I’m struggling to find quality forums for discussion on peak oil. There are some quite good out there but most of the time it’s just different people going through the old stuff over and over again.
On one side there’s people going saying the basic “yes oil is not about to run out, cheap oil is” and so on.
On the other there’s people pointing out that actually there is still a lot of oil left out there. They might even point out a “huge” untapped field in Alaska or somewhere. Arguing about individual fields and whether or not they’d make a difference is not worth your while. Even the figures for current “proven” reserves are subject for discussion. They’re given by people with incentives to lie and have been changed many times for economic reasons.
There’s also the “yeah they said that in the 1890’s and in the 70’s too” -argument, which is of course not too valid at all.
The alternative energy discussion is equally boring; People suggesting different technologies and someone shooting them down as not economically viable. That no alternative energy out there is not effective enough for large scale use seems to be what most people think. The two important things to realize here is that the more expensive oil gets and the more money we pump in to research for these technologies, the sooner we can start using them as real alternatives.
Also a lot of people interested in energy politics are people with very strong political stands or even biases. Obviously all their input to the discussion should be taken with a truckload of salt.
