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Adding a new topic (Peak Oil) and changing my blog behavior

October 11, 2007

I've been spending too much time in long discussions about other people's blogs.

Besides, I'm getting tired of the same old subject matter.

So you won't see my name popping up much in commentaries on physics arcana, and I am not about to go round and round on discussions of global warming.

Instead, I want to introduce a topic to which the blogosphere has not been paying sufficient attention. Peak Oil has been sneaking up on us, and it interconnects with many other topics, such as energy policy, global warming, and international affairs.

The link above leads to an old (2005) but not outdated review of two books on the topic. I am hoping that this and future posts will bring knowledgeable people with varying perspectives to contribute to an intelligent discussion.

To get things rolling, here are the opening paragraphs of that review:

After a summer of rising gasoline prices, two books that appeared in 2004 are worthy of renewed attention, especially when one of them, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New Future by energy and economics writer Paul Roberts, has come out in paperback with a new afterword.

In the other, Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil, Caltech Distinguished Service Professor David Goodstein provides a more scientific view but reaches the same urgent conclusion: The Age of Oil is coming to an end, and the future is precarious. Demand for oil will soon exceed the production capacity of even the largest suppliers. The world's economy is heading for a painful transition.

I'm sure there are readers out there with more knowledge than I have on the topic. I invite them to respond here or to start their own blogs to keep this on the radar screen.