Last edited Fri Aug 14, 2015, 11:50 AM - Edit history (1)
Just that the response of the PO community was far too narrow and in addition was emotionally biased. Not that this should come as a surprise to anyone - we are limbic critters trying to comprehend a very complex system, so such responses are par for the course.
This goes for the parties to all social debates, whether they're about energy, the environment, politics, economics, morality or any other such topic. These are complex, emotional topics, so people bring their unavoidably limited knowledge, their emotional limbic systems and their entrenched belief systems to the table. It's no wonder the debates turn acrimonious at the drop of a hat - there is a lot of opportunity for friction on many levels, and most of us have little training in how to remain objective in such situations.
On edit: The PO community got fixated on defining a time frame before the underlying theory had been properly explored and validated. The validation would be difficult, because it had to take into account such a wide variety of soft factors. Economic situations, the technical and economic feasibility of substituting for non-oil energy sources, political willingness to support substitution vs. investing in more imports or extraction capacity, the willingness of national populations to switch between sources or pay higher prices for oil - all of these needed to be considered in both regional and national contexts, and all of them affect oil production numbers. This is a task that the amateur PO community was not up to. As a result we result ignored the complexity and tried to determine peak dates and price behaviour anyway. It was a fool's errand from the get-go, no matter how valid the purely geophysical aspects of the theory.
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