Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Predicting the timing of peak oil


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Some of the issues here (out of date / duplicated content) can probably be resolved through editing, unfortunately no consensus has formed for either the merge proposal or deleting this article at this time. No prejudice against a further nomination at a later time if issues around how to present this content are still unresolved – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 10:14, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Predicting the timing of peak oil

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Firstly hopelessly out of date as it seems to assume that oil will peak due to lack of supply rather than demand.

Secondly the topic is covered much better in Fossil fuel phase-out.

By the way my earlier proposal to merge with peak oil was rejected. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:37, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:37, 13 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Delete This is already covered in peak oil, and the topic is too closely related to peak oil to have its own article. Essentially, a discussion of peak oil is practically a discussion of the prediction of peak oil. There may be some salvageable information (especially historical context) that can be integrated into peak oil. --Ita140188 (talk) 17:33, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Good point about salvageable info - you and @EMsmile have now convinced me I favour Redirect to peak oil so that future editors can use "View history" to easily retrieve anything they would like to move to that article Chidgk1 (talk) 06:33, 20 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Keep. This is already covered in peak oil, but in standard summary style, just as long articles must be. Naturally, there are many summary sections on that peak oil page. This is a long topic, rightly broken down to a summary article and component articles on subtopics. Peak_oil is a fairly vanilla use of the style of article organization (something that's apparently used in 1% of all articles). This historical background is worthy of inclusion in the encyclopedia, but would give undue weight and length to the parent article if embedded there. (Presumably, this is why this page was given its own article, and why similar pages on complex subjects are broken out from their main topic, and was only reason that the earlier merger proposal was rejected.) So, I prefer the style as it is, but that's maybe just my personal preference. I want to address the three specific reasons given in the deletion proposal above. The first reason given for deletion is that: the article is "outdated"... but that's entirely to be expected of a retrospective of predictions. (Note that the lengthy Geocentric model article also uses the summary & organization.) The second reason given (in the AfD proposal) is that: "the topic is covered much better" in another article... Yet that other article actually contains almost none of the same content (on historic predictions) and really has a different focus (though not a different POV--it's not even a wp:povfork). The third proposal sentence is the killer, since it points out that an earlier merger proposal was rejected, which clarifies the intention: to excise this material from the encyclopedia. The effect of deletion would be: to remove interesting background content from Wikipedia, information that is not given on the main page or in Fossil fuel phase-out or on any other article (that I can find). If there were such parallel/fork articles, or if the merger request hadn't already been rejected, then moving this content would be a worthwhile discussion. But instead, this AfD proposal is simply a proposal to delete the detailed history of peak oil predictions. I.e. it's a proposal to erase notable and relevant background to the main article (which aleady includes this important sub-topic in summary form). We should keep this content. Outright notable content removal isn't a standard use of AfD. I don't see how deleting this article would satisfy any of the AfD criteria, but even if I've missed something in that list (that might by used to justify this deletion) the two reasons given in the proposal don't conform to any of the 14 reasons listed be the AfD policy (as well as being unclear reasons for deletion in themselves). --Wragge (talk) 04:51, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Reason 14 which covers anything else - because “A Wikipedia article should not be a complete exposition of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject” As you rightly say the article is a detailed history of peak oil predictions. In fact it is so detailed and out of date that I contend that a reader would not be able to see the wood for the trees and would misunderstand the subject as we understand it today. I am not an academic but as I understand it nowadays (since the invasion of Ukraine) the peak year is most likely between 2022 and 2025 and depends on energy security and Russian drills falling apart, price caps, IRA and carbon taxes etc - this can perfectly well be summarized in a few paragraphs in the peak oil article. But I suspect editors are reluctant to update anything to do with peak oil because they fear getting tangled up in many pages of historical details. Chidgk1 (talk) 12:46, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I should also have mentioned Phase-out of fossil fuel vehicles as another article which seems far more useful to the reader and which could be used to hold any bits of info which are actually summary style Chidgk1 (talk) 13:14, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think I would support Chidgk1's proposal although a whole sale deletion sounds a bit harsh. I would assume some content could be salvaged in a kind of "history" section as part of peak oil. Actually this coincides with the proposal by Ita140188, so I agree with them. An alternative might be to give the article a name change to History of peak oil predictions. - Can we please have the link to the earlier discussion of merging it into peak oil? Oh wait, I found it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Peak_oil&oldid=1136640945#Merger_proposal EMsmile (talk) 15:44, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * We agree that there's a problem, but might differ on exactly what it is. For me, the key problem isn't the overabundance of historical predictions, but is the lack of detail on the most material point that the average reader would probably want to know: what is the best & latest estimate for the peak oil year? I think has Chidgk1 has put their finger on this point (in the comment above). The strange thing about all three of these articles is that (despite being very long) none lead with this date. This absence might be explained by an overinterpretation of WP:CRYSTAL, but whatever is the cause, the gap is glaring. (How can we have an article or a section on "predicting peak oil" without daring to give the consensus prediction?) And closing this gap can't be achieved by deleting material; it should be solved in the normal way: by boldly editing these articles to foreground the best estimates from the literature. (Ideally, this expected date would be in the first sentence of Peak_oil and would be covered in more detail at the start of this article.) In the current state, the most daring answer given to the main practical question is in the Peak Oil lede: "as of 2021, forecasts of the year of peak oil range from 2019 to 2040"... If that's really the best we can do, then it's not an argument for deleting (most) of the content in this article (maybe it's an argument against the deletion, since we need more detail on the reasons for uncertainty). Alternatively, if we can be more specific then a bold edit should solve it. --Wragge (talk) 02:22, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Wragge If you or anyone else would like to spend the time and effort to bring the article up to scratch good luck with it - but I doubt there is enough good info to justify both this article and peak oil. If there was only one article I suspect editors would be keener to improve it Chidgk1 (talk) 06:38, 20 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Comment - IF the article is kept, and I am neutral on that point, the title needs to be changed to something more noun like. I'm aware "Predicting" is technically a gerund in this context, but it doesn't read like one. PianoDan (talk) 17:53, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 03:33, 21 February 2023 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Timothytyy (talk) 03:45, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep; subject is notable enough to justify an independent article.  Invading Invader  (userpage, talk) 22:45, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree the subject is notable - but I disagree that is enough to justify an independent article Chidgk1 (talk) 06:40, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Redirect to peak oil per nom RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 05:05, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Keep The meat of this article is the detailed history of past and present prediction methods. Good encyclopedic material, and demonstrably quite extensive. I don't see why this should not be spun out into a separate article that is suitably linked and summarized in the main article. Peak oil is not unmanageably big but it's certainly getting into the range where we should think twice about ramming in further material that makes good standalone sub-topics. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:53, 6 March 2023 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.