A Saudi Prince tells America to give up futile dreams of energy independence. Op-Ed in the NYT says Peak Oil is a waste of energy and an illusion. Meanwhile, the OECD's energy advisors, the IEA are saying cheap oil will run out in ten years, a decade sooner than estimates made as recently as 2007.
posted by bystander on Aug 26, 2009 - 88 comments

Peak Oil, 1925. In 2000, 20% of new buildings will be solar equipped. By the late 1990s, 90% of the world's energy will be nuclear-generated. These and other erroneous projections are being collected as part of the Forecast Project on the website Inventing Green: The Lost History of Alternative Energy in America.
posted by Miko on Jul 27, 2009 - 65 comments

The author of a new book on how rising oil prices will change America makes the claims that higher gasoline prices will make the country healthier and safer. Christopher Steiner asserts that, for every $1 that gasoline prices rise, obesity rates drop by 10% (as people walk more and eat out less). As for "safer", that comes in when high gasoline prices force police out of their cruisers and onto bicycles and foot patrols, where they can interact more closely with their communities. [more inside]
posted by acb on Jul 22, 2009 - 61 comments

Recently, John Michael Greer has been exploring a little known idea of the deceased economist E.F. Schumacher (a student of the oft-discussed Keynes). "Schumacher drew a hard distinction between primary goods and secondary goods. The latter of these includes everything dealt with by conventional economics: the goods and services produced by human labor and exchanged among human beings. The former includes all those things necessary for human life and economic activity that are produced not by human beings, but by nature. Schumacher pointed out that primary goods, as the phrase implies, need to come first in any economic analysis because they supply the preconditions for the production of secondary goods. Renewable resources, he proposed, form the equivalent of income in the primary economy, while nonrenewable resources are the equivalent of capital; to insist that an economic system is sound when it is burning through nonrenewable resources at a rate that will lead to rapid depletion is thus as silly as claiming that a business is breaking even if it’s covering up huge losses by drawing down its bank accounts." [more inside]
posted by symbollocks on Jul 10, 2009 - 14 comments

In a talk titled Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation given at The New Emergency Conference, Peak Oil activist and writer Dmitry Orlov (previously 1 2 3) shows how he has come to the conclusion that the oil price spike of summer 2008 was the trigger for the financial collapse that occurred later on in the fall. He goes on to summarize (from his point of view) pretty much everything that has been happening in the past year or so, and what he thinks is coming up next. [more inside]
posted by symbollocks on Jun 19, 2009 - 41 comments

Pickens Plan -- oilman T. Boone Pickens has a plan to reduce America's oil dependency problem: exploit the country's massive windpower potential for domestic energy, replacing natural gas, and then use natural gas to power cars instead of foreign oil. Some problems with the plan.
posted by Laugh_track on Jul 10, 2008 - 41 comments

In Lester R. Brown's new book Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (2008, full-text)) - an update to Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (2006, full-text) - he calls for a war-time mobilization (ch.13) to save global civilization (already showing Early Signs of Decline (ch.6)) from Deteriorating Oil and Food Security (ch.2), Rising Temperatures and Rising Seas (ch.3), Emerging Water Shortages (ch.4), and Natural Systems Under Stress (ch.5)
posted by stbalbach on Jul 2, 2008 - 15 comments

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” (RealVideo) Al Bartlett, retired University of Colorado Professor of Physics, gives a stunning hour-long old-school lecture (overhead projector!) on exponential growth and its inevitable results. [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul on Nov 20, 2007 - 83 comments

"The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life." The new Oil Report from Energy Watch Group makes a strong case that we have now passed peak oil. [more inside]
posted by roofus on Oct 22, 2007 - 87 comments

Peak Oil no more? Prophets of peak oil are being proven wrong as new technologies increase oil recovery rates. In fact, the entire peak oil theory might be based on flawed assumptions.
posted by blahblahblah on Mar 6, 2007 - 94 comments

Supertankers are so cool. Click previous sentence for more information.
posted by thirteenkiller on Apr 29, 2006 - 43 comments

As of today, world oil reserves are five percent lower than previously thought. Well informed early toppers like Jeremy Leggett (previously discussed here) won't be surprised by the news, though they may be disappointed that it didn't make bigger headlines.
posted by alms on Jan 20, 2006 - 42 comments

"Richard Rainwater made billions by knowing how to profit from a crisis. Now he foresees the biggest one yet". Rainwater discovers peak oil and wants to profit from it. Among other things, "he's thinking about opening a for-profit survivability center". Admittedly, his peak oil obsession goes beyond profiting:

But there may be something more important than making money. This is the first scenario I've seen where I question the survivability of mankind. I don't want the world to wake up one day and say, 'How come some doofus billionaire in Texas made all this money by being aware of this, and why didn't someone tell us?'

posted by samelborp on Dec 13, 2005 - 20 comments

Boundless energy or bad math? Randell Mills thinks he has the solution to our energy problems. In his company's patented process, "energy is released as the electrons of atomic hydrogen are induced to undergo transitions to lower energy levels producing plasma, light, and novel hydrogen compounds." It also implies that quantum mechanics is wrong.
posted by Espoo2 on Nov 5, 2005 - 73 comments

Your Mr. Fusion is ready. Sort of.
posted by loquacious on Sep 14, 2005 - 13 comments

Peak Oil discussed in the US Congress. Roscoe Bartlett (Rep. 6th District, Maryland - R) delivers a presentation on Peak Oil to the 109th United States Congress. More here and a backup of the full text with a bit more of an introduction by Rep. Gilchrest here (PDF)
posted by loquacious on Mar 25, 2005 - 48 comments

The Sky (and Global Oil Production) is Falling! With all the recent news on Global Warming, here's an article on the root cause of the problem: Global Energy Use. Has oil production peaked? Is the real focus of the Iraqi insurgency foreshadowing an energy-dominated future? Is there a solution to the problem??
posted by DAJ on Feb 18, 2005 - 13 comments

Real-Time Biological Natural Gas Generation. A research lab has discovered that microbes living in Wyoming's Powder River Basin are generating methane (natural gas) through their natural metabolism of local coal beds. In relation to the many Peak Oil discussions here, could be way to get more energy for the future. (via SpaceDaily.com)
posted by zoogleplex on Nov 17, 2004 - 22 comments

Peak Oil? Include Me Out, is one of the best reads about the whole issue of peak oil. Its author, Mick Winter "is a former Y2K community activist who currently suffers from chronic déjà vu and still hasn't figured out what to do about Peak Oil." I am a peaknik and I can tell you this is a good read, no matter your stance on peak oil! (psssst, if you are already a peaknik, or just curious, Winter maintains a good a peak oil metadirectory. )
posted by samelborp on Oct 18, 2004 - 41 comments

Greenspan on oil (speaking to the the National Italian American Foundation, which De Niro would never do :) "We will begin the transition to the next major sources of energy perhaps before midcentury as production from conventional oil reservoirs, according to central tendency scenarios of the Energy Information Administration, is projected to peak." And just to make it political, here's a chart relating presidential approval ratings to gas prices!
posted by kliuless on Oct 15, 2004 - 9 comments

Revealing Statements about Peak Oil and Natural Gas Depletion.
posted by thedailygrowl on Jun 12, 2003 - 13 comments