[Olaf]

2004 here as well. I think one of the first places that really impacted me with the seriousness of peak oil was stumbling across the "Wolf at the Door" site.

Copious amounts of research followed and I discovered this place as well. It is often a good and interesting outlet for discussion, but I often find that when I focus on the details of peak oil too much, it can get a bit overwhelming. I took the better part of a 2 year break from the site for the most part so I could focus on what I wanted to do in a different manner.

I unfortunately haven't become more optimistic about how things are going to be, but I have a degree of acceptance of the inevitable at this point. My faith in the political process has also become much more jaded, and I didn't have a great opinion of it to begin with. Seeing where the economy is now, the housing market, oil prices/supplies, climate, war, and lack of political initiative just makes it all so very real.

Ughhh...

[jboogy]

I remember Wolf at the door now , thanks for reminding me , I'm gonna look it up .

[RonMN]

DANG! I missed the cutoff by 2.5 months

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jboogy', ' ')I remember reading Pops and thinking ; this guy has his shit together ....

[pip]

I remember April 21, 2004 very well.

San Jacinto Day for any fellow Texans here.
Texas Aggie Muster Day if there are any fellow Aggies here.
Peak Oil aware day for me.

I read the entire LATOC site that day as well as joining this site. As a oil refinery engineer, it seriously changed my outlook on life. I plan to be starting the construction of my wind/solar powered farmhouse on 320 acres of farmland around the first of the year, financed mostly by the foreknowledge of where oil prices were going. I don’t post much anymore, the discussions today seem about the same as 3 years ago, but I do check the news here regularly.

[Tyler_JC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jboogy', ' ')I remember reading Pops and thinking ; this guy has his shit together ....

[Pops]

Is anyone out there?

[DantesPeak]

I started reading this thread and lost track of how long I've been posting. Yes it was in 2004, but seems like so long ago.

Yes, there were some crazy arguments about energy alternatives back then. Some of those well known optimists like Lynch and Yergin still sounded a little credible, and Lynch even posted here. But now those cornucopian gods are just following the rest of us follow the price of oil to new heights.

The peak of light sweet crude came and went in mid-2005, obscured by major hurricanes that summer. Now as refineries around the world progressively become less efficient handling lower quality fuel, there is a growing realization something is amiss.

Well it has been mostly fun and mostly civil. Hope PO.com stays around while as we past peak and discover if our predictions and preparations turn out to be the right ones.

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'T')he thing about JD was he really believed this crap, and was willing to defend it to the death. I really couldn't stand his techno-vegetarian smugness.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheDude', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'T')he thing about JD was he really believed this crap, and was willing to defend it to the death. I really couldn't stand his techno-vegetarian smugness.

[Ayoob]

I think I got started here around that time.

It's changed a lot. Most of the hippies are gone, and so are most of the good technical analyses of oil flow. The technicians seem to have flocked over to TOD. The hippies are... well, who cares.

The college kids have mostly found something else to do I think. It must be tough putting together a Women's Studies degree in light of peak oil. Tits on a bull, you know?

The complete lunatics are still here. Golem, PMS (my very first ignore list member), and NEOPO I believe constitute 80%+ of the drivel on the site.

At some point between 04 and now I realized how essentially useless it is to debate PO online at all. What's the point? I should be doing pushups. I still read the site, but I just can't stomach burrowing into every thread to suck out that last juicy slurp of knowledge. I guess I know what I need to know.

Hell, I flipped my whole life upside down and I think I'm going to be pretty well-off long into the post-peak twilight for many years to come. Why do I still need to read?

I think a lot of the reason we all talked to each other so much is that several (many) of us were wondering if we were crazy. It helped to talk to somebody other than our own inner voice about this stuff. I've met a few members IRL a few times. Nice people.

I don't think that knowing about PO, or believing in PO, or whatever you want to call it, is beneficial. Behavior is everything.

[jasonraymondson]

I have been here since the end of the 2004 and there aren't near the arguments on here that there use to be. I think we all know that "it" is coming, but we are also no longer hyped up over it. It is more like acceptence then preaching.

Before, we felt like we had to convince others of the nature of this beast. Honestly; I think everything has been said, and now we are just sitting back watching the signs unfold.

When I first started coming here the site would have 100+ posters at any given time and you couldn't disapear for 3 hours without and entire page of new threads popping up.

I use visit the site while I was working at the guard station, nothing was going on at night and I could be on here at three in the morning (CST) and the site would just be raging sometimes. Oh god that so reminds me of how freaked out I got when I first discovered Peak Oil... I thought it was insane and I tried to find ways to debunk it, but the only sites I ever ran across were talking about abiotic oil and how it just magically came from fucking nowhere. I learned alot here and I was so scared, I was thinking the world was going to start falling down immediatly. Damn was I freaked.

Sorry about the rambling, but when I start thinking about the past I kind of go loco

[kpeavey]

joined Oct 4 2004, #713
same day as Shannymara, #711
We used to have a similar number of posts!
I guess I strayed a bit.

When I first got involved, there would be maybe a dozen members online, maybe another 30 guests.
Current numbers: There are currently, 640 guest(s) and 39 member(s) that are online.

There were far fewer threads, If you were gone for a couple of days, you could catch up on everything in an evening. Now it seems that posts are added faster than they can be read.

The threads were more oriented to a particular important aspect, whereas now, new threads seem to digress. Then again, most of the critical subjects have already been started. This makes sense.

I think the emotional aspect of the newcomers seems to be more panicky. You can almost feel the jitters in their posts.

The news, not just on here, but all across the web, shows clear evidence of peak oil. However, it is almost always directed to economics or global warming being the cause of the situation, rarely if ever is Peak Oil mentioned. Used to be oil was barely mentioned in the news unless it was a major spill. The current events section has certainly picked up.

We have gone from discussing Peak Oil as a Theory to Peak Oil as a Projection and are now at Peak Oil as a Reality. I think the urgency in some of the posts has become more common. Used to be like reading the Sunday Paper in here. Now its like drinking from a fire hose.

The people on the outside still are living their lives almost completely oblivious to world events, growth rates, consumption rates, limits, overshoot and collapse, declining resources, rising pollution, ecological and economic troubles. Kids are even fatter, lazier, and more ignorant then they ever where. Everywhere I look I see people who will be thrust into confusion, their lives turned upside down, by a rise in energy (and all other) costs, a rising burden of debt, and an ever more oppressive government. My own brother calls my solar hot water system a "pile of crap, throw it out" and my chickens a "stupid idea." The people I see as most ready for the future are the people who have the least to lose.

After 3 years on here, I am seeing all the predictions we made then becoming reality now. High energy prices, debt issues, a weakened dollar, ongoing war, declining oil exports, china being a problem. Some of the predictions we are making now certainly point to a turbulent future.

I hope we are all still online in another 3 years.

Whatever became of Peak Oil Alice?

[RonMN]

Drifter Wrote:
Ok, how about all 2004 and early 2005 members please check in.

OK, I'm here

One of the funniest things I remember about that time (once I had figured out that the PO theory is correct) was me trying to "spread the word" I have to laugh at myself.

Now I look at the people who will clearly suffer most & get a chuckel out of it.

[Permanently_Baffled]

Hi All

Just thought I'd chime in - I joined in April/May 2004 - near the beginnings of this site (joined date says Aug 04 only because my original account got deleted due to a hack on the site)

Still read the forum and news everyday , I only stopped posting because you tend to get to a point where you understand the arguments.

You then have to take a view on how fast and how bad, and take some action!

Still very grateful to PO.com , if it wasnt for this site I am sure I would be upto my eyeballs in debt with 15 kids, hummer and a miserable future!

Mortgage free in 22 months and then I think its only fair I pay a tidy fee to PO.com to say thank you!

[jdmartin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Drifter', 'A')ll board members who joined in 2004 or early 2005, please check in. Let's discuss the changes we have seen since joining this board in it's first year. Changes in the news, changes in postings here, attitudes, etc. Kind of like a 2004 class reunion.

Things I remember:

-Peakoil.com server crashed in summer of 2004. Posts and some member accounts got erased- including mine.

-Our favorite whipping post member techie John Denver was posting like mad on this site. Wow, there were some serious blow-out arguments. Those were the days.

-Montequest made some of his most brilliant posts back in 2004-2005. He really did contribute incredible amounts of factual peak oil and overshoot info. But in the end I think he just got burned out and turned too negative.

-In 2004, most board members agreed about peak oil. Then in 2005 and later, this board got flooded with cornucopians. We had some really big arguments back then. Lots of stupid techno wonder speculation. Those cornucopian posters have finally disappeared from here for the most part. Their ridiculous arguments finally ran out of steam once peak oil was becoming obvious. They couldn't deny the obvious any more. I am happy about that.

-Back in 2004, peak oil was hardly mainstream in the news. Now it is kind of mainstream.

-Back in 2004 oil when was about $30 or so, we couldn't even imagine oil at $40.

Any other old members got any good input about those early peak oil days?

[kadoomsoon]

Cornucopians are people who can't see the bad that is coming.

[Free]

Great thread, brings back memories...

I was starting to peak behind the curtain after I just couldn't figure out what this seemingly totally unnecessary and stupid drive towards the Iraq war was about, it all made no sense to me.

I suspected it was about oil, I researched and I found out about peak oil, but only after I discovered this forum and all the smart people with their knowledge here I realized how deep the rabbit hole goes, and all the puzzle pieces fell into place.

I don't spend much time here anymore (because I don't have much time), but every time something peak oil related happens I know this is the place to get the best info, and this is the place to be