# Talk:Hubbert curve

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## Untitled

Steve: Sorry if I've unwittingly breached etiquette, but I've moved your comment over to Talk:M. King Hubbert when I shifted the content you were referring to. Hope you don't mind.

Previously this page started talking about the mathematical curve, but then drifted off into a discusion of petroleum production and social consequences. I've shifted the latter material over to M. King Hubbert, and slightly tidied up what's left.

Stuart

--GPoss 13:00, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)

Accurately forecast? HAHHAHAHAHA the usual great leftist propaganda at wikipedia. Note this site less accurately than any other collection in the history of humanity routinely suppresses the abject failures of modern science to predict the future.

## Hubbert peak theory

22:09, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

## The differential equations

Most of the content here is based on the alternative method Hubbert presented in the '86 paper. Where are the original formulas based on differential calculations that the '56 paper discussed? That is the true Hubbert curve.

Carbonate 23:53, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

There's no such thing. Seriously, go look at the paper. There is no (nontrivial) equation in there.

RandomP 09:22, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

## "Bell shaped", it's not "bell shaped"

(moved from talk:peak oil)

It's the Normal distribution. --Leladax (talk) 09:12, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

They are somewhat similar, and yes they are both bell-shaped. The primary difference is that the Hubbert curve has definite end points, where as the normal distribution never reaches 0 on either side. Compare the formulas at Hubbert curve and normal distribution for more specifics. Did want to see some change in the article? NJGW (talk) 13:25, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
The Hubbert peak graph doesn't reach a 0 at least in the higher end either. Oil is not going to become "0" in production, oil is not going to become "0" in demand either, at least in the long term future. It could be argued that even the beginning of it doesn't start exactly from 0, e.g. cavemen burning it for fire or something in limited quantities. --Leladax (talk) 00:24, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
The normal curve never reaches zero. Ever. One day, man will no longer pump oil. A long time ago (cavemen???, where did you hear that?), man first started pumping oil. Those are zeros on both ends. Also, the normal curve is normally distributed while the Hubbert curve is not. Compare:
Hubbert : ${\displaystyle x={e^{-t} \over (1+e^{-t})^{2}}={1 \over 2+2\cosh t}}$
Normal : ${\displaystyle \varphi (x)=\varphi _{0,1}(x)={\frac {1}{\sqrt {2\pi \,}}}\,e^{-{\frac {x^{2}}{2}}},\quad x\in \mathbb {R} ,}$
The curves do in fact look similar, but they are mathematically different. NJGW (talk) 18:15, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
ok, but I have to point out your "never" is weak, normal distribution reaches zero when x tends to infinity. Also I find your way of thinking on "cavemen" (disregarding the case with such ease) quite simplistic, possibly an attempt to pick a fight, and a drawback in a serious discussion. There's no axiom requiring you thinking of modern oil pumps and be fixed to that. Using oil even by extracting it with buckets or even carrying it in your palms to a cave is still using oil. --Leladax (talk) 19:50, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Statistically speaking, never is never because infinity never happens. It's only theoretical so I don't know why you'd want to argue with that. I'm sorry you felt I was trying to pick a fight with the caveman thing, but I was just trying to point out that if you cite an example, you really should cite a source for it, or at least point out that you are stating something just for the sake of argument. In either case it doesn't matter because if we assume people first started using oil, we assume there was a beginning, and that implies a zero point one moment before that. As for the other direction, there will be a zero point as well, whether it is when all the oil has been used or when we can't physically pump any more out or when all humans die out. That's the main mathematical difference, though I'm sure a statistician could help us out with the more technical details.
There may also be a time when oil production shoots back up (say for example a new well is discovered, a new technology created, a future environmental pact breached), further moving the curve away from a normal distribution. I guess that that's the practical, and more crucial, reason why Hubberts isn't normally distributed. Either way, what's the point here? Is there something that needs to change in the article? NJGW (talk) 02:45, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
The text reads {cquote| According to the Hubbert model, the production rate of a limited resource will follow a roughly symmetrical bell-shaped curve based on the limits of exploitability and market pressures.}} Is this what Hubbert predicted or not? The article doesn't provide a reference for the statement.LeadSongDog (talk) 03:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure "bell-shaped" is simply a visual description, though for some reason if you look up bell-shaped on WP, you end up at normal distribution (which I'm not sure is necessarily true, but I'll try to ask a statistitian). This page has a comparison which shows that the Hubbert curve highly resembles a parabola on it's top half, as opposed to a "gauss" curve (normal distribution) on the bottom half. This page however confuses things by suggesting that a normal curve is simply symmetrical (dubious?), but then points out that a real-life Hubbert curve is not symmetrical. NJGW (talk) 04:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

(undent) From a stat professor's quick evaluation: "Hubbert function is the derivative of the logistic function so you can always find a normal distribution that will resemble a Hubbert function, and vice versa. The cumulative form of the Hubbert function, though, is more tractable than the cumulative normal. " I'm not really sure what tractable means there, but I think he means you can play around with the numbers a bit more. He's in the middle of getting ready for a big conference or he'd tell me more :( NJGW (talk) 05:21, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

## Merge proposal from Hubbert math

Propose that Hubbert math be merged into this article because "Hubbert math is a wp:neologism,[1], and so not appropriate for an article title. The information from 'math' fits in naturally and compliments Hubbert curve, and what doesn't go there could fit in Hubbert peak theory. NJGW (talk) 03:50, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Hubbert math is redirected here per wp:NEO. The history is preserved so that any information which seems important may be placed in this article. NJGW (talk) 23:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

## Hubbert's curve shape

File:Hubbert-fig-20.png
Original Hubbert's curve, as proposed in 1956, asymmetrical.

The actual shape of the Hubbert curve, as proposed in his famous 1956 paper (and in numerous other occasions) is not a logistic curve ; it is not even symmetrical. The logistic curve, as an approximation of Hubbert's proposal, came much later.--Environnement2100 (talk) 01:14, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Nice find... figure 21. Interesting caption though. Doesn't seem to be the prototypical curve. More like a model based on observations. Hubbert liked to account for those. Have a look at Figure 11 if you want to see the prototype. 71.125.71.215 (talk) 00:40, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
As a consequence of the above, I recommend that the text be changed accordingly - typically the paragraph Shape. All account of logistic curve, which does not appear in M. Hubbert's work, may be moved to either Hubbert peak theory or Peak oil article. --Environnement2100 (talk) 02:01, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Why are you so set on getting rid of the word logistic? Not only is it the most common version of the curve in current models, it is also considered by Mathematicians to be what Hubbert himself used 1956.[2] You're either in way over your head or being facetious. 71.125.71.215 (talk) 03:40, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
The 2006 study doesnt really test Hubbert and claims some points about Hubbert which are not to be found in the original study. First Huberts 1956 paper was already about global peak oil, gas and coal, the actual figures far from what happened. This is completely left out in the 2006 "testing paper". Hubbert used among other an asymmetric statistical model to predict global oil produccion after the peak. Neither a Bell curve nore a gaussian Model were used for this. Bakulan (talk) 21:39, 15 December 2010 (UTC)