My other blog is called Prof. Goose and His Ramblings. This post may illustrate why.

I have to say, all of this traffic has been interesting. Much of the email and comment traffic has complimentary and positive. A lot of "wow, I'm scared shitless," "great blog!" and "keep up the good work."

Those words of encouragement are always welcome, by the way. This stuff's not exactly uplifting or easy to write about. This is big scary stuff.

Still, we're not here to scare anyone. We're here to talk about, inform, debunk, and think about the problem/controversy that confronts us.

I also want to be clear that even the not so complimentary and positive are welcome here. This is a blog about IDEAS about peak oil. That means constructive counterviewpoints are welcome, if not encouraged. Prove us wrong. Please. All we ask is that you bring your evidence and reason. Read up. See both sides of the arguments. Think!

(I think both HO and I would like to see conclusive evidence that this is all a government/big oil conspiracy/pipe dream so we could go back to work-a-day blogs and worlds and that there's no reason to have this blog...but to this point, neither that fancy nor that line of reasoning has struck either of us.)

A couple of emails that I have received over the past couple of days have mentioned the dropping oil prices this week and said "see! everything's ok. Now no one's going to listen to you. You fool."

You're right, prices are down below $54/bbl yesterday, but I still don't feel like a fool.

The point of this story is this: this phenomenon is a secular trend. There any many many variables and path dependencies involved. There will be ups and downs, there will be events and shocks, wins and losses, successes and failures. (I rather hope for more successes than failures.)

However, around 1856, we started up the curve of oil production. Since then we have used up somewhere close to half of oil inside our planet, and we now approach the peak of supply. Demand continues to grow exponentially.

Our first (and for that matter second) world economies are dependent on oil for food, technology, transportation, and commerce. The world's demand will continue to increase, the supply of oil will decrease.

Will the degredation of our economy be fast? Will it be slow? Will it start this summer? Will it happen in five years? We have our guesses.

Whatever the course, I am informed by M. King Hubbert's (yes, the guy who came up with Hubbert's peak) example. Hubbert was a geologist/geophysicist who was regarded as a carnival side-show because he predicted that US domestic production was going to peak in 1970. It did...and now Hubbert has a theorem and a wikipedia entry.

The catch is, no one acknowledged we were past the peak until 1973.

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