David Sumptersaid, I think, Richard, for you the important point is that lots of other papers have followed the same path, while pretty much nothing is known about past trajectories of oil exploration on different planets. Therefore, there is good reason to trust the general shape of the curve and just to be unsure about the parameters. This means the predictions are more reliable. I think it will be fun to see how our predictions compare to data from 2014.
Richard said, Thats a good point and an important difference. What that means is that estimates of 'gravity' from previous papers should be used as prior information in fitting any new curve, otherwise it's as if those observations had never occurred. Also there are probably many different 'gravity' levels consistent with any papers trajectory, which if incorporated would produce an estimate of the uncertainty in when the peak will occur.
Richard Mann said, http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2011/05/why_i_dont_trust_hubbert_peak_arguments.html
David Sumpter said, I think, Richard, for you the important point is that lots of other papers have followed the same path, while pretty much nothing is known about past trajectories of oil exploration on different planets. Therefore, there is good reason to trust the general shape of the curve and just to be unsure about the parameters. This means the predictions are more reliable. I think it will be fun to see how our predictions compare to data from 2014.
Richard said, Thats a good point and an important difference. What that means is that estimates of 'gravity' from previous papers should be used as prior information in fitting any new curve, otherwise it's as if those observations had never occurred. Also there are probably many different 'gravity' levels consistent with any papers trajectory, which if incorporated would produce an estimate of the uncertainty in when the peak will occur.