[annie]

I found out about peak oil from my husband Dale Allen Pfeiffer who learned about it from his studies as a geologist. He wrote many articles for Mike Ruppert and educated Mike on the subject. Matt Savinar has said that he learned from Mike and Mike learned from Dale. Dale hopes that we can all look beyond the doom and gloom and off the wall predictions and look for answers and possibilities. But human nature being what it is we sure have our work cut out for us.
Elizabeth Anne Pfeiffer aka (Annie-only on Peak Oil)

[rushdy]

I looked under my barrel and there it was

[cat34]

I guess I really started thinking about it while studying economics in grad school. The price of oil (or any finite resource) is something of a mystery. I went to work as an oil analyst for an energy trading company after school. I have since switched over into analysing electric power markets. A few weeks ago, I stumbled across lifeaftertheoilcrash.com and it really scared me. Up until then, I really thought we had enough oil for a few more generations at least. I still am not convinced of the timing and will have to read more to come to my own conclusions. In any case, we do have responsability to future generations and the environment.
It is interesting that many consultants in energy either ignore peak oil or say that it is very far off into the future. What scares me is that things will have to get pretty bad before most people will change (conservation or using alternate sources of energy).
So I guess I am compelled by peak oil and can't ignore it. I would rather stay somewhat optimistic about the future though. I am trying to think of ways in which I can help so that I don't sit around and wait for things to happen.

[whatpeak]

It was ironic. I was waiting for new tires to be installed on the SUV when an acquaintence hands me a copy of Rolling Stone Magazine. He says that I should read the article on oil. It turns out to be the excerpt from Kunstler's Long Emergency book. We discussed oil depletion after reading the article and the conversation digressed to Iraq.

A few weeks later I bought a copy The Long Emergency and became hooked. I've been trying to conserve energy at home. We don't have central A/C and don't run the heater that much because it doesn't really get that cold. Still holding out on buying a PV system because of the price.

My wife and I agree on oil depletion, but the economic consequences are open for debate.

[jimk]

I worked with Deffeyes & MacGregor at Princeton in 1976 & 1977. They gave me a copy of a Senate report by Hubbert. So that's 30 years now that I have been aware of peak oil. What I remember from that report was that world peak would probably hit maybe 2025 or 2030. So what's interesting is that generally the estimates of the peak date have moved earlier in time. Drives me a little batty when cornucopists say that lots of folks have predicted the peak and it always keeps moving out. Sure there is a lot of bad science in the world that is way off target, but there is good science too that gives a decently accurate picture of reality. Hubbert sure looks like pretty good science!

Just by way of introduction, I studied physics in college - four years of grad school earned me an MS. Been writing computer programs since then, programs that analyze designs of digital electronic circuits, i.e. chips.

Another book I read around 1991 that really influenced my outlook was Knowledge Value Revolution by Taichi Sakaiya. As I recall, the basic analogy is with the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Maybe the peak of civilization was really like 1914, or ok maybe 1972. Nobody will come out and announce that civilization has now entered the phase of collapse. At every time, there will be some good news and bright prospects, along with some bad news and bleak prospects. The long bumpy ride down looks just like this, like what we see.

Anyway it seems to me that there is a sort of perceptual problem here with time scales. All this peak oil and global warming business happens on a time scale of decades and centuries. Our lives happen on shorter time scales! The whole survivalist response, that somehow one can build a castle and live through the crisis, doesn't make sense. The "crisis" is likely a 500 year affair. Nobody lives for 500 years!

Of course the long crisis will probably looks like a series of shorter crises, and castles might be useful for some of these.

But in general, it seems to me that what we really ought to work for, the thing that has a chance of surviving and would be worth helping to survive, is the best parts of human culture and civilization. What are those best parts, and how can we do a kind of triage to figure out which we have any hope of preserving or keeping alive, that to me is the most interesting thing to discuss & puzzle over.

[daneosporin]

I did a search for "oil forum". Peak Oil sounded the coolest and I was very surprised to see how popular the forum is, oil really does run everyone's life!

_________________
Oil Supply and Demand

[waegari]

I cannot exactly recall what it was I was browsing the web for, but in some way or other I stumbled upon the Rolling Stone excerpt from Kunstler. It was about the most shocking thing I read in years, and soon I understood it to be inevitably true. It was so much in line with what I was already thinking about the global situation, that in a way it didn't even surprise me. However shocking it still was, mind you.

So then I started searching for websites on the subject, did a thorough search with Amazon, got to read Heinberg, and landed with peakoil.com. And just in order to overcome my bewilderment I started to check the web and submit news stories, eventually saying yes when Stu asked me to become news editor.

Not that it helped much to alleviate this bewilderment, but at least now I cannot get caught unawares.

[Cran]

My dad told me about 30 years ago that oil would run out... So I'm kind of surprised it's lasted as long as it has...

It's not really just oil that is the problem though, our whole way of living is not sustainable, energy is going to be the biggest problem in the near future though I think. If oil had run out in the 70's it wouldn't have been as big a problem, people didn't have cars and all the gadgets that we have now, and people were more inclined to help each other instead of just try and take what they want and screw everyone else...

My plans are to just make the most of things until the s*** starts to hit the fan, and then quickly move somewhere remote and out of the way... or hide in a cellar with a big gun for a few months... not really sure what's going to happen and we don't have guns over here (unless you are a criminal) which makes the second option difficult, hopefully my kids will be finished school (4-6 years) by the time anything major happens...

I changed my car from a hot hatch to a diesel last year, pertly because of the cost of the fuel, and partly because I need to tow. I'm currently spending less than 50% of what I used to a year on running my car despite fuel being more expensive.

I'm learning to grow food and make water drinkable and all that stuff... but not really making any plans, definately not buying property at the moment. Might get something abroad in a few years (4) though and leave the UK.

Found this site by accident when I was thinking, how come we haven't run out of oil yet... wonder how much is left... and did a google for oil and energy type stuff.

[KennyBeeAK]

Interview on National Public Radio with Jeremy Leggett about his book "Empty Tank" kicked peak oil up to top priority, January 2006.
I've known about the threat to civilization of resource depletion generally since 1972, when one of my college professors devoted a class period to summarizing the then recently-published book by the Club of Rome, "Limits to Growth". Since then, it was never a question of whether; only of when and how, and if nuclear war or environmental catastrophe would get us first.

[Epyx]

I found out about it through a friend that gave me a link to www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.com, I didn't really read anything then but one night when I was really bored I read the entire thing and it all made sense to me, after reading it I didn't really know where to get more information about it so I searched google for peak oil and stumbled across this site

[jupiters_release]

Saw a post on a music forum about the Oil Storm doc right after Katrina and a quick google led me here, never heard peak oil before. Living in NYC for 7 years and now entirely too spoiled to consider any survivalist strategy nor have any desire to live without electricity. Currently compiling an online discography of 6ts, 7ts, and 8ts independent black gospel music or what I consider the cultural peak of western history albeit mostly undocumented. Also starting a soul record label issuing purely analogue vinyl hoping to have at least three years before economic collapse.

[Beat]

I've read couple of years ago the "THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY" by Jeremy Rifkin, and wipe off from my minds all the info over there since 6 months ago.

I start to investigate about peak oil and I came here thru another website (I don't remember wich one at the moment).

I've already found some useful informations here, in the future I hope to share more info with you.

Ciao,

Vito

[oilshock05]

The journey that lead me to peak oil started with housing bubble. I live in SF bay area and the 2001 recession hit us the worst. So I was surprised to find a boom in housing in 2003. Then I stumbled across sites like patrick.net and housebubble.com. These sites lead me to a lot of financial websites that were based on the austrian school of economics. I was lead to books like "Dollar crisis". Then I realized the problem was fed incessantly inflating the dollars. This lead me into exploring possibilities of investing in Gold/Silver and other commodities and eventually to energy.

Then I started studying the oil industry which ultimately brought me to Peak Oil and now I run my own website at http://www.theviewfromthepeak.com

-Oil Shock

[gwmss15]

I Found out in Early October 2004 and just read everything i could about it

the topic came up via a railways forum site similar to this www.railpage.com.au and there was a post with 3 links in it something like lifeaftertheoilcrash.com

aspo's site and peakoil.com i visted lifeaftertheoilcrash.com 1st at this time they had a book you could download so i download it and read it for days and got freaked out abit so much that i cried to my self on the metro train the next afternoon. That soon passed and i took it on board as fact and tryed to tell my family about it they ignored it. after that i didnt bother spreading the news of peak oil beyond a few close friend most didnt take it on board. even though there childhoods were from poor subsistance farming life in rural asia in the late 1970's.

however in recent times my family has found out about peakoil after i ask them to send me a book on peak oil from australia to thailand. ie it made them look around about the topic and go an buy the book which ment my dad would look at it as he likes to read. he took it on board but felt the world will overcome this and life will go on.

for me i believe in the slow long decline and transistion to a lower enegry future. but it will be hard and some people will die along the way and everyone will have less money and face some discomfort because of peak oil but it will not be the end of the world anytime in the next 30years. unless theres a nuclear war etc

[gwmss15]

I Found out in Early October 2004 and just read everything i could about it

the topic came up via a railways forum site similar to this www.railpage.com.au and there was a post with 3 links in it something like lifeaftertheoilcrash.com

aspo's site and peakoil.com i visted lifeaftertheoilcrash.com 1st at this time they had a book you could download so i download it and read it for days and got freaked out abit so much that i cried to my self on the metro train the next afternoon. That soon passed and i took it on board as fact and tryed to tell my family about it they ignored it. after that i didnt bother spreading the news of peak oil beyond a few close friend most didnt take it on board. even though there childhoods were from poor subsistance farming life in rural asia in the late 1970's.

however in recent times my family has found out about peakoil after i ask them to send me a book on peak oil from australia to thailand. ie it made them look around about the topic and go an buy the book which ment my dad would look at it as he likes to read. he took it on board but felt the world will overcome this and life will go on.

for me i believe in the slow long decline and transistion to a lower enegry future. but it will be hard and some people will die along the way and everyone will have less money and face some discomfort because of peak oil but it will not be the end of the world anytime in the next 30years. unless theres a nuclear war etc

[kodgetts]

I work as a graphic designer on a local community newspaper in the UK and was introduced to the concept of Peak Oil by my environmentally-aware editor. We've included articles about this and related subjects in our last two issues, but whether the public take a blind bit of notice or not is another question...

Of course, we were taught in school that fossil fuels are a finite resource and that there are better alternative sources of energy (I remember watching an old video in Science class that predicted fossil fuels would run out by the 1990s!), so I always assumed that the 'people in charge' would be working on switching. 15 years later, this doesn't appear to be the case - we are even more dependant on oil, gas and coal than ever - and now our government have stupidly decided that nuclear power is the way forward. [facetious]Hey, let's just ignore the issues of radioactive waste disposal and the difficulty of decomissioning nuclear power stations. Let's also ignore the potential of encouraging citizens to provide some of their own power using small scale hydro and solar.[/facetious]:roll:

[cr0bar]

I'm an undergraduate electrical engineer at Edinburgh University, and just completed a short dissertation on the supply of carbon based fossil fuels. I didn't really expect my dissertation to be as interesting or as alarming as it turned out to be, luckily I'm already doing my masters project on optomising a type of permanent magnet wave generator, so maybe I can contribute to the solution! I'll try and do a good job for your sakes

[simontay78]

My first post !!

I came across the subject of Peak Oil just 1 month ago...it all happened too fast....I cannot remember which website I went!

I used to work for a License Electricity Retailer in Singapore and I had many concerns about the energy crisis...the inflation is going to be very harsh...especially in the resource poor country like mine.

Great job on this forum!

I had make this a permanent home page for my research on future planning......

[Spartan2]

I found out about PO about 18 months ago. Before that, the idea of having 40 years left of oil already sounded a little strange to me. Wouldn't demand increase? Would we be swimming in oil for 40 years and then suddenly we wouldn't have a drop of it left?

So, when the barrel of oil passed $40 I decided to make an investigation on the subject in the internet and I came across Savinar's site. I was immediately convinced from what I read that the world's oil production would peak. Finding out that the alternatives can't replace oil was a small step and now here I am.

[mullen112280]

I found out about peak oil during Hurricane Katrina, when the price of gasoline shot up. I was doing internet research, and the subject of peak oil kept popping up. I have been watching the oil market since then.