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I did some digging and if you look at the fields he is involved with ie:
Leverhulme Centre for Innovative Catalysis
Surface science
http://www.catalysisnetwork.com/Overview.htm
http://svr.ssci.liv.ac.uk/
The same old themes appear - big drugs, big petrochemicals, Monsanto-esque pig patenting eco-nightmare corporate lobbying....well you get the picture.
This guy is not part of the solution he is part of the problem
Of course thats all just an opinion, officer..
he is just a policy man, with little/no scientific training.
his main responsibilities were to either get more funding or do PR and get public support or big donations.
i doubt he could hold a scientific thought in his head.
you will note that there are no papers published under his name, nor is ever mentioned as a professor.
Oh come on----somebody isn't a professor of chemistry at Cambridge by hereditary title. I'm sure he actually is/was a practicing chemist or chemical engineer.
The principal mistake that he makes is the assumption that "peak oil" theory and predictions have nothing to do with the more superficially apparent economics or 'above ground factors' --- and that geophysical reality has no input into those as well.
"Peak Oil" of course as understood here has everything to do with those since it is about flows.
The fundamental driving fact is the geophysically justified assumption of non-replenishing (at human timescales) oil fields distributed with the usual power-law type of probability distributions in size, and space.
To that, add facts about human behavior and economics: easy oil is used up first----people deplete the largest and easy-to-get-at-high-reservoir-quality first.
Peak Oil is the inevitable conclusion that inevitably the depletion of previous oil fields---even assuming continuing improvement in technology and ability to extract 'deeper' into the probability distribution tails---the deficit from filling up the probability distribution easiest-to-hardest/biggest-to-smallest will inevitably win out over the improvement-in-technology curve. That is, even as technology gets better, the size of the oil fields now newly extractable will continue to get smaller, and not make up for the old, easier, oil being pumped out faster (due to application of same improved technology on geologically easier targets).
It a mathematical fact made obvious by continuity arguments: assume negligible cost to extract out oil no matter how difficult. What is the flow of oil the next year? Zero, of course. And zero, ever after that.
All the issues the professor talks about (usual above-ground factors) are always and still there, but the effect on society revolves quite prominently about the present situation w.r.t. the peak time.
The empirical question is "when is this peak?" Here, obviously we disagree with the professor. The effect on human society and decisions made will be quite distinct on the two sides of the peak, and the question of "are we close or not" really does matter.
And we have a winner!
Thanks for doing the leg-work Pondlife.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein