I asked an on-line friend who knows a good bit about Peak Oil to give me some advice to get up to speed.

I'll share his suggestions verbatim for anyone else who wants to contribute to this topic.

For the moment, I’d start with The Oil Drum website. Good lead article today on “The Shape of Oil to Come,” but it’s helpful to know where the decline rate figures come from. Get too far into it and terms like reserve growth, ultimate recoverable reserves (URR), cumulative production (Q) and various other jargon become meaningful.

Good introductory pieces are tabbed at the top of The Oil Drum website. Look out, or search for any articles by Stuart Staniford, “Khebab”, Westexas (Jeffrey J. Brown) and his Export Land Model, Euan Mearns, Ace, Heading Out, GailtheActuary (Gail Tverberg). Also Robert Rapier, who has his own blog, R-squared (or something like that). Kenneth Deffeyes’ second book is great (Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert’s Peak) and Richard Heinberg’s “The Party’s Over” is useful.

The article by David Rutledge of Caltech (on TheOilDrum) is my source for the intersection of peak oil and global warming. Check his website for a video of his lecture on that subject.

For terrific background on growth (just review for you I’m sure, but some great things on population and energy at the end) is Albert Bartlett’s video lecture called “Arithmetic, Population, & Energy.” You can find it on YouTube sliced up into 8 parts. Careful, because some segments are posted that do not have the graphics. When you see “Part 2 of 8,” or something like that, you’ve got the right videos.

It looks like I've got some learning to do, starting with http://www.TheOilDrum.com

Care to join me?

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)