Even if Peak Oil occurred in 2000 (seems like even the hardest core Peak Oil theorists have dropped that one) you still could production to match today's 40 years later. And peak coal will occur even later.

We CANNOT afford to still burning 40% we burn today in 2040  - not to mention the coal (which produces more carbon per BTU).  We need to phase out oil use; but we need to phase out coal use just as badly, and natural gas not much more slowly.

Global warming requires much more severe reductions in consumption of oil (and other fossil fuels as well) than peak oil does, and requires them more quickly. Everything you would need to do to solve peak oil, you also need to do to solve global warming -  and a great deal more besides.

So peak oil very simple indeed; it is not important when it will occur; we to push for as much reduction as quickly as possible regardless, because we need to stop greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere as quickly as possible, regardless of how many liquified dead dinosaurs we have remaining.

Do the math, whether for global heating or facing reality on peak oil, and then think about what is within the realm of the possible, and you come back to between 3-5% per year reduction in all fossil fuels usage.

The US, the biggest energy hog and energy waster in the history of the known universe, can easily reduce its fossil fuels usage by 3.25% in any given year--in fact, it will be easiest here at the fat end of the thing; it will be harder later, although we will have had more time to develop better tools and habits.

The point is that this is a rough "oil depletion protocol" (a la Colin Campbell and Richard Heinberg) that also happens to hit the target for carbon reduction.

It's a simple, doable plan that would pay us in spades.  Let's start.

3-5% reduction in fossil fuel use sounds good to me. That is a phaseout over the course of thirty years or fewer.

I don't know much about peak oil, but I do know a lot about engineers. You really nailed it with this:

"They tend to think that the main determinant of political action is the established empirical facts."

I remember trying to tell some engineers that it didn't matter what the data showed about hurricane intensity, all that mattered was public perception and they just didn't get it. But I guess that's why they're engineers and I'm not.

Good!  I know too much.  And it was a complete waste of time.  Peak oil, schmeak oil.

Oil industry engineers do not believe anything can or will be changed and spend their time justifying that point of view (renewable energy is only 1% of energy production, blah blah blah..).  The only thing this POV has to do with empirical facts is that they like to pick out or make up ones that support the status quo.

1000 bucks to read more "empirical facts" like that?  I bet the engineers who wrote that projected that is how much they would have to charge to break even on the report itself.  

What do you think?  Did they break even?

Anything you read about peak oil is really about pump and dump oil futures trading and that is it.  The insiders pump the current trading trend (price, supply, demand up or down, it doesn't matter) and then dump their positions into that trend, the suckers (and we the consumers)who believe the hype get shucked.

That and oil war, oily monopoly corruption of governance, and global climate disaster is all we the people need to know about peak oil.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

...is very important in these analyses, and unfortunately CERA seems to not do that work. Lowering EROEI means higher fossil fuel and energy prices, and as it comes closer and closer to breaking even, the cost will rise higher and higher. I don't know at what price of energy the world will hit a depression (probably not the only driver, but whatever), but it is inevitable. The peak oil argument is not as simple as the 'end of oil' , it's really the 'end of cheap oil, with the subsequent effects on economic, political, social, and agricultural status quo'. Think 70's, but worse.

. . . because it signals the end of the infinite growth school of economic theology and provides a warning to those who will hear that there is good reason to make preparations for the transition to a low-energy lifestyle now.

Global warming is every bit as much a physical limit as peak oil. A finite atmospheric sink is every bit as much a limit as a limited energy source.

and right now the price of oil is dropping-

Surely, the oil cannot even charitably be described as free, though. Doesn't that render price signals a little suspect?

Drat. Preview is there for a reason. Should be "Surely, the oil market..."

>the signal is called price- it's something economists have been studying for going on 3 centuries- and right now the price of oil is dropping- if we look to peak oil for policy we're screwed...big time

While I think we are on the same general page on how much to concentrate on peak oil, on price signals. I'll point out that carbon equivalent emissions also have a price, and that this has dropped  a great deal more than the price of oil.

 No amount of of CERA propaganda will make a difference to those of us who've been looking at this for a long time.
 The current "low" price of oil is a temporary phenomenon, it won't last long. The US inventory is high but oil-use during the coming months will rise, whether there's a mild or severe winter.
 Production of oil is so tight that even small disruptions send the price upwards. However, I've personally stopped looking too closely at supply/demand data because it hardly makes that much difference to prices; background manipulations are more interesting and have a greater bearing on price at this time. Demand-destruction is the major strategy used these days; note the coincidental "liquids-on-planes" fiasco that timed perfectly with the aviation-fuel bottle-neck - all those cancelled and delayed flights managed to give them some breathing space to lift stock. CERA isn't the only pay-for-comment organisation "on the payroll".
 The other markets are much more worth paying close attention to as so many clear imbalances are guaranteed to crash the markets overnight, and sometime soon. It's a matter of where it will start that's going to be the most interesting aspect.
 The FOREX currency trades have been one place I watch fervently; the US$ is being sold-off by a lot of foreign central banks and Goldmann Sachs and the (privately-owned) Federal Reserve Bank appear to be holding up the dollar through buy-ups.
 The US housing bubble is yet to burst, though its been deflating rapidly lately, while the cheer-squad on Wall St continue to pump out dubious treasury figures and dubious market predictions.
 The US deficit is going through the roof and net savings are in negative territory, and worsening.
 The petro-dollar is the only thing saving the currency above the buy-backs, but moves in oil prices will add to the downward pressure on the US dollar. I think a recession/depression will become the demand-destruction tactic of the future, it should push the oil-peak ahead by a few years; which will still only delay the inevitable...

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be led by the nose. - Mark Twain's Notebook