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Is the peak oil debate really over?

By January 3, 2011
hand holding a white flag

Just because a variety of authorities said in 2010 that the world had reached peak oil already and that its consequences for industrial society would be profound, it doesn't mean that energy cornucopians have raised the white flag. Quite the opposite. They're actually claiming victory. Yes, the International Energy Agency said that conventional oil peaked in 2006, the US military and German armed forces fingered peak oil as a threat to world peace and their respective nations' security and … [Read more...]

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Top 10 peak oil stories of 2010

By December 21, 2010
Gulf oil spill

The biggest stories of the year were financial. But you could say that the continuing Great Recession, the deficit debate, and more and more mortgage defaults were really stories of energy-driven economic crisis. This year also had plenty of big stories directly on energy, including some breakthroughs on peak oil. Here are our top picks. It's a highly subjective list; so please chime in with any stories you think we left off. Gulf Oil Apocalypse. The explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon … [Read more...]

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Tune in, turn off, hang up

By December 1, 2010
Bill McKibben wants Obama to save the world through solar panels.

In 1988, as an eighth grader in Mr. Cedric A. S. Paine’s Introductory to Physical Science class, I tried to create the greenhouse effect in a two-liter Coke bottle. It kind of worked, but more importantly, the project made a powerful impact on me that remains to this day. In 1989, a writer from the Adirondacks published The End of Nature. It was the first book for a popular audience about global warming or what has come to be known as climate change, and even more recently as “global … [Read more...]

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Peak oil for visual thinkers

By December 1, 2010
VisualThinking_US_EIA

Some people think that any discussion of peak oil must involve peer reviewed papers and complicated mathematical analyses like the “multicyclic Hubbert model.”  Even the non-modelers love to toss around tables of numbers with units of “million barrels per day” or “tons of oil equivalent." But there's another way of explaining and understanding our global oil predicament that doesn’t require a graduate degree in math or science. Instead, it uses pictures to explain things … [Read more...]

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Can Palin and Glenn Beck make America solar?

By November 19, 2010
NASCAR fans

Solar power. Do-goodery. Environment. Limousine liberal. Rare. California. Eco-Yuppie. Expensive. GREEN. No doubt about it. The words that the general public associates with solar power these days are probably not the ones that will get most people to put PV panels or a solar hot-water heater on their roofs, as the blogger known as Dave puts it at 1blog.org. He suggests a new set of words: Average family. Self-reliance. National security. Practical. Economically Conservative. Increased home … [Read more...]

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Reading between the lines of the IEA report

By November 16, 2010
world oil chart in Swedish

One of the more interesting occasions each year is learning just how far the International Energy Agency has come in the last 12 months towards publicly admitting that days of boundless cheap oil are over, just how high global oil production will ever get, and when the inevitable decline in production will set in. The IEA, of course, is not a completely free agent in formulating its discussion of peak oil, for it must take into account the collective positions of the 28 member countries that pay … [Read more...]

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It’s official: Peak oil came in 2006

By November 10, 2010
vintage oil cans

The subject of peak oil seems to hover always at the margin of the national conversation. Every so often a prominent politician will make a veiled reference to problems with oil supplies. The Saudis will talk about "demand" declining. A mainstream media outlet will do a tongue-in-cheek profile of someone who's preparing for a post-peak world. Or some country's military will warn us yet again that oil depletion poses a threat to world peace. Then it's up to the peak oil community to read the … [Read more...]

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Solar power: the teddy bear of energy sources

By November 1, 2010
teddy bear

Is there a more lovable energy source than solar power? Its fuel is light from the sun, which is free and available almost anywhere. It's entirely clean to run. It's easy to install and maintain. The big utilities can use it to generate green grid power, but you can also put it on your own roof to become your own utility or to go off-grid. And did I mention that it's powered by THE SUN? (Full disclosure: I do some work for a solar power developer). It's no wonder that public support … [Read more...]

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Bailouts and body bags: US military plans for peak oil

By November 1, 2010
Rear Admiral Lawrence Rice

"I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendants--those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age," said Admiral Hymen Rickover in 1957. Fast forward to 2010, and US military leadership clearly feels that the time has come again to talk about the Fossil Fuel Age and the national security dangers of its end. But this time, the warnings are less about our descendants than about Americans living today. "Our reliance on carbon-based fuels forces … [Read more...]

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The great white shale

By November 1, 2010
Leapfrogging into the dustbin of history.

Everybody likes good news. But perhaps nobody likes good news as much as exuberant traders and financial advisers who are in the business of selling willing investors on making a quick buck off the next greatest thing to come rolling down the pike. Such is the case for American shale gas, which, to hear it from some analysts, offers a Saudi Arabia on American soil, or rather, 11—count them—11 Saudi Arabias of natural gas just a waitin' to be primed for a payday. The implication? Poke a … [Read more...]

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