I happened to have been one of those "online people" and I definitely understood the importance of reserve uncertainty well enough to know the difference between P90 estimates and P50 estimates and why backdating the later was a crucial step to get a stationary probability distribution in both time and reserve dimensions that allowed the peak oil community to accurately predict the peak.Sclass wrote: Second, the only thing I learned about "calculating" reserves is the people who discuss this data online have no concept of the uncertainty bars.
Here's my summary written in 2003 explaining why the distinction is important as well as predicting the peak to be 2007. In retrospect it turned out that conventional peak happened in 2005. If you add shale, you'll find that the total peak was postponed but that was only made possible by misallocating resources from elsewhere in the economy. The shale crash was predicted a few years ago realizing that cheap credit wouldn't last forever. Evidently realized now. The shale had very weak EROEI was predicted many years ago, so the boom could only be facilitated by finite cheap credit. No credit, no shale.
The peak oil community was (and probably still is ... I haven't been active since 2005) one of the smartest communities on the net on par with this one except most of these guys were hard science types and/or people (petroleum geologists) with actual field experience and so have better technical credentials than this one.
The prediction used the same methodology that correctly predicted the US 1972 production peak and only required using an honest (statistically unbiased) look at the data. Basically, the math is simple but getting the data is hard.
It was thus neither surprising nor lucky when it turned out to be correct.
In general, I find the following quote to hold annoyingly often when it comes to deep analysis based on solid reality-based fundamentals (and not supercilious math-facilitating assumptions, like e.g. the entire field of economics), that
... but that the predictions during the first stage are often rejected by argument of generalized incredulity, which is something to the effect of:All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.---Arthur Schopenhauer
1) Major (stated premise), I don't understand X. Alternatively, esteemed experts, professors, etc. don't understand X or say it's impossible to understand; same thing.
2) Minor (unstated and false premise), I think I am/they are smarter than anyone else.
3) Therefore, nobody else can understand X either.
... which is then reused during stage 3 with the "nobody could have known"-excuse. Which is not true. People did know but they were first ridiculed, then opposed, and then conveniently forgotten.
This speaks to a general phenomenon known as the Cassandra syndrome which is an affliction that plagues people whose skills in analysis vastly exceeds their skill in salesmanship. You know, scientists, analysts, strategic thinkers, ...