[bentstrider]

I've known about since third grade.
When our teacher was talking about what oil really was and how it would become really scarce one day.
I've always accepted the fact that it would run out and never really gave it much of doom thought, until I ran into the nuts who preached owning some type of weapon and learning how to fight.
I never had any objections to riding trains, horses and carriages or using candlelight again.
But, weapons and fighting skills give me bad thoughts of the issue.

[venky]

Always knew that oil was finite and 'running out' would be a problem in my lifetime.

As a word, since the fall of 2003.

[I_Like_Plants]

Only about 6 months, although I grew up with the concepts of ecology and it was no problem to digest the concept once I looked into it.

[katkinkate]

About a year. Hadn't really given oil a thought (I don't drive much). Peak Oil just give me another excuse to downsize my life, as I was doing anyway (being a tree-hugging, greeny, ecovillage-hippy wannabe). And sharpened the sense of urgency.

[Sencha]

I of course, always "knew" about peak oil. But like a moron I believed the mantra, "It won't happen in our lifetime." I didn't really understand how wrong this was until a little over a year ago. Now, a day doesn't go by when I don't think about oil.
Its enough to drive me crazy. Before, I only thought about it when it came to things like changing it in my car, now its a haunting ghost that follows me where ever I go. It has become an inseparable thing in my life and I hate it.

[Omnitir]

Like most people I’ve always been aware that oil is a finite resources, but I only learnt about the approaching of peak oil production about a year ago. I’ve always been concerned about the environment and in particular the general publics disregard for the environment, so in that regard I’m not too distressed about peak oil.

I think it’s going to be a massive problem in the short term, but eventually, in the macroscopic, I think it’s going to be a good thing for humanity. Peak oil will give us a kick in our complacencies.

[elizabethlea]

I've known oil is finite since I was 10 when my Dad talked to me about it, in the context of some other conversation. But I didn't realise the immediate implications of "peak oil" until this year, and now I'm 16.

At least I have a bit of an early start I guess... I don't know if that's ultimately a good or bad thing

[stu]

I always knew oil was a finite resource but just presumed that we would easily switch to alternatives without a problem. Maybe I saw too many sci-fi movies. I just got on with life and took everything for granted. Those days are well and truly over.

[Jake_old]

Same as stu!

Its strange, I remember learning about fossil fuels at Primary School, and it being mentioned that they would run out in our lifetime. Somehow that was pushed to the back of my mind.

I wonder if schools still teach about it.

[NEOPO]

Yes thats about right.
I would have to say that I became "re-PO aware" about 5 months ago.
Most of us were "informed" at an early age yet I dont recall much about it in my later years of education when it probably should have been spoken more often.
I think we all kinda want to believe it wont happen in our lifetime.
Even when its "20 years" away we tend to think "oh well we have all the time in the world then"....
I still remember 5th grade and a blackboard full of zero's as my teacher tried to show the class just how big the national debt was.

Perhaps all those star trek episodes did have a negative impact on our acceptance of reality.
Still expecting Scotty to miraculously beam us up!!

[Andrew_S]

In '02 I became aware it was not so many years way.
But in the back of my mind since I was a boy in the '70s.

[bentstrider]

As I said, it wouldn't be thought of as a bad thing.
As long as all those with the gunslinging and streetfighting skills would've kept their mouths shut, and kept to themselves.
It's like they were trying to profit off of oncoming disaster.
I could understand fending off a few attackers.
But, these people have the mindset that "wannabe-Mongols" will return and never go away again.

[oiless]

I've always know that oil was a finite resource, (that's obvious to even the meanest intelligence) but when I was in school in the early '70's we were taught in social studies that Canada had sufficient oil reserves to last us 1100 years, at our current rate of consumption.

Several years ago I was cursing my commute particularly hard one morning, for a number of reasons, and wondering when this sort of foolishness would end, I had some thoughts.
First, I knew that the figure from school had to be wrong, we've been selling our oil as cheap and as fast as we could for as long as I can remember, (to quote Pierre Eliot Trudeau: "we don't want find ourselves locked into the petroleum age") so it was unlikely that we had anything like that much left.
The second thought that I had (I had never heard of Hubbert at this point)
was that oil was unlikely to be flat in production, that production would rise from field discovery, peak, and then decline.

I left it at that for a while, then in the last couple of years my feeling became that we were almost at maximum oil production, and since I have more time now, and the internet has made research easier, I began researching the matter, discovered that my original hypothesis was in fact common knowledge.
Here's to re-inventing the wheel. I do it all the time.

[Free]

Since spring 2003, in the build up of the Iraq war. Everybody was talking about the motives of this attack, and it was quite clear to everybody that it had to do with oil, at least partially.

But I was wondering for a detailed picture of fossil fuel security, and while searching came to Jay Hansons dieoff.org

I immediately "knew" that there was some truth about this whole concept, because I have always been very "energy aware".
I knew that you can't just pull energy out the magic hat, I had an - at least subconsciously - understanding of the laws of thermodynamics, and so I grasped the consequences and the potential dimensions of PO very quickly.