Fossil Fuels

Up Water Tower Hill

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In “The Story of Here Begins” I asked myself the question: Setting aside the issues of the wide world for a second, who and what are right here under my nose? Well, from the top of Water Tower Hill, one answer is abundantly clear: My little ten-mile world is filled with cars. Lots and lots and lots—a god king hell of a lot—of cars. A large slice of the blame for a century’s worth of wrong turns can be laid at the feet of this one invention. More than any other single toy in the playroom of technology, it has enabled us to go completely crazy—and to get there in air conditioned comfort and style!

Remembering the remarkable Matthew R. Simmons

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Matt Simmons was arguably the most influential individual on this side of the Atlantic to warn about the coming peak-and-decline of world oil production. Beginning in 2001, when he published his ground-breaking white paper on the world‘s giant oil fields, Matt alerted presidents, politicians and whoever else would listen that our energy joyride was headed for deep trouble. He drove himself tirelessly, riding the speaker circuit at breakneck speed, visiting some 25 countries to deliver over 400 fact-filled energy talks to industry, investment, academic, and general interest audiences.

Then, suddenly, he was gone.

On the death of Matthew Simmons

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In the days following Simmon’s death some 400 obituaries appeared on the web, on television broadcasts and in hard copy publications around the world. Some of these were written by people and organizations who understand the threat of peaking world oil supplies and praised Matt for his leadership in analyzing and publicizing the issue. Others were written by hostile skeptics who sought to play down his significance or focused on those instances in his voluminous pronouncements where he was wrong.

OPEC’s spare crude oil capacity – will it disappear by the end of 2011?

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In this post I present an analysis of how OPEC oil supplies have responded to changes in crude oil prices during the last 10 years. My objective was to estimate OPEC’s probable marketable crude oil capacities as of May 2010, based on responses of OPEC oil supplies to price changes.

The ascent of Middle East food and energy demand

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At the EIA’s International Energy Outlook (IEO) presentation this May the issue of future oil exports from OPEC nations came up, and in an interesting way. Readers may be familiar with the phenomenon of declining net exports, from major oil producing nations, as a result of internal demand from growing, domestic populations.

Peak Everything: Preface to the paperback edition

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A good case can now be made that the year 2007, when this book originally appeared, was indeed the year, if not of “peak everything,” then at least of “peak many things.” Since then we have begun a scary descent from the giddy heights of consumption achieved in the early years of this century.

When truth is unbelievable

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As a college junior I frequented a website (www.dieoff.org) where prognosticators observed that with accelerating rates of environmental destruction, overpopulation and fossil fuel depletion, modern civilization was on the verge of collapse. I kept my new-found realization that life as we knew it was coming an end to myself, for fear of being labeled a “Cassandra.” Only that’s exactly what I would soon become.

Die Post Carbon Reader Serie: Grundlegende Konzepte

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This is a German translation of the essay Beyond the Limits to Growth by Richard Heinberg which will appear in the forthcoming Post Carbon Reader. Im Jahre 1972 erkundete das inzwischen klassische Buch “Grenzen des Wachstums” die Konsequenzen des exponentiellen Wachstums von Bevölkerung, Industrialisierung, Umweltverschmutzung und Ressourcenverbrauch.# Dieses Buch, bis heute unangetastet der Bestseller unter den Umweltbüchern, berichtete über die ersten Versuche, Computer zur Modellierung der Trends bei den Interaktionen von Ressourcen, Verbrauch und Bevölkerung zu nutzen.