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

[cian]

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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