What's wrong with Hubbert Theory

Hubbert theory states that oil production from a field or a group of fields will rise gradually, reach a peak in production and subsequentely decline.
If you take that at face value it's correct.

Oil is a non-renewable resource and logic dictates that the volume of oil produced must lie under a production curve (of whatever shape) and that the amount of oil produced can never be greater than the volume under the curve.

What hubbert theory doesn't mention is that it's talking about the production curve taking ONLY current technology into account.

Let's repeat that so we get it. At any one point in time, the amount of technically recoverable oil is x% of the total oil in there. 100 years the total recoverable oil from a field was 10%. That means that 90% of the oil from those old fields is still down there and not recoverable with the technology they used 100 years ago.

The actual amount of oil sitting in the ground, however is much larger than that under a hubbert curve at any one point in time. Some Old fields, for example, as stated still have 90% of the oil still sitting in them.

If technology stood still then you could say that a hubbert curve with a steep production curve upwards, followed by a sharp drop was a definitively predictable model for future production.

In the REAL world, however, technology is ever changing and this leads to reserves being stated upwards as new technology allows us to grab an ever greater percentage share of oil in place thus pushing any putative peak off or else flattening out a peak from a bell curve into a grand piano curve instead.

The church of peak oil dogma, however, reckons that only a perfectly formed bell curve is possible and that the reason reserves have been continually stated upwards is in fact due to OPEC lying for political reasons rather than technology.

A recent example would be stating that Canada has 300 billion barrels of reserves whereas ten years ago it only had 80 billion barrels.

Actually here in Alberta we are sitting on over a trillion barrels of oil in the ground just waiting on technology to pull it out. The technology exists: nuclear reactors.

Move along here nothing to see folks...

Where is JD?

Many people have been asking "where is JD?" or "where is Brewskie?".

The doomers would gleefully answer with "they have accepted that we're doomed and are now hunkering down in their doomstead and manically counting their gold eagles and MRE while calculating how many zombies they can kill per scarce and very valuable round of ammo.

Personally I reckon JD is just bored with the whole peak oil shtick. He has better things to do with his time than argue with fanatics whose real position stems from a belief that modern civilisation is evil and clutch at any available straw to argue that it *must* collapse.

In the case of Brewskie, he's gone back to school and is having fun and is spending his money on beer and pizza rather than saving for a doomstead.

Why are all the biggest doomers science illiterate?

Trawling through the various cesspits of peak oil doom boards, I've noticed a common thread. Many of the biggest and most vocal doomers are Druids, Animists, English Teachers, Accountants, Lawyers etc. In other words, functionally illiterate in science.

I reckon this must be the reason why they swallow olduvai "theory" (what a joke) whole and when confronted just regurgitate like big roaches. They breed too. Wherever you get a treehugger more are attracted.

Another type of person attracted to dieoff type theories seem to be those who long for the destruction of modern industrial civilization and actively promote gibberish such as back to the land. Careful not to say "we will die without fossil fuels" and "if we go back to the land all will be well" in one breath.
One particular recent example of this was a comment on a new scientist article regarding Hansen's global warming piece. This clown said (paraphrasal): "What would be wrong with that [dieoff of all humans]? At least the ecosystems would be given a chance to recover." That particular clown hates human beings and would see no problem if humanity went extinct. That's disgusting in my eyes but the hippy/treehugger/global warming crowd are replete with these people.

The reason for that, I suspect, is that anyone with the ability to see through rhetoric and who has at least a sophomoric grasp of deductive reasoning can see that they

1. WANT civilization to fall (and anything that says it will is to be pounced on with great glee)
and
2. WANT a dieoff. (all will be well - with the environment, just not the human population)

It's a bizarre way of thinking but often underneath there is a longing for the "good old days". For those who go further and want extinction, there is nothing less than a total hatred for humankind.

Too late people, the genie was out of the bottle when we invented agriculture.
There's no way we're getting off of the tiger.