Talk:Hubbert Peak/archive6

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Contents

Questions

I actually just had a quick question, I am pretty sure I read somewhere that peak oil theorists were denoted with some sort of title - what is it? --Falieson 17:01, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, finally I found what I was looking for, the title is: “peaknik" --Falieson 17:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

new non-controversial controversial section

Reagrding this material ....

The theory is subject to continued discussion and controversy. The central overwhelming feature of the oil industry at the beginning of the 21st century is Albertan oil sands, the subject of $100 billion of investment through 2010. Before about 1980, this form of oil was basically unusable. Due to dramatically advancing technology, since about 2000 it has been trivial to use this form of deposit to produce petrol. The figure for estimated usuable reserves of Albertan oil sands shot up to 180 billion barrels in 2000 and is increasing dramatically every quarter due to advancing technology and investment and is currently (mid 2006) over 300 billion barrels (cf. the Saudi Arabian reserve of about 260 billion barrels). Again, this figure is increasing, very rapidly, every quarter. Previously "alternative," Albertan oil sands are now the mainstream of the industry. http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/102spring2002_Web_projects/M.Sexton/ http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/statistics/energy/default.html http://www.cnrl.com/horizon/ http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2004-09-07-oil-sands_x.htm http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/canada.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4649580.stm http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/docs/oil/pdfs/pub_NAOR2003.pdf http://www.fin.gc.ca/ec2005/agenda/agc3e.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/14/AR2005061401533.html http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/mar03/NN_canada.html http://www.eyeforenergy.com/news.asp?id=458 http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/oil/supply_demand.html http://www.varldsbild.org/artiklar.php?artikelID=225 http://www.sepp.org/weekwas/2003/May3.htm http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10003476.shtml


It would be EXTREMELY BIZARRE not to mention the "bull in the chinashop" which is oil sands.

Bitumen is not oil. The oil has to be extracted from bitumen and the conversion/refining process is energy intensive.

Canadian reserves at 300 bb are now bigger than saudi reserves.

Bitumen requires much more energy to refine than even the heaviest crudes. The cost of energy in the extraction process reduces the actual reserve potential.

It's just really, really nutty not to see this as the primary, the central, issue for any discussion about peak oil.

Please don't pointlessly say "oh, that's controversial, I'm reverting" -- it is just not helpful.

Nonsense. Hubbert's theory is not about tar sands;

This is UTTERLY, TOTALLY, COMPLETELY NUTS -- no offense.
Bitumen is not oil.
It would be like saying "Hubbert's theory is not about ultradeep drilling" because ultradeep drilling was not used for producing oil when Hubbert was writing.
Bitumen is not oil.


> Therefore, the section is not central to this article. You could argue differently if this article were about "the coming oil crash" or something like that, but it's not. It's about the Hubbert peak theory.

It's definitely not important enough to go in the lead section, before the theory is even adequately described.

Albertan oil sands are now the mainstream of the industry.

is just not true:

Albertan oil resevres are bigger than Saudi Arabian reserves. Not much more can be said.
3 mbpd, by 2015, maybe, are hardly "the mainstream of the industry".
increasing dramatically every quarter

is a prediction.

Again, this figure is increasing, very rapidly, every quarter.

is totally unnecessary in an article. We do not repeat ourselves in articles (at least not in two consecutive sentences).

<sarcastic rant> Ah! (*basking*) The "Royal 'We'"! I do so love to see the Ambiguous-Collective logical-fallacy -- it's always a tip-off and sure sign that science (or whatever) is being or has been abandoned for political manuevering. Which, in the case of this article, is doom-n-gloom mongering asserting "diminishing" oil-reserves, with the unspoken insinuation that, why YES!, fascist bozo Bill O'Reilly and Marxoid pinhead Al Gore are absolutely correct in that we need new Stalinesque transnational uber-bureaucracies to control production and prices in a stupendous ejaculatory spasm of Utopian Socialism With a New, Improved Human Face! (Why the hell else does anyone give a runny anal-leakage about such complete pie-in-the-sky guessing, save to fantasize their bossing around all those "exploiters" and "guzzlers"?) If this interjection does not in any way describe you personally, please consider it just a general observation sure to apply to many, many worthy others. </sarcastic rant> --Mike18xx 03:05, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The reference section is totally unusable; sources need to be for specific statements, and long lists of URLs do not belong in an article, at least not in the lead section.

Accusing other editors of being "really nutty" is not helpful. Alberta tar sands are, and will remain for the next couple of years, in all probability, an interesting footnote: their scale is currently, if not negligible, then masked by other developments. They're not the "central feature" of anything, and they're only overwhelming on a very local scale. It's not "trivial" to use them to produce petrol, from all I hear.

If you have so little knowledge of how oil is produced, should you even be involved here?

All these statements need to be fixed. The section needs to be moved, for example to "Alternative sources for oil", where there is a much better paragraph on the Alberta tar sands already, as far as I can tell.

So the short story is, Hubbert "peak oil" theory is now as redundant as the Ptolemic description of the solar system - specifically because of Alberta - but we're not going to mention that in an article about peak oil.
Funny !

RandomP 12:01, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

While you do manage to make a number of rude comments, you do not present any facts about tar sand production rates, most likely because you know those facts do not support your outrageous claims. Tar sands production is now 1 million barrels a day and is projected to increase fivefold by 2030. That fivefold increase is a huge growth rate, but 5 million b/d is still only about half of Saudi Arabia's current output and less than five percent of projected world production in 2030. Five million barrels a day will never make up for global production shortfalls if Hubbert Peak Oil theory is correct and the world production has begun to decline. To claim Hubbert theory is now "redundant" is a willful and deliberate distortion of the facts. Now that's "Funny!" --Valwen 01:32, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

What you say is nonsensical, Valwen.
The amount of oil (USABLE) in Canada is astronomical. It is already (2006) far more than the known (USABLE) amount of oil in S.A.
There are many projections of the amount of recoverable barrels of oil in the Alberta oil sands, though the Canadian Government estimates 180 billion, which is less than S.A. reserves. --Skyemoor 15:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)- Skyemoor
As a thought experiment, let's say the amount of oil in Canada was --- say -- TEN THOUSAND times the amount of oil in S.A. Would you THEN start saying, "yeah, I guess peak oil theory is kind of dopey" -- ? Or no? My point is, "nothing would make you happy" - no matter HOW much new oil becaomes available, you will just feel "oh, that's not enough, we're running out of oil, of course we're running out of oil, we're about to run out of oil."
"Five million barrels a day will never make up for global production shortfalls" why not? What do you mean? You're proposing it will increase 5x in 20 or 30 years, so in the following 20 or 30 years it will increase another 5x, so now we're at 125 .. etc. What's the big deal?
Note that there's plenty -- absolutely plenty -- of oil coming from the current "conventional" (ie, difficult) sources such as drilling.
This statement couldn't be more incorrect; supply margins are the lowest they've been since the 1973 Arab Embargo. --Skyemoor 15:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)-
There is currently not the slightest hint of a shortage of oil. The price of a barrel of oil continues to go down and down and down and down and down, decade after decade after decade after decade. In inflation-adjusted dollars it is cheaper than ever.
Good, then let's compare the price with 1999 levels of $11/barrel...--Skyemoor 15:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
But LET'S SAY for some incredible reason we couldn't use the conventional oil on hand. Would we then have a shortage of oil? No, because of Alberta.
This completely misses the point about the bleeding edge technology pilots that are struggling to get around the natural gas and water limitations of current technology. THAI is a dream right now; it needs to go through a complete prototyping phase, then a piloting phase in order to achieve proof of concept. Then, and only then, can it start to begin the ramp up to full fledged extraction infrastructure, say by 2030. If the peak happens before that time, then the impacts of the peak will not be obviated by oil sands production. --Skyemoor 15:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
In essence, in the last 5-10 years, a much bigger than S.A. amount of oil has been "found." It's always been there, but it's moved from being unusable, to easily usable, due to new technology (such as "big dump trucks") ... it's really just incoherent for "pealk oil" fans to be unaware of this, to not see it as the "bull in the china shop" in the entire issue.
I think it would be very easy to say that most people rabbiting away on this web page, simply, HAVE AN AGENDA.
And you do not, it seems.--Skyemoor 15:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
In the face of blatant reality there is a tortured attempt to jury rig the notion that "we're running out of oil."
Unfortunately it's a good example of the Wiki at it's worst .. activists who tediously CAN BE BOTHERED endlessly editing the wiki page, keep the wiki page how they want it.
It's important to remember that Peak Oil is not about the amount of oil left, but rather about the rate at which it can be produced. The world produces around 73 million barrels of crude a day. Production is actually lower than it was last year. 1 Every year declining fields loose several million barrels a day of production. The expected increase in Canadian oil sands prodution of 4 million bpd in the next 25 years comes nowhere close to replacing depletion.--Karma432 14:37, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Mediation

Hi, I am Adam and I have taken this case. The details of the request for mediation are at 2006-06-16 Hubbert Peak Theory.


Note, it would appear that this article IS NO LONGER IN mediation (see below).
By the way, would anyone (RandomP) be able to summarize the position of the two apparently opposing posters, which resulted in the mediation? I seemed to miss what happened and the mediation process (now abandoned?) seemed to erase the previous discussions, etc. Cheers


During this mediation please refrain from editing the article.

Please remember to stay civil. Please be sure to read Wikipedia:Verifiability.

For future reference, Mediation Cabal may take up to a week to respond to requests, depending on the queue. Ideogram 00:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

What's being mediated? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm honestly not sure what the current issue is.

The articles has problems. I made some attempts to help those problems, thinking they would be uncontroversial. With one exception, no attempt was made to justify the previous content over what I replaced it with; however, most of my edits were reverted.

So, what's the state? Who's participating in mediation? Am I? Who's supposed to "refrain from editing the article"? Is that just a friendly request or is it an order from the mediation cabal? (Again, all honest questions.)

I'm confused.

RandomP 14:45, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Please continue your regular discussion but try to reach a consensus before proceeding to edit the article. Ideally all participants should refrain from editing the article. Occasionally a non-participant may come along and edit it, not realizing we are in mediation. If that happens, do not try to edit in response, just leave it alone until we reach consensus.
Feel free to summarize your concerns and then wait for your opponent to address them. I will be here to gently remind you of Wikipedia policies should you violate them by, for instance, being uncivil or refusing to verify your positions.
I have no power and cannot give orders. Should you be unable to reach a compromise by your own efforts (with my guidance) you will have to move to a higher form of dispute resolution. However, any party that does not show a good faith effort to solve the problem here will be at a disadvantage in later stages. Ideogram 15:04, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Considering that the only person who was discussing with me has, by my reading, announced they're not talking to me anymore, before reverting the article, telling another user that "it's your problem now", and trying to get other editors involved (just to be clear here: none of this is a bad thing), I'm taking a guess here, which is that that user has stopped editing the article for now. RandomP 15:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Your opponent has been gone for less than a day. Ideogram 15:58, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I am not "waiting" for concerns to be addressed by an editor who has disappeared. RandomP 15:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Please be patient. Wikipedia will not suffer if the article stays in this state for a few days. Ideogram 15:58, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh: I'm grateful you, and the other members of the Mediation Cabal, volunteer so much time for the dispute resolution process. I think when there are opposing parties wishing to discuss things, and they agree to mediation, that can work. However, it appears to me that this is simply not the case here. RandomP 15:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Again, your opponent has been gone for less than a day. Without me you would still be waiting for a Mediator to take the case. Ideogram 15:58, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, we are not in mediation; I haven't agreed to mediation (though I would); ruber chiken has ignored both requests for mediation, the one I made and the one Nagle made, and at this point I see no reason to believe that he would agree to it (which, again, I would consider a good thing. That's why I suggested it in the first place).

As far as I'm aware, mediation as a process requires at least three participants. Two short, so far. RandomP 15:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

If this mediation fails, you will have to move to a higher form of dispute resolution. However any party that does not make a good faith effort to solve the problem here will have a disadvantage in the later stages. That means if you both fail to participate, you are equal. If only your opponent fails to participate, you will have an advantage.
You have much to gain by simply being patient, and nothing to lose. Ideogram 15:58, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

All I'm questioning is whether we are in mediation, and whether it makes sense to ask people to deviate from normal Wikipedia guidelines (WP:Bold is still official?) if we're not. RandomP 15:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:Bold is commonly understood not to extend to the point of edit-warring, Once other people oppose your boldness, the need for consensus overrides the advice to be bold. Ideogram 15:58, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
"Other people" seems to be only User:Ruber chiken. Nonetheless, I'm willing to hold for a few days, also. (In other words, I submit to the mediation on this article until such time as User:Ruber chiken rejects it or the mediation dissolves.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:37, 17 June 2006 (UTC)


Ideogram, your last comment could easily be understood as an accusation of edit-warring; I did not say anything about edit wars, it is you who first brought this up. I do not think anyone's behaviour here could adequately be described as "opposing my boldness".

Furthermore, I cannot help but read the comment about parties "not making a good faith attempt" as a threat. Here I thought the idea was informal mediation, not setting myself up in a good position for whatever happens next?

Without you, I'm afraid, I would shrug off ruber chiken's last comments, and continue working on the article, until such point when an editor of this article suggests to keep the article in whatever state they're happy with and wait for mediation. That hasn't happened.

I am, frankly, puzzled why "informal mediation" appears to have an influence on "later stages".

Ideogram, I'm going to go by what rules I can find here (from Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Suggestions for mediators):

you [the mediator] should try to gain general acceptance, otherwise people are free to just treat you like any other participant in the discussion.

As far as I can see, you haven't tried; I mean, as far as I can see, there is no reason to believe a mediation process will ever happen.

So, welcome to the discussion. You suggested we all stop editing the article, and I would like to ask why, as there seems to have been no disagreement since ruber chiken stormed off?

(Just for future reference: "You have nothing to lose by [waiting indefinitely]" and "Wikipedia will not suffer if the article stays in this state for a few days" might be unhelpful things to say. While I'm not reading them that way, what you technically said is "there's no advantage to your edits" (otherwise, Wikipedia would "suffer" (just not very much) by having the lower-quality article in place for a few days). You might find it helpful to avoid those phrases.)

Wikipedia's dispute resolution process appears to be slow enough. At many points, it gives both involved parties the opportunity to stall; I don't think that the time between another party's suggestion of informal mediation and its acceptance is a point where everything has to grind to a halt on the off chance that people who have stormed off return.

Note that I'm not going ahead and editing; but, for the time being, I'm treating you like any other user who requested everyone stopped editing: please supply a reason.

RandomP 18:00, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue with you. I have a dozen cases on my plate. If you don't want my mediation, I'll leave and let you figure it out for yourself. Ideogram 18:14, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Er, if it's my personal decision, then bye, for now. I'll call in the mediation cabal if and when there's something to mediate ...
Good luck with those other cases!
RandomP 18:56, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
I'll close the case. Ideogram 19:01, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

What is correct term for 'admin' rights?

Dear ideogram,

Regarding this sentence: "Wikipedia does not allow free editing: a user, William M. Connolley, who's wiki page states that he is a Climate Modeller, has "admin" rights over this page, and can and does block users from posting if they use strong language on the discussion page, etc."

You said: "removed editorial comments; assertion about "admin rights" was simply false"

Please note that this sentence:

                   Wikipedia does not allow free editing: a user, William M. Connolley, who's
                   wiki page states that he is a Climate Modeller, has "admin" rights over this
                   page, and can and does block users from posting if they use strong language
                   on the discussion page, etc.

is utterly correct and true and literal in every word.

A user, William M. Connolley, who's page states that he is a Climate Modeller, can and does block users from posting, if they use strong language on the discussion page.

Presumably, by this English sentence: "removed editorial comments; assertion about 'admin rights' was simply false" you must mean that the term "admin rights" is not the correct term to describe the event: "can and does block users from posting, if they use strong language on the discussion page."

Is that right?

So - what is the corrcet term to use to describe "can and does block users from posting, if they use strong language on the discussion page." if the term is NOT "admin rights" ?

Thank you.

All admins can and do block users if they violate any Wikipedia policies such as by being uncivil or issuing personal attacks. William M. Connolley is not special in this regard. No one owns a page on Wikipedia. Users are free to edit as long as they obey Wikipedia policies, including being civil. Ideogram 10:15, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
PS Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and a timestamp. Ideogram 10:18, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I guess I don't understand .... "assertion about 'admin rights' was simply false" ... what was false?
"William M. Connolley is not special in this regard. No one owns a page on Wikipedia." Sure, I did not state or imply that Connolly is special nor that anyone owns Wiki pages.
Everything it says here is completely true:
                   Wikipedia does not allow free editing: a user, William M. Connolley, who's
                   wiki page states that he is a Climate Modeller, has "admin" rights over this
                   page, and can and does block users from posting if they use strong language
                   on the discussion page, etc.
You've made a fairly bold claim. You're saying that what I said was "SIMPLY FALSE." That is a bold claim and a fairly astonishing claim.
As it stands you've made a fairly - very - bold claim .. that what I said was "SIMPLY FALSE." I'm trying to be as polite as possible here, but I'm just not seeing anything "SIMPLY FALSE," you know?
84.92.111.247 06:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Please don't argue with me about the wording of the edit summary.
Uh ... ok then, I won't
It may not have been accurate, but it can't be changed now. And it's not important enough to me to argue about. Ideogram 07:05, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
PS I encourage you to register and get an account. Ideogram 07:06, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm guessing you're fairly new to the Wiki. The broad consensus of opinion is that the Wiki works MUCH BETTER with anonymous entities. I encourage you to try for a year or two: stop using your nym, and go anonymous. This is better for the community overall.
I've never noticed this consensus, and since the above poster is anonymous I'm less likely to trust their claim about consensus. However I have noticed that most vandalism is from anonymous users, which makes me more likely to suspect that the above comment is a relatively sophisticated form of vandalism. Ain't the Internet grand? Pjrich 00:50, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Athabasca oil sands

I reverted the section added by an anon about the Athabasca oil sands: "The central overwhelming feature of the oil industry at the beginning of the 21st century is Albertan oil sands, ... Many analysts think the superabundance of these nowadays easily-usable low grade forms of oil trivially consigns peak theory to the history books." for lack of verifiability. Wikipedia has a good article about Athabasca Oil Sands, and even the oil sands companies don't make claims that strong. --John Nagle 07:17, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

If you're into oil sands, I suggest reading the Long Lake Project web site. This is the first big in-situ extraction project, the one that has to work if oil sands extraction is going to produce really big volumes of oil. The 9-minute video intended for construction workers is worth watching. Construction is on schedule and extraction starts this fall. Take a look at their projected output numbers, even after the next two phases of expansion. --John Nagle 07:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
The National Energy Board of Canada just issued a new report, updating their 2004 report to 2006 and projecting through 2015. Their projections are a bit less optimistic than the ones previously discussed; they think that production in 2015 will be closer to 3 Mbbl/d than the 4 Mbbl/day previously discussed. That's still 3 times the production today. One big problem is that there isn't enough water in the Athabasca River to to drive all the proposed projects. The reserves are there, but the extraction rate may be water limited. See section 6.21 of the report. --John Nagle 22:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
The Long Lake project is based on SAGD processes and requires vast quantities of energy and water. A newer process called Toe to Heel Air Injection (THAI) is discribed in [1] and plans to burn a portion of the original oil in place (OOP) to produce heat and carbon dioxide to drive the rest of the oil toward collection wells. Petrobank Energy and Resources Ltd. is building a test project near Conklin. Carbonate 01:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
That process worries me. I hope they don't create an underground fire they can't put out. There are several big underground coal fires that have been going on for years.[2].
I would also like to know how they plan to relight it if the air pumps stop for some reason.Carbonate 13:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Summary of discussion

Regarding the anonymous request

By the way, would anyone (RandomP) be able to summarize the position of the two apparently opposing posters, which resulted in the mediation? I seemed to miss what happened and the mediation process (now abandoned?) seemed to erase the previous discussions, etc.

I can certainly give a summary from my point of view; so I didn't even make any significant effort to be neutral:

  • I fixed an image caption in the article, and, when this was first reverted by Carbonate (talk • contribs), explained why I did so: the short summary is, as it always has been, is that a "Hubbert curve" is the graph of any one of a very small family of functions, and they all are symmetric; the graph in the image is not.
  • ruber chiken (talk • contribs) objected to this; they were convinced that a "Hubbert curve" was not always symmetric, and it probably didn't help that the image that was then in the logistic distribution article was incorrect.
  • during the discussion, ruber chiken and I happily reverted each other whenever we were convinced that our argument was now so convincing that the other party would surely have to agree with it. Oops. Again, my apologies for reverting once too often, at least.
  • Nagle (talk • contribs) was concerned about the edit warring, and called in the Mediation Cabal.
  • Before the mediator arrived, ruber chiken had already made clear he wasn't going to edit the article further, by my reading.
  • I agreed with the mediator, at least, that there was no point considering the article "in mediation" when ruber chiken had left and I was under the impression no one else was feeling the need to be involved in any further disputes.
  • the last three edits to the image caption were Arthur Rubin (talk • contribs) (back to the correct version), Carbonate (back to the incorrect one), and Arthur again (back to the correct version), where it stands now.
  • Ruber chiken (talk • contribs) now agrees that the Hubber curve is symmetric, in a post I do not want to link to.
  • the image in logistic distribution has been fixed in the commons; turns out it was a typo. So, at the least, that got fixed. We're making some progress :-)

There are still issues that now need discussion, like the misquoted EIA reference; I can conceive those might need mediation (between, as things look now, Carbonate and me) at some future point, though the case seems extraordinarily straightforward to me.

(Full disclosure: I have previously been in informal mediation with Carbonate, which failed. I think he supplied me with a link to this article in that discussion, though I had looked at it previously, and it might have been a remark of his that caused me to attempt to find the fabled mathematical model attributed to Hubbert. So I don't think any wikistalking or other misbehaviour is to blame for the coincidence of disagreeing with Carbonate again so soon.)

RandomP 15:46, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

EIA quote

The actual quote in the EIA document is:

The initially recoverable oil and gas resource volumes in both known and undiscovered fields are projected to increase through 2020 in all cases. Ultimate recovery from the initial stock of inferred reserves in all cases except the moderate resource case is assumed to expand over the period of the forecast, exceeding the published estimates from the USGS and MMS. Economically recoverable resources for currently undiscovered fields are assumed, with one exception, to expand by 2020 to the level of current technically recoverable volume estimates released by the USGS and MMS. Recoverable resources in shallow waters in the Gulf of Mexico are assumed in all cases except the slow and rapid technology cases and the moderate resource case to achieve

a level of about 40 percent greater than the volume estimated by the MMS to be technically recoverable. These adjustments to the USGS and MMS estimates are based on nontechnical considerations that support domestic supply growth to the levels necessary to meet projected demand levels.

(quoted liberally, but I believe this is PD).

So it's a quote (from 1997!) about specific adjustments:

  • currently technically recoverable resources are expected to become economically recoverable by 2020
  • furthermore, recoverable resources in the shallow part of the Gulf of Mexico are expected to increase by 40%, in some cases.

This just isn't a very big deal; the first adjustment essentially assumes that if no cheap oil is found, the oil price will rise.

The second adjustment is about a few billion barrels at most.

I see no reason for the quote to remain.

RandomP 11:53, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

There is also no comparable quote (that I can find) in the 2006 version.

RandomP 12:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the relevant sentance is the last sentance, in which the EIA admits that it fabricated supply estimates in order to support an assumed economic growth rate. It is very illustrative of the political manipulation of energy data. [jb]

No, it doesn't. Assuming that resources will become economically produceable when they're currently not is hardly "fabricating" estimates. Particularly not when it's clearly stated how significant this effect is (40% increase). That these "nontechnical considerations" (technology will become better, essentially) also happen to match other numbers (which they match by definition - supply and demand take the same value, as always) is merely an observation, and one the EIA removed from later versions.
I agree the choice of words was unfortunate, but I will not have misquoting on Wikipedia.
RandomP 12:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Peak prediction section

This section currently reads, in part:

Most critics instead argue that the peak will not occur soon and that the form of the peak may be irregular and extended rather than a sharp logistic curve peak. Like any mathematical model, the accuracy of the prediction is dependent on the validity of the model and further to that, by the accuracy of the input data. If variables such as consumption are estimated incorrectly, then the formula will yield different results.

I'll try to discuss the individual sentences separately, so partial consensus might work. Please try responding after the right signature.

I'm going to go ahead and remove the first paragraph soon, unless it's defended; however, please defend each sentence separately, as I believe they should all be removed for different reasons.

RandomP 12:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Since the global petroleum supply is finite, alternative energy sources must be found in the future.

Not relevant to that section. Anyone want to keep it?

RandomP 12:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Most critics instead argue that the peak will not occur soon and that the form of the peak may be irregular and extended rather than a sharp logistic curve peak.

That's what Hubbert said, too! The "most critics" bit is simply misleading; it's possible that the Deffeyes crowd argues that a sharp logistic curve will happen, but that needs to be sourced, since it's a position not appearing in Hubbert's papers.

If no source can be found, that whole sentence should go out.

RandomP 12:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Like any mathematical model, the accuracy of the prediction is dependent on the validity of the model and further to that, by the accuracy of the input data.

It is unclear which "mathematical model" this is about. As I have been unable to find any mathematical model, please provide sources pointing to one.

At present, it's impossible to say anything about the validity of the model since it simply hasn't been sighted.

Again, in the absence of new sources, I see no reason for that sentence to remain; it is simply inapplicable without a mathematical model to point to.

RandomP 12:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

If variables such as consumption are estimated incorrectly, then the formula will yield different results.

Which formula? I've not seen a formula in the article or the references that treats "consumption" (of what?) as an input variable.

Again, if there's no source, I'll have to remove that.

RandomP 12:19, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Request for comment on reverting to June 6

Since this article was first tagged for merger with with the cirtisim page, RandomP has been making many major edits that have been disputed in the talk page by many including RuberChiken. Mediation was requested by Nagle and rejected by RandomP. I would like to ask for comments about reverting this article to the state on June 6th before the edits made by RandomP and/or RuberChiken. Carbonate 01:02, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Oppose. RandomP's changes seem generally helpful, in spite of User:Ruber chiken's illegible scrawls. (I think he copied in a French article, then performed a word-for-word translation. If his babelboxes are correct, he would have been better off using babelfish.com.) For what it's worth, I think Ruber Chiken rejected mediation, as well, although I can't figure out exactly what he said. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Despite my previous disputes with RandomP, he's been quite reasonable and has only gradually made changes. If there is a mathematical model, it needs to be in here, or any reference to one should be removed or clarified. MrVoluntarist 01:32, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Alberta tar sands, again

Whatever the state of the now heavily {{fact}}ed section on the Alberta tar sands, is there any reason it's in the lead section?

This article is about Hubbert's peak theory. Hubbert defined the scope of that theory precisely, as petroleum, which he takes to mean crude oil from conventional sources. Whether or not tar sands are significant is a different question, but I don't think it's such a terribly relevant issue to this article. After the split, maybe ...

RandomP 12:20, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

After looking at the current mess, I have no objection to reverting anything from 84.92.111.247 (talk • contribs). They're getting close to vandalism. And since they don't have an account, you can't talk to them. That material belongs in Athabasca Oil Sands, which is watched by some people close to the actual projects and is more factual. --John Nagle 16:47, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm assuming because the user does not have a talk page, they are monitoring this discussion page.
I think that they should definitely stop putting that section in without further discussion. In particular, while far from vandalism, they have now readded the section without the {{fact}}s that have not been resolved.
I'm also not sure whether the section is a verbatim copy of some of Critique of Hubberts peak theory, or whatever it was called.
It also does not belong in the lead, or at least we need some discussion first.
So, for now, I'm taking it back out, because that's easier than fixing all those things, unless there are any fairly immediate objections?
RandomP 18:03, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
OK with me. The Athabasca oil sands are important, but not big enough or easy enough to extract to totally solve the problem. That material was unrealistically optimistic. Incidentally, if you're really, really into this, there's an Oil Sands Discovery Tour. --John Nagle 18:42, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup

I'm trying to make this a good article again, without changing the perspective much. I cleaned up the "Alternatives" section, with the general concept being that the alternatives should be covered in the articles on each alternative. There are Wikipedia articles on all the alternatives, from oil sands to fusion, so that's covered. I cut down the oil sands stuff a bit and added a mention of and link to the Orinoco field in Venezeula, the other big oil sands area, which somehow nobody had mentioned yet.

I also rearranged some sections without changing them. Now the Hubbart peak theory and predictions are at the top, and the alternatives, implications, and criticism follow. That reads better.

Comments? --John Nagle 19:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks great so far! The rearrangement seems kinda familiar, but I totally spaced on redoing that after the ruber chiken situation resolved itself.

I've got to review the article again to list all the places where there are claims about "Hubbert's theory" (there is one, it just doesn't make as precise a prediction as some people think), Hubbert's "model" (I'm just not sure whether what Hubbert did qualifies as a model), or a "mathematical model" (doesn't exist), but I think most of my concers can be fixed fairly soon :-)

RandomP 20:41, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether what Hubbert did qualifies as a model either. What we do have is an emperical result that, for each field of finite size, production increases with investment up to some limit, then tapers off despite additional investment. That's the per-field peak. We also know roughly how long this process takes for a field - about 30-50 years. (Interestingly, that's true even for oil sands; the Athabasca people are planning for a 40 year field life.) We know the discovery peak was in the 1960s. Those statements alone lead to expecting a world production peak around now. --John Nagle 21:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Notes on USGS assessment

I've been reading the USGS world oil resources assessment, which is cited in the article here. It's older than one might expect; the report is from 2000, and the data is from no later than 1996. There's a 4:1 ratio between the high and low reserves estimates. The USGS web site for energy resource has become much more vague than it used to be. There's still a link to the "classic site" on that page.

There's a big IHS study underway on reserves. IHS has the best data, which they sell for large amounts of money. IHS data goes down to the level of exactly which wells are doing what. Much of the USGS study is based on 1996 data from IHS. In late 2006, IHS will have a new world oil study out, and the overall conclusions will probably give some better information about what's really happening. --John Nagle 19:54, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Natural gas peaking claim

"Natural gas is expected to peak anywhere from 2010 to 2020 (Bentley, 2002)." This one sentence claim seems a bit out of place to me. Isn't the article about oil? Regardless, the word 'anywhere' in that sentence implies a greater degree of certainty than exists. I imagine that some people think that gas will peak after 2020, a few may predit its peaking before 2010. I vote for getting rid of this sentence, or at least trying to better integrate it into the article. Matthias5 22:21, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The opinion given is, in any case, an extreme minority opinion in the industry. Ordinary Person 11:57, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

redundancy in article

Most of the 'has it happened?' section is repeated in the article. Except for the first sentence, this section could be junked or merged with current events. Matthias5 22:26, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that there is redundant material that could be cleaned up. Since current events tend to become out of date, maybe that section should be merged into the 'has it happened?' section. Also, the two items for discussion that appear at the top of the article have been there long enough. If nothing is happening with that, they should be deleted. Jkintree 21:23, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Natural gas production had been in decline for the last three years in North America. This is worth mentioning.--69.251.234.83 01:08, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Opinions on Hubbert's peak

Concerning this sentence

Opinions on Hubbert's peak range from predictions that the market economy will produce a solution, to predictions of doomsday scenarios of a global economy unable to meet its energy needs.

I'm a bit confused; this appears to say, to me, "opinions range from predictions that public policy intervention won't be required, to predictions public policy intervention would be futile".

Any thoughts on rewording this to include people who believe this to be a problem to some degree, and think public policy can do something about it? That kind of appears to be a common government position, at least ...

RandomP 18:12, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

It's saying that opinions range from "it's not a problem" to "it's so bad we can't solve it". That already includes people who hold intermediate positions such as "it's a problem but solvable". But it could use a better wording. MrVoluntarist 18:28, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Merge from Critique of Hubberts peak theory and/or split of article

I'm in favor of moving the critique's in the article, and then possibly splitting out other parts. (No specific discussion section of this page was ever set up.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:57, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

  • I don't think they should be merged.--8bitJake 18:08, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Reject - They should remain seperate Carbonate 00:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - I just wrote more about this at Talk:Critique of Hubberts peak theory. Right now, almost all of the material on the critique section is already covered in the main article. I went through this paragraph by paragraph. Check it out. There are really only two items left to merge, and they're basically references. So I'm inclined to do a merge. --John Nagle 17:33, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • merge for now. As by John above. However, it's an important subject and probably deserves more space in the future to give the arguments some credibility. When the current section starts growing big, we can consider splitting it up, but not now. Jens Nielsen 10:59, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Speed Limits

So Arthur Ruben deleted a section suggesting that speed limits be reduced to 55mph (90km/h). His reasoning? Its immoral. You have got to be kidding me! It is common knowledge that driving 55 saves fuel over higher speeds. I have personally verified this fact. How can anyone suggest that driving faster saves lives? Absolutely amazing how selfish and self centered some people can be. Carbonate 07:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Please don't get into a revert war over this. It's a side issue. If desired, a link to Energy conservation would be appropriate. That would be the right place for speed limit issues. Thanks. --John Nagle 16:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
It also happens to be the low hanging fruit in terms of oil conservation (not that I believ it will happen). Along with proper tire pressures, reduced speed could actully make a dent in U.S. oil consumption. Carbonate 22:07, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
This argument ignores that people have other priorities than just conserving petroleum. Time is generally very valuable in the US and elsewhere in the developed world and for what it's worth is the reason the national speed limit was overturned in the first place. My take is that the optimal speed depends on how much your time is worth, the curve of fuel efficiency versus speed for the car, your driving habits, and how expensive your fuel happens to be. -- KarlHallowell 20:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
This is not an argument, it is a statement of fact about petroleum consumption. As such, it belongs, whether some people are impatient or not. I notice you left out depletion in your list of criteria for determining cruising speed. Skyemoor 20:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Carbonate claimed that reducing highway speeds was a relatively easy way ("low hanging fruit") to reduce oil consumption and presented reasons why he felt so. That was an argument.
Depletion of oil is incorporated in the price of the fuel unless there is some sort of market distortion. IMHO the global markets are sufficiently faithful (the price reflects well enough the cost of depletion) to consider that issue covered. -- KarlHallowell 00:08, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Do not link to general Energy conservation. As the reference about oil usage shows the two are not the same. --70.132.36.238 05:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

A section of the energy conservation article is the main one for the section of this article. Rewriting. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:42, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup of references

I've been cleaning up the overly large reference section, dropping some refs to web sites which were mostly pointers to other web sites. I'm tempted to drop the entire "blogs" section? Are any of those blogs worth keeping?

--John Nagle 04:37, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to drop the entire "blogs" section, unless someone objects. Are there any particular blogs worth keeping? Most of them are not too useful. --John Nagle 21:39, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
'The Oil Drum' should be moved to Sites. It's very informative. I agree the rest should go. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.239.71.240 (talk • contribs).

More Information?

In the section dealing with the effects the perspective is quite narrow, is there room in the article for more detail? Example - since plastic is derived from crude oil, hitting peak oil has implications for packaging, medicine (disposable needles), and so on. Another example I saw in a National Geographic article (sorry, don't know which, but it was a cover story) included the information that a single cow being raised, slaughtered and transported to shops requires the equivalent of 7 barrels of crude oil for the various stages. If anyone has access to the article to reference it properly, it gave a broader coverage of the issue. 59.167.168.152 10:40, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Possible resource for further expansion of this article.

At the risk of being one of those "complain but don't fix" editors...

Australia's national non-commercial public broadcaster Four Corners program this week ran a story on the subject of Peak Oil. It summarised all the current voices and implications nicely (has an Australia-centric viewpoint however). If anyone's interested in an unbiased report they have the entire program on broadband here. Perhaps it may give some editors some new starting points for improving and updating this article.

(Also I'm suprised there's no mention here of the emerging economies' need for oil and the future imapct of this. I'm thinking of China and India here.) --Monotonehell 14:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Added definition of "Peak Oil"

After reading the article, I felt that the proper noun term "Peak Oil" needed to be defined in order to set a context for the rest of the article, particularly since the Wikipedia term "Peak Oil" redirects here. I strongly suspect that a high percentage of the people who find their way to this article do so by looking up "Peak Oil". So I expanded the earlier section about the US oil peaking and used it as a way to explain the concept of the unique global event. I think this explanation adds a lot of context to the rest of the article and makes it more intelligible for readers.SparhawkWiki 06:01, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I approve of Nagle's overhaul of the article's introduction. Nice collective editing. Jkintree 17:49, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I also like the edits, but I couldn't just leave well enough alone and I made some more contextual additions. Hopefully they meet with community approval.SparhawkWiki 20:33, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
There is a lot of attention to peak oil the media here in Europe, most of it referring to the theory that it is peaking (globally) very soon, and (to a lesser extent) that we're on a disaster course if we don't make major changes to our energy system. I believe the article should address that, and in fact that it should be the focus. Jens Nielsen 17:59, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Some of that is in Implications of peak oil, which could use some work. --John Nagle 18:01, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Has it happened already?

Regarding the section on "Has it happened already?": It's very welcome and essential information we have now on current and recent annual supply figures, but I think the current perspective (2004-2006) shown in the bar chart is a bit too short for us to draw any strong conclusions from it. Year-on year variations can be rather large, and can lead to overinterpretation of the significance of a single year's production. How about expanding the chart and the information to cover, say, a decade? What are the time scales used in the literature? Jens Nielsen 10:55, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that only one chart showing short term information can be limiting, though charts in the previous section meet your criteria; should we also show them here as well?--Skyemoor 14:54, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I must admit I had not read the whole article up to that point, but we cannot expect everyone to do so either. Unfortunately, the last chart in the previous section stops in 2001, five years short of now. Can't we construct one anew, up tp and including 2006? Or at least refer to the previous chart? Jens Nielsen 15:29, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I think it would be helpful to add a newer chart that portrayed the data over a longer timespan, while including current data. I would leave the short terms chart in, though, as it provides a 'zoom-in' view of near term data (which needs updating as well).--Skyemoor 15:55, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I had to dig into IEA tables, and I noticed that the IEA total oil production includes biofuels, which is obviously negligible, but also natural gas plant liquids. NGPLs give a substantial, and steadily growing component to the IEA total data. NGPL is arguably not crude oil, so the (IEA total) - NGPL - biofuels might be a relevant (additional?) quantity to plot on Image:WorldOilProduction2002-2006Q2.gif. I also feel that the two plots showing actual production data are somewhat redundant. --AndrasCz Thu Aug 24 08:09:59 UTC 2006

Understand, though a request was submitted to go back before 2004, as the timeframe shown in the first one was too short. Skyemoor 12:21, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Sure! now we have a figure with as long a timeframe I could find data for, and also your figure for the short time frame, which is updated every 3 months. I was just saying that your figure contains all the information which is in the first (John Nagle's) figure. I guess you guys need to decide who is more willing to maintain it in the long run.. --Andras Thu Aug 24 15:21:01 UTC 2006
"Has it happened already?" In a word, no. Production has increased monotonically since 2002, and the general trend continues upward. The major areas of growth are the Middle East, Africa, and South and Central America.

Global Oil Production Ordinary Person 11:53, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Redirect created

I have turned the article Implications of peak oil into a redirect going to this page. The reason for this can be viewed at its talk page. --Polonium 21:01, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


Peak oil myth

Hear is a good reading, relevant to this article, for anyone with a open mind: [3] --Striver 23:46, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

  • An open mind has a much greater requirement for critical thinking than a closed one. The link implies a conspiracy theory between a diverse group of producers with myriad individual interests. May oil companies have tried to artificially limit to-pump supplies by restricting refinery growth in the highly inelastic price environment of the US? Perhaps. But there is broad world consensus that liquid oil will peak sometime in the next 30 years (retired industry experts and independant analysts are mostly saying 2005-2025) - among nationalized oil industries, multi and transnational corps, governments, everyone. What doesn't get consumed in the US will get refined and consumed elsewhere, including by governments whose direct interests lie in cheap oil.

Removed final sentences

I removed this text from the end of the article: "Note that it is very dangerous to tie the amount of oil we can get, to the price per barrel. The reason is that despite the possible profitability of the venture, when the ERoEI falls below 1, it is no longer a SOURCE of energy, just profit".

This had only been in the article for the last few days. It is a problem because of the phrase "very dangerous", and because it assumes that oil must be an energy source. Even if, at some point in the future, oil is no longer an energy source, it still may have many uses, as a fuel, a source for making plastics, etc. --Xyzzyplugh 18:58, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

And, reading the article more extensively, I see that this is indeed covered in an earlier section, "Energy return on energy investment". So this content was redundant as well. --Xyzzyplugh 19:01, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Why is Hutter here

I don't see why Freddy Hutter gets mentioned here at all. Unless he actally wrote himself into the arcticle. He is just some guy with a webpage, possible mental problems, and no credentials whatsoever. Here are some actual quotes made by Freddy on "The Oil Drum"

"Maybe before we ask the nazi pope to bestow sainthood on mr deffeyes we should take two minutes for a reality check"

"Had one too many slips on the skree? Our website graphs and other content is referenced at hundreds of other sites and in some journal work. Are u as bad with search engines as you seem to be with comprehension? If i ever turn into a grumpy old man i hope somebody shoots me."

"Apparently u and greyzone know about as much about the pope's pre-omipotent days as y'all do about deffeyes seven predictions and all his backpeddalling. They guy is on the book ciruit and looks only for notoriety. Simmons $200 public bet for $5k is of the same ilk. Sleazebags both. And we see the have any easy time attracting koolaid drinkers here at TOD."

Links to non-English sites normal?

There is a link to http://www.crisisenergetica.org/ in the links section. Seeing as it points to a Spanish site I removed it as I assumed it was a mistake. The link has now been restored with the question "Why shouldn't we link to Spanish sites?" in the history.

My answer would be that I would suggest that the link actually belongs on Spanish Wikipedia here (where there is already a link to that site):

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teor%C3%ADa_del_pico_de_Hubbert

I have left the link in place but surely if it were to stay it should actually point to an English section on the site or a translation? Or do we normally link to sites in languages other than English on the English Wikipedia?

Its quite normal to link to foreign language sites especially when no translation or English equivalent is available as many readers dont just read English. Sometimes it is necessary to source things in a foreign language, no source being available in English, SqueakBox 21:46, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

    • OK thanks - I'll remember that.

More reference cleanup

Continuing to clean up the references. Dropped the "Voices" entries, most of which were just links to Google searches. "Voices" with a published book were moved to the book section. Fixed many of the "Book" cites to use the proper template, eliminating redlinks in that section. All book entries now either have an ISBN link or a link to the author's Wikipedia article. --John Nagle 18:17, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Michael Lynch

People need to be careful when considering statements regarding Michael Lynch, since there are at least two distinct Michael Lynchs which have been referred to. Compare http://www.energyseer.com/MikeLynch.html with http://reason.com/Bio/lynch.shtml. Bobo159 20:36, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Production Statistics

There has been something of an edit war over the production statistics in the "Has it happened already?" section. I would argue that any statement of the form "it appears that" is POV; if it appears that way, then it will appear that way to readers without you having to tell them.

Identifying a trend is not POV; clearly the production is leveling off, in the near term, as is supported by the referenced data, whether or not one likes the message the data depicts. Skyemoor 14:21, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
When I fit a curve to the historical production data and found (to my surprise) that it showed oil production was exponentially increasing, that was deleted on the grounds of being "original research".
You would have had to cook the books to come up with that trend in 2005 and 2006. The data clearly shows otherwise.Skyemoor 01:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
If you pull the last several years of data (I think I used the last 8) into a stats package (or even Excel) and fit an exponential, you'll find I'm right. That the best-fit curve does not agree with your bias does not mean you're correct. I would ask you not to start slinging unfounded accusations of malice, though; I have "cooked" nothing. Bobo159 18:25, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I repeat: the trend in 2005 and 2006 is not exponential increasing, no matter how you try to spin otherwise. Skyemoor 01:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
You appear to be misunderstanding what I'm saying. I've never said the 2005/2006 data shows an exponential-increase trend; I only mentioned the fact that the data shows an upwards exponential over the last 8 years to illustrate the point that Wikipedia is a place for data reporting, not data analysis. Insisting that there is no positive-exponential trend in the last two years of data is simply missing the point (and ill-founded, since there aren't enough data points to do a statistically-significant analysis with this amount of noise anyway.) Bobo159 06:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
"Missing the point"? You are leading a cheer to make it look like oil production is still growing steadily, when the data clearly shows this is not the case in the last 18 months. I don't misunderstand you at all, I simply am not going to twist the words to portray a falsehood. Skyemoor 12:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
You have just demonstrated that you are, in fact, grossly misunderstanding me. In particular, I am not leading a cheer to suggest that oil production is growing steadily; this should be obvious from the fact that the year-over-year methodology shows a particularly low rate of increase right now (0.6%), due to the vagarities of the data. I'm not leading a cheer for any conclusion, as should be obivous from my statements to that effect. What I am leading a cheer for is for a neutral and unbiased methodology, regardless of what conclusion that methodology gives us.
By contrast, it appears as if you have the pre-determined conclusion that oil is peaking now, and hence all data must be made to support that conclusion. That's biased analysis. Pick a common and well-regarded methodology and let the data tell its own story, regardless of what that story is. Bobo159 01:34, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
You haven't proffered a 'methodology', beyond your reporting data in 'year-on-year'which distorts short term trends over the last 18 months. THAT'S biased analysis. Can you show me where my math was incorrect concerning the growth since Q4 2004? Skyemoor 03:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Probably rightly so, too - Wikipedia is not a place for analysis of the data, but only for reporting the data or for reporting analyses done elsewhere. So cite an authoritative source saying that production is levelling off, and we're good to go. Otherwise, it's your opinion, and that's POV, regardless of whether I agree with you (which I do) or not. Bobo159 21:29, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm only citing the data, which clearly shows a leveling off in the near term. And that is what I state, no more, no less.Skyemoor 01:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
No - you're interpreting data. Citing data is "production for period X was Y"; interpreting is "production appears to me to have the following trend". That is not how the data appears to everyone - indeed, I've read arguments saying that this pattern means a further increase is likely - so this is pretty clearly interpretation of data. Once that is recognized, we can discuss whether this is reasonable interpretation of data (which it may well be). Bobo159 18:25, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
The data shows a leveling off from prior growth, which is obvious.
Obvious to you, perhaps, but Wikipedia is not here to report things that are obvious to Skyemoor. Now, it would be reasonable to cite someone saying that production is levelling off, such as these guys, but then you'd have to contend with the fact that they appear to be contradicted by more recent data. Still, that would be a much more reasonable basis for a "levelling off" claim than "it's obvious to me". Bobo159 06:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
With production growth rates declining over the last 18 months, production has indeed leveled off. It doesn't take a quote from an expert to state the obvious, even if you don't like what the data communicates. Skyemoor 03:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
If you want to demonstrate otherwise, please provide something concrete which shows a 1% growth over 18 months is exponentially increasing over 1.7% from the prior 2 decades. Skyemoor 01:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Law of the Excluded Middle Fallacy; it's quite possible that neither of those descriptions is true, so failure to demonstrate that production is increasing at 1.7% annually in no way demonstrates that production is levelling off. A steady 1% growth rate, for example, would be neither 1.7% nor levelling off, so I'm afraid you'll have to back up the "levelling" claim a little bit. Bobo159 06:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
If a yearly average growth rate of 1.7% is replaced by a yearly average growth rate of less than 1%, that shows the growth rate to be leveling off. Note that I didn't say 'level production', which would infer no growth. Skyemoor 12:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I would also argue that year-on-year changes are the most neutral statistics to report, and that it's biased to carefully pick either an unusually high starting point (to give the impression of low growth) or an unusually low starting point (to give the impression of high growth).

It interesting that you've chosen to pick the lowest starting point to give the impression of high growth, all the way through your section. On the other hand, I've chosen to identify the peak production of 2004 (Q4), which showed a steady progression throughout that year. After that, production became volatile, which would not be the basis for rational comparisons on a quarter by quarter basis, but lends itself to the cherry-picking you've been insisting upon.Skyemoor 14:21, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
You are in error. I have consistently shown year-on-year changes, which involves neither the highest nor the lowest starting points. Take a look at the chart -- you'll see I'm right. Were I cherry-picking a starting point to suggest that growth is high, I would clearly choose Q3 2005; since it's lower than Q2 2005 and more recent, it would give a very high annual growth rate. I have no interest in pushing an agenda that oil production has been growing either quickly or slowly, though, so I used Q1 2005 vs. Q1 2006, and then updated to Q2-vs-Q2 when the data became available. I don't see how showing year-on-year changes is "cherry-picking". Perhaps you could explain how that is so, and how carefully selecting the data point that makes growth look lowest is more reasonable. Bobo159 21:29, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
You are overly hasty in your assignment of error. Yes, you compared Q2 2005 with Q2 2006 with Q2 2004. But Q4 2004 was the eventual peak in 2004, which you've somehow missed in your cherrypicking.Skyemoor 01:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Why do you insist that Q4 2004 be used in every possible analysis? If one is doing a year-on-year comparison - which is the standard for comparing this kind of thing - then quarters other than the corresponding one a year ago don't play a role. Indeed, you're engaging in the very definition of cherry-picking here - you've identified a data point you really, really like (Q4 2004), and you're trying to shoehorn it into every single analysis. By contrast, I'm picking a standard analysis methodology - year-on-year - and simply letting the chips fall where they may, without trying to influence the story the data is telling one way or the other. Bobo159 18:25, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Remember, we are talking about peaking production in this article. Look at the graph for 2004 - production progressively grew up through Q4. It then became volatile. What was the peak up until that point? Q4 2004. So that becomes the benchmark. Your 'year-on-year' methodology conveniently avoid some of the lower production quarters in 2004 and 2005, which skews your results. Skyemoor 01:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Find anyone reputable who analyses data like that. You will find that nobody does, because that's cherry-picking. By contrast, everyone analyses the data the way I'm suggesting: the International Energy Agency does year-on-year (p.4), the US Energy Information Administration does year-on-year, British Petroleum does year-on-year, ... This isn't me making up a methodology; this is how this kind of thing is done, precisely to avoid the temptation to cherry-pick data to support a cherished belief. Massaging the data like this is the reason for the saying regarding "lies, damned lies, and statistics". As that article notes, "even accurate statistics can be used to bolster an inaccurate argument through such methods as selectively choosing data." That's the reason for using a clear and well-defined methodology, such as year-on-year. Bobo159 06:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
I've visited the sites you've provided many times in the past, and they even describe differences in production on a month by month basis, so I have no problem with using an 18 month time period. You, on the other hand, are cherrypicking data out of selected quarters, ignoring those data points which dismiss your contention. That, is the essence of 'lies, damn lies, and statistics'. Skyemoor 12:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Your approach would be fine, if you were consistent in using an 18-month time period. Instead, you've used a 16-month time period, then a 17-month, then a 18-month, and soon a 19-month, all to keep your favorite data point in use. That is the essence of lying with statistics.
By contrast, I have used a 12-month time window. Period. No changing the window to make sure the right data is highlighted. That is the essence of good statistics.
If you don't agree, by all means ask a statistician. You will find they agree with me. Bobo159 01:34, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I've simply picked the last production figures from 2004, which happen to also be the highest. Since the subject IS peak oil, then gauging production growth drops is a possible indicator of a peak... or it could just be another hiccup. As you see, I draw no particular conclusions, other that what the data itself states. And I am not stating by months, but by quarters. Are you a statitician, or do you just speak for them? I have no doubt I could find a statician who would be thrilled with the simple statements I've made. Skyemoor 03:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
You ignore Q1, Q3, and Q4 of 2005, because they show a dropoff or insignificant increase from Q4 2004. That's cherrypicking, no matter how you try to wrap it in banal rhetoric of 'year-on-year' changes.Skyemoor 01:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
No; I'm not reporting Q1, Q3, or Q4 of 2005 because that's how year-on-year statistics work, not because they do or do not support my argument. In fact, the annual rate of increase has been 1.3% since Q1 2005, 1.7% since Q3 2005, and 1.9% since Q4 2005, all of which would give a much higher value for annual production growth than the Q2-vs-Q2 comparison I'm suggesting. You keep accusing me of "cooking the books" and "cherry-picking data" to artificially inflate the recent production growth, but I keep showing that you are provably wrong. So would you stop doing that, please?
By contrast, though, your absolute insistence that by far the most important data point is Q4 2004 is the very definition of cherry-picking data. You're seizing on a single data point and insisting that that proves your point of view is correct; that's not a valid argument. Bobo159 18:25, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Q4 2004 set a historical production high, which was the benchmark from that point forward. Production became volatile after that, which could be a signal or just a temporary setback: I make no judgement about that, I simply report the data, which shows production growth leveling off in the following 18 months. Skyemoor 01:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
According to IEA figures, production has been higher than Q4 2004 for all of 2006[4], so I don't see how you're calling it a "historical production high". Bobo159 06:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Reread the sentence; I never said it wasn't surpassed (indeed, I supplied data to show it was), I simply said it became volatile after that. If you can find a quarter in which production surpassed Q4 2004 prior to that point, I'd like to see your sources. Skyemoor 12:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


Relatedly, the "Countries Past Peak" table linked to in that section is verifiably incorrect (see that page). While it is known that a large number of countries have passed their petroleum peak, that table is not a reliable source for a precise count. Bobo159 20:44, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

The term 'approximately' should be fine.Skyemoor 14:21, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Not necessarily. No parts of the cited table are reliable until it's overhauled -- for example, it was showing Canada as peaking in 1973, but the linked-to data shows Canada's petroleum production has been higher than that peak since 1993 -- so there's no basis for using a number derived from that table. Given the requirement that content must be verifiable, I don't see how it's reasonable to say anything more specific than "many". Bobo159 21:29, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. While you provide a reason to restate the number as 'approximately 38", I see no reason not to reference another Wikipedia page that has not been declared invalid. Indeed, the table clearly states, "Inclusion on this list does not necessarily mean oil extraction cannot exceed the previous peak in that country." Skyemoor 01:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
There is no indication that any of that table is valid. I've checked about a half-dozen of the countries on the table, and about half either are erroneously listed as peaking or are below their all-time high but completely fail to follow a Hubbert curve.
Nothing in the statement mentions whether or not the countries have followed a bell curve, only that they have passed peak production. Please provide data on other countries in that table that are erroneously showing they are past production when they are not. Skyemoor 01:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
The table is linked from the top of the "Has it happened yet?" section of the "Hubbert Peak" article with the statement "have passed their peaks"; there is a distinct implication that they have passed their Hubbert peaks, which is not what the table is talking about. However, I think the paragraph is much better with your new edits, especially since the Chevron quote you've put there is more informative than what we had previously. Bobo159 06:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Since Wikipedia insists its articles be verifiable, and there is no indication the data in that table has been verified, it's not reasonable to rely on it, especially when a general quantifier such as "many" would do the job just as well. Why is "approximately 38" (but maybe some other number) more valuable than "many" or "a substantial number"? Bobo159 18:25, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Referencing another Wikipedia article is perfectly acceptable. If the number is approximately 38, why shouldn't that number be used? Skyemoor 01:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Part of the edit war was that I inadvertently reverted a legitimate user's contribution thinking it was that 70.134.*.* vandal. Nova SS 20:48, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I originally added the "appears to have levelled off" phrase, but I'm inclined to wait for the end of 2006 to see what happens.

Actually, I did on July 28. You are referring to another quote about "flattening out", which Bobo took out as well. I'm not making any declaration that this is the beginning of the global peak, but simply reflecting the data over the last 18 months, which I state clearly. Identifying the peak will occur sometime after it has taken place. 01:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)Skyemoor

Realistically, we'll be sure that the peak has been hit only about 3 to 5 years afterward. Meanwhile, we should keep updating the charts quarterly and let the reader judge the trend. The really striking effect, which isn't mentioned much, is that the price of oil more than tripled without much increase in production. That's an indication of how inelastic the supply side is. --John Nagle 19:27, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, agreed, agreed, and agreed - in that order. Bobo159 06:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


One interesting thing I ran across: quarterly oil demand from the IEA (p.4). The interesting part is that Q4 2004 had unusually high demand, which might explain some of why it was such a high-production quarter. It's also interesting to note that Q4/Q1 has much higher demand than Q2/Q3, which the text suggests is due to heating requirements in the winter. This pattern seems to repeat for the reports from the previous years, suggesting another reason why year-on-year is the normal way to analyze the data: demand and production vary with the seasons, meaning that comparing numbers from two different seasons will invariably give skewed results. It's like comparing apple harvests for Q3 and Q1; one is not likely to get sensible results without taking into account where in the apple's growth cycle we are. Similarly, it appears as if we won't get meaningful results unless we take into account where in the winter heating/summer driving cycle we are. Hence year-on-year - compare at the same point in the cycle to cancel out those cyclic effects. Bobo159 07:10, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

At unheralded high prices, and low stockpile rates in late 2004 and early 2005, oil produced was still being absorbed into stockpiles, and in the US and China, was continually being added to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and China's petroleum reserve. Indeed, production was still being added in a few short months after Rita/Katrina. [5] If you simply look a the chart on the right of the page, it shows production rarely affected by seasonal variation. So if we are at a point now where suddenly this becomes an issue, at historically high prices and razor thin demand/supply margins, such a claim would have to viewed with suspicion and a high degree of scepticism. Skyemoor 12:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Critiques

"Some oil industry executives, economists, and analysts" simply refers back to Michael Lynch, who was already referenced before. When citations can be provided, then this sentence could be reinstated. Skyemoor 15:27, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Mitigation

Mr. 70.132.*.* wanted the 55 mph speed limit under #Mitigation. Although that makes little sense, as it has not been shown that speed limits, even if observed, significantly reduce actual fuel usage, even a tightening of the CAFE standards would qualify. (I'm going to be on wikivacation from a time less than a 24 hours from now for at least 5 days, so I'll have to leave it to others to watch Mr. 70.132.*.*'s edits.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 18:31, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Within appropriate ranges, lower highway speeds (i.e., 70mph -> 55mph) do reduce fuel consumption on a mile-by-mile basis. There are endless studies and lab results to confirm this, even engine manufacturers agree;
http://www.everytime.cummins.com/every/pdf/4103811.pdf
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question477.htm
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/driveHabits.shtml
The exact fuel efficiency point is a complex matter for each vehicle, related to the final drive ratio, peak efficiency motor speed, and aerodynamic drag characteristics, primarily.Skyemoor 21:14, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Is it just about "watching my edits" or are there others out there interested in presenting relevant information in this section? So far there seems to be a bias towards bland statements that cannot convey actual information and are lieing by omission. For instance ordinary hybrid vehicles do not save much gas over a modern fuel efficient regular car but I am forced to leave that fact out due to Arthur's zealousness for saying nothing. Arthur's statements on the 55 mph speed limit above is just incomprehensible.12.162.10.2 16:38, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

"For instance ordinary hybrid vehicles do not save much gas over a modern fuel efficient regular car". You don't give the definition of a 'ordinary hybrid vehicle', but my Honda Insight achieves 60-70 mpg, which is significantly greater than 'a modern fuel efficient regular car'. Granted, a hybrid Accord only gets a couple of extra mpg, but you can't lump all hybrid vehicles in one category. Skyemoor 01:04, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I know its confusing because people usually quote the plug-in hybrids at 100 MPG which is not true. The plug-in hybrid vehicles can go 40 miles without using gas. So for me that would mean driving to work all week and back without using any gas! On the week end people take longer trips but then they are also frequently car pooling. So the savings from plug-in hybrids are much much greater than what 60-70 mpg will mitigate. Also your 60-70 mpg is not free way. Ironically if you are in the fast diamond lane in California, which the hybrid allows you to be, your gas mileage will not be much different than any other new Honda because you are not braking and recharging the battery. This is all true and well known but I don't know how to put it in a form that will get past the censors. 70.132.29.69 02:25, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

On plug-in hybrids, I agree. On my hybrid Insight, however, I do indeed attain 65+ mpg on the highway/freeway. You must be thinking of the Prius, which gets better around-town mileage than highway. Skyemoor 12:15, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

You're right I hadn't researched the Insight - updating the section12.162.10.2 15:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

The Insight isn't the only hybrid to achieve significant savings; the Prius and Honda Civic, for example, also fall into this category. Updating the section. Skyemoor 16:07, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Without the "some" in there it sounds like you are saying all hybrids are high efficiency.12.162.10.2 16:11, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

The term "high efficiency" is an adjective, which identifies those hybrids which are high efficiency. Other hybrids do not apply to the sentence, which makes the use of 'some' unneccessary. However, a better adjective might be 'high mpg' I understand your concern and I agree wholeheartedly that hybrids that do not achieve high mpg are not in any way mitigations, but a form of greenwash. 66.225.251.176 14:10, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


External Sites

Almost every one of the sites referenced could be classified as blogs. It is discriminatory and arbitrary to include some but not others, especially when some of the others contain newsfeeds and static articles. These are not social networking sites. Skyemoor 00:51, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

My criteria for weeding was whether or not the site appeared to be notable. One for instance was written by an expert who is frequently quoted by major media outlets. The other main criteria I looked at was whether or not the site was ad-laden. It's pretty common for people to put together quick "news aggregator" sites on a particular topic, then seed them with ads. It's unusual to see an article with this many links; I think most editors agree that we should focus more on content and links should be limited to only a few highly-relevant/notable ones. OhNoitsJamie Talk 01:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. Way to many links here, and very few are needed. let's stick to scientific ones, nothing on blogs or comapnies. HawkerTyphoon 01:13, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Some of the best research and analysis is going on in the blogosphere using what numbers are publicly available, to be honest. Not everything has to link original research, linking valuable analysis is probably more important for something as technical as oil reserve analysis. Respectable third party reports on the topic are quite pricy, and internal research tends to stay internal. Some of the most cited (in mainsteam press) reports involve statements by non-scientists, and organizations like CERA consistently overstate predicted production figures in what's become a cottage industry of yes-men. Eliminating, for example, The Oil Drum would be irresponsible, as one of the places producing pages of many analysis on how Hubbert's curve fits with reality, every single day. "Social Networking" involves the primary goal of developing friendships, whereas a blog can be anywhere on a continuum from personal diary to medical-journal level article. Judge on content, not whether the source allows comments and discussion of content.Lesqual 01:17, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

In addition to the Oil Drum, Peakoil.com is certainly 'notable'. According to the senior site admin, it has 140,000 registered users, averages over 40,000 pageviews per day, is non-profit, and maintains a editorial group who manually sift and select the news. So this is not a fly by night ad trap, it is an honest to goodness top shelf operation that enjoys visits from Savinar and other notable PO proponents, as well as repeat visits from Michael Lynch et al. Removing it from the list was done in haste, without an understanding of its contributions or relevance. Skyemoor 16:16, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

bad edit.

Hi there, I removed the first sentence from the article because its completely unsubstantiated or referenced, and controversial, as well as being completely out of place within the flow of the article. This sentence was:

"Many people believe Peak Oil is the untold motive of 9/11, facilitated by the U.S. government, as a pretext to secure energy supplies. " Astack 21:54, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Concur. Skyemoor 16:16, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you should reintreduce it in a section about conspiracy theoryies.Like for example,peak oil is a scam from the industry to inflate prices an things like that.--Pixel ;-) 20:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

bad graph

TrendLinesOilDepletionScenarios41211.png which appears in the Implications of a world peak section has 6 lines, yet the legend refers to 7 of them (the OPEC 2004 line being absent in the graph). As I do not have the original data, nor am I photoshop adept, I cannot fix this. 24.203.57.221 02:54, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Some industrialized countries are currently highly dependent on oil.

Skyemoor reverted my statement "At present, industrialized economies are highly dependent on oil." to the above. I do not believe my statement is POV as Skyemoor asserts in the edit history. Perhaps my statement is not the best way of saying this, but "some" is NOT a correct characterization of the current oil dependency situation. There are ZERO industrialized economies on the planet that are not highly dependent on oil. It's that simple, and "some" does not illustrate the scope of the issue here. SparhawkWiki 15:18, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

"Highly" is an adjective with no set meaning in this context; Do you base this on the per capita consumption? Along with GDP or standard of living? Or because most commuters in a country have a whim to drive themselves to work? Or does it have to do with the amount of critical infrastructure that cannot operate without it? Do you mean the simple existence of oil, or high volumes of oil production/imports? Do you distinguish between heavy or light industry? Are there specific industries that are completely dependent on oil in all countries? If so, state those that are and provide citations. Note that the industrial nation with one of the highest oil exports (Norway) is the least dependent, whereas the country with the highest imports is the most dependent (U.S.). There is no clear answer to any of the above questions, so a complete blanket statement about all industrialized nations is not only ambiguous, but also speculative and therefore POV. Skyemoor 18:15, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
First of all, if you disagree with the use of the word "highly", then why revert to a version of this that also uses the word "highly"? Secondly, I disagree that this statement must be that specific, again, all criticisms that you make here are equally applicable to the reverted statement. My point is: all industrialized economies at present are dependent on oil for the continued existence of their economies. I do not believe that this is a controversial statement, nor do I believe that it is a statement that, for the introduction to the subject matter, requires a lot in the way of citation. For most of the 20th century and the 21st, industry is synonymous with oil. At present, a country that does not have an oil supply does not have an industrial economy. If you insist in using "some" instead of "all", I suggest you point out an industrial economy that does not depend on oil in 2006.SparhawkWiki 18:02, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the term "highly" is indeed subjective, but some industrialized countries are indeed highly dependent on oil, such as the US, Canada, and some other developed nations. However, the degree of dependency is widely variant, as Norway and Sweden, for example, use less than half the oil per capita, and Sweden is on an agressive path to eliminate its oil dependency completely. So I believe it's important to note the distinctions, instead of using an overly broad brush. You are certainly on the right track, as GWB did admit that the US was addicted to oil in the SOTU speech this February. Skyemoor 22:44, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


Wait -- are any economies "highly dependent" on oil (consumption)? It would seem they're more dependent on energy, which, if need be, can be converted into oil. (e.g., turning some hydrocarbon matter into oil for things that currently *must have* oil, others to electricity, etc.) MrVoluntarist 18:36, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not only energy,ther's also derivatives like plastics and chemicals.Even norway wher 100% of it's electricity commes from hydro,they still are dependent to oil for all the rest.--Pixel ;-) 20:30, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
And...what does that have to do with my point? MrVoluntarist 19:09, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I didn't read you well in my original comment.Any whay it's a lot more cumbersome than the use of oil,even if energy is present.If energy is present we can do enything we whant.Is quite probable that we continue to pump oil for centuries,not for energy but for the chemical indistry(by consuming energy).--Pixel ;-) 23:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, yeah, and I guess it depends on how pedantic you want to be about it. For example, lets say that China's diet is 80% rice or something like that (don't know if it's true, lets assume it is). One could correctly make the statement that the Chinese are "highly dependent" on rice. But, a pedant could come along and say "well, they're not highly dependent on rice so much as food, after all they could eat any food, right? Well, it's true, but it doesn't correctly reflect reality since they can't easily supplement the amount of rice they eat with some other equivalent food. Once you start down that road, you start abstracting the dependencies so far up the chain that they don't make sense anymore. SparhawkWiki 17:38, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

IMO, it depends on how you define "highly dependent". Let's say tomorrow the oil were shut off. The U.S. and most industrial societies would be in bad shape because most of our infrastructure (especially in the US) is dependent on oil in the form or gasoline (for personal transportation) or diesel (for moving goods). Now, surely you can say "Well you don't need to be using oil, any source of energy will do" but the infrastructure is not designed that way and will take a substantial amount of time to change. I suspect that this is why numerous politicians and corporations favor hydrogen powered vehicles and bio-ethanol type schemes, because they would require the least amount of infrastructure change. Also, if I remember correctly, oil-from-something-else schemes are notoriously inefficient energetically. Astack 15:22, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, you remember incorrectly. In any case, it's true that is oil were to have a shock, that would cause significant disruptions until substitutes are in place. But then, you could say that about anything currently in reliable supply. If the supply of something seems to be reliable, people will predicate more of their actions on it continuing to be supplied. Like food. So a more accurate statement would be that "current infrastructure is built in the anticipation of a steady flow of oil, requiring readjustment during shocks" or something along those lines. MrVoluntarist 20:37, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Prove it. Show me one case where a modern society has completely transitioned off oil to another energy source. During WWII several countries tried transitioning to ethanol and not one of them was doing it after WWII ended. Also, I point out that the countries that won that war also happened to retain control of the oil fields, those that lost didn't. Some countries like Norway and Iceland which are small could concievably rely on their geothermal and hydroelectric, resp. for all their power but they certainly couldn't power the rest of the world. France gets about 70% of its electric power from nuclear, but they still transport 8b metric tons of freight by truck, second only to 14b for rail (both of which use oil). The bottom line is that your assertion that a society could transition off oil is unsubstianted, it may very well be true, but it is by no means proven. Astack 23:33, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Hubbert's Peak for Coal, Gas?

Did Hubbert make any predictions or do any modeling of coal and gas reserves? If not, then it would not be right to create these categories under Hubbert's Peak. They should be their own articles. Skyemoor 23:29, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you mixing everything.Because he didn't do that him self,that don't mean that the theory can't be aplied on thies too(i don't now if he actully aply it him self or not).Einstein didn't aply relativity on every thing that is consivable to aply on it,but is still relativity.It would be extrymly strange that oil chould stay here like if hubbert theory is only about oil,and other articles(like gas) is refering here for explanations about the theory.--Pixel ;-) 21:03, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Hubbert's peak is typically used for oil. I am not aware of it for uranium or coal, and the depletion model for natural gas is a little different. For natural gas fields, production rates keep up pretty high until it simply runs out and rapidly drop off, rather than the nice smooth bell curve for oil. I don't have a cite for this, have to look.66.92.94.174 21:36, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Is mostly associeted with oil because it's the big fass of the moment.Aparently it can even be aplied for population grow.But i'm a little bit confused because definitions of theoryies begin to be unclear here.But if you accept that it don't aplie on uranium or coal then what model do you use for thoes?For gas,yes it is suposed to do that, but be aware that more than one curves can be used for modeling,for example world population modeling use tree and world oil production use two.So the theory don't demand that the final curve is nice smooth and symetrical.--Pixel ;-) 23:15, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree entirely that coal, gas, and uranium can have their own depletion models. But since they are not addressed by Hubbert, it would not be correct to put them in this article. I suggest you create other articles to contain this information. Skyemoor 00:31, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Because it wasn't adressed by hubbert ,it's meaningless.The point is,what the term "Hubbert peak theory" is suposed to mean exacly?Is it soly about oil?--Pixel ;-) 02:02, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Plus coal and uranium wher direcly adressed by hubbert.[6] The theory is suposed to be generic.It's not possible that he aplied it anywhere it was aplicable.
Plus, the peak in fossil fuels are interlinked.A problem in one will simply add pressiour on the others.So it's important to mention,if for example gas has inded peaked in 2001(USA) it simply means that the usa will be more depended on oil with even more important concequences.--Pixel ;-) 02:17, 8 September 2006 (UTC)


You have a point about coal and natural gas, as they were discussed by Hubbert in terms of projected resources. I would support their entry here. Skyemoor 03:00, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't like that link,too commercial,take it as an example.[7]--Pixel ;-) 16:40, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

An example for cod, and again with population.[8]--Pixel ;-) 16:49, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

To answer the original question: Yes, Hubbert did apply his "theory" (if that's what you want to call it) to oil, gas, coal, and uranium, at least in the 1956 paper. As Hubbert never adequately explains (to my knowledge) why his predictions should hold, it's a bit pointless to argue whether or not this is appropriate.

RandomP 09:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Well,it would be OR if we argue about it.--Pixel ;-) 17:51, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry? RandomP 19:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Note, however, that while there is a physical reason for oil production to decline exponentially towards the end of a field's lifetime (as water is pumped into the field to replace the oil-water mixture that is taken out, the remaining oil in the field is diluted further), I am not aware of such a reason for coal or gas.

RandomP 09:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Similar reason,The richest and easyly exploitable ores are exploited first(expodential groth),at the end only the poorest remane..Whell the fact is that he did,so no reason to argue this.--Pixel ;-) 17:51, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
It's a scientific theory (or claims to be). It's not a work of art, and it needs to be internally consistent. If your premises don't carry over from one case to another, then neither does your theory. I don't see why exponential decay should carry over, and if it's not obvious, someone needs to argue for that. RandomP 19:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
If it's internaly uncounsistend simply put it in the article,is not your theory.And yes,it is internaly consistend.For all resources peopol go for the easy part first,and leave the harder for last,the result is expodential groth and declines.--Pixel ;-) 20:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Hubbert's "theory" for oil is not, as far as I can see, inconsistent; it's just totally incomplete and, a priori, has no predictive power. Applying it to situations where his premises clearly do not hold, rather than merely being questionable, would make it inconsistent, though.
I think you are trying to say
Whenever a scarce resource is being exploited by a sufficiently large number of people, the exploitation curve will initially grow exponentially and decay exponentially in the limit for large times.
That statement is incorrect; in many of the simpler examples you can think of, a normal distribution will be what should logically be, and is empirically, a very good approximation.
(As an aside: the main difference is that the initial growth of the normal distribution is faster than exponential; in all the attempts I have seen to use a Hubbert curve to approximate actual production curves, there is an initial period where production grows much faster than the Hubbert production function does — consistent with a normal distribution. Image:Norway_hubbert.jpg is one example of this).
RandomP 21:25, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not aware of Hubbert describing his theory as "generic", and it clearly is not. Applying it to renewable resources or population violates what little scientific integrity there is in the logistic-curve derivation in the first place (the whole point of the logistic curve, as far as Hubbert is concerned, is that it is the "simplest" curve, in his opinion, to satisfy the following constraints:

  • finite integral
  • exponential growth in the limit for early times
  • exponential decay in the limit for late times

Leaving out the first constraint voids that line of argument.)

RandomP 09:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

The aplication on renewables,is on the cases that production is to big.Like with cod,if you fish it too much,thers less and less.So finite integral is reached.If you whant to see it in an other way,for a normal renewable ,you set the cumulative production as infinite.--Pixel ;-) 17:51, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
That is not Hubbert's "theory". It has different premises. It might quite easily come to different conclusions. "Setting the cumulative production to be infinite" does not make sense in the slightest when talking about logistic curves. RandomP 19:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
What?The logistic curve don't becaume an expodantial?That's what you expect from a renewable.If you whant you could see fossil resources as renewables with extrimly long periodes of regeneration.--Pixel ;-) 20:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

In short, no claims that the theory is generic, or that it applies to anything that Hubbert hasn't mentioned, are appropriate for this article.

Do you have sources that say something about it(in ither direction)?--Pixel ;-) 20:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

RandomP 09:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any claims that hubbert theory is aplicable exclusevly to oil.--Pixel ;-) 17:51, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
As far as I know, Hubbert never gave a good explanation for why premises two and three should hold for oil (however, there are well-known physical reasons for this). In the non-oil cases, even the physical reasons no longer apply.
Wher did you find your last claim?--Pixel ;-) 20:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
The physical reason that oil wells, if kept in operation, decline exponentially in production is very simple: as they take oil (and water) out of the subterranean basin holding the oil, they have to replace it with water; that way, the oil-water mixture in the basin is diluted with water, and the concentration of oil in it declines exponentially.
The same is not true of the way gas, coal, and just about everything else are produced.
RandomP 21:25, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
For oil,despite the fact that oil wells are keep been added.For,let's say gas,pressiour collapses,and at the same time more and more holes are driled,despite that new drilling can't keep up the collapse of the pressiour.For Coal and other "rocky" ores,the big and rich vanes are exploited first,later smaler and smaler vanes have to be put in production,so the miners produce more and more useles rock despite the fact of more and more work thron in to it.For cod,in the begining they are big groups,you throw your net,and cach a big lot,no gps,satelite or whatever is neded.At the end the population is brake up in smaller groups,more disperced,in the same ocean,you need biger and biger nets,you have to stay more days at see for the same quantity of fish...--Pixel ;-) 22:05, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Take, just for example, the cod case that you keep going on about: today, it is trivial to locate any remaining stock of cod. No matter how few there are, you can continue fishing them at a rate limited only by that point when there will be no more. The exponential decay in the limit for large times just wouldn't happen. Thus, Hubbert's "theory" is inapplicable.
RandomP 19:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't understant what you saying here.The cod is rarer an rarer,It becomes harder and harder to fish.At one point thers no cod left.Expodential decline intill extinction.It's a nice expodential decline to zero.--Pixel ;-) 20:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
No. What I was describing is a production curve that would keep growing until all cods were caught, at which point it would suddenly fall back to zero. (No, it wouldn't quite look like that, but the ultimate decline would probably be faster than exponential).
There is a very important distinction to be made between "quick decline" and "exponential decline"; the exponential growth article is worth reading.
RandomP 21:25, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
This last one is simply incorect.If the cods wher in a frige.Then yes,you have one,an other one and sudenly the frige is empty.The cods are rarer and rarer,the fishermen are cauting less and less,despite working harder and harder.At one point the densite is so low that the fish goes extincte.What you think that the fish is stupid enof to wait and cach it?When ther's less fish,it becomes harder and harder to find them,the packs get smaller and more disperced.Acording to hubbert theory,this is what happens,you have nothing else then POV as conterclaim.--Pixel ;-) 22:05, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
My source says that hubbert theory is aplicable to cod.Are you saying that my source is incorect,or at least not notable?I don't see what i have to prouve further in order to put it in the article.--Pixel ;-) 22:05, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Show us your source, so that we can evaluate it. So far, I have not seen anything from Hubbert that talks about Cod. Skyemoor 16:28, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Why should it be from hubberts little hand?Give me a source of what the official definition of hubbert theory should be.My source says that he aplied hubbert methodology.--Pixel ;-) 16:51, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Difficulty of a Reliable Assessment

Deleted the following as uncited original research:

More generally, the strong opacity surrounding the amount of real oil resources makes it very difficult to credibly evaluate the potential proximity of a global oil peak (timeline being the main sticking point, given that very few economists or geologists contest Hubbert's depletion model as such). The main reason for this opacity is rather simple : all players have an interest to inflate supposed oil resources - oil companies (it increases their financial weight), producing countries (it bestows them a stronger international stature), consumer countries (governments don't want to panic their citizens/consumers nor the financial markets). As a result, if the world is near or, worse, past an oil peak, it will be left grossly unprepared, and the consequences for economies and societies dependant on oil (that is to say most of the world) would be far-reaching and potentially devastating.

Actually, we don't need reserve data to find when the production peak occurs. The main point of Hubbert's theory is that it's sufficient to observe current production over time. --John Nagle 05:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

  • You're right, in Hubbert's model the evolution of current production allows for extrapolation of the peak. However, the point of this section was about the exterior objective factors allowing to crossexamine and verify Hubbert's peak as applied to world oil production (Hubbert's model was so far verified only for national productions, mainly the US). So it seems to me that this aspect concerning the opacity of real oil reserves is important and should be integrated into the article one way or another. Maybe not in a special section. Maybe at the end of the "Critique" section.--Fils du Soleil 07:00, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
In fact,nowing the reserve data can help for beter modelling,for a real life prediction.Even actual production,is complicated too now with acuracy,too many peopol are encourage too cheat.--Pixel ;-) 17:12, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Multiple Curves

Does anyone think we need a section on "Multiple Curves", other than Pixel? Skyemoor 01:06, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Added a bit more info.Lesqual 05:50, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I really don't understand why you whant it complitly out.--Pixel ;-) 19:08, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Industry Opinion

A few points:

The Hubbert Model

Perhaps the main appeal of the Hubbert peak theory is its simplicity, but unfortunately, this is perhaps also its downfall. The global economy, the petroleum industry and the earth's crustal geology are complex matters and any model that will give production predictions, or even simply total recuperable resources, will need to be complex.

The Hubbert peak theory has been used to predict peaks in the 1980s, 1990s and today. Most recently it was used to "predict in retrospect" that the peak had arrived in 2003, but product has increased monotonically since 2002, and this is part of a strong upward long term trend.

We are to take the word of an anonymous person over the actual data? The rate of production has dropped since Q4 2004, almost levelling off. Skyemoor 22:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Skyemoor, the data is in the link immediately following the paragraph! See it below? "Global Oil Production". (Actually it's not immediately following the paragraph now because of these comments...)Ordinary Person 22:42, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

The major increases are Russia, the Middle East, Central Asia, Central and South America, and Africa (both north and south of the Sahara).

Global Oil Production

You have contradicted yourself. A 'monotonic increase' would show an increasing rate of growth, though 2005 clearly shows a dropoff in growth. But we have such datapoints on the website, including the most recent information by quarter. And these show the dropoff in growth continuing into the first two quarters of 2006. Skyemoor 12:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
A 'monotonic increase' would show an increasing rate of growth,. Skyemoor, that is not what the expression monotonic increase means. An interval of monotonic increase in a function A(t) is one in which A(t2)>=A(t1) for all t2 > t1 on that interval: that is to say, an interval that contains no sub-intervals of decrease. Ordinary Person 01:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
There have been intervals recently where t1 > t2, as is clearly shown in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:WorldOilProduction2002-2006Q2.gif . If you are only referring to yearly data, then state that exception. Skyemoor 13:41, 13 September 2006 (UTC)


HPT has lead to estimates of TRR that have required constant change in one direction: the direction of a later global peak, the direction of greater Total Recuperable Resource. Any modelling system will produce estimates that vary as more data comes in, but when a system produces estimates that continue to rapidly slide in one direction over a period of decades, there are serious questions about its value.

No doubt mention has already been made of the fact that the Hubbert curves that were used in the 1970s to describe the peak in the USA's production now give estimates of the USA's current production that are less than 40% of its observed value.

Good enough, however, to have pinpointed the peak. Certainly advances in seismology and directional drilling have improved recovery and Alaskan oil has bolstered production, but the slide downward continues, while consumption continues to climb. The US has been importing a majority of its oil, which is not an assumption of the early model. But I'm sure you knew that. Skyemoor 22:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
" Good enough, however, to have pinpointed the peak. " You must surely know that Hubbert did not pinpoint the peak. He provided a function relating TRR to the date of peak. His estimate for the peak if ultimate resource was 150 billion barrels was 1965. This was his neutral estimate of TRR. ( His estimate for the peak if it was 200 billion barrels was 1970. )
Being off by two years in such a calculation is as close as pinpointing. You are quibbling about minutiae to distract from the proven fact that the US peaked not long after 1970, and is in terminal decline. Skyemoor 02:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
You should check out his 1956 paper: Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels. If, like Campbell, you have a mean estimate of TRR that is much lower than is reasonable, you can use Hubbert's methods to predict that the peak has already come. In any year from the last few decades, in fact, you could have used HPT to show the peak was less than 15 years away. Ordinary Person 23:27, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
So what you are saying is that the prediction of peak oil in year 2000 by Hubbert might not occur until a few years later? We are well aware of that. Having industry skeptics astonished again will be little comfort. Skyemoor 02:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Total (or ultimate) recuperable resource

The mainstream industry opinion is that humanity is roughly 30% of the way through the total recuperable resource of "conventional petroleum".

[9] [10] [11]

And the mainstream industry opinion was that Hubbert was wrong in 1956 about a production peak.

The "mean" estimate of TRR is 3020 billion barrels, and of that we had consumed some 710 billion barrels up to the point of 2000. At the time I write this (2006), that second figure will be heading towards 900 billion barrels.

Why not higher? Anytime a hidden resource is unaudited, any claim could be made. I have as much faith in those industry estimates as I do the industry opinions in 1956. Skyemoor 22:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
The question is: what is your source of faith in a method that predicted a peak in global production in 1986, 1995 and then later in 2003, each time being completely wrong? What is it that makes you think it is correct this time? Ordinary Person 23:12, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Too many indicators point in this direction. Demand dropped sharply in the 1970s, going outside the assumptions Hubbert based his projections on. So a peak at a later date is to be expected. Skyemoor 02:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Other sources of petroleum

While this is significant, and taken in isolation would indicate that there would be a crisis within a century in petroleum, it is only sensible to take into account the probability that as the price of petroleum rises, alternative sources of petroleum would become more attractive. A conservative estimate of the total amount of petroleum that can be easily sourced from tar sand and oil shale would be 4000 billion barrels. The creation of the facilities for this extraction would represent a considerable investment, but no wise analysis of the possibility of a resource crisis would ignore these resources.

A 'wise' analysis would understand that oil shale is neither and has the energy equivalent of baked potatoes. Also, tar sands production would not be able to stave of demand destruction were the peak to occur before 2025. Skyemoor 22:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
The oil shale resources are worth some 2 trillion barrels of oil, even allowing for the losses due to energy that has to be expended in the pyrolysis.
You don't know exactly what the EROEI will end up being, nor how soon a prototype will even determine if such an approach is feasible. The longer some people cast doubt, the slower the transition to alternatives, and the fatter the wallets of the vested interests. Skyemoor 02:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
The technology for in situ hydrocarbon extraction from oil shales has been developed: it is not regarded as an economically competitive option now, though. I'm not sure why someone would leave it out of the analysis, unless it was to deliberately give a low estimate of global energy resources.
How fast will production be able to ramp up to 6 mmbd? 12 mmbd? And if peak happens before 2010, how will oil shale be able to fill the demand gap? Skyemoor 02:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
It will take decades for production to ramp up, but that's okay, because there will be no sudden crisis associated with peak oil. The investors, developers, and consumers in industry are all aware of the situation, so a gradual change will be sufficient. Ordinary Person 11:10, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
"there will be no sudden crisis associated with peak oil". Indeed, it will be more like a slow motion train wreck. "a gradual change will be sufficient." Sounds very much like those who declared, "Peace in our time". Skyemoor 03:16, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Economic impact of the peak

It is a mistake to represent the mathematical point of the peak in production as representing a critical point, in the technical sense. Over the coming century, there will be two general trends: demand for petroleum will increase, and petroleum will become harder to find. This will lead to a general increase in prices. There will be occasional reversals (due to unexpected finds or easing of political tension), but the main trend will be irreversible until such time as humanity no longer heavily relies on petroleum for energy production.

Your last sentence is simply an unsupported pronouncement.Skyemoor 22:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
That's true, but I think it is one of those "we hold these truths to be self evident" things. Increasing demand with decreasing remaining supply = increasing prices. Ordinary Person 07:51, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The point is: in this process, the point of peak production has no special significance. There will, of course, be some year in which global conventional petroleum production is higher than in any other year, and almost certainly that year will arrive in the coming century. From a point of view of the petroleum economy, however, there will be nothing special about that year.

Prior to the peak, there will be decreasing resources, increasing demand, and hence a general trend of increasing prices (as we have observed for some time now). After the peak, there will be decreasing resources, increasing demand, and hence a general trend of increasing prices.

"Increasing prices" is an understatement. The oil companies surely must be reveling for that moment to come, because even if they have less oil to sell, they will make much, much more. Unless measures are taken to become less addicted to oil. Skyemoor 22:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no reason from economic theory to think that there will be any sudden change, or crash, associated with the time of the peak. Probably it will not even be realised that that was the peak until many years later, after "the oil age". This is because the oil production graph is punctuated with "local maxima": years in which production is higher than in the years around it, but not necessarily the overall maximum.

Undoubtably, there will be a volatile plateau in terms of price and production. Skyemoor 22:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

There is also no reason to think that the peak of production will coincide with the moment when half of the resources have been consumed, and in fact it seems almost certain that the two points in time will be decades apart.

One final point: there has been a tendency for some of the Peak Oil authors and presenters to overstate the industrial problems that the end of crude oil will represent. Some even go so far as to suggest that the airline industry will be greatly reduced in activity. To be responsible, they should point out that jet fuel, and for that matter gasoline/petrol, can be created from either coal or natural gas (of which plenty remain).

Coal yes. NG production is down and has been going down in the US since 2001. http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9050us2A.htm
The world does not end at the US border. The comparison between usage and TRR of NG with that of crude would suggest that the global peak will come much later for NG than for crude.Ordinary Person 22:42, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I understand that, though getting a full fledged LNG infrastructure (and agreements) up and running doesn't happen overnight. And since the US border does not define all of North America, I invite you to share what you know about NG production trends in North America over the last 20 years with an emphasis on the 6 most recent. Skyemoor 02:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
The general trend within North America has been for demand to greatly outstrip growth in supply. Ordinary Person 07:46, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Just as I suspected, you have avoided the painful truth about North American NG production growth trends. The fact is, even with Canadian production included, North American NG production has declined. And Lee Raymond himself said that North American gas had peaked in 2003. But from what you've said, you are clearly extremely well informed on this subject. I offer you the opportunity once again to share the NA NG production trends (in a more numerical format, this time). Skyemoor 12:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
There is nothing particularly painful or secret about the fact that the NG supply in North America is in decline. It has decreased about 6% since the start of the millennium. Ordinary Person 23:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
So price spikes on consumers' heating bills are not painful? Your perspective is indeed an industry one. Do you forsee a return to production growth in NA this year or next? Skyemoor 13:32, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

The technology to do this is very old and established, and the only reason it doesn't happen now is that crude oil is still so abundant that it is cheaper to make fuel for transport from that. We are not going to get to the point suddenly one day where the crude oil has all run out and people abandon air transport. As crude becomes harder to find, the alternatives will become more economically attractive.

In the fullness of time, when the non-renewables really are exhausted for all practical purposes, that still need not be the end of hydrocarbon based transport. (Hydrocarbons are, after all, excellent fuels for powering land and air vehicles.) If you have a renewable energy source, water, and carbon dioxide, you can synthesise hydrocarbons. Thankfully, we have coal to last us a couple of hundred years at least, so we have plenty of time to prepare for this eventuality.

What is your role in industry? PR? Skyemoor 22:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
No. Exploration, facies interpretation and resource determination. Ordinary Person 22:42, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Pardon me, but I somehow doubt that your role eschews PR. Call it a hunch. Skyemoor 02:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I am not, and have never been, involved in PR or any kind of media work. I'm just a helpful chap. Ordinary Person 07:44, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Helpful to whom is the question. Skyemoor 12:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Ordinary Person 12:48, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

MrV's Two Cents

I don't know if statements from industry experts are reliable sources of information on the real "industry opinion". "Industry" will say whatever it takes to pander to consumers. Real industry opinion is revealed in the pricing of oil futures contracts, which shows and sudden shortage of oil to be a long time off. MrVoluntarist 13:34, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Certainly, it is reasonable to expect people paid to represent the fossil fuel industry to put a spin on matters that will maximise their returns. However, criticisms of Hubbert's methods and modern predictions being made using Hubbert's methods are not based on trust in fossil fuel industry representatives. The criticisms are based on evidence available to everyone about the history of Hubbert peak predictions and actual oil production. Campbell's estimates of resources and general methods are at odds with those of the USGS, and the USGS is not a fossil fuel industry body. Ordinary Person 23:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

peak for reneables,none finite resources

If the consumtion surpasses reneability then even reneables folow a depleation trend.You can consider renewability as a kind of discovery.The example for cod.[12].I don't want to put that bit in the article without discussion.--Pixel ;-) 00:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm warning you,if you ignore this section i'll consider ok to add it.--Pixel ;-) 16:49, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I have not seen a single source indicating that Hubbert's "theory" can be modified to apply to renewable resources. Please provide sources for everything you add to the article; also keep in mind that this article is about the Hubbert peak theory, and it might thus be a bit out of scope to include very modern research.
So, for now, please don't add anything like that?
RandomP 17:08, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

What about the cod?[13].--Pixel ;-) 17:25, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Hubbert didn't produce a theory on Cod stocks, so it shouldn't go into an article on Hubble Peak Theory. You can put it into the Cod article if you like; have you checked there first? Skyemoor 22:14, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Give me a reputable with the exact definition of what "hubbert theory" means.Is my source incorect?unreliable?I have a source how says that it is.--Pixel ;-) 22:28, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Hubbert peak fossil fuel resources and the rest

What hubbert theory means exacly,or oficially.It's clear that the method can be aplied in various places.Does someone has a source that sayes what hubbert theory is talking about, oficially?We schouldn't rearenge the article so that oil is one section(the biger one) among others,without some special place in the intro?--Pixel ;-) 01:02, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I suggest reading Hubbert's papers - I have put in some links to his papers in the longer peaks section. Basically Hubbert was concerned with sustainability and applied simple observations to the various resources humanity can run out of. His genious was not so much in complicated models as in recognizing in the first place that we have to watch finite resources and think about substitutes.70.231.224.226 03:51, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

There is (to the best of my knowledge, having followed all links to Hubbert's original writings that people sent me back when I was looking into it) no "theory" worthy of that description. The entirety of Hubbert's "theory" (that I am aware of) is this:

The premises Hubbert uses are:

  • there's a finite amount of oil (or whatever) that's ultimately going to be produced
  • production initially grows approximately exponentially
  • production decays approximately exponentially for large times

He then proposes the logistic curve because that is, in effect, the simplest curve to satisfy all these constraints, and is smooth.

Applying this to various empirical situations, there generally is something like an okay match, though usually the curve deviates and looks more like a Gaussian bell curve (a normal distribution).

To my knowledge, Hubbert never explains the second or third premise; the first is immediately obvious.

That's it. Seems unsatisfactory? It does, to me at least, and not worth making too much of a fuss about. No one's going to argue that production of a finite resource isn't going to follow something like a vaguely bell-shaped curve, with growth at the beginning and some tapering off towards the end before it becomes a novelty business.

I'm still looking for a good way to put that into the article. Essentially, "if you're looking for a scientific theory, go away. nothing to see here."

RandomP 10:14, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Hubbert theory is about the big picture.You schould see it as the Van der Waals equation or the Liquid drop model.Anyway what i whant in this section is if everybody can axept that hubbert theory is a general theory and not oil or fossil fuel theory.This implie that the intro have to be changed and the oil stuf united in one section.--Pixel ;-) 16:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I do not think that would be a good idea, at all. Hubbert's "theory" has premises that seem controversial even in the case of oil - they'd be totally out there where non-fuel materials are concerned. So, no, I can't agree with that. I think we should present the theory as it is, and that makes even the application to oil a leap of faith.

Please do not write about all the different materials it might apply to; don't explain how it's an oh-so-wonderful general theory unless you're willing to admit that the logistic curve amounts to an unsubstantiated guess. Explain the theory. Explain that it makes no usable predictions until the "Hubbert curve" comes in, and that there is no real reason to use that curve as opposed to any other one, pretty much. If you can find someone who's actually made an a-priori argument for the Hubbert curve, that definitely belongs in here, but that's about it.

RandomP 17:06, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok,i think i misexplaned my self.I didn't ask what you whant,i ask what you think that the theory is about,general or oil only?If the theory is general,then is misleading to consider oil more equall then the other resources in this article.--Pixel ;-) 17:17, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Lead section, again

The Hubbert Peak theory posits that for any given geographical area, from an individual oil field to the planet as a whole, the rate of oil production tends to follow a bell-shaped curve. Early in the curve (pre-peak), production increases due to the addition of infrastructure. Late in the curve (post-peak), production declines due to resource depletion.

"a bell-shaped curve": this implies that there is a single local maximum. Did Hubbert actually say that? source? also, there is ambiguity here about whether the term refers to the Hubbert curve in particular or just any bell-shaped curve, however that's defined. Wikilink would help that.

RandomP 10:58, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

You mean global maximum,ther are too many local ones.The real production can get disrupted ,by say, some greedy producers,wars ...--Pixel ;-) 17:10, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
No, "bell-shaped" quite definitely means there is a single local maximum. There's almost always going to be a single global maximum, of course, but that's not an interesting statement at all.
In essence, the first sentence suggests Hubbert excluded a large variety of production curves when in fact his theory never did so.
RandomP 19:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
You can add up the curvers when necessary.--Pixel ;-) 20:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

"due to the addition of infrastructure": source? What infrastructure is meant? Are pumps and wells counted as such? What about exploration? I think Hubbert is misrepresented here.

RandomP 10:58, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

the theory takes in to acount all of that by it self.All the human-mecanical-economic constraits too dificult too model,are shovled in one constant.--Pixel ;-) 17:10, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, yeah, wonderful. Then why does the statement suggest that the theory is anything to do with infrastructure? As far as I can tell, it's not taken into account, so it doesn't belong into a lead paragraph about that theory. RandomP 19:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Ther not taken explicitly,because it would be monstrous to take them in too acount in that way.What saves the day is that ther contribution tends to be stable.Plus the statement tryies to explane why the curve look like it looks,it don't try to derive from it any result.--Pixel ;-) 20:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, the "single peak", meaning single local maximum, statement is, at best, an empirical observation of Hubbert's; it's simply not true for world oil production so far. If there is a theory that posits so, we should source it.

RandomP 10:58, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Because of the arabe imbargo.You need more than one curve for world production.--Pixel ;-) 17:10, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Hubbert was alive, and publishing on the subject, well after the 1970s. Where's his modification of the theory to treat whichever events you say derailed the theory? RandomP 19:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
If you use multiple curves the prediction is fine.If you talk about peak oil why should this mater.If you talk about hubbert theory,the article means what he said personaly? or olso what other peopol contributed to it?What this article talking about?If you mean that hubbert theory is what mister hubbert sayed, then peak theory stuf should be split(general theory about peak on resources) and don't basse the predictions exclusivly on the stuf of mister hubbert.--Pixel ;-) 20:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

It is still my opinion that in this article, we should describe what little theory there is; going into potential consequences, various opinions about it etc. is secondary to actually giving an account of what Hubbert's premises (finite amount of oil; exponential growth and decay), methods (think of curve fitting constraints; declare it the simplest; method for finding not-quite-best match that doesn't require computers), and conclusions (we're all doomed) are.

RandomP 10:58, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

It is by no means obvious that you can add production curves (in fact, any production curve can be approximated as closely as required by a finite sum of Hubbert curves - the theory would lose all its predictive power).

RandomP 21:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes,obviously adding curves don't mean that you can add an infinity and claim that your theory works.But obviously you have to do something if the production was disrupted by an external factor.--Pixel ;-) 21:37, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm not aware of Hubbert ever specifying which factors were to be treated as internal and which one, as external. Please enlighten me. RandomP 21:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

But that's not what my comments were about. The current lead section states quite clearly that there is a theory that predicts a bell-shaped production curve — as the only reason that the characteristic single local peak (disregarding minor fluctuation) appears in Hubbert's work is that he arbitrarily choses the Hubbert curve as the simplest model of a production curve, it is simply not a prediction of Hubbert's "theory" that there be a single peak, or a bell shape.

RandomP 21:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

he arbitrarily choses where did you find that?If you wher too chose an arbitrary curve,why not the gausian?--Pixel ;-) 21:37, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
In Hubbert's paper (the 1980s one, check the history of this page for more details). The only justification offered for choosing the logistic curve (out of a large family of curves that does not, however, include the normal distribution) is that it is, according to criteria that never quite become clear to me, the one that appears simplest to him. RandomP 21:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
copy past here what you didn't understand.--Pixel ;-) 22:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Thank you, I believe I understood the paper. It's just that the paper does not contain an acceptable derivation of the logistic curve. There is no explanation for Hubbert's premises (see above), and out of the many many curves that satisfy them, the logistic curve is chosen because some other function defined in terms of it then happens to be quadratic. For virtually any given curve, I can come up with an argument making it the "simplest" choice. That's not how it works. You don't start out with an idea of what you want your result to be and work your way towards it.
RandomP 14:03, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, the lead section states that the initial exponential growth is due to "the addition of infrastructure". As you pointed out above, Pixel, that's not how you think the theory was meant. I take it you have no objections against removing it, then?

RandomP 21:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Infrastructures plus rich fields.The diplition is due to poor fields dispite the fact of developed infrastructures.--Pixel ;-) 21:37, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I have no idea what you're trying to say here. If you have a source for Hubbert crediting the initial exponential growth he postulates to infrastructure, please reference it. RandomP 21:48, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
According to your noleg what is it then,arbitrary?little engles?the Flying Spaghetti Monster?--Pixel ;-) 22:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
As far as I know, Hubbert never gives an explanation either for the initial exponential growth or the final exponential decline. Anyway, it is not my task to figure out why he might have thought it held — if there's no source for it, it gets deleted. WP:RS. RandomP 14:03, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that the choise of the logistic curve is quite natural [14].here the 49 version of it.[15].And i would say that yes,the groth is due only to the development of infrastructures,and the decline is due to the grdual deplition of the resources.The section is absolutly corect.If you whant you can add that production colapses despite the adition of infrastructures.--Pixel ;-) 23:37, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Can you be more specific about where those sources credit addition of infrastructure, and how they define infrastructure? Or is that only a personal opinion?
As a general recommendation, I'd suggest reading the Technocracy Study Guide, which Hubbert was a co-author of. In it, we learn that US automobile production reached an "all-time peak" of 5,600,000 cars in 1929 (p. 97), complete with a nicely-drawn bell curve. Similar peaks are available for pig iron production and industrial hours worked (p 118). As far as I know, none of these peaks actually turned out to happen the way predicted in there.
RandomP 14:03, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I read it very fast,it don't seem to me that it was a prediction.He just show a historic example,that things don't go up expodetially indefinitly.1929 was the depression,so i would find rather strange if hubbert theory could have predicted the depression.Because of the depression the model couldn't have made a prediction,plus i think that prior 1929 the curve is at a too erly stage in order to make any valuable extrapolation.--Pixel ;-) 15:59, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

The expandential groth is due to the expodential groth of the infrastructures,that are asumed to work at 100%.You hesitate with something else?Why is it growing then?Are they willingly underemploi ther infrastructures?They bild ther infrastructures instantly?If you want to deleate it go a head,i alredy read it.I'll simply keap reading the old vertion.If you want to say that a good day hubbert cleaned his teeth and sayd that "i will model resource depletion with a logistic curve" put it in the article then,put also that is unscientific with no basis at the same time that you remove the explanation for the looks of the curve.--Pixel ;-) 15:59, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

General theory

this gives me the impretion that hubbert arguments are quite general.It's just an other logistic curve model. [16][17]

This article isn't about Hubbert's "argument". It's about a theory. It's not about Hubbert coming out and saying, "oh, I think cumulative oil production will follow a logistic curve". That has all the scientific value of someone claiming to know next year's lottery numbers.
I've read the primary sources that people claim contain the derivation of the logistic curve as a model; they don't. I don't blame people assuming that they still do, of course, because many secondary sources claim so flat out, but, as far as I can tell, they are wrong.
If you want to change the entire article to be about predictions Hubbert made, with no claim of an underlying scientific process, that's another story; as long as it is about something that's portrayed as a scientific theory, though, we need to be accurate in distinguishing predictions based on rash simplifications from those based on acceptable theories.
RandomP 13:34, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Peak Oil article

Until recently, I've thought that having a search on "peak oil" at Wikipedia bringing the user to the Hubbert peak theory article was fine. The Hubbert peak theory article is becoming cluttered these days with sections relating to phosphorus, metals, and now even an attempt to include a section on renewables. Maybe it really would be best to have a separate article on "peak oil" that would contain a link to the article on "Hubbert peak theory," but would be more focused on the issue of oil. Jkintree 14:51, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

didn't you now,hubbert theory is pseudoscientific.It's obvious that oil folows a strait line to the stratosphere.Also hubbert pseudotheory talks only about specific recources,oil,coal,gas,iron, but nothing else,so phosphorus and metals section should be deleated,and ofcource include renewables is liducrous,since they are endless.Since obviously his theory works only for this very narow list,since he didn't discuss others.Like gravity,is obvious that it works only on our solar system,since newton never bother for the rest of the univerce.--Pixel ;-) 16:14, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

split proposal

hubert peak refers in general for fossil fuels and resources, like oil AND gas,coal,uranium,iron,coper ...The article is complitly overwelmed by oil problematic and nothing for the others.--Pixel ;-) 04:42, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I sujest to rename this one to oil peak, and move the hubbert theory section to it's one article.--Pixel ;-) 04:53, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

also it's 38 kilobytes long !

Can anyone produce references that show that M. K. Hubbert applied his peak theory to anything but fossil fuel fluids? Skyemoor 10:53, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

See Hubbert's 1956 paper at http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf . Jkintree 19:09, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
To summarize, Hubbert's paper discusses not just oil production, but other fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, oil shale, etc) and fissionable materials, uranium and thorium. -- KarlHallowell 00:20, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Kelly has suggested that the Alternate and EROEI sections do not belong in this article. This may be the best reason to have a separate Peak Oil article, so that this article could focus on the theory itself. The Peak Oil article would focus on the rest. Skyemoor 11:02, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I would say that both the Alternate and the EROEI sections are relevant to this article. The Alternate section mostly links to other articles, which is good. Splitting this article has been discussed multiple times in the past, and never agreed on. While Hubbert's theory also applies to natural gas and coal, the most immediate impact is likely to come from peak oil. I originally found this article by searching Wikipedia for "peak oil." Leave well-enough alone. Jkintree 19:09, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Ok, will restore the Alternate and EROIE sections. Skyemoor 01:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Support a split to Hubbert peak theory and Peak Oil. The former should deal with the actual theory and criticism of it and can be quite technical, the later should describe peak oil and cover the implications of peak oil, mention that Hubbert is just one of the peak oil models/modeller/modelling techniques (and could link to others), it could also cover the cultural phemnomen of Peak Oil, ie the emergence of the blogs and local community groups planning for post peak. Everyone refers to the page as the "Peak Oil" page anyway - Peak Oil is the best term for this info and Hubbert peak theory does not describe the content in this page. Such a large subject as Peak Oil can easily support lots of separate pages on the subject. - Drstuey 10:56, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Support Whell Drstuey explaned it nicely.--Pixel ;-) 03:25, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Support Oil production info, prediction, and implications of peak oil is a much larger subject than Hubbert's works. Actual oil production is clearly not a Hubbard curve, still, oil production will start to decay sometime with a wide range of possible consequences. --AndrasCz 06:40, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Would like a split but not this one. Whether oil peaks or not is not as relevant as whether humanity is forced to seek alternatives. For instance production could go up 100,000 barrel per year for the next 100 years and all the peak ramifications described in the article would still be immediately relevant. The correct split is between "Hubbert Peak Theory" and "Oil Supply and Demand".70.132.29.69 13:43, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

The theory, the likelihood of occurence, and the ramifications are tightly coupled. It would be possible to split them into two articles, but there would have to be some overlap in order make sense of the separate articles (e.g., "Is it happening yet?"). Supply and demand outside of peak oil is related, but ultimately different. Skyemoor 14:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Support Drstuey's opinion. Things like the breakdown of fossil-fuel based infrastructure, the reduction of exports as opposed to production, the relation to energy and malthusian scenarios - peak oil needs its own article.Lesqual 18:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Support Doesn't Hubbert's theory equally apply to gas, for example. Peak oil is one thing his theory can be applied to and is a matter in it's own right. Webchat 21:02, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Oppose As others point out, Hubbert did apply his theory to uranium and coal, and the theory itself is applicable to any finite resource. However, the reason why I don't support a split is that I don't clearly see how one might reasonably talk about Peak Oil and its implications without explaining Hubbert's theory first. The two are inextricably linked, as the former is the application of the latter. Astack 21:54, 1 September 2006 (UTC) *edit* I thought it over and I would support a "Hubbert's Peak and Peak Oil" page and an "Implications of Peak Oil" page as separate articles, since the implications are much more debatable and uncertain than the theory itself. Astack 22:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

The assertion that oil production will peak someday is a direct (trivial) consequence of the widely held belief that there is only finite amount of accessible oil. An ever increasing oil production requires infinite supply, which is absurd. --AndrasCz 11:38, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
AndrazCz, yeah that's true but the form that the effects of the peak and at when it will occur are debatable. That is, is there going to be a "soft landing" with people turning to alternate energy sources or is that "by 2025, we'll be back in the Stone Age" (to quote Deffeyes). However, to get back on topic, after reading John Nagle's comment, I'm leaving my "oppose" vote. As for splitting the page along the lines "Peak Oil" and "Hubbert Theory": in my impression, Hubbert is "the" man for peak oil, yes many more have worked on it, but he's the one widely credited with coming up with the peaks and predictions. To illustrate from other wikipedia pages, the first sentence in the relativity pages (special and general) says Einstein came up with the theories and they don't have a separate page for "his" contributions versus others' contributions. So I think its fine to give Hubbert his due by crediting him with the discovery of "peak oil". :o) Astack 14:15, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Support per Drstuey --Jpbrenna 19:59, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Oppose We're going to have trouble deciding what goes in Peak Oil vs. here. We used to have "Implications of peak oil", but there was nearly total duplication and it was merged out. Right now, "Peak oil" redirects here, which is probably OK. --John Nagle 04:16, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

In my understanding, the work of Hubbert (e.g., what mathematical function did he suggest for the Oil production curve) should have a relativly small, own page. He is clearly notable as a scientist. As stated above, he is just one of many people dealt with peak oil. His particular statements and predictions may be wrong, but "peak oil" as an idea clearly exists. So, the proposed split is not between implications and facts, but to create a stand-alone page for the the personal contribution of Hubbert. --AndrasCz 11:38, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that it will stay small.Ther are other technics that are not discused at all.For example the use of multiple curvers.--Pixel ;-) 19:51, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

CommentI added the stub sections to show what kind of stuf are mising.also more technical considerations are mising,like the use of multiple curves or when and how the theory can be aplied.--Pixel ;-) 22:02, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Support - Hubbert peak oil is now only a subset of the peak oil story - a subset that had inherent errors that have been pointed out. Peak oil in general deserves its own article, free of the complications in Hubbert's calculations. TastyCakes 04:48, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

proposal for "Hubbert peak for Renewable resources"

Despite the fact ,that in theory, hubbert theory shouldn't apply on renewable resources.Over exploitation often results in a hubbert peak anyway.An example is the Cod of the north sea[18].

discuss

Is this article hubberts biography,or is it about hubbert theory?What is the official definition for hubbert theory?The hubbert method is ,sadly ,aplied for renewables too.--Pixel ;-) 17:51, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposal rename/reorganize article

problematic:good material about oil modeling is removed on the grounds that hubbert didn't say that.Despite that peak oil redirects here,and peopol expect to find what the models have to say today.Is hubbert theory and peak oil synonims under that interpretation?Also the theory and variants aply to zillion other stuf that hubbert didn't mentioned explicitly,despite that there are sources that use it in that whay anywhay.

1.I propose to rename the article to "resources production modeling" or something like that. proposals for new name:

  1. resources production modeling

2.Reorganize the sections.One for hubbert theory,variants,alternatives,extantions of the theory,for oil,gas and all the rest...

--Pixel ;-) 19:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Oppose rename. The article is about Hubbert 's peak theory. As there is, in fact, no theory, we can only include what Hubbert discussed. Comments about Peak Oil which do not refer to a Logisitic curve could be carved out to another article, as could articles on renewable resources which don't refer to the analogue of a logisitic curve for the diffential equation that Hubbert assumed he was using.... — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:14, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Peak oil should redirect wher?To the new article?--Pixel ;-) 19:54, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I'm not aware of the "good model" you talk about. Some people actually went to the trouble of collecting the best estimates for oil reserves and future production. Their projections point to no imminent production peak. As far as I'm concerned, there's two questions people might ask that we need to answer accurately:
  • "So, what is this wonderful mathematical theory of Hubbert's, and how does he arrive at such peculiarities as a symmetric production curve?" - answer: "nothing special; by begging the question and choosing a symmetric curve based on nothing but an a priori preference for symmetric curves"
  • "What about the movement that's set itself up to popularise the theory? They seem very convinced" - answer: "all of their conviction goes back, indirectly, to the 1980s paper of Hubbert's. It's not satisfactory. Just another pseudo-millennialist group."
I don't care much whether that's one or two articles; but setting up one article that demonstrates how vacuous Hubbert's theory is (and will contain a debunking of it as soon as I find a citable one), and another that totally ignores the issue and merely goes on about the happy "scientific community" spreading the gospel, with all criticism relegated to a separate page, is simply out of the question, and I get the impression that's what being proposed. RandomP 23:39, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
That a peak will happen is a foregone conclusion if you accept that resources are finite. Looking at consumption continuing to outpace discovery by many times means that it will happen in the short or medium term - within 30 years. The issues that tend to support a near-term (1-10 years) peak involve the OPEC quota war of the '80's and current production declines on most of the giant and supergiant fields - though this is more speculative than the other conclusions. The subtleties of hubbert's peak (symetricality, logarithm as opposed to normal) are at noise level for wells in the real world, and the acceptance of a very roughly bell-shaped curve (whatever the exact equation) is really the only important tenet of discussions about peak oil - which tends to be general information about a particular form of permanent energy crisis, about alternative fuels, etc. The article needs to be seperated so that there's room to address criticisms of Hubbert (that he was basically pulling it out of his ass), as well as analyses of other resources noted. Most of an article about peak oil, on the other hand, is valid if the actual graph mathemagically resembles a christmas tree or a camel.Lesqual 18:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
If you want an article about a roughly bell-shaped production curve, this is the wrong title for it. The rest belongs in oil depletion (and oh dear, look at the shape of that).
If it's not about Hubbert's peak "theory", it doesn't belong in Hubbert peak theory. Pretty simple really.
People who actually went to the trouble of looking at the best available data, rather than accepting a logistic curve as an article of faith, have somewhat varying ideas of the maximum rate of production; none of them appear to be predicting an imminent decline.
RandomP 18:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
RandomP 18:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Mathematics quote

The following quote has just been added to the article:

(1) For any production cure of a finite resource of fixed amount, two points on the curve are known at outset, namely that at t = 0 and again at t = infinity. The production rate wil be zero when the reference time is zero, and the rate will again be zero when the resource is exhausted; that is to say, in the production of any resource of fixed magnitude, the production rate must begin at zero, and then after passing through one or several maxima, it must decline again to zero.
(2) The second consideration arises from the fundamental theorem of integral calculus; namely if there exists a single valued function y = f(x), then \int_0^{x_1}y\ dx = A, where A is the area between the curve y = f(x) and the x-axis from the origin out to the distance x1.

I'm a mathematician, so those statements are to me both slightly incorrect (in assuming that the production curve is smooth, a technical requirement that can be assumed in most real-world models) and painfully obvious.

Essentially, what's being introduced is the concept of a derivative: given the (monotonically increasing) cumulative production function, we can define a (nonnegative) function giving the production rate.

I think this is obvious even to those who are not familiar with the mathematical concept (when I challenged a student of economics once on the use of derivatives, I was told that it was no problem, as economic functions were defined only for integral multiples of 1 cent, and the derivative could thus be defined without recourse to limits).

Furthermore, the rest of the section seems intent on ignoring an important part of Hubbert's mathematical knowledge: the production rate curve can pass through one or several maxima. We do not know that the production peak in the United States has been reached — it might well return to higher levels before finally declining (compare the technocrats identifying an automobile production peak at 6 million cars/year in the study guide).

In short, the quote seems obvious and the rest of the section seems either wrong or empty of any notable information.

Comments on just removing it, or reducing it to a short list that various people have applied Hubbert curves to? (Shall we list cars, pig iron, and hours worked in industry as well? I believe the TSG even includes information on human population.)

RandomP 23:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok delete aal of it.--Pixel ;-) 00:54, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes the mathematics are obvious and yes their could be another peak for oil or whatever. But if you read Hubbert's papers (which are quite short) you will see this is the way he thought; most of the section is direct quotes even when not block tagged. If you want to do a page on RandomP Peak Theory I support you but so long as its Hubbert Peak Theory we have to stick to his insights - namely that finite resources will run out and we should be prepared.70.132.29.215 04:53, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I have read everything probably written by Hubbert's that I could get my hands on. Most of it is mind-bogglingly boring, or at least makes me boggle for other reasons (I'm not going to go into the section in the TSG about World War II).
It's not that I doubt the quote; it's just that I doubt it provides encyclopedic value to anyone. To most people it's just going to look like mathematical jargon, and many have a "oh, that's all right then, he obviously knows what he's talking about" reaction to that.
"finite resources will run out" is obvious; "we should be prepared" is something that Hubbert touches on only very briefly, IIRC.
so, what's your opinion on the quote? why in this section?
RandomP 12:29, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Adding comment to page - basically being forced to add more and more from his papers by people who doubt this was Hubbard's beliefs. Originally I did not have the math nor the quote I am adding now.
I'm not "forcing" you to do anything — we don't need to quote Hubbert's papers in their entirety. I just don't see the need for a section on "longterm hubbert peaks" listing every conceivable finite resource (and at least one non-finite one, so far), particularly when the main articles about these substances do not even describe reserves and production.
I think links to the articles would suffice, to be honest.
(FWIW: yes, I'm doubting that there's much useful science in the Hubbert "theory". I do doubt that Hubbert was planning to have a millenialist new-age movement set up around it, and most people advising to "prepare" for peak oil are a bit on the odd side.)
RandomP 15:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
There are no non-finite resources listed there if you are considering the time frame of a human's lifespan. If you consider geologic time frames then even oil is non-finite as today's rain forest might be millions of years from now tomorrow's oil find. Yes Hubbert's contribution is not scientific so much as cultural. There is no solid scientific evidence for the EXACT amount of most of these resources. And yes anyone who disagrees with the steady drum beat of growth is good must be odd. But then its also kind of odd to object to one page having Hubbert's point of view in an ocean of don't worry be happy rhetoric no? 12.162.10.2 17:07, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I disagree about water, which is moved by humans in astonishing amounts over similarly astonishing distances.
No, no page on Wikipedia is going to have Hubbert's point of view. Wikipedia doesn't have a per-page point of view policy: every (article) page must be written from the neutral point of view.
(you're also totally off on trying to characterise my opinions, just FWIW).
RandomP 17:58, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes neutral in the sense that I have been careful to present this as Hubbard's point of view instead of attempting to present it as fact. Moving water astonishing distances is moot; the AVAILABLE without Herculean (it was one of his tasks) effort resources will still peak.12.162.10.2 18:43, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
No, no page on Wikipedia is going to have Hubbert's point of view.Realy?And the critique section is for what for then?--Pixel ;-) 18:12, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, really. Read WP:NPOV.
RandomP 19:43, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
You should read it too:The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being the truth, and all significant published points of view are to be presented, not just the most popular one. It should also not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions.--Pixel ;-) 20:05, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Neutral Point of View (NPOV) is a fundamental Wikipedia principle which states that all articles must be written from a neutral point of view, that is, they must represent all significant views fairly and without bias. - What significant view is being left out? Don't tell me its the nothing can ever run out and harm humanity view point because that one is all over in spades in many sections. Or are you saying there must be a disclaimer in each section stating that people disagree with Hubbert and maybe with the concept of finiteness in general.12.162.10.2 20:25, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I was referening to randomp's pov how aparently is mre neutral then others.--Pixel ;-) 22:21, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Huh? May I ask what you're talking about?
I appear to be the only one who's not sure what RandomP's POV is. Can someone enlighten me?
Earlier in the discussion, another editor said "But then its also kind of odd to object to one page having Hubbert's point of view". I merely pointed out that, no, it's not odd, it's one of the fundamental policies of Wikipedia.
I'm not sure whether the recent discussion still relates directly to the article — regardless of neutrality, I'm still doubting that there is any value in having the two paragraphs about mathematics in the section concerned.
RandomP 22:31, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I think we're suffering semantic difficulties here. Take a look at Reaganomics. Like Hubbert peak theory this is basically an article on a point of view - Reagan's. So of course the article will "have" or it would be better to say "contain" Reagan's point of view. It also has a section called Criticism of Reaganomics to let people know Reagan's point of view is not the only one.
Now going back to value of the two paragraphs on mathemantics. Hubbert thought in mathematics - instead of saying, "what can run out does", he liked to think in graphs (which I would liked to have lifted from that paper of his but its not as easy as lifting text). So of course Hubbert peak theory is going to have to have some of Hubbert's math - anyone with high school calculus should recognize that this is not some high powered model. Its just the way Hubbert writes.12.162.10.2 23:36, 20 September 2006 (UTC)


I agree with RandomP. There is no value in that section. Ordinary Person 11:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

As this is an article expressly about Hubbert's theory, then his opinion on the matter is the thrust of the article. The example of Reaganomics is spot-on. Skyemoor 01:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Citing sources

I'd just like to remind everyone that it is important, when citing sources, to actually make sure they contain the same statement that you are using them as a source for.

I just [removed http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hubbert_peak_theory&diff=76766392&oldid=76762036] the highlighted sentence in the following paragraph:

In 1974, Hubbert projected that global oil production would peak in 1995 "if current trends continue" [19] (i.e., 2% growth in consumption per year) http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/growth/.

This suggests that the "current trends" Hubbert bases his (wrong) prediction on consist exclusively of a sustained exponential growth in "consumption" (virtually the same as production for oil, last I heard). Not only does this flatly contradict the idea of a peak, it also contradicts Hubbert's methodology of looking at historic data to make a prediction. Let's see what the source says:

It is my understanding that the present hearings pertain primarily to the bill H.R. 11343, ``A bill to provide for the establishment of a comprehensive energy conservation program in order to regulate the national rate of growth of energy use, to establish a Council on Energy Policy, and for other purposes. In Sec. 7(a) of this bill it is stipulated that one of the duties of such a Council shall be ``to develop and transmit to the President and to the Congress ... a comprehensive report setting forth the proposed legislation it deems necessary to achieve a maximum rate of growth in energy consumption of 2 per centum per year [Italics added].
  • the word "maximum" is important
  • it's not about oil. It's about energy consumption, including nuclear fuels and renewables. It is about limiting how much energy people consume, not about how much oil is produced. It simply does not apply to the problem at hand.

(By the way, I also think it's interesting that Hubbert actually corrects another speaker to claim the US production peak was in 1970, not 1971 (the date in the article), and that he's back-pedalling about the possibility the 1971 peak might yet again be reached. He also makes economic statements that are flat-out ridiculous (see technocracy). That the interest rate would have to be the same as the real rate of economic growth to avoid inflation is nonsense; it's based on the assumption that all money is earning interest, while reserve deposits and cash are clearly not.)

So, please be careful. Hubbert based his wrong prediction on the historical data available to him, which already included the first oil crisis. That cannot just be reduced to a 2% p.a. number.

RandomP 11:33, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

linearisation

Do you now what an extrapolation means?If some points in a graph tend to folow a strait line,we asume that thers some kind of bias,and so we make the gess that future points will oscilate around that line.If the production data are graphed in a way like here [20], a strait line seems a fair enof gess(in combination with the experience of the geologists).For the world, we see two sets that are lining up,the first is before the oil crisis,the second after it.For the future it seems a fair enof asumtion that the latest strait line trend will continiu.Of cource it's not that simple as looking at the graph,thers also the expertise of the geologist on the field that permits him to "gess" if this is a real gess or a real mess.This is science,not exact science,but it is science anyway.--Pixel ;-) 15:37, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Keep in mind that that straight line is only possible by choosing rather weird axes - any monotonous function can be made a straight line by distorting the axes, and that's pretty much what happened here.
Also note that there is systematic deviation for early times, where the data always seems to support super-exponential growth. As expected from the normal distribution.
No science here.
(The expert geologists have so far failed to provide an argument for the logistic curve.) RandomP 15:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Like i said this is not exact science.Speculating that the production can take any shape we whant,thats unscientific.Aparently,yes you don't know what extrapolation meens.So,you are not ready to beleave that the points will continiu to follow that strait line (of say "unnown reason") in too the future.Your on a science theory and you editing it like if it was a exact science,can you make the difference betwen the two?--Pixel ;-) 17:59, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

How is making specific predictions about timing of a "peak" not exact? It's not "exact science", but that's not because it isn't exact, it's because it's not science.
Of course I'm unwilling to believe that there is a linear relationship between terms one of whose meanings is never explained. Being willing to believe in such a relationship, when there is no evidence that it exists, would be rather silly.
Virtually any prediction can be turned into a similar diagram. There's many predictions I'm unwilling to believe. So I cannot accept Hubbert's methodology on this.
It's that simple.
RandomP 18:13, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
  1. You have experimental data,grapped in this linear corelation[21].If you whant to gess what the future points would be,how are you going to complite the graph in the best way that is available to you?
  1. You have a dice,you throw it 50 times.You receave 3 for all 50,what will be the 51 throw?

--Pixel ;-) 18:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

But you do not have data that shows anything like a linear correlation! You don't start out with data for, using the image's nomenclature, "P/Q" and "Q". You start out with "P" alone, and all the others are derived from that.
Also, wondering why the blue dots don't go all the way to Q=0? Simple: because Hubbert's theory fails for small times, where growth empirically was not exponential. Most likely it'll also fail for larger times - when people guess at what's going to happen, they're usually wrong.
Keep your dice.
the anser is 3.--Pixel ;-) 20:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
RandomP 19:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

EOE

The encyclopedia of earth, a non-GFDL (that means we can't copy and paste their articles) encyclopedia focussing on geology, is online, and has an article mentioning Hubbert.

There are some factual inaccuracies, of course, but I really like the way they call Hubbert's "theory" a "curve-fitting technique".

Quite definitely, EOE will have to be one of the future sources of this article and related ones, though.

RandomP 23:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

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