This is a guest post by Kevin Rietmann, aka The Dude, on The Oil Drum. The post is a response to Tuesdays NYTimes Op-ed by political scientist Michael Lynch, showing some historical track records between some 'peak oilers' and Lynch and others.

Energy analyst Michael C. Lynch's op-ed piece ‘Peak Oil’ Is a Waste of Energy, published in the August 24th edition of the New York Times, has naturally garnered much attention from those in the peak oil community itself. Lynch's dim view of predictions of declining supplies of energy is evident from the title of his piece, and those familiar with views espoused by him in the past weren't surprised by this new batch of commentary:

A careful examination of the facts shows that most arguments about peak oil are based on anecdotal information, vague references and ignorance of how the oil industry goes about finding fields and extracting petroleum. And this has been demonstrated over and over again: the founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil first claimed in 1989 that the peak had already been reached, and Mr.