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Ken Deffeyes thinks the depletion of fossil fuels could lead to a worldwide cataclysm

Here's an interview in The Oregonian with Ken Deffeyes who believes that Peak Oil could lead to a worldwide cataclysm. He recently announced that the world oil production peaked on Dec 16th, 2005.

Life After Peak Oil Hits

There's an excellent series of four articles on life after Peak oil in the Austin Chronicle by Michael Ventura. Here are the links.

Things to come: part I [2005-09-30]
With two storms, nature has increased the speed of America's decline by several years. This series of columns sketches what we're in for (for good as well as for ill). The focus of this column is air travel and the tourist industries.

Things to come: Part 2 [2005-10-14]
People of all political persuasions are beginning to face the reality that Americans' demand for oil is outpacing our supply and refining capacity, which in turn will cripple our economy's ability to grow. Our disposable society will become a scavenging society, and, on the brighter side, a more inventive society.

Things to come: part 3 [2005-10-28]
With oil in the future rationed to agriculture, essential services, and (inevitably) the military, and personal long-distance driving and passenger flight no longer feasible – then, if the United States is to remain a continental entity, the only answer is trains.

Things to come: part 4 and last [2005-11-11]
Right now, and for at least the next three years of this administration, the United States of America is not being governed. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, and Iraq every day confirms, that the powers-that-be are dysfunctional. We are on our own.

Click here for a good introduction to Peak Oil.

King of Comedy Don Knotts Dead

This man was a such huge part of my childhood as Barney Fife. He is truly one of the greats of comedy.

His final movie role was that of Dubya in Dubya the Movie.

Good night, funnyman.

You will be missed.

Peak Oil Visualized

Well, some things are worth repeating. This short article ,which helps one to visualize the earth's total supply of oil, is one of them.

The earth's half empty oil tank
John Gilkison, EV World
The Simmons article on Peak Oil saying we had crossed the peak on December 16, 2005 set off a train of ideas which I thought deserved a blog. Simmons quotes a little over 2 trillion barrels as the total amount of oil available to mankind and said we had consumed just a little over one trillion barrels of oil by the end of 2005.

Crossing the threshold of Peak Oil is a little analogous to crossing the event horizon of a Black Hole in space, in that there is nothing to tell you that you have done it. Once you have crossed the invisible line it is however a irrevokable event. More to the point with numbers like this, it is often hard to get a good visual appreciation of just how much oil we are talking about. While a couple trillion barrels of oil may seem like a lot of oil, (and it is for any of us personally) just how big is it as compared to the Earth let's say?

I will leave it up to the reader to check my methods, I will just tell you what I did. A barrel of oil contains 42 gallons, a US Gallon has a volume of 231 cubic inches. So a barrel of oil constitutes roughly 9,702 cubic inches, or 5.6145 cubic feet, if you divide by 1,728. This last figure in cubic feet must be multiplied by 2 trillion barrels to yield our total volume.

The cubic foot is a little unwieldy for our purposes, so converted this to cubic miles, and ended up with a little over 76 cubic miles of oil. Still without a visual clue, I organized this rather large amorphous concept, into a sphere. The formula for figuring the volume of a sphere is 4/3 times pi cubed. This resulted in a sphere with a radius of 2.63 miles, or a diameter of 5.26 miles.

Now we are getting somewhere, just imagine a large spherical oil tank almost as tall as the tallest mountain on Earth and you got it.

Click here to finish.

~

More info on Peak Oil.

Solar Power bags Recharge Your Gadgets

The Voltaic™ solar bags are mobile power generators, designed to charge your devices without tying you to a power outlet. This makes them ideal for traveling or for people on the go all day.

Simply plug a standard car charger into the bag and you can recharge most small electronic devices including: cell phones, cameras, two way radios, PDA's, and MP3s.

 

Read more on this solar-powered luggage here.

Peak Oil: Unplugging from the Grid and Rat Race

Today a report came in from the year 2030 from the Unplugger's Movement which for the previous fifteen years has led the trend in moving off-the-grid as a response to Peak Oil.

Two quotes that stood out for me are:

Touting their movement as a combination of the economic theories of Mahatma Gandhi and the political science of Buckminster Fuller the Unplugged have now reduced the GDP of the United States of America by 20% over their 15 year programme.

Gandhi's model of "self-sufficiency" is the goal: the freedom that comes from owning your own life support system outright is immense.

Read the full report on dealing with Peak Oil the Unplugging Movement here.

Further information on increasing your freedom from the grid and rat race can be found at Karavans.

Peak Oil Primer

I just came across this recent audio primer on Peak Oil with Jim Puplava talking to Richard Heinberg and James Kunstler.

Invasion of the Pod People

These are very interesting new pod shelters from a company in the Seattle area. They are cheap and can be quickly assembled. Prices start in the low $2000s. Not bad if you have raw land out the country somewhere.

More info on pod shelters here.

First Peak Oil Collapse Novel

Although I'm reading two to three books at any given point in time, they're all work related. I haven't had time for fiction in years. Until now that is. A week ago I placed an order for a new novel dealing with the survivors of a post Peak Oil collapse of civilization. I'm hoping that the mailman delivers it today.

The novel is titled After the Crash: An Essay-Novel of the Post-Hydrocarbon Era, by Caryl Johnston. You can read the first chapter at the above page. For only $8.18 plus s/h, it's quite the deal.

There's a site out there somewhere trying to find investors for a Peak Oil movie, although I can't recall any information that could be used to dig up the url.

Here's hoping that Hollowood catches on to Peak Oil as almost nothing raises public awareness of an issue like a good movie.

The Amazing eGo Cycle

This is an amazing little electric-powered moped for running errands around town and simply having fun.

You can find more detailed information on the eGo Cycle here.