[lbo-talk] Is There Anything To This Peak Oil Business?

cian cian_oconnor at yahoo.co.uk
Mon Nov 17 12:44:03 PST 2003


If Keynes truly claimed that, then he was far more stupid than I had previously had reason to believe. Nothing (other than mathematics) is certain, but you know, so what. The sun might not rise tommorow, but I wouldn't criticise someone who acted on the principal that it would. The science that suggests that oil is finite has been extremely successful/effective (in a way that economics, say, hasn't). There is no reason at present to believe that there are reserves hidden somewhere else. Maybe we'll get lucky, but you'd be insane to bank upon it. The oil companies aren't, which suggests something.

Jevon's actual mistake (and I'm guessing Keynes, who I think was actually fairly smart even if he tended to shy away from the implications of his own work, meant this) was to assume that present circumstances would be sustained. ie. - that coal would be used at a similar rate, that no alternatives would be found, etc. As it turned out alternatives were found (gas, oil), and patterns of consumption changed. The same may happen with oil (we may find alternative energy sources, or we may end up using less energy, or global warming may be so devestating that we end up in some kind of pre-industrial hell) - it may not. Current trends suggest not. I would prefer to be wrong.

As a general thing, I find extreme skepticism very tedious. Exciting when you're 18 - banal any time after. The universe may not be real, but to paraphrase Descartes, one loses nothing assuming that it is.

-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org]On Behalf Of Ted Winslow Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 7:38 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Is There Anything To This Peak Oil Business?

cian wrote:


> Its quite possible that we'll find alternatives, or that there's more
> oil
> than experts currently realise. Hard to say.

If this is so, then the long run future of oil is "uncertain" in the sense of and for the reasons given by Keynes re coal. That's all he claimed i.e. Jevons's mistake was to regard what was in fact uncertain in this sense as certain.

The ontological fact of internal relations doesn't mean that nothing is knowable. So long as there is good reason to believe that the relations on which particular phenomena depend, e.g. the relations governing the movement of planets, the relations linking smoking to lung cancer, the relations linking global warming to extreme weather, etc. etc., rational long run prediction of planetary movements, the health effects of smoking, the weather consequences of global warming will be possible.

Ted

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