{"id":899,"date":"2010-07-08T23:57:50","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T23:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/tierney-to-win-peak-oil-bet.html"},"modified":"2010-07-08T23:57:50","modified_gmt":"2010-07-08T23:57:50","slug":"tierney-to-win-peak-oil-bet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/tierney-to-win-peak-oil-bet.html","title":{"rendered":"Tierney to win peak oil bet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2005, NYT columnist<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/08\/23\/opinion\/23tierney.html?_r=1&amp;oref=login\"> John Tierney bet a large sum of money with Houston oil guru Matt Simmons<\/a>, on the future of peak oil. Tierney, a peak oil doubter, bet that the average price of a barrel of oil for the year 2010 wouldn&#8217;t be $200 or more; Simmons, a peak oil believer, bet that it would be that or greater.<br \/>\nBarring some massive disaster, <a href=\"http:\/\/mjperry.blogspot.com\/2010\/07\/tierney-wins-peak-oil-bet.html\">Tierney&#8217;s going to win that bet.<\/a>  Why? Does that mean there&#8217;s no such thing as peak oil?<br \/>\nI&#8217;d say that&#8217;s the wrong conclusion to draw. The world was at or very close to full capacity on its use of available oil &#8230; right up to the global economic crash. The slowdown in economic activity caused a dramatic easing of oil demand. Simmons didn&#8217;t foresee the kind of economic falloff that the world experienced in 2007 and 2008, and from which we haven&#8217;t yet recovered. That doesn&#8217;t prove that peak oil is real, of course, but it does offer an explanation for why the price of oil is still dramatically lower than Simmons predicted. If the world&#8217;s economy returns to normal, then you&#8217;ll see the price of oil go up, because demand will increase to where it was pre-crash, but to my knowledge, supplies have not increased.<br \/>\n(Thanks to reader Peter K. for the link).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2005, NYT columnist John Tierney bet a large sum of money with Houston oil guru Matt Simmons, on the future of peak oil. Tierney, a peak oil doubter, bet that the average price of a barrel of oil for the year 2010 wouldn&#8217;t be $200 or more; Simmons, a peak oil believer, bet that&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-science"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Tierney to win peak oil bet - Rod Dreher<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/tierney-to-win-peak-oil-bet.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tierney to win peak oil bet - Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 2005, NYT columnist John Tierney bet a large sum of money with Houston oil guru Matt Simmons, on the future of peak oil. Tierney, a peak oil doubter, bet that the average price of a barrel of oil for the year 2010 wouldn&#8217;t be $200 or more; Simmons, a peak oil believer, bet that&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/tierney-to-win-peak-oil-bet.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-07-08T23:57:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Tierney to win peak oil bet - Rod Dreher","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/tierney-to-win-peak-oil-bet.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Tierney to win peak oil bet - Rod Dreher","og_description":"In 2005, NYT columnist John Tierney bet a large sum of money with Houston oil guru Matt Simmons, on the future of peak oil. Tierney, a peak oil doubter, bet that the average price of a barrel of oil for the year 2010 wouldn&#8217;t be $200 or more; Simmons, a peak oil believer, bet that&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/tierney-to-win-peak-oil-bet.html","og_site_name":"Rod Dreher","article_published_time":"2010-07-08T23:57:50+00:00","author":"Rod Dreher","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/tierney-to-win-peak-oil-bet.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/tierney-to-win-peak-oil-bet.html","name":"Tierney to win peak oil bet - Rod Dreher","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-07-08T23:57:50+00:00","dateModified":"2010-07-08T23:57:50+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#\/schema\/person\/0eb55fec41ac37c5cdc76396861852db"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/tierney-to-win-peak-oil-bet.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/tierney-to-win-peak-oil-bet.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/tierney-to-win-peak-oil-bet.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Tierney to win peak oil bet"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/","name":"Rod Dreher","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#\/schema\/person\/0eb55fec41ac37c5cdc76396861852db","name":"Rod Dreher","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2e1\/2e1e526772cb318f0168aec327715d02x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2e1\/2e1e526772cb318f0168aec327715d02x96.jpg","caption":"Rod Dreher"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/author\/rdreher"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}