*WARNING: THIS LIST IS OPINIONATED*
Love.
1. Aaron. When I first googled peak oil in late 2003, the internetss was a desert. Then in 2004, PO.com popped up and I gave a little YELP of surprise. Aaron maintains a terse, ironic style that I like and cultivates a kind of conspicuous anonymity which is intriguing.
2. Bakhtiari. I adored him from the moment I first saw him in "End of Suburbia." "Gawd does set hiss own limits. And sometimes he likes to tesst uss. I believe such a tesst is coming very, very soon." He only publishes when he has something to say. You're always waiting for the next bit. Plus, he doesn't waste words.
3. Bartlett (Albert!). I relish -- absolutely relish -- the silence in my classroom after I've shown the DVD version of Arithmetic, Population and Energy. You can hear a pin drop -- and little hopes crashing and burning. But he's funny, too!
4. Campbell. Old duffers who know their shit are high on my list. He has dignity but is not afraid to blurt out terms like "flat-earth economists." His willingness to hint at worst-case scenarios in the ASPO newsletter has made him the object of intense vituperation, but he handles it gracefully (i.e. he keeps his mouth shut).
5. Darley. Long been freaking out about natural gas, and has been instrumental in getting lots of interviews posted with peak oil experts at the Post Carbon Institute.
6. Deffeyes. Ditto above sentence about "duffers." He's simply nuts about geology and makes you laugh. I wish he was my grampa.
7. Craig Bond Hatfield. Not many people know of his early efforts at getting word out about peak oil, but I wrote about him (under the link above).
8. Heinberg. He plays the fiddle and writes about Jesus.!
9. John Howe. Another duffer, from here in Maine. Invented Head tennis racket. Pioneered advanced ski design. Retired, then wrote an early book about the end of fossil fuels. Is obsessed with solar-powered tractors. Will talk your ear OFF. I'm going to be visiting him soon.
10. Matt Savinar. Proof that we lay persons can be well-informed and active in energy issues. I miss the LATOC media presentation early on when his site first came up featuring the Titanic & iceberg.
11. Sonia Shah. She comes across as "just" a bubbly girl, but is so well-informed and engaging that it's well-worth getting Crude Awakening (NOT "Crude Impact!") to see her. I love smart chicks. [Beside, Sharon Astyk might complain about the disproportionate number of penises in my list. She probably still will.]
HATE.
1. Bartlett (Roscoe).
Now that he has No Future in the House of Representatives, he shows his "concern" about our energy future by driving a Prius, voting against abortion rights, and populating the world with hundreds of grandchildren.
Do you KNOW what a Seventh-Day Adventist is? Any politician whose website profile opens with the statement that he he is not a politician is definitely a scammer.
2. Thom Hartmann.
A creep. Something about his using anxiety about climate change and energy depletion to claw his way to the top of the loony-librul talk radio circuit. I read his book "Last Days of Ancient Sunlight" at the urging of a friend and about fell out of my chair at the crackpot nature of his "solutions."
3. Kunstler.
Good writer. Nice paintings. But an armchair thug. I still remember his blog entry (since removed from his site) advocating that the populace of Afghanistan be "carpet bombed back to the Stone Age." His rhetoric around the recent Lebanon/Israel conflict similarly veered toward the bellicose. As with Hartmann, I sense a whole room in his house devoted to housing his ego.
4. Rob Hopkins.
Sharon Astyk with a cock (perhaps). Very very sensitive human being. Sees oil dependency in terms befitting an AA group.
5. Mike Ruppert.
My first "link" into peak oil was an article by geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer called Eating Fossil Fuels published at Ruppert's fromthewilderness.com. It is a BRILLIANT article (probably should have included Pfeiffer in "love" list above, but frig it, I'm too lazy to revise.)
So why do I hate Ruppert?
Crossing the Rubicon made me
How can I evaluate such claims? Can't.
6. Simmons.
Bush's buddy. Brilliant energy analyst, but I hate him. The ubiquity of his face in the media is a monumental testament to the ineffectual nature of peak oil awareness. Besides, do you know what a Mormon is? Is on tape saying the Iraq war "is about weapons of mass destruction." Imagine a Presidential ticket with Simmons' buddy Mitt Romney and Roscoe Bartlett, with Simmons in the cabinet.
Imagine the construction of homosexual-fueled thermodepolymerization plants.
