Continued:

11. Most major oil producers are located in geopolitically unstable parts of the world and have competing interests to OECD (oil importing nations).

What we can infer, although I won't call them facts as yet is that:

1. Corn based ethanol is a marginal energy source that has had a signifcant negative impact on food prices.
2. The hydrogen economy does not look like it will ever be a serious proposition.
3. Algal based biofuels are a marginal fuel source if that (hence why the US Dept of Energy has cancelled its research program).
4. That efforts to develop the infrastructure to reduce oil consumption have been insignificant (Hirsch Report stated that it would take 20 years of wartime mobilisation type effort to mitigate peak oil).

The uptick in US oil production from tight oil is about the only upside from an oil production perspective but when you look at the details (extremely high decline rates, drilling costs and number of wells that need to be drilled, financial situation of tight oil companies etc) maintaining let alone increasing this production will be extremely challenging.

In summary peak oil is a major problem (well predicament actually). In a sense the major reason why it does not appear to be a problem now is the state of the global financial system and the sovereign debt crisis, which has reduced demand for oil.

Hi Graham, replies between your lines:

"Michael, when the facts change I change my mind."

Except when they are uncomfortable. Most people, including yourself it seems, believe what is convenient. Like I said before, "most people cannot understand that the laws of physics might limit human ambition or underpin the behaviour of a system such as the human economy. But without an understanding of energy any form of economic thinking can never accurately reflect (or predict) reality."

"I certainly believed that peak oil was an issue, but it isn't now, not if you look at the spectrum of hydrocarbon fuel sources. For every expert you cite there are dozens that disagree. Citations are not a fruitful way to conduct an argument."

How convenient! The problem is that, to scientists, citations are the way we conduct arguments. But if your idea of economic (not scientific) "truth" is established by how high you can stack your experts on each side of an issue then I can understand why you do not bother to read/listen to the references I have given but continue to believe what is comfortable for you.

"Hasbeen is quite right. The reason that BHP had to write down gas assets is because there is so much of it around that the price has collapsed. Because it is expensive to transport the world market for gas is not homogenous in the way that the oil market is, so you can get higher prices selling it into Japan, and at the moment China. The Chinese are likely to have huge gas deposits too, so how long Australian natural gas will trade at the prices it does is anyone's guess."

Like I said to Hasbeen - listen to Art Berman's talk. Then you can, yourself, make sensible comments on this issue rather than regurgitating the oil industry's hype.

(continued below)

(continued)

"I'll take the market signals before your experts' opinions on this issue."

In other words, you will continue to anticipate the future by looking in the rear view mirror. It works for a while but does not end well!

"As for peak oil causing the GFC, I myself argued that high oil prices were having a dampening effect on economies and that therefore interest rates could be set lower than they were being set, but that doesn't mean the oil price, which is a separate issue from peak oil, caused the GFC."

You have not bothered to read Hamilton. Do so and then we can have a sensible argument.

"The GFC was caused by an overstretched credit bubble bursting. The inability to keep expanding credit was the major issue, not the increase in some prices."

Yes, but the bursting was triggered by the oil price spike (see Hamilton). And the property bubble itself was driven by an inability to expand the real economy due to the non-availability of increased energy flows - so "increased value" instead was generated by speculation on property made possible by easy money generation trough cheap debt. Maybe you need to watch the video "money as debt" to understand this.

"If oil prices had caused the GFC you would have expected mortgage defaults to happen before the GFC but they actually tended to happen after. Without mortgage defaults I can't see what your mechanism for transferring oil prices into the financial crisis is."

See my comment above and read Hamilton.

There is indeed no point in arguing with you Michael if your only form of rebuttal is to suggest I read a book that you have read but whose arguments you apparently can't, or won't, advance or explain. I am not going to do the hard work for you of reading the pieces, distilling their arguments, presenting them here, and then rebutting them.

I should also point out that scientific argument is not carried out by citation. It is carried out on the basis of principle, hypothesis, counter-hypothesis and ultimately experiment.

The only respectable intellectual field that I know of where citation is actually the basis of much argument is the law, and in that case, given that each judgement is in essence an experiment, and succeeding judges will be bound or guided by these judgements in the judgements that they make, that is a reasonable and logical way to proceed.

Leckos, it is true that we are probably near some peak in oil, but given the alternative hydrocarbon energy sources that is no longer an issue. It may be for my children or grandchildren, but not for me.

And given the availability of nuclear energy, energy is unlikely to be a limiting factor for generations, if ever. The issues with peak oil were not to do with availability of energy per se, but transitioning to alternative transport fuels, as well as potential problems with finding alternative feedstocks for fertilisers, plastics etc.

I think all of you Cornucopians need to stop and smell the roses.

I go back to the second link that I posted, actually read it and consider the ramifications, you can go on about tight shale, nuclear, bio fuels, algae, whatever you want, the simple fact is unavoidable, look at EROEI and the PDF and you will see we have a predicament not a problem.

Problems can be solved, predicaments can't, it is that simple.

Please read this fully and then comment with some authority:

http://www.countercurrents.org/clugston190812.pdf

Cheers

Geoff

"There is indeed no point in arguing with you Michael if your only form of rebuttal is to suggest I read a book that you have read but whose arguments you apparently can't, or won't, advance or explain. I am not going to do the hard work for you of reading the pieces, distilling their arguments, presenting them here, and then rebutting them."

How can anyone have a decent argument on a forum that limits the word count so severely? The point about scientific arguments is that they are based on evidence that people publish (usually in papers) and that are then cited. There are no books involved in the links I put above - the longest one is a report by Hamilton - but you obviously are not interested in challenging your beliefs if you expect me to produce summaries of these in 350 words. (And why would I spend ages concisely summarising ideas for someone with [despite protestations otherwise] apparently fixed ideas when I can just refer them to the report and they can read it in detail or scan read it for themselves?) However, it seems (apart from your failure to understand EROEI) that one of the cornerstones upon which you base your optimism for the future is that there is a flood of cheap gas out there just waiting to be harvested. In that case, just take 40 minutes of your time and look at the presentation by Art Berman that I mentioned earlier:

http://www.energybulletin.net/media/2012-06-20/after-goldrush-learning-us-shale-gas-experience

You probably didn't notice that I had given up on you Graham after you allowed Malcolm King to publish his lies and then refused to do anything about it. But no matter - there is now much broader awareness in public and political circles of the peak oil issue (Leckie's excellent recent ADF Journal publication is a good example) and the population debate in Australia has exploded far beyond OLO's readership (visit the Global Population Speak Out Facebook page to see). However, it is still interesting to comment on some of the wilder views of your contributors.