Who to believe? On one side we have the oil and gas industry, its public relations minions and its bankers, as well as a few official agencies — including the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the International Energy Agency — that tend to parrot industry statistics and forecasts. This team is respected and well funded. We’ll call this team “the Cornucopians,” after the mythical horn of plenty, an endless source of good things. The other team consists of an informal association of retired and independent petroleum geologists and energy analysts. This team has little funding, is poorly organized, and hardly even existed as a recognizable entity a decade ago. This is my team; let’s call us “the Peakists,” in reference to the observation that rates of extraction of nonrenewable resources tend to peak and then decline. These two teams have very different views of the energy world. Back in 2003, the Cornucopians were saying that global oil production would continue to increase in the years and decades ahead to meet rising demand, which would in turn grow at historic rates of about 3 percent per year (about the same rate at which the economy was expanding) grist.org/climate-energy/why-the-peak-oilers-are-still-right/#.UfklCiZhiG4.twitter
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 21:35:03 +0000
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