Peak Oil on the skids

There is a somewhat popular theory first put out by oilman M. King Hubbert in 1956. The Malthusians latched onto it and used it as another club to beat us over the head trying to get us to convert to their dystopian lifestyle. Peak Oil has since been blown out of the water as a fallacy. Three recent events: First -- a major apologist for Peak Oil is shutting down. From The Oil Drum:

An End to Eight Years of The Oil Drum
Dear Readers of The Oil Drum,
A few weeks ago the ISEOF board (The Institute for Energy and Our Future that facilitates The Oil Drum), Euan, Super G, JoulesBurn, and Myself, met to discuss the future of The Oil Drum. A discussion we have had several times in the last year, due to scarcity of new content caused by a dwindling number of contributors. Despite our best efforts to fill this gap we have not been able to significantly improve the flow of high quality articles.

Because of this and the high expense of running the site, the board has unanimously decided that the best course of action is to convert the site to a static archive of previously published material as of 31st July 2013. We will continue to post articles up to this date. Afterwards any articles will be held as a public archive into the foreseeable future, so that others can continue to learn from the breadth and depth of knowledge published by our many authors, over the 8+ history of this remarkable volunteer effort.

We sincerely thank everyone who has been part of the TOD community - authors, staff and especially commenter's and readers - for contributing to the success of the site. It is unusual for a site which is based primarily on volunteer effort to continue this long.

Second -- Australia doesn't need to worry about oil for the near future. From Adelaide Australia's The Advertiser:

$20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy 'can fuel Australia'
South Australia is sitting on oil potentially worth more than $20 trillion, independent reports claim - enough to turn Australia into a self-sufficient fuel producer.

Brisbane company Linc Energy yesterday released two reports, based on drilling and seismic exploration, estimating the amount of oil in the as yet untapped Arckaringa Basin surrounding Coober Pedy ranging from 3.5 billion to 233 billion barrels of oil.

At the higher end, this would be "several times bigger than all of the oil in Australia", Linc managing director Peter Bond said.

This has the potential to turn Australia from an oil importer to an oil exporter.

Wonderful news for our friends to the south. There is a strong body of evidence that oil is being continually manufactured in the Earth's crust. Finally, people in New Zealand are calming down -- from The New Zealand Herald:

$10m freeze on global warming
The Government has proposed cutting $10 million in funding for climate change research in a move described as disheartening for New Zealand's highly capable climate scientists.

Treasury documents showed that Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy has recommended scaling back funding for Climate Change Research Grants by $2 million in the next financial year, $3.75 million in 2014/15 and $4.25 million in 2015/16.

This would reduce the pool of funding from nearly $10 million a year to $4.5 million a year by 2016.

The contestable grants were used to finance research by tertiary institutions and government agencies on adapting to climate change, reducing emissions and creating carbon sinks, and tapping into business opportunities which arise from climate change.

I love how the narrative has been switched from global warming to climate change. As if we have any ability to change it...