Optimistic, but unwarranted, energy supply forecasts permeate the media (courtesy of the oil and gas industry) even as the occasional dire scenario gets coverage. But, it is well to remember that none of people making forecasts can know the one thing they all desperately want to know: the future. The most important thing you need to understand about forecasts–any forecast–is that their accuracy deteriorates rapidly, the further they go into the future. Surprisingly, almost no one who makes public energy supply forecasts acknowledges this; otherwise, we would see what statisticians call error bars –very large ones–in all these forecasts. In layman’s terms, the further out a forecast goes, the wider the range of possible outcomes–so much so that for long-term forecasts the range of outcomes is far more important than the middle estimate. But, this kind of waffling doesn’t get headlines. Humans are evolutionarily disposed to listen to those […]