Peak Oil: A Different Perspective

I recently came across PERFECT STORM – ENERGY, FINANCE, AND THE END OF GROWTH. It’s a well-written and thoroughly-researched 2013 report issued by Tullet Prebon, a British financial services firm (in the wholesale financial and energy sectors), authored by Dr. Tim Morgan, Global Head of Research. This effort presents a sobering take—from a nuanced, slightly […]

The Future of an Illusion

In Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Sigmund Freud relates the story of the man accused by his neighbor of damaging a borrowed kettle.  As Freud tells it, “A. borrowed a copper kettle from B. and after he had returned it was sued by B. because the kettle now had a big hole in it […]

Ex govt adviser: “global market shock” from “oil crash” could hit in 2015

A former oil man calls for renewable “Renaissance” to ward off shale dystopia In a new book, former oil geologist and government adviser on renewable energy, Dr. Jeremy Leggett, identifies five “global systemic risks directly connected to energy” which, he says, together “threaten capital markets and hence the global economy” in a way that could […]

Peak Oil: Great Question. The Answer Is _ ?

The real question for the United States is not about optimal trade policy or economic theory, but whether we want to extract the last drops of our oil endowment as quickly as possible by enabling the debt-fueled land rush that has brought us a gratifying, but temporary, bump in production, or whether we want to […]

Captain Erikson’s Equation

I have yet to hear anyone in the peak oil blogosphere mention the name of Captain Gustaf Erikson of the Åland Islands and his fleet of windjammers.  For all I know, he’s been completely forgotten now, his name and accomplishments packed away in the same dustbin of forgotten history as solar steam-engine pioneer Augustin Mouchot, […]

Searching for alternatives: Transition

“Governments tend to be reactive rather than pro-active; most change comes because people just go on with it and start to live their lives as it had already happened ”. Originating in the little town of Totnes in South West England, the Transition movement has spread to many countries. There are now some 1,300 official […]

Peak civilization: how the Roman empire collapsed

This long post was originally published on the “Oil Drum” in 2009. I think I can repropose it here as follow-up of a recent post of mine dealing with the fall of the Roman Empire. A silver mask that had belonged to a Roman cavalryman of imperial times. It was found on the site of […]

Ukraine Crisis Highlights Ugly Global Energy Truths

Anyone who thinks the crisis now unsettling Ukraine is purely about a people’s quest for democracy and “the madness” of Vladimir Putin would be mistaken. Ukraine, a semi-failed state due to energy debt and corruption, merely illustrates the new energy politics now unsettling governments from the United States to Crimea. It represents our collective global […]

The Chevron Newspaper, Collapsing Consciously & Prison for Internet Trolling

On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin remarks on a Richmond, California newspaper sponsored by Chevron, calling out the absurd propaganda about the oil industry featured in the publication. Abby then talks about the crackdown on individuals who choose to live ‘Off the Grid’ citing a examples such as a man in Oregon […]

Peak Oil: “Show-Stoppers”

Freshly fracked wells sent U.S. oil production soaring 39 percent since 2011. That’s the steepest climb in history, and if production continues apace, the U.S. would become the world’s biggest source of oil by 2015, according to the U.S. Energy Information  Administration. Rapid well declines threaten to spoil that promise. The average flow from a […]

Peak Oil: Laherrère, Real Curves, and Official Curves

The graph above is Figure 11 from Jean Laherrère, “World Oil and Gas Production Forecasts up to 2100,” The Oil Drum, July 16, 2013. Retrieved from www.theoildrum.com/node/10009 Notes on some of Laherrère’s abbreviations: AEO = Annual Energy Outlook (from EIA) (= US Energy Information Administration) NOPEC = non-OPEC Tb = trillion barrels U = ultimate […]

Why peak oil signals the world’s end, or at least the one we know

While global financial markets are still levitating somewhere between the stratosphere and the Kingdom of Asgard, by 60°24′31″ North and 172°43′12″ West, in the middle of nowhere, an isolated island of 137.857 sq-mi holds the key of three major economic developments and risks: November 2013, Lawrence Summers raised the question whether the “secular stagnation” and […]

Power is nothing without control: how to lose an empire

  Image from an advertising campaign for Pirelli in the 1990s. Empires seem to be a typical human structure that reappears over and over in history. The problem is that empires are often so efficient that they tend to overexploit and destroy even theoretically renewable resources. The final result is a destructive cascade of feedbacks: […]

#PeakOil, end of story?

In the past few weeks there were several new publications from renowned institutes with titles like ‘Peak Oil’ Concerns Should Ease, Experts Predict, More Signs of ‘Peak Us’ in New Study of ‘Peak Oil Demand’ and The receding threat from Peak Oil A you undoubtedly know I am a true PeakOiler, so when institute like […]

The Challenges Facing Saudi Arabia Include More Than Oil

The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently issued a call for Saudi Arabia to sustain its current oil output during the upcoming seasonally weak global oil demand period in order to rebuild global crude oil inventories following the harsh winter in the Northern Hemisphere and the uptick in developing country oil needs. The IEA estimates that […]

Peak Oil: Sobering Realities

Expenditures for finding and developing oil fields have tripled in the last decade and the return from these expenditures has not been enough to justify the costs. Nearly all of the major oil companies have announced major reductions in their exploration and drilling programs and several are selling off assets as they are caught in […]

John Michael Greer: American Delusionalism, or Why History Matters

One of the things that reliably irritates a certain fraction of this blog’s readers, as I’ve had occasion to comment before, is my habit of using history as a touchstone that can be used to test claims about the future. No matter what the context, no matter how wearily familiar the process under discussion might […]

Dmitry Orlov: Collapse and Systemic Failure at All Levels Coming

Dmitry Orlov is a Russian blogger who writes about the parallel between the U.S and the USSR.  Orlov lived through the financial collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, and he thinks the U.S. is on the same trajectory.  Orlov contends, “The trajectory is defined by this sort of incompetent militarism where more […]

If 9 Substations Are Destroyed, The Power Grid Could Be Down For 18 Months

What would you do if the Internet or the power grid went down for over a year?  Our key infrastructure, including the Internet and the power grid, is far more vulnerable than most people would dare to imagine. Image: Power Grid (Wiki Commons). These days, most people simply take for granted that the lights will […]

The global Transition tipping point has arrived

Last Friday, I posted an exclusive report about a new NASA-backed scientific research project at the US National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (Sesync) to model the risks of civilisational collapse, based on analysis of the key factors involved in the rise and fall of past civilisations. The story went viral and was quickly picked up by […]

Heinberg: Peak Oil And How To See The Bigger Picture

Richard Heinberg explaining everything that you need to know about Peak Oil and how to prepare for it, because we are already deep in Peak Oil time

Peak Oil: The Military Seems Concerned … Just Sayin’

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Dr. Nafeez Ahmed (quoting Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis): ‘A lot of high-ranking officials are starting to ask exactly these hard questions about the sustainability of the current energy system. You’ve got to remember that for the military, it doesn’t matter what you want to do. What […]

The Creation of Society’s Shared Hallucinations

Since the advent of the printing press and general literacy, media organizations have constructed parallel realities for the general populace. Radio and silent films, followed by “talking pictures” and television went further by creating artificial worlds that can be seen and heard in the same way that the real world is perceived. The human mind […]

Peak Oil: Problem, Not Solution

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Knovel Corp: Fossil fuels will continue to dominate the energy sector for the foreseeable future, after a report issued by the World Energy Council made it clear that fears expressed in respect of so-called ‘peak oil’ were unlikely to be realized within the next forty years at […]

The Crocodiles of Reality

I’ve suggested in several previous posts that the peak oil debate may be approaching a turning point—one of those shifts in the collective conversation in which topics that have been shut out for years or decades finally succeed in crashing the party, and other topics that have gotten more than their quota of attention during […]

Peak Oil Denial: Nonsense, Part 1 of Infinity

At the risk of starting a cat fight where truth may too quickly become a casualty, why don’t we more forcefully challenge those who deny peak oil (and global warming) and who do so for reasons that generally ignore reality in favor of narrowly-defined interests? Those motivations will ultimately do nothing but promote more eventual […]

Peak Oil: A Peek At The Data

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Dr. Nafeez Ahmed (quoting Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis): ‘We put the event [Transatlantic Energy Security Dialogue conference] together because the prevailing idea that we have a bright future of increasing oil and gas production that can sustain our current way of life indefinitely is based on […]

A Walk in the Future

I will begin this post with apologies to my regular readers for taking a mid-winter writing hiatus this year. The truth is, in early January, my wife and youngest daughter and I moved out of the city and back to rural Colorado where we are home. After ten years of urban homesteading—creating a half-acre farm […]

Peak Oil Denial: Reality Is Still Here

At the risk of starting a cat fight where truth may too quickly become a casualty, why don’t we more forcefully challenge those who deny peak oil (and global warming) and who do so for reasons that generally ignore reality in favor of narrowly-defined interests? Those motivations will ultimately do nothing but promote more eventual […]

Question Everything, Believe Nothing – Group Think and the Hive Mind

Question Everything, Believe Nothing Chapter Two Group Think and the Hive Mind By Cognitive Dissonance     To subscribe to ‘Dispatches‘, a periodic newsletter from Cognitive Dissonance and TwoIceFloes Creations, please click here.   Chapter One may be found here.   There is a pretty common ‘belief’ among many that to ask questions of some ‘things’ that others […]

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