and then reverted (with orphaned pieces no less. (for the record - I'm not "against" this article per se, but very much against using it as a catchall for every possible oil angst. Hubbert has a theory - it has some merit and problems that's it. As for "The Energy Crisis" live it up on a rational site. Oil deserves a rational discussion which is Untainted by the controversy of a single theorist. Benjamin Gatti

Again, help by editing in a subarticle and by creating other articles if needed. If you linked to a version that was clearly better, we'd all be for it. Instead, you've made the article clearly worse. As I said kindly link to where you supposedly split this material off to. - Taxman Talk 20:40, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

unnecessary apologetics

" Like any mathematical model, the accuracy of the prediction is limited by the accuracy of the inputs. If variables such as consumption are estimated incorrectly, then the formula will yield incorrect results."

If you have a scientific theory make it and stand by it. You cannot in science say "this is what will happen, except that the random chaos in the real world will render this theory absurd - so see it's still a good theory, it just doesn't rise above the noise of reality." Stuff that form of science in your ear. Benjamin Gatti

There's a difference between handwaving away a model for random chaos and pointing out the largest source of uncertainty in a model. The former I'll agree is ridiculous, but the latter is probably important, is what the above quote does, and even helps show the specific spots where the theory could be entirely wrong, so is again, valuable, even from a critics standpoint. - Taxman Talk 18:54, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
I suggest that one cannot be taken seriously in science - unless one has a theory which explains the real world as it is in all it's wrinkles - and which is proveable by repeatable observation. Now a religion on the hand is far more flexible. Which is it here? Benjamin Gatti
All well and good, but backing up your opinions with references is what counts. Either do that, or don't bother editing beyond formatting and markup. How about actually reading and making a good faith effort to incorporate suggestions instead of defying them. That would be a start here. - Taxman Talk 19:44, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
Consider my deletions here to be backed up by POV. Benjamin Gatti
Backed up by point of view? In other words not at all. So you've confirmed it, but since I'd been trying my best to assume good faith here I held out hope you'd actually be helpful and back up any good points you might have. So much for that. - Taxman Talk 20:40, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Weasel Words - not citation

"Catastrophe

Some believe that the decreasing oil production portends a drastic impact on human culture and modern technological society, which is currently heavily dependent on oil as a fuel, chemical feedstock and fertilizer. Over 90% of transportation in the United States relies on oil. Some envisage a Malthusian catastrophe occurring as oil becomes increasingly inefficient to produce.

Since the 1940s, agriculture has dramatically increased its productivity, due largely to the use of chemical pesticides, fertilizers, and increased mechanisation. This process has been called the Green Revolution. The increase in food production has allowed world population to grow dramatically over the last 50 years. Pesticides rely upon oil as a critical ingredient, and fertilizers require both oil and natural gas. Farm machinery also requires oil. Arguing that in today's world every joule one eats requires 5-15 joules to produce and deliver, some have speculated that a decreasing supply of oil will cause modern industrial agriculture to collapse, leading to a drastic decline in food production, food shortages and possibly even mass starvation.

Oil shortages may force a move to lower input "organic agriculture" methods, which would probably be more labor-intensive and require a population shift from urban to rural areas, reversing the trend towards urbanisation which has predominated in industrial societies.

Another possible effect would derive from America's transportation and housing infrastructure. A majority of Americans live in suburbs, a type of low-density settlement designed with the automobile in mind. Some commentators such as James Howard Kunstler argue that because of its reliance on the automobile, the suburb is an unsustainable living arrangment; the implications of peak oil would leave many Americans unable to afford fuel for their cars, and force them to move to higher density, more walkable areas. In effect, surburbia would comprise the "slums of the future."

A movement to deal with this problem early, called "New Urbanism," seeks to develop the suburbs into higher density neighborhoods and use high density, mixed-use forms for new building projects. "

This section leads off with weasel words - i'm sure some of it is relevent, but needs to be reintroduced with proper citations. "Mr Baily Blowhard believe the world will end (See reference on Blowhard.com)" will do fine. Benjamin Gatti

It seems like you think you can keep doing whatever you feel like, and everyone else will just give up. Why not instead do things the right way so we can have a much better article we can all agree upon? Your above point about citations is absolutely correct, so why not help find some solid references? Again, removing material you disagree with isn't helpful unless you can back up your removal with reliable sources, and that you haven't even attempted so far, for any edits of yours I've seen. (I could have missed one though). - Taxman Talk 18:54, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Taxman, the article is heavily cited on both sides - to the point of being ridiculous. Me adding more citations to the mess seems overkill. The problem I have is that the article does not conform to NPOV and it asserts the absurd. NPOV requires disputed assertions to be independantly verifyable. some exmaples:

  • Some people believe the sky is falling - not verifyable.
  • Mr. Blowhard said in this paper that the world will end tuesday [www.msnbc.com ] (that is verifyable).

Whatever is here and unverifyable is trash, is just taking up space, and needs to be pruned. Once we get the driftwood off the beach, then we can create an article with a simultude of sanity Benjamin Gatti

So on the one hand you want to say this stuff is uncited so I'll remove it because you don't like it, but you're not willing to cite anything to back up your changes because the article has lots? Which is is? I'm not even saying you have to add that many citations to the article. How about lets just start with adding them here to justify your removal of material. - Taxman Talk 20:40, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
I'll try to be reasonable, but this requirement of providing a citation to justify removing baseless and uncited absurdities is difficult and I think not in the spirit of POV. The article is so fraught with absurdities, its difficult to know where to start.
Well I think you might be referring to WP:NPOV our base policy, so that indicates it would probably benefit us all if you went and read that again. And actually justifying edits with valid sources is one of the best ways to follow the NPOV policy. Clearly what is absurd to you is just your opinion and doesn't appear to be grounded in much so far. That's the point. - Taxman Talk 23:02, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
  • "Some petroleum economists, such as Michael Lynch, argue [3] that the Hubbert curve with a sharp peak is merely a guess, taken by adherents to be self-explanitory when in fact oil production follows market demand rather than geological constraints, and any peaks which have occured represent the saturation of the market for that particular commodity."
- read the citation - this is what it says and its clearer than the previous description.
Since when is gasresources.net a high quality source? It's a pro abiotic petroleum origins site, which is widely considered pseudoscience. At least this is a source so maybe we're getting somewhere, but it's barely passable. But that Lynch paper also contains a ton of non sequiturs, and ends the section that includes something resembling what you have above with "Therefore, exponential growth and decline is normal, and while the bell curve is not necessarily the precise path likely to be followed, its presence is hardly proof of an immutable, natural, scientifically-determined law." So the most he claims is that it is not a law, but still may fit the situation. The good news is the Lynch article does reference his opponents as well, so those may be worth researching to get the whole picture. He could also just be pulling out straw men though. We'll see. - Taxman Talk 23:02, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
  • "As of June 2005, OPEC has admitted that they will 'struggle' to pump enough oil to meet pricing pressures for the fourth quarter of the year. It is expected that the summer and winter of 2005 will bring oil prices to a new high; some would say this is a prime example of demand starting to outstrip supply. Others could blame it on various geopolitical forces in the regions where oil is produced. One other explanation for the rising oil prices is that it is a sign of too much paper money and not too little oil. In this view, dramatically higher prices of all commodities and U.S. real estate indicates rising inflation."
This again is irrelevent - Where did hubbert write that a rising china would create a demand surge?
This article is not solely about Hubbert himself.
  • "Catastrophe- Some believe that the decreasing oil production portends a drastic impact on human culture and modern technological society, which is currently heavily dependent on oil as a fuel, chemical feedstock and fertilizer. Over 90% of transportation in the United States relies on oil. Some envisage a Malthusian catastrophe occurring as oil becomes increasingly inefficient to produce."
This is weasily and uncited. If Hubbert used the word "Catastrophe" than its ok - otherwise - how it is rationally connected - its disrespectful to Mr. Hubber to sensationalize his work under his own name. Benjamin Gatti
This article is not solely about Hubbert himself. It is about a whole set of theories that have grown up around his ideas. Possibly, then, it should be moved to peak oil (the more common name on the Internets at large). However, the current title is no reason to delete information. ~~ N (t/c) 22:42, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
I would go along with that. "Peak Oil" can be the trashbin of neocultists peddling cataclysmic curves to simpletons desperate for a view of the world they can fit into their monochromatic perspective. But Hubbert deserves to have his name associated purely with his own assertions, and not tarnished by every short-selling bookmonger trying to drum up a bestseller by name-dropping a one-hit wonder. Benjamin Gatti
Agreed. Yes it is uncited, but since it is such a common belief of what will happen after peak, that it is just a summary of those. In fact it is so common, that failing to include it would mean failing to cover an important facet of the topic. And one last time, the exact beliefs of Hubbard aren't the only thing that matters here, since his theory has been built upon, expanded, and used by others. You appear to be repetetively using this same misunderstanding and it's getting really hard to believe you're not just doing it to be difficult. Pull that one more time, and it'll be even more conclusive proof you have no interest in editing in good faith. We're wasting a lot of time here, because you're either not reading anything I'm writing or you're just purposefully ignoring it. - Taxman Talk 23:02, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
I completely do not buy the idea that "Hubbert's peak theory" should be expanded ad nauseum to include the average mouth breather's opinions as to what happens when you sail a ship off the end of the world. It's not like I don't hear you, It's just that I don't accept it. Benjamin Gatti
While they do need sourcing, I think most or all of the catastrophic predictions in the article are sufficiently notable to warrant inclusion. See Life After the Oil Crash - the PO doomers' bible. Also see PeakOil.com. (Yes, I used to hang out with these people. No, I don't anymore, thank Gott.) ~~ N (t/c) 23:39, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
Ahh yes, more impressive use of the straw man. No one is claiming we need to include unrelated items like sailing off the world, but to be comprehensive and accurate (part of the featured article criteria, which are important in writing a good article) we do need to include topics commonly associated and discussed with a given theory. We don't need to go overboard about them of course, but even Hubbert critics like the Lynch article you cited attack the current theory as it is used, not strictly the things Mr. Hubbert discussed. So very simply you're wrong and no one agrees with you. That means at the minimum you bear the burden of proof to justify your edits with quality sources. If you bring a great reference supporting your position and no one can find anything of similar or greater quality rejecting it, then I'll be the first person congratulating you and seeing how to best add the material in or adjust the article. Until then your opinions aren't welcome here. - Taxman Talk 14:40, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

The US DOE Chart citation

Predicts oil increase as far as it goes - well beyond anything covered By Hubbert. I've seen the chart a hundred times - it's geniune DOE issue. That is a hugely respected source which runs directly counter to the sky is falling cult. Is that not enough of a citation to demonstrate that Hubbert's theory is disputed at the highest levels? Since they are in fact disputed claims, the article needs to be written in the "disputed voice" that is it should not assert "This is true regardless" which it did BTW. Benjamin Gatti

Well that's one, but it is contradicted by many also. Our goal is to represent the facts and accurately characterize the debate, but your edits aren't approaching that. Maybe people would take you a little more seriously if you didn't replace text in the article with blatantl POV. I'd quote specific examples, but I think they're obvious enough. - Taxman Talk 20:40, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

I think we'd be a lot better off reverting back to the version before you started pulling stuff out [4], but keeping a few of the changes that are actually improvements. I'll do it, but I'd like to get some other people's input first. - Taxman Talk 20:40, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

My position is that the article needs to be trimmed some, but the recent sweepin edits are more like clear-cutting than trimming. I think we need to take a slower pace to allow discussion and reach consensus. Johntex 20:45, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Outside view

User:Benjamin Gatti's comments on the talk page show that he is not working toward consensus. I don't know enough about this topic to know about its scientific worth, but User:Taxman seems willing to write an article that includes critiques of its scientific methodology, while User:Benjamin Gatti just wants to impose his POV that the entire theory is pseudoscience, and is being uncivil in the resulting debate.

Taxman, props for keeping your cool when Benjamin hasn't kept his. Benjamin, you need to work toward consensus more. You could turn out to be entirely right, and yet the way you are participating in this debate would still be wrong.

RSpeer 22:08, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

I would also like to give Taxman props for keeping cool. I have had the unfortunate experience of dealing with Ben on other articles. His strawman, attack tactics can be very frustrating, espicially when the accompanying logic is so specious that you know arguing is useless. I wish you luck, I finally gave up in trying to deal with him and quit editing. Dalf | Talk 23:00, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm extraordinarily persistent though, so I'm not going to let someone ruin an article. I feel (and I'm backed up by precedent) that you pretty much give up the right to edit an article if you're not willing to back up your opinions and edits with quality references, and I am willing to take further measures to make sure that kind of editing doesn't go on here. - Taxman Talk 14:27, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
I could have used that sort of persistence over at Nuclear power, but I got frustrated and gave up. Plus the article over there started out in worse shape than this one when the editing frenzy got kicked off. Dalf | Talk 18:35, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
In any case, with editors that aren't helping an article, everyone insisting on quality sources saves the day. Not only does it prevent quackery, but it can actually switch to making some improvements. Changes by a consistently unhelpful editor that are not backed by quality sources should be reverted on sight by everyone in order to keep the quality of edits high. Then they'll reallize they actually have to substantiate their position, which they may or may not be able to do. If they can, everyone learns and we all win. If they can't, they'll hopefuly go away, and at least the article isn't damaged. As mentioned, this has pretty much been established as precedent by the arbcom, and we can get the specific situation looked at if need be. - Taxman Talk 22:02, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Proposed Name Change "Hubbert's Peak Oil and Anything Else"

Any objections - reasons? Benjamin Gatti

Your stance represents such a fundamental misunderstanding of how this project works that I'm concerned if we'll get anywhere. See above for more details. - Taxman Talk 23:02, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
I urge everyone to remember "Don't feed the trolls" Johntex 22:56, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
I've been trying hard not to, but I can't come to any other conclusion that that you're right. I guess in assuming good faith I've been had. - Taxman Talk 23:02, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
Stop being silly. I assume you mean "this article is a hodgepodge collection of stuff", which ain't the case. I do think, though, that it should be moved to peak oil as previously stated, as that is the most common name and is not Hubbert-centric. ~~ N (t/c) 23:10, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
In the case of moving the article would this become a re-direct? I would support such an action, if only to quite Ben's insistance that this article become a bographical one. Dalf | Talk 18:37, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Support for splitting Implications

Here's to Gazpacho for breaking out an important section and bringing us closer to a manageable article focused on the above titled cause.

Johntex, if the "implications" are split off to an article on oil shortage then none of the content has to be removed. Sure, the implications are relevant to the peak theory, but that doesn't mean this article has to include them inline vs. linking them. They're relevant to demand spikes and embargos too. Gazpacho 00:40, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Hi Gazpacho, in principle, I agree. I even proposed that (see #37 above), and I even created a seperate article Hubbert peak implications as a test for how that might come together. However, as you'll see in #37 above, there was no consensus. I don't mind at all trimming that section within this article and pointing to another article focused just on the implications. However, the implications are very important to this article. So, there has to be more left here than just a small paragraph. The implications are the whole reason anyone cares about the peak. Johntex 00:45, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

World War I is the only reason anyone cares about Franz Ferdinand, but his article doesn't say much about the war. In case it wasn't clear, I am proposing to move Implications of a peak oil to oil shortage so that it could cover the effects of oil shortage regardless of cause. Gazpacho 01:21, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the clarification. I would be against lumping effects of "passing the peak" in with coverage of "oil shortages regardless of cause". The idea of Hubbert's peak is that it represents a unique, permenant situation, as opposed to a temporary shortage due to something like an oil embargo or the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Johntex 01:44, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Could I recommend Oil depletion it's seperate from temporary supply lapses, but stil covers the clearly inevitable fact that at some point oil will be consumed. Benjamin Gatti
Oil depletion might possibly be an acceptle title. Let's discuss that suggestion for a bit. The way you have currently written Oil depletion, you say "When this occurs and why it will occur are matters of broad speculation." and you list 3 other causes that you seem to be saying are reasons for oil depletion other than Hubbert's peak. For example, one of these is "Environmental constraint". I don't see how the hypothetical reduction of oil consumption for environmental reasons has a bearing on Oil depletion. Therefore, on its current path, I think Oil depletion is still mixing in other topics besides "running out of oil". If the new article is going to deal with running out of oil, what would be wrong with the title Hubbert peak implications? Johntex 02:25, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Oil scarcity is another option, but I wouldn't oppose tightening the contents of Oil depletion so that it doesn't creep into non-depletion based scenarios (brief link should suffice). What is wrong with using Hubbert's name is that Hubbert has a quite specific and overly simplistic theory - which is destined to be falsified and discredits a serious discussion - aside from which the hero-worship aspect lends itself to straw-man arguments such as "Hubert was right about the US in 1970 and THEREFORE TEOTWAWKI is upon us. Benjamin Gatti
I can support Oil depletion as a compromise under the promise that non-depletion scenarios are removed (a link to non-depletion scenarios should be OK if done correctly). Also, I still maintain that we need what I would call a "medium" amount of "implication" material to remain here because it is so important to this article. By "medium" I mean less than we have now for "implications", but more than we have for "alterantives to oil" which is just a sentence and a link to a different article. For implications, we need about 2 sentences on each major scenario (catastrophe, recession, market solution,...) We may also be able to merge some - for example, maybe we can cover "fuel efficiency" under "market solution"... Johntex 17:44, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd like to call everyone's attention to this section. I'd thought we might be getting somewhere with this, but certain editors keep making major changes to the article, introducing strawmen, creating new sections on the talk page. Perhaps I am guilty as well since I created the section about references. Could I ask if others care to comment on the thoughts in this section? Johntex 17:50, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Is there any reason for "Further Reading" to be seperate from "Sources"

I recommend all "further reading" links be moved into "sources". Then we may agree to prune some redundant ones. Johntex 00:41, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Since there has been no discussion on this point, I went ahead and consolidated the further reading, external links etc. This removes some artifical distinctions and reduces the length of the table of contents as well. I kept Sources seperate because presumable we do cite all those sources - I haven't compared them all to the current article. We need to trim this section if we can agree on which links are deserving of being tossed out. Wikipedia is not a link farm. I'll leave removal of links for another time. Johntex 02:14, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Random incoherent Sentence

"A significant percentage of today's resource use is based upon lifestyle choice rather than unalterable human needs."

In what chapter of Hubbert's essay do I find this gemstone? Benjamin Gatti

  • As has been pointed out to you numerous times, the article is not limited only to what Hubbert said. I don't know who put that sentence in. I've trimmed that section some but I'm still working on it. Ideally the sentence you cite should be sourced (who says? what percentage? how do they definine 'unalterable') but there is lots of stuff in here that is still unsourced. And I think no one would argue that consumption (at least in the West) could not be curtailed to one degree or another. Johntex 01:04, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Stream of (random) consciousness

"However, others will note that an increase in fuel efficiency may in fact compound the problem. This phenomenon is referred to as the Jevons paradox, which states that as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, total consumption of that resource may increase, rather than decrease."

I missed the page where Hubbert meets Jevon. It strikes me as quite original research to suggest that Hubbert's theories include conjectures into the applications of jevon's paradox - made more incredible given the differences in time. This article has become a virtual cesspool of disconnected energy angst having nothing in common but a shared prophet. Remember Israel and Palestine both claim Abraham as their father. Benjamin Gatti
Well, I don't know what to say except that you gave me a good chuckle. Johntex 01:45, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
Since you are choosing to be dense on the point of this article not being about Hubbert's theory but instead a theory named after him I have no real illusion that this post will help yet I persist. Lots of people have lots of things named after them. Some of the people were even dead when the naming happened. Even if your false analogies get worse and worse, the non sequitur about Abraham was amusing. Dalf | Talk 18:48, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Jevons / TOTC

The section Johntex has edited is good material and needs a home. Can we not find a more appropriate home - let's say Hubbert's theory falls apart in 2007 (which it will), this section is still valid and interesting in the context of "implication of any energy crisis." No? Benjamin Gatti

straw man argument

The first sentence of the Introduction in the version dated 09:54, 30 August 2005 was, "In 1956, American geophysicist, M. King Hubbert presented his Hubbert's peak theory which predicted that known oil reserves would peak and then decline in a symetrical fashion because the energy required to extract the oil would eventually exceed the energy in the oil extracted."

That is the basis for a straw man argument. In his 1956 paper, Hubbert actually suggested the possibility that new technology might reduce the steepness of the slope of the curve following the peak. Here are his own words, from the last sentence on page 32, "A more probable effect of improved recovery will be to reduce the rate of decline after the culmination with respect to the rates shown in figure 21."

Figure 21 is the famous graph that shows Hubbert's curve for the United States production of oil. Guess what, the graph actually shows two curves; one for ultimately recoverable oil of 150 billion barrels that peaks in 1965, and the other for a scenario with ultimately recoverable oil of 200 billion barrels that peaks in 1970. Guess what again, the uphill side of the slope is jagged because it is based on historical production. Only the downhill side is perfectly smooth because it is based on a mathematical model.

Reality is messy, and Hubbert was well aware of that. To emphasize the symmetry of his curve is a distortion of the point he was making. To emphasize the eventual negative EROI is another distortion because that has to do with the end of production instead of the peak of production. It's the peak that has the most immediately serious implications. These distortions come from someone who has stressed that the article should express only Hubbert's own position, and the distortions were made after they had already been challenged in this discussion. Just another data point on the curve of one person's refusal to act in good faith in a collaborative writing process. Jkintree 16:58, 31 August 2005 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ? (talk • contribs) .

Some good points, but all this leaves me wondering how far Hubbert's theory is from the default assertion "this stuff can't last forever." The article appears to say - hey he's got this tight curve thing, and it fit the data perfectly in 1970 - therefore its going to fit the data perfectly in the future, only if it doesn't then we have a ready list of excuses. I'm sorry but that is a religion - a perpetually delayed belief system, how many times do we see these doomsday cults set the date and time for TEOTWAWKI only to have that day come and go. I think we can this a spade and move on - there's really not much to recommend this as anything other than a cult following of doomsday naysayers, in short, this is a modern interpretation of Chicken Little. I suggest Hubbertism which others have called it. Not for its naysaying, but for it's subtle open-ended-ness. Benjamin Gatti
By creating Hubbertism you are in violation of WP:POINT. I have listed that page for speedy deletion. You have clearly created that whole article for the purposes of pushing towards your desired version of this article. It gets 2 Google hits and Neologisms do not merit articles. POV pushing is not allowed. When are you going to play nice and stop trying to turn Wikipedia into your private playground, filled with yuor ChickenLittle scare templates and made up words? Johntex 16:14, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
I Hardly think Hubbertism - "interupts" wikipedia. It might make a point, but it hardly interupts. Really I feel that I am playing nice - which is of course the problem, that we come with different perspectives. This article is a gross violation of NPOV, it is so noisy, there is no meaningful signal. It has _So many_ links, noone can argue that it is uncited - but neither could anyone determine whether a particular statement is original research, the opinions of others, or broadly accepted fact. I think i will list it for deletion as one giant violation of NPOV. My "desired" version of this article would be an article focussed on Hubbert's personally expressed ideas - and some directly linked opinions about them. (leaving off tertiary opinions about the opinions. With nothing asserted as fact other than Hubbert said this while other (named sources) have said he could be mistaken). And that has been taken as sacralige). Benjamin Gatti
I agree with you that having all the sources lumped at the bottom is not ideal. It is better to cite the source after every statement, either with a link like this [5] or with a footnote to the bottom of the page if the reference is a book and not an on-line reference. I have begun that process, but it takes time. You could help match up the statements to the sources below and add links after each sourced statement. Once we have done that, then we could delete a lot of the external sources and links that have actually not been used in the article. Johntex 17:25, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
I'll Start by ploughing through the 57 pages of Hubberts rambling metaphor and highly speculative curve fitting (my goodness it's horrible). Benjamin Gatti

Show me da Science

How about [someone] show me the raw (provable) science behind this Theory. I'm beginning to think "Theory" is the wrong word. Theories are subject to experiment and falsification, Hubbertism is not subject to falsification, its proof-hardened. Any "Evidence" that it is clearly wrong results in a True believer digging deeper into the pages of the prophet and finding where - in his wisdom, he forsaw that "certain" things could affect the shape of the future, and no test is valid because it contains those certain things. This is such manure!

personal attack removed by RSpeer 18:50, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Give me a falsifyable theory - otherwise we drop the pseudo-science overtones, and settle with "movement". In fact I like that. The Peak oil movement, popularized by King Hubbert. Benjamin Gatti

Well, the theory of peak oil is based on the evidence that the planet's fossil fuels were formed over millions of years, millions of years ago. Therefore, the amount of ultimately recoverable oil has a geological limit. If someone could show that there are vast quantities of non-fossil oil available, then the theory could be proven false. Jkintree 17:03, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

And how about this:

  • "a decreasing supply of oil will cause modern industrial agriculture to collapse, leading to a drastic decline in food production, food shortages and possibly even mass starvation."
  • "portends a drastic impact on human culture and modern technological society, which is currently heavily dependent on oil as a fuel, chemical feedstock and fertilizer."
  • "envisage a Malthusian catastrophe occurring as oil becomes increasingly inefficient to produce."

Is this science or speculative meteorology? Benjamin Gatti

Science does encompass making predictions. An economist might say "rising interest rates will cool the housing market" and an oceanography might say "rising global temperatures will cause fish to die off". Of course, either could be wrong. That is why we should try to attribute the comments to specific people, rather than hand-wringing about how much we like or don't like their predictions. Johntex 18:05, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Benjamin, you evaded my previous point, and did not provide evidence of vast quantities of non-fossil oil that are waiting to be pumped out of the ground. Let me suggest another way to falsify Hubbert's theory. The theory is based on the observation by Hubbert, and many others, that typically there is a period of time after the discovery of an oil field before production begins, and it takes more time for production to ramp up as increasing numbers of wells are drilled, until a peak in production occurs which is followed by a decline in production. This decline can be slowed by secondary recovery techniques such as pumping water or steam into the wells, and so on.

Evidence that could falsify Hubbert's theory would be discovering oil fields that followed a different pattern of production. If pumping oil from a field resulted in subsequent oil coming out of the ground with increasing pressure and volume, so that secondary recovery techniques were not needed to maintain production, that would be evidence that Hubbert's theory was false. Can you identify a single such oil field? Jkintree 18:24, 31 August 2005 (UTC)


Here is theoretical and empirical disprove of the biological origin of oil, thus of the peak oil movement : Center for an informed America

--The HellCat 20:50, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Science or Fiction?

Based on the 1956 paper, Hubbert estimates total yield based on the first deviation from logarithmic growth. That assumption has indeed turned out to be false. Benjamin Gatti

This gem is not a part of Hubberts theory and my point is that it doesn't belong here. Benjamin Gatti

  • The article does not attribute that statement to Hubbert. The article is not limited to only what Hubbert said. Therefore, the statement does not have to be removed. Ideally we should say who specifically does claim this. Thank you though, for a good example of how to use the "motto" box. I must remember to use that in the future to set off a quote. Johntex 19:11, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
Benjamin, your assertion that Hubbert's assumption about total yield is false is another statement that is not backed up by citation or explanation. Jkintree 19:21, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Have a look at the paper [6] Bottom of page 12 there's a chart. poke about for the context.
  • Notice he's pointing to a devitaion in 1930 for oil.
  • Now have a look at [7] (Holding your hand over the speculative side of the image and find 1930. The deviation Hubbert describes is a pea under 30 mattresses.

Benjamin Gatti

Sorry, Benjamin. The chart at the bottom of page 12 of Hubbert's paper is about United States production of oil. The ASPO_2004.png chart in this article is about world production of oil. Comparing those two charts is comparing apples and oranges; hardly a reason to declare that Hubbert's assumption turned out to be false.
In addition to that, Hubbert explains in the text preceding the graphs on page 12 that, "The significance of this is that during the initial stages all of these rates of production tend to increase exponentially with time." He's not talking about total yield as much as making the fairly obvious point that one simply cannot continue an exponentially increasing rate of production indefinitely with a finite resource. His estimates of total yield come later in the paper, and are based on other factors than the cessation of the initial exponentially increasing rate of production. Your credibility, which was already low, is dropping even further. Strange, because you express your opinions so dogmatically. Jkintree 00:54, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
But see how we're discussing this - reference to original material by page numer. That at least is constructive, and while we may not agree on the merit of this theory, let's at least agree on the quality of discourse. I can live with everything you just said as representing his theory. I think you should describe his actual method for determining the size of the resource. I only remeber the phrase "If we accept the size: implying it was a guess and a given. I'd very much like to see it spelled out. That is what this article ought to look like. (And I think the ASPO chart includes a line for US if you look more closely.) Benjamin Gatti

Quotes from 1956

"On the basis of the present estimates of the ultimate reserves of petroleum and natural gas, it appears that the culmination of world production of these products should occur within about half a century, while the culmination for petroleum and natural gas in both the United States and the state of Texas should occur within the next few decades. This does not necessarily imply that the Unites States or other parts of the industrial world will soon become destitute of liquid and gaseous fuels, because these can be produced from other fossil fuels which occur in much greater abundance. But it does pose as a national problem of primary importance, the necessity, both with regard to the requirements for domestic purposes and those for national defense of gradually having to compensate for an increasing disparity between the nation's demands for these fuels and its ability to produce them from naturally occuring accumulations of petroleum and natural gas. Finally, there is the possibility of obtaining industrial energy from nuclear sources which we now propose to examine."

I appreciate your suffering through reading Hubbert's paper. By the way, it is clear from the context in his paper, both from the text and the graphs, that Hubbert is referring to the peak of production when he uses the word "culmination."
I'm not aware of another notable work by Hubbert. The best reference I can give for ongoing work is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) at http://www.peakoil.net/ . ASPO started publishing monthly newsletters in January of 2001. Starting with issue #17, in May of 2002, they began doing a feature story, including a graph that shows the rates for discoveries and production, for a single country. Most oil producing countries have already passed their peak. While their curves are not perfectly smooth bell shapes, that does not falsify Hubbert's theory. The curves jaggedly follow the pattern of increase, peak, and decline. Copies of old newsletters are found in pdf format at: http://www.peakoil.ie/downloads/newsletters/ . Jkintree 18:57, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
Bankrupcy court is filled with "curve-fitters" trying to apply this same technique to trade on the stock market. It is an intellectually bereft proposition, protected only by magnitude of the time domain. Every country has experienced the settling of oil prices into a commodity curve which occured circa 1970's. Since that time, only the cheapest fields have been economically viable - however projecting the production curves on this value alone is mere wizardry. Benjamin Gatti
You say that since oil prices settled into a commodity curve around 1970, only the cheapest fields have been economically viable. Hmmm, the north slope of Alaska and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico don't seem like the cheapest places to get oil. I haven't heard Vice-President Cheney celebrating the high profits that will be realized from domestic oil production since prices went over $50/barrel, but he is visiting the tar sands developments in Alberta, Canada on Sept. 9, 2005. Are tar sands the cheapest way to get oil now? Jkintree 19:35, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
Resource econ 101, as the cheapest resources get used up, the higher hanging fruit must be picked. So we're moving to higher hanging oil. The point is that "having" oil is no longer enough. Since the commodification and cheap oil of the late 70's - 2000 it has not been economical to drill for just any oil, only the lowest hanging oil. Sure, things are changing a bit this year, but forcasting eternity on brief deviations is hardly scientific. Benjamin Gatti
You could have stopped after admitting, "So we're moving to higher hanging oil." Forecasting eternity is not what Hubbert's theory is about; another straw man argument. I don't know what else to say. Jkintree 01:29, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps you should revisit the pdf. especially the nuclear section showing -5000 years and +5000 years. Perhaps I should have said 10,000 years rather than eternity? This is what is frustrating, the theory is vague when attacked, but meaningful enough to predict TEOTWAWKI. seems unscientific to me. Benjamin Gatti
I gave a quick scan to Hubbert's section on nuclear energy, and didn't see much of value there. He wrote that at a time when people thought nuclear energy would be too cheap to meter. I think he is on more solid ground when he talks about oil.
You edited the Introduction to the article this evening, and injected the misinformation that "the future of oil could be calculated by a simple logistic curve based on little more than the first downward excursion in the growth of oil production which occurred in 1930." Do you see what a gross distortion the phrase "based on little more than" is? That garbage cluttered the Introduction for 2 hours 43 minutes until it was reverted. Do you get some kind of satisfaction out of corrupting the article like that?
It seems like you think you are on some kind of messianic mission to expose the truth, and you are the only one with the truth, and the rest of us are impeding you. It should be self-evident that you do not have a monopoly on the truth.
The implication of Hubbert's theory is that we need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, especially oil. The implication of today's gasoline prices is the same. For the moment, whether we have reached the peak in the world's production of oil, or not, there is a harmony between the implication of Hubbert's theory and current reality.
I'm going to take a break from this article for a week, and suggest that you do the same. Take a walk, relax, be grateful we don't live in New Orleans. I assume you live elsewhere given your ongoing activity at Wikipedia. A week from now, I'll check back to see what you've been doing. Jkintree 03:57, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, I'll second that, what a mess. I completely buy that we need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, I'm pretty sure it doesn't help to make that argument using absurd exagerations and doomsday rhetoric. People are dying every day from the pollution caused by fossil fuels, chiefly coal, it seems that should we have stronger arguments to make on behalf of conservation than the desperate reach of the fearmonger's mantra. Here's one in favor of rational arguments - and for the record, Hubbert was far more reserved than this article would have the reader believe and we have permitted his legacy to be tarnished with the lunar ravings of his posthumous entourage. Hubbert never even implied: "that a decreasing supply of oil will cause modern industrial agriculture to collapse, leading to a drastic decline in food production, food shortages and possibly even mass starvation." Benjamin Gatti
No but this has been speculated. Seem as modern agriculure is heavilly dependant upon oil, it is hardly an unjustified concearn that a declining oil supply could have serious consequenses for food production. Try reading this for example. G-Man 18:00, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Straw man again

Benjamin Gatti, your recent hacking of the intro is a thinly veiled straw man again. What you are continually ignoring is that no one but you thinks this theory is only about Hubbert's specific version of it, and you want to bring this article back to that, so you can tear it down. And no, you can't cite parts of Hubberts 1956 paper and think that's good enough. If you really want to make this a mess and not help anything, keep doing what you're doing. But if you have any interest in helping the article, be reasonable, read the WP:NPOV policy, and stop with the straw man arguments. - Taxman Talk 02:35, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

We either agree to disagree on this, or we take it upstairs. I think the consensus is that we change the name to "Peak oil theory." I don't hear any objections to a name change, and I have very strong objections to muddying the waters where an individual's name is involved. I think we should do both - create the page about Hubbert's theory AND the nunsuch that follows. Benjamin Gatti
I would only support the move of the article if this remained as a redirect to it. I think Hubbert peak is a term that just about anyone theorizing in this area would reconize and not associate with a specific time line given with qualification about various unkonwn factors that woudl change it. We now know some of those factors better, and the time line has been updated. The only thing that is even remotly contraversial is what the structure of the peak and the time after it will look like. Not the timing, unless you believe in abiogenic petroleum in large quanties then it is a mathmatical certanty that there will be a point in time where oli extraction peaks. Dalf | Talk 04:59, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I would suggest that the disputable parts of the theory as described on this page are the effects of crossing the rubicon. Let me propose a corrolary to Jevon, that as the cost of individual transportation goes up, the cost of mass transit goes down - and the quality and availability of that transport goes up. Another law: that regardless of the transporation available, the grocery store is always 15 minutes away. In addition, globalization is directly associated with cheap oil, as oil goes, so goes cheap imports which destroy the local market for unskilled labor and bankrupt nations by siphoning off the social currency - so in the end, there are benefits to rising oil prices, cleaner air, less medical costs, economic efficiency, improved quality of life etc... I have no doubt the oil is a nearly finite resource, but I see no clear and convincing evidence that oil shortage is universally bad. Benjamin Gatti
Well part of the problem with the split between Hubbert theory and the Peak oil theory articles is it is clear that many people use the former name to discuss the whole theory as it has developed, so focusing it in on only what Hubbert had to say is misleading. The disambiguation note at the top is not enough, especially if the text goes on to say Hubbert peak theory is x, when clearly much discussion using that name considers it w,x,y, and z. So not only does that make the statement 'Hubbert peak theory is x' incomplete and therefore wrong and misleading, but it makes the article 'Hubbert peak theory' misleading if that is all it discusses. This is what several people have told you repeatedly and you've offered no justification for your stance other than that is what you think. Even your Lynch article, a critic, uses the term to discuss it as more than just Hubbert's version of it. - Taxman Talk 14:44, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • Benjamin, I strongly object both to an article name change and to your claim that '... the consensus is that we change the name to "Peak oil theory."'. That claim is completely false, which is plain to see from the discussion on this page. Johntex 15:42, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Dalf concured here: "In the case of moving the article would this become a re-direct? I would support such an action, if only to quite Ben's insistance that this article become a bographical one. Dalf | Talk 18:37, 31 August 2005 (UTC)" - it seemed no one objected and it's the only logical conclusion: Benjamin Gatti
That is a poor, poor characterization of consensus, for the followign reasons:
  1. User:Dalf was commenting under your section 'Proposed Name Change "Hubbert's Peak Oil and Anything Else" ', which is not the name you used when you edited the article.
  2. I'm not even sure if it is accurate to characterize his statemnt as agreement since he says "if only to quiet Ben's insistence" - I'll left Dalf speak for himself on that.
  3. You claim no one objected, but in that same section where Dalf made that comment, User:Johntex, User:Nicktpar, and User:Taxman all objected
So, basically, you are claiming that when you make Proposal A and the result is 1 agreement and 3 objections, that this somehow means you have consensus for Proposal B. I don't follow your logic. Johntex 17:43, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Goggle says it should be named "Peak oil"

do the numbers 750,000 for "Peak Oil" 4,000 for "Hubberts Peak"

What rational exists for blending the two seamlessly? Most people obviously refer to "Peak oil" Hubbert's peak is his theories on the subject. Benjamin Gatti

Agree with move to peak oil. Disagree with splitting article - make Hubbert's original ideas a section of peak oil. ~~ N (t/c) 16:19, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm going to agree with Nick here. Hubbert deserves a prominent but discrete section under Peak oil, then every y2k fearmonger can spam wikepedia without reflecting on the dead. (BTW did you know the article includes links to sites which sell T-Shirts?) Benjamin Gatti
How do you reconcile agreement with making Hubbert's peak a section of Peak Oil with your statements above that Hubbert's peak theory is completely distinct from Peak Oil and should be limited only to Hubbert? And what do t-shirts have to do with anything? Johntex 17:32, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm pointing out that related topics may be deserving of their own article. To do so, I used an example that an earlier editor had made (above). Johntex 17:32, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Consensus to Move to Peak Oil Theory

I see above what looks like agreement from

  • Dalf
  • Nick
  • Ben

to move the article to "Peak oil theory" and create therein a section for Hubbert and his special theory of Peak oil Benjamin Gatti

Do any object and on what grounds:

  1. I suggest that the bulk of the content here be moved to "Peak oil theory", but that a separate, trimmed down article on the "Hubbert peak theory" should also be maintained (just as Einstein's theory of relativity has its own article separate from both Albert Einstein and the more general physics article). -- BD2412 talk 18:11, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  2. Support above for the same reasons. Benjamin Gatti
  3. I oppose moving or renaming the article. Force10 18:23, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  4. Object - User:Johntex. It would be nice if you would stop creating so many new talk sections - it forces repition of comments. Also:
  • User:Dalf was commenting under your section 'Proposed Name Change "Hubbert's Peak Oil and Anything Else" ', which is not the same as the proposal you are making here.
  • I'm not even sure if it is accurate to characterize his statemnt as agreement since he says "if only to quiet Ben's insistence" - I'll left Dalf speak for himself on that.
  • You claim no one objected, but in that same section where Dalf made that comment, User:Johntex, User:Nicktpar, and User:Taxman all objected
    • At the risk of agreeing with Ben (which does give me pause that perhaps I shoudl rethink my logic), can someon explaine to me why moving the whole article (with a redirect to it) over to Peak oil would be bad? It seesms like a valid compromise. Move everything there and give Hubbert mention due to his obvious influence on the devlopment of the idea, then redirect this article (as well as Hubbert peak etc. over there). Dalf | Talk 07:33, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
  • So, basically, you are claiming that when you make Proposal A and the result is 1 agreement and 3 objections, that this somehow means you have consensus for Proposal B. I don't follow your logic. Johntex 17:43, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Just trying to keep a consensus process focussed - you're welcome to create your own section and ramble at will. Benjamin Gatti
  • If it is true that you are trying to keep a consensus moving forward then quit creating new sections on new proposals. It would have been better to continue discussion up above where we were already making progress on possibly agreeing on a limited content move to Oil depletion than to start over on a brand new proposal. Consensus building is not merely a matter of "everyone needs to vote up or down on Ben's latest idea - take it or leave it" Johntex 20:26, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Johntex - I think you're being to timid WK:Be bold - you want to move a section to Oil depletion you've mentioned it more than once, and nobody has objected - by all means move it on over. I think you are complaining because talk pages don't get as much attention as just doing it. Somebody wants me to make my edits in a sandbox, and then beg for consensus - i've seen that played, it just gets ignored, and no progress is made. It's time for you to make the move you've proposed. That's my bit. (and you have a point) Benjamin Gatti
  • Hi Ben. Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between being bold and acting unilateraly without consensus. Since this article has stirred up controversy, I tend to err on the side of caution. Perhaps too much so, I'm not sure. You are absolutely right that no one objected to a limited move to Oil depletion. However, no one actually supported it either, except I guess we might assume that you would support it since you actually already created Oil depletion in the first place? As much as I dislike cluttering up this page with one more section - I'll create a section on a content move to Oil depletion. Johntex 20:50, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  1. I'm possibly ok with it though certainly not before getting some reasoning from you on why Hubbert peak theory should only be about Hubbert's words when it's fairly easy to show people use the term for the wider theory as it has developed. The only actual reasons you've given are that is the way you want it. If a move is made, the Hubbert article needs to clearly explain that the term is used for the wider theory by many, but that we cover it at peak oil theory, a term many other people use to refer to the whole idea. The problem with that that I have not thought of a way of resolving is that Wikipedia articles should always be written so as to avoid self referring to Wikipedia. If that needs to be done it is a failure. If that could all be resolved fully, I'd be more inclined towards the move, but I'm skeptical. - Taxman Talk 18:35, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
See the Google hit count. Most refer to it as "Peak oil". We should go with "most" that consensus, the google consensus is "Peak oil" I suggest adding "theory" because it isn't a thing - it's an proposed idea. Benjamin Gatti
Ahh yes, google in its infinite wisdom should decide. If that were true google should also decide on whether theory should be there. Google is considered far from definitive in a difference of opinion of course. But seriously, what actual reasoning and evidence do you have? Don't evade the question, and if you don't have solid evidence for your position, just admit that. We all have opinions and that is fine. But you have a repetitive pattern of ignoring most points in people's comments. - Taxman Talk 19:54, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
Since this is only a dispute on the title, and PO discussion is in large part done online, Google is a perfectly valid arbiter. I've almost never seen anyone use a different phrase in serious discussion. ~~ N (t/c) 21:39, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
True, I can't argue for the word "theory" from mere hueristics. But in practice, science is a series of "theories" of which realtively few become "laws" - if there is a consensus against "theory" i would respect it. Benjamin Gatti

Summary of Consensus to Move to Peak Oil

Strongly in favor

  1. Ben
  2. BD2412
  3. Freddy

Favor:

  1. Nick (Peak oil)
  2. Dalf

Oppose:

  1. Johntex
  2. Force10

Strongly Oppose:

  1. Taxman

We're going to need an admin to sort out the move because the names are occupied. (if we want to preserve history) Does anyone wish to argue that a consensus does not exist to move the article to Peak Oil Theory (With redirects from everywhere else)? Benjamin Gatti

Checking for consensus on a content move to Oil depletion

Proposal is to

  1. Take the existing contents from Hubbert peak implications and paste it over the existing content at Oil depletion
  2. Redirect Hubbert peak implications to Oil depletion
  3. Place a pointer to Oil depletion in the "Implications" section of this article
  4. Shorten the "Implications" section of this article significantly, but still leaving enough content so that visitors here will understand why people get so worked up over this theory
  5. Redirect Peak oil to Oil depletion Johntex 20:58, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Generally in favor - with comments

  1. Obviously, I'm in favor. Johntex 20:58, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  2. In favor. I've been following this page for a while, and it seems that much contention centers on the question of whether it's about what Hubbert alone said, or about broader interpretations/ramifications of Hubbert's theory. So long as Hubbert's name is in the title, it seems logical to me that the article should be tightly focused on his own observations. The interpretations and ramifications of peak oil are certainly notable enough to merit a freestanding article. -- BD2412 talk 21:00, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
  3. In Favor. not a perfect solution, but a workable foundation to build on. Benjamin Gatti
Thank you - I appreciate your support for a compromise. Johntex 00:42, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

4 In favour. Wik is all about categories and sub-cat's. This is a good ratinalization start of the hodge podge. I have been reluctant to add content and graphs that are not my own because of the confusion and duplication. It is a fine maturity and in the end will give a more balanced point of view and dampen the emotional responses that the current format inflames. --FreddyH> 21:12, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Generally opposed - with comments

I am opposed to moving content to "Oil depletion." The way I found this article was by doing a Wikipedia search on "peak oil." The primary organization working to educate the public about the issue today is known as the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO). In some ways, "Oil depletion" is ambiguous because an oil field begins to be depleted as soon as oil is first pumped from it. Our concern is the peak in the world's production of oil, and the phrase "peak oil" is pretty clear about that. Giving Hubbert credit with a subsection and a link to the M. King Hubbert article would be appropriate. Renaming the article "peak oil theory" would eliminate opposition to including more up-to-date support for the theory as done by ASPO and people such as Matthew Simmons. Jkintree 20:55, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Comments only

  • I would be opposed if in the oil industry the term Hubbert peak is used interchangbly (or more frequently) with peak oil. If the term as used in industry does limit itself only to thigns actually said by Hubbert then this move is fine. I have the fear that the result of this move woudl be that this article gets gutted into being basically somethign that shoudl be redirected to an expanded biographical article of Hubbert himself. My impression is that Hubbert peak is a valid term for the discussion of the idea in general and not just one papper. If my impression is correct then I think to be factually accurate we should move everythign or nothing with approprate redirects. There should be one article with the other title redirecting to it. However I do not work in the oil industry (or even geology) so I could be wrong. Dalf | Talk 07:25, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

No consensus

I don't see a consensus here. How about Peak oil theory instead? Uncle Ed 21:38, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

Just so I am clear on what you are proposing, are you proposing that we follow the above steps but substitute Peak oil theory where the above proposal says Oil depletion? If so, then that would be fine with me. Johntex\talk 21:43, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
I believe the proposal that has consensus is to move the entire article to Peak oil theory and create a substantial section for Hubbert - which from a content basis is what thie article is. But as long as editors insist on shoving non-hubbert assertions onto this page, the argument has been made to create a more general title - and accepted by consensus (2 sections above). Benjamin Gatti
That is interesting. Unfortunately, the above summary is not an accurate reflection of the polling. I haven't checked the history to see who created that summary, but whoever it was did not count all the comments correctly. For example, Forec10 clearly is in opposition to a page move. Nick sais he was in favor of a move to Peak oil not Peak oil theory. If you want to re-open that poll, I suggest you do it in such a way as to allow each editor to put their name in the right place. Johntex\talk 23:36, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
I summarized - you're welcome to edit. I added Force10. Benjamin Gatti

REOPENING THE SUMMARY

  1. Benjamin Gatti 01:49, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
  2. I think "Peak oil theory" is a better name for this article than "Hubbert peak theory." Jkintree 03:00, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
  3. Monsterhero 03:47, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
  1. I am opposed to changing the name. I am still in favor of shortening the article (as above). Johntex\talk 20:39, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Comments, long opinions and dialogues
  1. If the name of this article is changed to "Peak oil theory," Wikipedia searches on "peak oil" and "Hubbert peak" and other closely related terms should still bring users here. Jkintree 03:07, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
The three are all currently intra-directed, and this would continue to be the case - unless - and i am not proposing this - but unless consensus decided to create a dedicated article for Hubbert personally. It appears to me, that Hubbert was rational, lucky, and uninformed by today's standards. since his theory - which was based on a downward excursion in 1930, much has changed. Technology and exploration have expanded the "squares under the curve" considerable, while at the same time, the environmental movement is creating an argument for voluntary curtailment. and finally, a group of Hubberts adherants have expanded a scientific proposition into a chronostationary prediction of impending global catastrophy. Thus the argument could be made that, like Darwin, his own ideas are intellectually unique from the continium of related conclusions and conjectures, rational or otherwise. Benjamin Gatti

The article says:

The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) was founded by the geologist Colin Campbell. Based on current information about known oil reserves, estimates of future discovery, growing oil demand, and available technology, the ASPO predicts that world oil production will peak around the year 2007.'

and also:

Colin Cambell of ASPO has calculated that the global production of conventional oil peaked in the Spring of 2004 albeit at a rate of 23-GB/yr, not Hubbert's 13-GB/yr.

these are inconsistent. Maybe they are both wrong. But why does the article give so much weight to ASPOs ideas anyway? William M. Connolley 19:31:32, 2005-09-09 (UTC).

If you look at the table titled "Estimated production to 2100" on page two of the September 2005 ASPO newsletter, you will see that the definition of conventional, or regular, oil "excludes oil from coal, shale, bitumen, heavy, deepwater, polar, and gasfield NGL." According to ASPO's inventory of oil production and reserves, conventional oil has already peaked, and oil from ALL fossil fuel sources will peak in two more years. I suppose so much weight is given to ASPO's ideas because members of ASPO have studied the issue for decades. Members of ASPO also request that countries such as Saudi Arabia allow independent audits of their oil reserves and production in order to eliminate much of the uncertainty about the situation. Jkintree 01:06, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Green Revolution

We need a Green Revolution yesterday if the peak in the world's production of oil is 2005.

Breaking this up / Eclipsenow.org

Eclipsenow.org (talk · contribs) is a very green newbie who is eager to make contributions to Wikipedia related to peak oil. One of his first contributions, Doomer, is now on AFD primarily for being a neologism. I have suggested there that this article, with it's more than 48k of bloat, might be fairly ripe for diffusing into several subtopics. Things like post peak oil scenarios and social responses to peak oil, etc. come to mind, though other suggestions are welcome. He seems to like this idea, but of course it deserves some discussion in this community and he will need some help getting things going and conforming to Wikipedia standards. He does seem to be of a reasonable sort in discussion and believe his participation should be encouraged, even if his namesake website is somewhat strongly POV. Dragons flight 20:24, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Agree with concept of break-up. If you look above, there are many of us who agree to some form of break-up or redistribution of this article's content. We are having trouble agreeing exactly how to do it. I did even create some seperate articles (see above) based on what seemed like a consensus at the time. Johntex\talk 20:36, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I have now removed content from this article that is duplicated at Implications of peak oil. Johntex\talk 00:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

False figures in Critique section

The critique section contains wrong information about ASPO's prediction of the peak date. I have looked up all the newletters and this is what I came up with:

  • regular oil:

- up until March 2003, the model predicts FLAT DEMAND from 2000 to 2010, not simply "a peak in 2000".

- April, 2004 - today: estimations oscillates between 2004 (last estimate) and 2006

  • all liquids:

- April 2004 - September 2005, the peak date is 2006 or 2007

- October 2005: peak date delayed to 2010

Currently the article reads

Campbell's critics, like Michael Lynch, argue that his research data is sloppy. They point to the date of the coming peak, which was initially projected to occur by 2000, but has now been pushed back to 2010.

Three possibilities here: (1) Lynch was misquoted (2) Lynch is unable to read the newsletter (3) Lynch is lying, because he's mixing the predictions for "regular oil" with the predictions for "all liquids": regular oil was never predicted to peak later than 2006, "all liquids" was never predicted to peak earlier than 2006.

His most vocal critic has been Freddy Hutter. Throughout 2001-2003, in his monthly newsletters, Campbell maintained that his 1996 prediction of a peak in 2000 was unchallenged, despite Hutter's alerts of increasing production levels.

I have been following peakoil for a couple of years and never heard of Freddy. I guess it could be true that he's very vocal.

See above, Campbell did not predict just a peak at the time, but flat demand for 10 years from 2000 to 2010. This should be made clearer, or it should be made clear if Hutter's quotations are instrumental.

Finally in his April 2004 Newsletter, Campbell relented and shifted the peak to 2010. 'Later this was brought forward to 2007 but in October 2005, was shifted back to 2010.

This is just false. The April 2004 Newsletter predicts 2005 for regular and 2007 for all liquids.

I am not changing this article because I still do not know whether Lynch and Hutter have been quoted wrongly, or if the authors themselves attribute wrong figures to ASPO! Can't anyone confirm / contradict? (sorry for the poor English, I'm tired -#-neko-#-)

Perspective of a Neutral Observer

Peak oil is a subject that has interested me for nearly a year now.

I can see from the arguments going back and forth here that a consensus among you will be highly elusive. I think the problem here is that the facts themselves are in dispute--Peak Oil is based on a geo-economic model that may or may not verify.

Here is my suggestion. Edit the Hubbert's Peak article down to include only Hubbert's core theory. If Hubbert didn't say it, it gets cut. No doomsday scenarios, no rebuttals to doomsday scenarios, just the theory, as postulated by Hubbert, that oil production in individual fields and therefore countries roughly follows a bell-shaped curve.

Then, create a second article entitled "Peak Oil Controversy." After all, the debate really has ranged far beyond Hubbert's original assertions, and this is a controversy if ever there were one, so I think that title would be spot-on. In the controversy, I see three core perspectives: One, Peak Oil is false, oil production will not peak (or at least won't peak for a long time) and Peak Oil is Chicken Little reheated. Two, Peak Oil is true, but won't have a severe impact because other energy sources will be brought online to supplement and ultimately replace oil. Three, Peak Oil is true, viable alternatives to oil do not exist, and, in the words of Bob Dylan, "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall."

One writer, or group of writers, will lay out each of the three perspectives. We place a word and external link limit on each perspective. We write a NPOV intro paragraph to the effect that everything that follows is speculation and theory, itself based on a theory, and none of it can be objectively, conclusively proven (which is true). The fact is that there are PLENTY of external sites that spin out all the ramifications of each of these three perspectives. We don't need lengthy essays on how suburbia sucks, the imminent fall of civilization, how we're going back to the Stone Age, or how the whole Peak Oil controversy is a conspiracy by liberals to take away Americans' SUVs. That kind of rhetoric is already extant, in abundance, elsewhere on the Net.

Comments?

BenjaS 20:13, 14 October 2005 (UTC)


I second your suggestion. This approach should keep the encyclopedic aspects of the Theory in the main article and move the more emotionally charged aspects of the discussions to the ancilliary articles.

Rafaelbn 04:43, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Comment: This is Rafaelbn's first ever contribution to Wikipedia. Welcome! Johntex\talk 09:14, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
  • As I have said above, famous theories do not end with their creator. Hubbert's theory includes variables for the amount of oil discovered each year, etc. As more information is discovered, it is natural that people would re-use the same equations. It is also natural that they would improve upon them, debate them, maybe even debunk them. Evolution does not end with Charles Darwin. Johntex\talk 09:14, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Saudi oil supply

Sadad Husseini, a key architect of Saudi energy production policy for more than a decade, said the kingdom has the oil in the ground, political will and cash to ramp up output.

But a shortage of equipment could leave state oil firm Aramco two-to-three years behind its plan to lift capacity to 12.5 million from 11 million bpd now.

"What we are hearing is that contractors are very, very stretched as is the availability of rigs and equipment. They may wind up being two to three years behind schedule," Husseini said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

"The industry does not have the resources required." Riyadh has fast-tracked a $50 billion scheme to keep pace with booming demand and maintain up to two million bpd of oil production in reserve.

It intends to boost output by 3 million bpd by 2009, with half that volume going to increasing output capacity and the other half to make up for depletion rates at older fields.

"Every new increment is going to be more expensive and complex and yield smaller amounts," said Husseini. "And you will have to replace easy production and large capacity declines with much more difficult production." In addition, increases beyond 12 million bpd will involve heavy and medium crudes that are difficult for the global refining system to process, he added. http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3474435a6026,00.html

Theory vs hypothesis

User:71.131.20.191 just reworded the opening to "The Hubbert hypothesis..." from "The Hubbert peak theory". I've reverted simply because the article's named after the latter; if we want to call it a hypothesis, we'd need to move the article instead of just rewording the opening.

That said, I believe "theory" is valid in this case. As I understand it, a "hypothesis" becomes a "theory" once it's been successfully tested—which in this case is evident from the fact that a majority of countries worldwide now show clear production peaks. —JwandersTalk 10:58, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Restricting to Mr. Hubbert

I've reverted User:Benjamin Gatti's recent edit restricting the article to relevant discussion of Mr. Hubbert. While I've no doubt the edit was in good faith, as the article is about the theory first proposed by Mr. Hubbert and not Mr. Hubbert himself, I see no problem with modern developments of the theory being included. —JwandersTalk 21:01, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that it is highly unfair and in bad faith to interject modern developments of thought under a heading which includes a person's proper name. Hubbert was an arguably decent chap, with a proposition. The fact that others would come later and exploit a random coincidence to found one of these new techno-cults (include Scientology, Trekkies, Y2K'ers, and Heaven's gate) is unfortunate, and I believe we should protect the dearly departed from exploitation by others. We can honor Hubbert most, by preventing his name from being used as the handle for a relentless causation/correlation confusion. Benjamin Gatti

Move to "Peak oil theroy"

Looking at the discussion above, it appears that a move to "Peak oil theory" reached a consensus but was never actioned. This would address Benjamin's concern as well as being more in line with the common usage. Unless anyone opposes, I'm happy to do the move. —JwandersTalk 07:08, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I have no objection to moving the article to "Peak oil theory" as long as people who search for "Hubbert peak theory" and for "peak oil" will still be able to find it. Jkintree 11:38, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

There was no consensus above. zen-master[[User talk:Zen-master| T]] 16:29, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

(Personal Attack Ommited)

for changing the wording in the Introduction from "U.S. oil production peaked in 1971" to "World oil production shifted from the U.S. to the Middle East, Venezuela, and Canada as a result of oil finds which were less expensive..." The reason domestic oil production from the U.S. became relatively more expensive by 1971 is that most of the easiest to find and to extract oil in the United States had already been pumped out of the ground. That is what Hubbert was saying. That's what this article is about. Trying to frame it some other way is a disgusting distortion. Jkintree 11:29, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

You have your point. I suggest the trigger was the 'discovery of cheaper oil. The evidence is the reopening of oil fields in the US as some foreign fields have begun to get more expensive. Part of the reason is the end of cheap oil here, part is the new availability of cheaper oil elsewhere. the physics are about the same as water. oil will flow from whereever it is easiest to produce. once that is used up, it will flow from the next easiest place. Hubbert is in the middle of a disovery of cheaper alternatives. The price of oil did not go up as oil production moved offshore (did it?) if it didn't then it is safe to argue, the foriegn finds were simply cheaper. oil production wasn't forced to more expensive foriegn fields due to scarcity, it moved because their oil was cheaper than our oil, only a small portion of which is attributable to elevated cost of pumping drier wells here. Hubbert is a one-hit statistical wonder in a 15 ticket lottery - whoopee. Benjamin Gatti
What do you mean one-hit statistical wonder? What does foreign oil being cheaper have to do with total global oil supply? If oil costs more in energy terms than it is worth it doesn't make sense to extract it, right? "Light sweet crude" is called that because oil men have dollar signs and "cha-ching" dancing in their head. zen master T 17:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Hubbert didn't predict the second, the hour or the day. He predicted the year, that's a fairly broad barn door to hit, I figure if about 15 people took pot shots, they had a 50% chance of hitting it within a year. one-hit wonder.
  • We're talking about the one-hit (Peak in US oil). The question: was it caused by the EROI rising above energy content?, or by the emergence of cheaper alternatives? You're simply wrong about the sense in extracting oil merely for its energy content. Oil is transportable. Until the nuclear powered Delorean is more than a cocaine pipe dream, oil will be more valuable than than its energy content. Benjamin Gatti
Nonsense, Benjamin. You talk as if the peak in United States production of oil in 1971 has nothing to do with the depletion of U.S. oil fields. And re-wording the Introduction to express your POV is offensive. It's not just the Introduction. You are up to your old tricks of launching a mass attack against the article. Jkintree 19:32, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Just answer this:
  1. Did energy use in the US Peak in 1971? (I know this one)
Energy use in the U.S. is still growing. Jkintree 18:38, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  1. Did the Price of oil (in the US) Peak in 1971? (What do you know - the Price of oil went (drum roll please) DOWN in 1971, it went down in 1972, it wasn't until the Yom Kippor war and the arab oil embargo that the price went up, Hmm. explain me how an arab oil embargo fits into Hubbert's theory - anyone?

[8] Benjamin Gatti 03:43, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

See the second paragraph of the article. Jkintree 18:38, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, and Benjamin if you edit the article to reflect your own POV against consensus on the talk page, you'll be blocked from editing. For the 237th time, get some evidence for your position or don't edit. Also use four tildes in signing your edits so they get a time stamp. It's common courtesy. - Taxman Talk 19:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Oil coming or going

Benjamin, you mentioned the discovery of cheaper oil outside the United States. You're right that the discovery of oil is critical. Oil can't be pumped out of the ground if it hasn't first been discovered. Let me ask you this. When did the discovery of oil in the United States peak? And since our interest now is with the global situation, in what year was more oil discovered in the world than any other year? If you have been making repeated major changes in this article without knowing the answer to basic questions such as those, then I do say, "Shame on you." Jkintree 21:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I've provided an oil price chart as evidence that the peaking of oil in the US Does Not coincide with a price event, consequently, it is a presumtively supportable position that the shift in production took place largely because it was simply more efficient to pump oil overseas and ship it to the US than it was to pump it out of the ground. Bear in mind that the price of oil, and arguably the cost as well was going down during the entire decade - including the year production peaked, and it wasn't the peaking which caused the significant price event - it was a war and an embargo. The point my gentle friends, is that a theory which focusses on a small aspect of a complex market isn't worth the salfetka it was scribbled on. Benjamin Gatti 03:43, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
You evaded the question, Benjamin. Shame on you.
Discoveries of oil in the United States peaked in 1930.
The year in which the most oil was dicovered in the world was 1948, when Ghawar was found in Saudi Arabia.
The second highest year of world oil discoveries was 1938, when Burgan was found in Kuwait.
The decade in which the most oil was discovered was the 1960s.
Prudhoe Bay was discovered on the north slope of Alaska in 1968, nine years after Alaska became a state.
Production of oil at Prudhoe Bay peaked at 1.5 Mbpd in 1989, and is currently a few hundred thousand bpd.
Pemex has announced that production at Cantarell, the world's third largest oil field, is peaking now.
The news just came out in the last week that production at Burgan has peaked.
Keep an eye on Ghawar.
The recent discoveries of oil off the coast of Brazil are puny compared with discoveries elsewhere and decades ago, and are also puny compared with current global demand for oil.
Some of the above came from the References at the bottom of the article. The graph of United States oil pruduction on page 6 of the ASPO newsletter featuring the United States is especially illuminating. Some of the other factoids came from googling things like "world oil discoveries," "Ghawar," "Burgan," "Prudhoe Bay," and so on. Jkintree 18:46, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

____

Oil discoveries are dependant on market forces. (that's a big word for peakniks, so take your time and sound it out.) Market forces suggest that when the price is up, interest in increasing supply (ie exploring) will go up as well. However (another biggish word) When the price sucks, then interest in finding new oil dwindles. I understand that you want a simple black and white world, but they world has more shades of gray than Hubbert's napkin graphs. The low price of oil has delayed exploration. This is not to say that we are not consuming a non-renewable resource, and that someday oil will gone, but two points remain:

  • Production moved overseas because new cheaper discoveries were found - and not as Hubbert suggested because we just plain ran out. We were undercut in a comodity market.
  • Market forces will conspire to regulate the consumption of oil and to soften to as great a degree as the information will allow, the rate at which oil production slows down.

Benjamin Gatti 21:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

So how come then, that despite the recent major rises in oil price, there has been no significant increase in investment in oil exploration by the oil companies. How exactly does that fit in with you explanation?. Could it be that they realise there is no major new oil fields to be discovered?. After all the number of new oil field discoveries has been declining year after year since the mid-1960s despite all manner of new technologies. Market forces however wonderful they might be, cannot discover something which isn't there. G-Man 22:05, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that it is in the best interests of "oil companies" to discover more oil, particularly if they are hard pressed to refine what they already have - and more to the point, every oil company dreams of selling the last barrel of oil (for a million quid). This is the reality of commodity businesses; they do well in a disaster. Produce is the same, if floods ruin your competitors crop - you make enough to pay off your farm loans, otherwise you'll probably edge deeper into debt every year. The current spike is short lived. Aside from which, the oil companies (if one believes their testimony on CSPAN) are hampered by lack of access (ie in Alaska). In short - it a hell of a lot more complicated than EROI/E. Benjamin Gatti 00:23, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that it is in the oil companies best interests to put the price up too high. Oil companies know that if they put the price of oil too high, it will merely cause a recession and thus cause a slump in demand for oil, thus killing the goose which lays the golden egg so to speak, which is precisely what happened in the 1970s following the Arab oil embargo. Speaking of which, they were only able to get away with that because they knew that American oil production had peaked and had no spare capacity.
Alaska is a big white elephant that keeps getting trotted out. I cant remember the exact figures, but Alaska even if it were fully exploited would only be able to produce something like 4-5 million BPD. Which considering that world oil consumption is something like 80 million BPD is hardly significant. G-Man 19:10, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
The price of oil could be a lot higher before it causes a recession. Hint: a restructuring is not a recession. If WalMart suddenly finds people don't want to drive so far, and builds neighborhood stores, that isn't a recession, its a restructuring. The same is true when people move closer to work. Sure, they will complain of high prices before they make the move, but that's ok. They should move close to work (I did). And walmart should get into the pedestrian market business. Benjamin Gatti 22:12, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Alaska is evidence that the barrier to exploration is artificial, and it isn't just Alaska, its most coasts, and many other places. Benjamin Gatti 22:12, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

-

I looked at the oil price chart http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1947.gif. It's a good graph, and shows the big spike in oil prices in 1980. There is a graph titled The Growing Gap, about halfway down this file, http://healthandenergy.com/world_oil_and_gas.htm that shows with a yellow line a big spike in oil exploration that followed the spike in oil pricies in 1980. That same graph shows that there was no increase in oil discoveries that accompanied that increase in exploratory drilling. Here is another graph that shows the decline in discoveries even better, http://www.peakoil.ie/downloads/graphs/growing_gap.jpg . The best and easiest to find oil fields have already been found. Increasing prices of oil do not change that fact. The current rate of discovery is pathetic. The gap between consumption and discoveries is growing. When the price rises high enough, and new discoveries and production do not happen, demand is destroyed. That is how the market operates. Those are small words, and should be easy to digest. Jkintree 22:25, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
You could have a point - the gap argument is the mascot argument in the lucy-goosey peaknik parade. OR, it could be that the market has refined the relative value of unneeded ground assets (oil futures). Remember that the growth in oil consumption was initiatly overforcasted - this lead to over-investment in energy, and historically low returns for the industry. The price peak in 73 set about a reduction in energy use, as well as diversification, and it undercut the profitabiity of exploration. We are just now reentering a period of substantial growth in that sector. Quite likely, we will see more exploration, probably some finds, and an adjustment of the value of oil based on the perceived future availability. Remember that any oil company which - based on a global depletion - believes that the price of oil will climb by more than 8% a year, would have an economic motive to hoard ground resources and stop pumping. The pressure to pump oil is based on the idea that money right now is worth about 8% more than the same money this time next year.
You point out that demand is vulnerable to price. So what. NASCAR burns tons of fuel - for no purpose. Hummers are just wastebaskets on wheels, same for Escalades, Motorhomes, Airplanes, Mansions, plastic grocery bags, and packaging, "great room" architecture, open refrigerator isles, commuting, traffic jams, seperating business districts from residential neighborhoods, and in short, there is a huge amount of demand for cheap energy which could stand to be destroyed without consequence. Benjamin Gatti 00:23, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
It is plausible that oil companies are manipulating supply, both at the production end and in the refining stage, in order to raise prices and to sell their product at the highest possible prices. Maximizing profits is their job. On the other hand, it is easier to manipulate supplies when supplies are already tight.
You can dismiss demand destruction by saying, so what. It's true that a lot of oil in this country is wasted and used inefficiently. On the other hand, some of that demand destruction may represent real hardship.
So, we're debating peak oil. It's a debatable issue. We don't know the future. On the other hand, since discoveries of oil in the U.S. peaked in 1930, and since consumption of oil was still growing at an exponential rate in 1956, when M. King Hubbert forecast that U.S. production of oil would peak between 1965 and 1970, it was a reasonable forecast for him to make. The global peak of oil discoveries in the 1960s, and the continuing increase in global oil consumption make it reasonable to forecast an impending peak in world oil production. Jkintree 17:16, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
First guess was close - could be luck, or a simplier world, but it does not follow that an apparent peak in exploration now means the same thing. the stock markets are full of people who go bankrupt on such notions. Exploration is a market-driven activity. The market has been low - therefore lower exploration. I think we know where there is a great deal of oil, but two things, as long as light sweet crude is available to the market, it makes no sense to fuss with lesser stock. Only when the sweet is gone, does extracting more expensive oil - into a pricier market - make sense, and it might not be until after that is gone that exploration provides a meaningful return on investment. I don't buy the idea that being responsable with energy represents hardships - i think the opposite. Walking brings communities together in many ways - socially, medically, and spatially. Higher gas prices will solve the health crisis in the US, and probably the phychological disorders as well. It will create jobs, and encourage people to live in friendly neighborhoods - rather than "out-in-the-country-where-aint-nobody-goin-a-bother-nobody." So I for one don't buy the oil hardship argument.
As for manipulating the market, I suggest the current companies are going to drag their heels when it comes to building, until the market is so lucractive there is a threat that outside companies might view building a refinery as a good investment. Benjamin Gatti
Understood. Forecasting and experiencing a peak in U.S. oil production is not the same as forecasting and experiencing a peak in global oil production. For one thing, the stakes are much higher now. After depleting the best oil fields in the United States, Americans could go to other countries to get more oil. Where do we go after depleting the best of the world's oil fields?
Burning mass quantities of natural gas, or building nuclear power plants to extract oil from Canadian tar sands does not sound like an attractive option. A permanent military occupation of Iraq does not sound good either. Walking and bicyling are great, but let's be serious. An immense amount of infrastructure (housing and highways) has been built to support the U.S.'s petroleum-dependent lifestyle. If the peak comes too soon, and people are unprepared, there will be hardship. It's a risk management issue; something to be taken seriously, not sneered at. Jkintree 22:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Consensuality Question

Please vote (or not)

  • Hubbert's Peak should discuss every persons who ever expressed a depressing theory featuring market stupidity and oil
  • Hubbert's Peak should discuss Mr. Hubbert and his personally published papers.
  1. Benjamin Gatti 01:51, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Evidence supporting Hubbert's theory that people such as Colin Campbell and Matthew Simmons are publishing should be included in the article.
  1. Jkintree 17:52, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Just for the record. These doesn't express a consensus either way. Consequentially, any edits cannot be made in violation of consensus. Benjamin Gatti

Response: Oil Depletion is serious - guesses on the back of a napkin which ignore market effect are not

First, I hold a provisional patent for a wave energy device. I completely agree that we need to be serious about alternatives. I believe that over-hyping problems into caricatures of themselves is not helpful. Oil is being depleted. We don't know how much is left, we don't believe oil will cost more than 8% per year more this time next year, or at any foreseeable time in the future. The damage oil is causing the environment is orders of magnitude worse than the pain of shifting into European-grade living conditions (since people pay big money to travel to Europe in order to experience these horrid conditions, I'm thinking they are not that bad.) Benjamin Gatti 04:21, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

That is your point of view, and you are entitled to it. What the price of oil will be a year from now is debatable, and I'll let that one pass. Time will tell. Yes, the environmental damage from burning fossil fuels is the other very good reason to conserve, improve efficiency, and develop clean, renewable alternatives. From that perspective, an earlier peak in production and rise in oil prices would be a good thing.
As far as the article goes, it's not perfect. It's certainly not what it would be if I wrote it entirely by myself; it's probably much better. Yes, I think the article is actually pretty good as it stands right now. Many aspects of the issue are debatable, but playing tug-of-war over the article is not going to resolve the debate. Let's check back in a year, and see whose forecasts turn out to be closest to reality. Jkintree 16:41, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
In the meantime, I think it is unfair to assert likely doomsday scenarios as if they were the views of a. Hubbert, and b. the wikipedia. (unlesss of course these entities actually believe and express these doomsday scenarios. Benjamin Gatti
Hubbert died in 1989, and evidence supporting and refuting his theory is still being presented. The article states that a range of scenarios have been described. We, the editors of wikipedia, report as the scenarios unfold. It's ok. Jkintree 04:27, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
I find no consensus in support of peppering an article in the form (Persons name - theory) with the theories of others. I find that it violates the premise of a -pedia, which is to organize and compartmentalize ideas and information into logically isolated boxes. Mixing disconnected information together in order to push a doomsday proposition is inconsistent with the purpose of a pedia. Benjamin Gatti
I'm sorry, Benjamin, but if anyone is guilty of corrupting the article, it's you. According to the History, your revision of 10:23 on November 15 added to the fourth paragraph a sentence beginning, "In the real world, the demand for oil peaked in 2004,..." That is outright false. The demand for oil is still growing, and according to deniers of peak oil, is projected to grow for decades to come. Your demands for revising the article would probably get a much better reception if your own credibility was higher. Jkintree 21:39, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
I doubt that. I may have reverted to a version which included that paragraph for another reason. Future prognostication is not a field known for credibility. Aside from which "Demand" is a word rather a bit tricky to quantify. Many people would like to have oil, and cannot afford it - including most of the developing world. Can you post a diff of the edit you cite? Benjamin Gatti 22:10, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Enter Causation / Correlation Confusion

The Diff [9]

If you read further up the article - it is claimed the "Production Peaked in 2004." Yes - I added the paragraph which translates a peak in production - to a peak in demand. Production and demand are linked. You suggest that demand will go up - what you mean I think, is that the number of people interested in buying oil at "today's" price would continue to grow. That is a simplistic view of demand. In fact, the price will go higher as the probability of future depletion becomes more certain - a transition which will in all liklyhood take place slowly, and at a rate controlled by the discount rate. Today we see Oil companies unmotivated to take on debt in order to increase refining production. This is a simple statement of market equilibrium, and strongly suggests that oil companies, realizing that their underground resource is not expanding, are content to sell their stock slowly into a high-demand market rather than to sell the entire stock as quickly as possible. In many respects, oil companies are like the ants stockpiling food for the winter (except they don't do that part) but nonetheless, they are sitting on a winter's store of oil. The politicians would like them to sing and dance and sell their oil fast and cheap; but being wise - they choose to store their fuel for the winter, and sell us no more than we really need. - good for them. And when they think the price will rise by more than the discount rate, they will hoard it - until the demand raises prices sufficiently to cover the loss of future revenue. This balancing act is continuous and includes market forces with the probability of future depletion in a stable free-market rational market. Hubbert's (and friends) proposition that market forces will be insufficient to smooth the transition to a post-oil economy is unsubstantiated. Benjamin Gatti 22:36, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

All scenarios about peak oil and its aftermath are unsubstantiated; it hasn't happened yet. The issue is, you felt compelled by your point of view to translate the article to say "the demand for oil peaked in 2004," which is clearly false. In spite of your fancy verbiage explaining why you wrote that, pushing POV translations is the kind of thing that diminishes the quality of the article.
You seem to think that proponents of the theory of peak oil are clueless about market forces. If you pay attention, you will notice that informed proponents do not say we are running out of oil. They say we are running out of cheap oil. The debate is over the timing, speed, and severity of the transition.
In your paragraph above, you stated that "the discount rate" is the factor that will control the rate of the transition. That sounds like a term from economics. A factor that other people are watching very closely is "the decline rate." After an oil field peaks, how quickly does the production decline? To the dismay of the United Kingdom, the decline rate in the North Sea is much higher than expected. If the decline rate at Cantarell and Burgan, and yes, at Ghawar, turn out to be higher than expected, the transition is likely to bumpy. We don't know. We're watching, and hopefully, practicing prudent risk management. Jkintree 18:00, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
You've said a few things here that I want to agree with. We should put more emphasis on the "timing, speed, and severity of the transition" As you say. Hubbert's theory is far more than the obvious "someday we will run out of oil" It appears to me to be "when we run out of oil (which I predict will be X) we are going to run out fast and hard." Therefore we could run out of oil, and Hubbert could be wrong. Hubbert would be meaningful only if - in your terms, the decline rate is both a. steep and b. coincidental - that is most oil fields experiencing the decline simultaneously. We accept that he could be wrong about the dates - and still right about this decline thing.
The flip side - is that oil speculation - for all its cost - involves a lot of people paying attention to this problem, researching the problem, and doing their best to determine the future availability of oil. It seems to me that if the future cost of oil is likley to beat the discount rate - that would be a hold signal, and would trigger hording - but only to a point. The point being that the price would rise until it waas once again more profitable to sell the oilt now at todays lower price, than to hold the oil and sell it later at tomorrow's higher price. That calculation is used by every business, even if it is not fully calculated - hotels know they can charge more for friday night, vacation homes know they can charge more during the summer, plywood salesmen know they can get a higher price during a hurricane. Ticket scalpers know they can sell tickets at a higher price if their team has a winning season. All of these businesses set the "daily price" by considering the potential value if they hold onto their stock until the value goes up. Quite likely, if the value is going up faster than the value of time (the discount rate) then it makes sense to hold onto reserves. Thus - the present price of oil includes the speculation that tomorrow's price could be higher, and as a consequence, future depletion will, as soon as it is known to exist, have a smooth effect on the price, and trigger a transformation from an oil race (and that's what we have) to a conservation race.
The "oil race" is a race by industrialized nations to acquire technologies and economic scale by consuming energy at the fastest rate they can afford. The US and Chinese both see energy consuption as a way of gaining critical mass for their economies - necessary to fund a war machine, necessary to develop technologies for building defense technologies etc ... Allowing the Chinese to over-consume us on energy would mean allowing them to overtake us in military matters as well. Consequentially - the "Oil Race" is a race to the bottom in which both sides are trying to bankrupt the other sooner (In this case bankrupcy means come to the end of their resources). From a balance of power standpoint, oil is irrelevent - so long as we get more benefit from it while it exists than do our competitors. If the only concern was ensuring the military dominance of the US, it would be rational to overconsume oil - because the depletion, when it does hit - would bankrupt poor countries first - ensuring the dominance of the lone superpower. I think this is why the President puts an emphasis on "energy intensity" or some double-speak word which means that rich nations have the right to consume more energy. In short - we are being more efficient if we use x energy to produce Y groos national product - but Kenya is less efficient because they use more energy per GNP - even though on a per person basis - they use far less energy than we do.
Proponents of peak oil (as you describe it) are suggesting that the market will fail to properly predict the future price of oil until it is so late, that society will be forced to adapt to a large change in oil prices over an inadequate period of time. It's not that they are clueless - but that they activelt believe the market is clueless. There is a natural conflict and inherent distrust between economists and peak oil theorists. Benjamin Gatti 18:58, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Sometimes distrust is healthy. Consider the investment banker, Matthew Simmons, who has brokered oil exploration and development deals worth $billions. His distrust of assurances that Saudi Arabia can increase production as needed led him to personally study reports from petroleum engineers in order to write his own book, _Twilight in the Desert_, that was published a few months ago.
I'd like to bring our attention back to this Wikipedia article. We've debated and re-debated some of these points until it feels like we are masterdebating. In my opinion, the article is good enough to be designated a Wikipedea Featured Article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles. Many people have contributed in many ways to make it so. However, one requirement for a Featured Article is that it has stabilized. Can we put this article to rest? Instead of mass, wholesale revisions from this point on, can we be more precise and polished? Jkintree 17:43, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Well hello again ben. You seem a little hard on governments arguing that they have an aim of increasing oil consumption. This seems firstly to imply a good deal more power and influence for governments than they arguably possess, but secondly to ignore the generally accepted driving mechanism of the economy. People want a better life, more of anything which makes the days go by more merrily. That is what pushes up demand for everything, and at root oil usage. Putting it the other way about seems rather a conspiracy theory. The argument is interesting, but the ideological punchline seems a bit doubtfull Sandpiper 20:55, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi Sandpiper. I think you have tough skin - good for you. The "Oil Race" theory I believe you refer to is an analysis of oil using game theory. Under GT, you devise a stategy to improve your personal odds - relative to your competitors - which are often at odds with a strategy for maximizing the result for everyone. Let's say we ran the world under a benevolent dictator - which might be persuaded that the best thing to do is to conserve - perhaps by raising the price of oil to avoid wasteful expenditures. In a competitive environment however, the strongest economy can use its advantage to attract a disporportionate amount of oil - thereby crippling the competitors ability to catch up. When the oil is gone, everyone experiences an increase in the cost of energy - across the board - and is therefore a competition neutral event. I'm not suggesting that the race is strategic or planned, but rather instinctive, and driven by the self-interested nature of democracy. Note that many politicians believe we should raise fuel taxes to discourage commuting and pollution - but in the same breath would move heaven and earth to "keep gas prices down" in the face of market pressure. That is the dicotemy which exposes nature of the "oil race". Every politician is going to secure as much of the oil at the lowest price for their constituency - regardless of the long term consequences. Democracies don't contemplate long term realities. Benjamin Gatti 06:26, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
yes, but you said it: people personally want to 'keep gas prices down'. That is the driving force, not that everyone has some brilliant idea to bankrupt neighbouring countries. Politicians might have some idea like that, but frankly it is liable to conflict with the publics own self-interest aims. Running a car which only uses half as much petrol per mile is inherently a personal saving irrespective of the absolute price. Now, quite what Mr Bush was trying to achieve with his recent foray into the world oil business defeats me. Sandpiper 11:57, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I suggest that I could demonstrate the "oil race" is real if I could show that democracies are capable of conserving (and fighting the tragedy of the commons against popular selfishness) when it comes to resources which do not have competative advantage. I'm thinking perhaps the way we run the Federal Reserve - ie somewhat disconnected from the voting booth - and with great emphasis on real economic theory (Note that Michael Brownie was not installed at the reserve) and on the long term viability of the economy. If we ran energy policy like the Reserve - with an emphasis on long term viability in both pollution and energy reliability, would a chairman be able to counter public selfishness in favor of a smooth transition to a more sustainable energy economy? I think so. The "oil race" doesn't involve "bankrupting" other countries at great expense. the "oil war" turns on the recognition that if we were to "raise interest rates" - ie. to encourage conservation of oil by increasing the effective price, then our economy would slow down relative to other countries - unless the inccrease is universal. Depletion will have a universal effect on energy prices. Self-restraint is univeral in its benefit (less pollution, longer access to oil) - but singular in its cost (slow down economy, increase cost of production). This is the classic dillema of the "tragedy of the commons", and is the driving force of the "oil race". This concen was addressed (imperfectly perhaps) in the Kyoto treaty, and the fact that the US was unwilling to participate strongly suggests a preferance for winning the oil race over the alternative "unilateral" conservation. Winning the oil race means that one's economy arrives at the point of depletion better prepared to deal with an economic slowdown than its competitors - generally by burning oil faster to growing the economy, the technology, the educated base, and every other aspects of an economy as quickly as possible - ignoring the implicit tradeoff of burning luxury oil now (A Hummer is luxury consumption of oil) vs. having necessity oil later. I would say we are in an oil race, and that we should adopt an attitude towards energy similar to the Fed, that is instead of lampooning Congressmen who have from time to time changed their enthusiasm for energy taxes as "flip-floppers" - we should view controlling the cost of energy as part of a strategy - like Greenspan, who was never been called a flip-flopper for voting to raise interest rates before voting to lower them. In other words, we should see energy policy as less of a conflict of agendas (less pollution v. more jobs) and more a matter of optimizing the energy economy by careful moves up and down with strategic reserve (and taxes). And since there will never be a "popular" time to store oil by raising gas prices, we should have an independant chair of energy - preferable one which can survive partisan shifts - like Greenspan. Benjamin Gatti 15:30, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Top 5 things you won't see in the wikipedia article

1. hubbert was a environmentalist hippie liberal and taught at hippie university aka Berkley M._King_Hubbert (during the early 1970's no less, dear god can you imagine the scene there?)

2. anything from a real economist including oil is fungible, supply elasticity :) and other basic ideas

3. your windmills and hippie liberal hybrid cars will only increase the useage of oil jevons paradox haha! oh the delicious irony!

4. marxists and hippie liberals have been predicting doom and gloom since the 1800's the crash but peak oil is SO DIFFERENT! it's from a renowned Berkley college professor

5a. The idea that oil supplies in amercica aren't exhausted.

5b. It's just not economically viable to pay rich americans to pump them out anymore.

5c. It's just cheaper to pay a 3rd world peasant to do our pumping for us.

"Growth, growth, growth -- that's all we've known . . . World automobile production is doubling every 10 years; human population growth is like nothing that has happened in all of geologic history. The world will only tolerate so many doublings of anything -- whether it's power plants or grasshoppers." -- M. King Hubbert, 1975.

Oh, noes!!! the sky is falling!! i wuv wittle wasshoppers! don't bogart that reefer!

or to quote richard pryor, "There's too many people on the earth! I'll have no room to ride my horsey!"

i left one extra criticism of the quote out for the discriminating conservative to find for him or herself, hint blank ≠ blank

lollerskates don't drink and post!--Capsela 03:29, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't know that calling people you disagree with hippies or Marxists is either accurate or relevant. By the way, Jevons also thought that recessions were caused by sunspots.--Jack Upland 04:04, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Peak oil production and oil depletion

There is a distinction between peak oil production and oil depletion which the article (and this discussion) isn't clear about. The existing oil depletion article is a bit thin and maybe the discussion about oil depletion could be shifted there.--Jack Upland 04:11, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

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