Peak
Oil Reading
The book section
is broken down
according to
the following categories.
Eco-living
Peak Oil
Food
Community Building
Get-off-the-Grid
Additional Reading
Beyond
Oil: The View From Hubbert's Peak
Kenneth
S Deffeyes
This succinct book is an engaging view
of Peak Oil by a gruff, no-nonsense petroleum geologist. It is not just
a concise overview of the origins of oil and the significance of the
Peak. Think of the Peak as that era when the price of oil soars because
supply can no longer meet demand, no matter how hard the effort to
increase production. For the mathematically literate, Deffeyes gives
the best popular explanation yet of the Hubbert method of calculating
Peak Oil. Deffeyes curve-fit puts the peak at 2006 - hence his sense of
urgency.
Yet the major emphasis of the book is on the energy alternatives.
Coming from an academic geologist deeply rooted in the culture of the
energy industries, the chapters on natural gas, coal, nuclear, tar
sands, and oil shale are most welcome. Most of the books on Peak Oil
are not by geologists, so their assessments on these subjects are
second hand. Deffeyes 2001 book, Hubbert's Peak - The Impending World
Oil Shortage, focused mostly on conventional oil.
There are two extremes to the views on Peak Oil. Some people, often
termed "cornucopians", say not to worry - technology will come to the
rescue, energy alternatives will take over as soon as the price is
right. Others, the "prophets of doom", predict the collapse of
industrial civilization and human population via environmental
degradation, warfare, disease, and famine. Or at best they predict a
return to a primitive 19th century style of existence with far fewer
people on the planet. Deffeyes predicts tough going, but he also
outlines a way for us to scrape through a few more decades until more
sustainable technology can be developed and scaled up. The kind of
civilization that can be sustained over the long haul is still an open
question.
Amazon review by R Burkhart
Out
of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil
David
Goodstein
Oil
will soon begin to run out, and the magical "market" will not save us.
Caltech physicist David Goodstein adds his voice to the growing chorus
warning that official complacency is steering us like the Titanic
straight for a massive iceberg. Global oil reserves are projected to
hit the Hubbert Peak sometime between now (according to some oil
geologists) and 2020 (the most optimistic estimates of the U.S.
government and industry). After the peak, we will be on the downslope,
and prices will rise as supplies diminish. Even a surprising discovery
of a new 90 billion barrel/year field, the biggest ever found, would
only postpone the peak by one year. Goodstein illustrates the
consequences -- if there is a 5% gap annually after the peak between
growing demand and diminishing supply, then in 10 years the gap will
grow to 50%. In only 10 years after some point in the very near future,
in other words, the world will see the available oil reduced by 1/2.
Goodstein points out that the U.S., with 5% of the world's people,
consumes 25% of global oil production. "Cheap gasoline is not the
solution; it's a big part of the problem," he adds. This physicist is
no polemicist, but it is clear he does not consider economics to be any
sort of reliable science. If the market is supposed to magically set
the right prices via supply and demand, then how can oil and gas
possibly be so cheap when it is so crucially valuable and running out?
Goodstein notes that oil companies do not produce oil. There are
unspoken volumes behind some of his brief comments. Those volumes can
be found in the work of Herman Daly, the ecological economist, who has
been pointing out for years that mainstream economics sets itself
against the basic laws of physics when it comes to natural resources
and the environment, especially the second law of thermodynamics --
entropy.
Amazon reviewer R Hutchinson
The End of Oil: On the
Edge of a Perilous New World
Paul Roberts
While the professional reviewers have
given Robert's book only the highest of praise, (The New York Review of
Books calls it "the best single book ever produced about our energy
economy and its environmental implications") several reader-reviewers
have faulted Roberts for not being an economist. As someone who had to
endure a good deal of economics while earning my MBA, I can assure you,
these unnamed, un-credentialed "reviewers" aren't economists either.
They all seem to have the same complaint: that Roberts doesn't
understand economics because he doesn't believe the law of supply and
demand will deliver us smoothly from our energy dilemma. Well, no one
else who's taken more than freshman Economics 101 thinks supply/demand
functions in that simplistic way either. Sure, the supply/demand
dynamic is at work, but markets left to their own devices are quite
capable of dragging us through shortages, depressions, environmental
disasters, and even wars on their way to new equilibrium. Roberts
doesn't fail to understand supply and demand. On the contrary, he sees
it quite clearly, with all its real world complexity and danger, and
helps the lay reader to see it as well. I have to wonder if these
"reviewers" even finished the book.
The End Of Oil is written not by an economist (thank heavens!) but by a
respected journalist who spent years interviewing economists and a
myriad other energy experts and players. Roberts has done what few
economists could have; written an accessible, readable, but
comprehensive book that could get the American public thinking
constructively about our energy strategy (or lack thereof).
In this country, we like to think the real power lies with the people,
and I believe it does, but only when we can be bothered to exercise it.
We must first recognize and understand an issue before we've any chance
of voting wisely, whether with ballots or our wallets. Reading this
book is an enjoyable, interesting first step.
By Amazon reviewer kd49
The
Empty Tank
Matthew
Jeremy Leggett
Of
the 8
or so books I have read on peak oil, this one is the most
compelling, reasonable and well-informed. If you are to read only one
book on peak oil, this is the one to choose.
Leggett has the credibility of being a former professor of geology, a
former oil industry insider (who then converted to a global warming and
oil depletion activist), and who now runs his own renewable energy
company. He knows the insiders of both the
oil business and oil-related government energy institutions. He knows
what makes them tick.
He correctly notes that we can't rely on the energy companies or
government to give us warning or leadership regarding oil depletion.
Instead, the demand for renewable energy must come from a groundswell
of public concern and support, until it becomes the tipping point that
affects our institutions. This is a change that will come from the
ground up, not from the top down.
Although he sees a virtually unavoidable peak oil economic depression
in the near future, he does offer a ray of hope that we can cure our
self-destructive oilcoholism with renewable energy -- and do so at the
grassroots individual and community level.
Amazon Reviewer M Mills
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