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I think you and OP disagree on what the actual problem with oil is.
* The knowledge abut the actual size of the milkshake has increased,
* The actual size of the milkshake has not increased, a decade and more of extraction has continued to decrease that actual size,
* The cost per unit of extraction has increased,
* All extraction of fossil fuel continues to contribute to an ever increasing real and serious problem with increased insulation in the atmosphere.
Peak oil was never about "oil runing out", it was literally about increasing costs for diminishing returns .. an asymptotic issue that never ends, just dwindles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil will help, here.
Until recently when it had to be redefined to remain a relevant concern, this was the point of "peak oil": that we would run out of reserves that could be economically extracted for fuel usage, due to rising costs for extraction of increasingly marginal sources. However, given that proven (economically extractable) reserves have steadily trended higher, "peak oil" is now about when other energy source costs fall enough to make oil uneconomical by comparison, which is not politically concerning except to fossil fuel industry lobbyists.
This kind of concept creep is very common where technology or science reduces problems that were previously seized upon by political activists.
Relying on "technology" and "science" gets a lot shakier when you realize that oil itself is what has largely funded the ability to do technology and science. We've been gluttonous in an age of cheap energy, the world is in no way prepared for what comes after the cheap part is over.
1. https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-cha...
If your salary had a coefficient of variation above 20% I don't think you'd be saying "I make similar amounts year to year".
What part of this graph of global energy consumption [1] do you envision PV storming oil and nat gas out of? Notice how we never transitioned from anything in the past on a global scale, sure, coal tapered here in the US, but thats because we have nice oil fields to play with. Developing countries and co are trying to get the same that we got in our boom, i.e we're far from "maturing" away from any energy source as a globe.
There's also the thermodynamic note of energy density and temporal coverage, i.e oil and oil derivatives are non-fungible for a bulk of their uses, see planes, ships, and mining. That last one conviniently being the gatekeeper to most of our ideals of renewable energy sources.
1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...
To make this clearer we can take a look at historic prices and the journey they've taken coming to where we are now. If you squint your eyes at the crude graph zoomed all the way out, you can piece together 3 general "tiers" in the pricing, levels where prices have oscillated around. Starting with the one from 1950s to the mid 1970s, this was $3, cheap conventional plays, we were swimming in this stuff, the modern world got built with this foundation. Then there's a rise to about $20 that "stabilizes" in the 80s, the hike up from $3 came due to conventional plays peaking in the 70s just as Hubbert said they would and then Alaska came online. The price didnt go back down to sub 10's because this new oil needed a new price floor to justify commercial viability. It stayed at this $20 range. And then Alaska peaked, China industrialized, global demand surged, and you see the long rise in the 2000s, leading to the recession, then shale comes online, this is the third tier. This is where we are now. Oscillating around $55-60, this is the new floor, fracking is expensive as hell, the only way we've been able to keep production alive at all is just by incinerating money at it.
The reason you don't see a clear price increase happening is because we're still on the shale tier. The treadmill is set to fast (check out how many wells need to be drilled for shale production to stay constant). Once this tier exhausts itself, however, that's when the market will correct, the price will rise until the even harder plays become viable. That fourth tier, if it even exists, won't be at a price any of our modern economic conveniences thrive in. It's a ratchet with wiplash, not a steady climb.
Yes, it's a useful reminder to those that thought Peak Oil related to oil running out when it fact, as your link shows, it was largely always about the relative costs of energy.
I had hoped that globally we would pivot harder into cleaner energies much sooner; the continuation and increase in fossil fuel usage has worsened an issue that much of the world will increasingly encounter in the lifetimes of those born today.
"Peak oil relates closely to oil depletion; while petroleum reserves are finite, the key issue is the economic viability of extraction at current prices.[6][7] Initially, it was believed that oil production would decline due to reserve depletion, but [...]" (emphasis mine)
It's associated with the drop in fertility, rise in life expectancy, etc.
There are now people arguing that we're undergoing the second demographic transition.
For "demographic transition"? That's not what I get, perhaps those results are customized by Google, and it has an inaccurate idea of what you're interested in? (Even if that "interest" comes from vigorously opposing something.)
I'd try opening a private/incognito window and comparing the result-pages.
When I search in a private-tab for "demographic transition" (in quotes) the first item is the Wikipedia article (the definition I expect) followed by more of basically the same thesis from other academic sites.
It has nothing to do with any particular ethnicity. Insofar as "immigration" comes into play, it refers to economic demand for labor as the population-bump people exit the labor pool.
1. Stross is trying to tie many events to a change from fossil fuels to solar power, but stronger drivers lie elsewhere.
2. It's better-explained by population dynamics, involving medical technology, mortality and longevity, contraceptives, the shifting balance of workers to retirees, etc.
3. [Charitable-reading effort increases here] These trends involved are old and multi-generational, arguably going back to the industrial revolution. As a casual way to show a very-long-ago datapoint, there are arguments/research about a secularizing France's odd population slump back in the 1700s, which predates the widespread use of fossil fuels.
> Birth-rate-over-time changes happen everywhere and have throughout history
If you look at a world population chart (logarithmic scale, naturally) [0] it becomes clear something in the last few hundred years caused a deviation from the old trend.
Stross might argue the trigger was fossil-fuels, others would argue the trigger was a change in human-capital from medicine/nutrition, perhaps a third group would argue both are inextricably intertwined.
[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_gro...
For example, if someone is also repeating other far-right propaganda (“fracking has solved the oil problem”), what are the chances that their use of this term is in good faith rather than as a dogwhistle?
Incidentally, are you claiming one of the above posters here has already included "other far-right propaganda" that tips the scales?
From my perspective, there's been some kind of false-alarm. The danger exists out there, but--unless there's some author reputation I'm unaware of--this isn't it.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/mar/18/molly-ivins-rai...
>After Pat Buchanan delivered an infamous speech at the 1992 Republican convention, couching the struggle with Democrats in terms of a “cultural war”, columnist Molly Ivins wrote that it “probably sounded better in the original German”. She did not live to cover a Donald Trump rally.