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Peak Oil has always and always will be about production rates, going back to Hubbert's paper in the 50s. We never solved the production rate issue, we just threw more money at it, see the shale boom of the 2010s.

Relying on "technology" and "science" gets a lot shakier when you realize that oil itself is what has largely funded the ability to do technology and science. We've been gluttonous in an age of cheap energy, the world is in no way prepared for what comes after the cheap part is over.

discuss

randallsquared|4 months ago

Adjusted for inflation, the price of oil has been similar for the last 20 years[1]. As PV ramps up further, there will be less demand for oil, and therefore the price will fall and extraction will reduce. It's not clear to me if that means the peak is 2026 or 2036, but either way, there will be all the oil we need to accomplish everything we want to use it for, even as we use less and less of it.

1. https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-cha...

Unearned5161|4 months ago

A bit wild to say the prices have been "similar" for the last 20 years and then cite a source that not only shows a coefficient of variation of 28% on regular prices but one that goes to 31% when you "adjust for inflation".

If your salary had a coefficient of variation above 20% I don't think you'd be saying "I make similar amounts year to year".

What part of this graph of global energy consumption [1] do you envision PV storming oil and nat gas out of? Notice how we never transitioned from anything in the past on a global scale, sure, coal tapered here in the US, but thats because we have nice oil fields to play with. Developing countries and co are trying to get the same that we got in our boom, i.e we're far from "maturing" away from any energy source as a globe.

There's also the thermodynamic note of energy density and temporal coverage, i.e oil and oil derivatives are non-fungible for a bulk of their uses, see planes, ships, and mining. That last one conviniently being the gatekeeper to most of our ideals of renewable energy sources.

1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...