"We owe them gratitude and not disdain"
/“Arguing that a peak oil prediction was foolish or inaccurate because it was not realized is a bit like arguing that an inoculation program was unnecessary because the epidemic never occurred. The geologists who made such predictions were not fools. Their models were well thought out and carefully validated. They understood the conditions and limitations of their prognostications and saw themselves not as doomsayers but as agents of change. We owe them gratitude and not disdain.”
Noah Smith called out this comment by Robert Frey posted on his article "Peak Oil is dead! Long live Peak Oil!"
Smith added: "YES. Exactly. If physicists predict that an asteroid is going to hit Earth, and so in response we send a bomb and successfully divert the asteroid, you hail the physicists as heroes, rather than deriding them as Chicken Littles. This is something that too many economists and economics and finance commentators tend to get wrong when talking about 'predictions'."
