See The Oil Age Poster for a 24×36-inch poster of past and projected world oil production, plus gob o’ other stats. It’s a nice addition to any room, and it makes a great gift.
See Start Here for RealClimate’s excellent page of global warming resources, divided into sections based on your experience level.
Of particular value is the section at the end, “Informed, but seeking serious discussion of common contrarian talking points”. I would have called it something like, “Informed, but in need of ninja debating skills to fend off hordes of global warming deniers,” but to each his or her own, I suppose.
See Dave Cohen’s The Gulf of Despair? on the ASPO-USA site for an excellent overview (even by Dave’s standards) of the projected oil production in the Gulf of Mexico.
Very highly recommended.
Can we please quietly strangle the line about how “the stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stone”? Please???
I hear this stupid line repeated all the time, and it drive me nuts.
First, by what measure did the stone age end? Our “modern” world uses more stone, in absolute as well as per capita terms, than we ever did during what’s normally called the stone age. Today we use astonishing amounts of granite, marble, limestone, and crushed stone for various decorative and structural purposes; we didn’t stop using stone, we simply added other technologies.
Second, the original line is very often used as a too-cute-by-half way of saying that we’ll simply move on, gracefully and painlessly, from oil to Something Better. Forget it, it ain’t gonna happen, kids. We’re far too dependent on oil including too much built-up infrastructure, we have no easy exit path from oil in terms of a magic alternative (or combination of alternatives), and we’re much too close to the oil crunch. This will hurt, a lot, and anyone who suggests otherwise is just plain wrong.
(And yes, I’ve decided to talk more about the oil crunch–a severe supply/demand imbalance–instead of the peak, since the former is what we really care about because that’s what will trigger vastly higher oil prices and widespread economic pain.)
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June 28th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
The “Stone age” quote comes from Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, who was the Saudi Oil minister in the 1970s. This was the time of the oil embargoes, when it seemed like Saudi Arabia/OPEC could raise the price of oil as high as they wanted.
But there were limits. One of Yamani’s big worries was that raising the price too high would cause the West to invest in conservation/alternatives, which would ultimately hurt demand for Saudi oil.
One of Yamani’s major goals was to prevent these investments from being made. We’d do well to keep that context in mind when considering his don’t-worry-be-happy aphorism.
June 28th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
chapter1: Good point. My comment was aimed at all the people who parrot the line, often with a very smug air, as part of some rhetorical proof that peak oil ain’t no big thing.
Considering how we’re stumbling around here in the US in terms of energy policy and personal behavior, it seems Yamani may have overestimated us a tad.
June 30th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
They could not only raise it, but lower it. That is what wiped out the Soviet Union in the 80s.