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Thursday, September 14, 2006

Peak Update (alternate universe version)

Khebab has aggregated a bunch of world peak oil predictions on to a single graph and posted the results to TOD. I added the data points from my oil shock model from last year to his plot below:

The oil shock model sits right dab in the middle of the other pessimistic estimates, nearly matching Staniford's median logistic model in the out years.

As I noted in a comment over at TOD, Khebab's loglet analysis perplexes me a bit. Every time I see an analysis like the loglet approach, with a potentially infinite number of variables, and no physical basis behind it, I feel better about the oil shock model which uses a few intuitive stochastic parameters backed up by solid physical reasoning. Yet, as ProfGoose at TOD stated:
Still, I come from the school that the more models you run, the better job you do critiquing the assumptions of other models.

In the end, all we have is incomplete information, and we are forced to guess. I like having as many (prima facie valid) tests of those guesses at my disposal as humanly possible.
Can't argue with that. And as always, Khebab keeps doing the hard digging and his efforts remain greatly appreciated.

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