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Comment by nyc_data_geek1 | Hacker News Reader

Peak oil was always a lie. As it gets more scarce, it gets more valuable, and innovations in extraction and processing are further incentivized to progress (see:fracking). It's just all living things on Earth that are the collateral damage (read:externalities) to that equation.

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I don't think that is what 'Peak Oil' concept was about. It acknowledged, or did not dispute, that with scarcity, prices rise, and supply/demand will cause something to happen. What 'Peak Oil' was speculating about, was that the change in supply would change rapidly enough, that the rate of change would be faster than the normal supply/demand humans are used to, and hence cause massive economic and societal disturbance. Not really too different than recent chip shortages, sure, with more demand, people will build new factories, but those factories take huge capital and time, so the rate of change of the demand is more than can be adapted to without 'discomfort'.

Should also have added, that we are fracking at all, is an indicator that we are heading towards a shortage. Oil Sands/Fracking all take energy to produce energy, and have only recently become economical, because we are running out make these poor second rate inputs become valuable.

I think the difference is that proponents of peak oil relied on motivated thinking and largely ignored known information. Their assumptions were widely criticized as inaccurate at the time and doubled down.

This is because they were looking to support a policy position to stop oil usage and trying to build a scientific case, opposed to the other way around.

It doesn't sound like you understand what "peak oil" means.

It was always the opposite of a lie: a logical truism.

If you have a limited resource and an increasing rate of use, there will a point in time where that rate of use peaks, i.e. reaches a maximum and then declines. That's just (very) basic mathematical truth.

And scarcity incentivizing innovations in extraction and processing changes absolutely nothing about it, those things are just (part of) the reason why the peak will be followed by a gradual decline rather than consumption continuing to rise until the day before all reserves are depleted.

So long as the supply of oil is finite, it's not a lie. The predictions of timing, however, were clearly wildly wrong.

Actually, we have no idea. We don't know how much oil is still in the ground in many of the major oil exporting countries. Even though it was anticipated that OPEC would increase output after Russia was banned from the global market, they didn't. Were the explanations given valid, or might it be that they are no longer able to ramp up so quickly?

And realistically why would have they. Russia did not stop too much production, just moved where it was sold. And increasing production would have driven price down making in long run less money in total for them.

First and foremost, that is not how the law of supply and demand works. If there is a sudden increase in demand, the equilibrium point rises, and they could have sold more at a higher price.

Plus, they've always done it before in a similar situation.

Which one ?

King Hubbert's prediction was true.

Campbell and Laherrère's prediction was also true.

(You can say that they failed to predict the tight oil and bituminous sands boom, focusing instead on the (thankfully still completely uneconomical) oil shale potential, but the gist of them being extremely dirty and expensive also fits.)

That's awfully dismissive. Not exactly a leap for people to argue:

Climate change was always a lie. As the planet warms, the premium for a safe and healthy planet increases, and innovations in clean energy technology continue progress.

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