Seven Generational Ruminations

The economy in a bad shape right now. That's caused a global economic slowdown and.. it has resulted in lower demand for oil. While it's not quite good for the oil companies (not that I care about their wellbeing) it offers us a breather in the peak oil scenario and offers an illustration of some economic facts related to oil. If nothing else this demonstrates a statement by Peter Wells at the 2008 ASPO conference.

Restarting the 7gen.com newsletter

Early in running the 7gen.com blog I thought it might be nice to have a newsletter, but then found I didn't know what to put into a newsletter. The newsletter subscription form was on 7gen.com for several months and a dozen people signed up. So I turned off the newsletter subscription form and disabled that feature.

Some people think the problems of 'peak oil' and 'climate change' are in conflict with one another. If we run out of oil then that means, whew, we'll dodge the climate change problem, right? Uh... What about the coal?

The amount of danger presented by the peak oil scenario depends on the future decline in oil production. That is, the peak oil scenario says (based on observations from around the world) that after some point of oil extraction and production the worlds oil production will inevitably enter a decline and that once world oil production begins to decline no way will it ever increase.

"Oil Change International campaigns to expose the true costs of oil and facilitate the coming transition towards clean energy. We are dedicated to identifying and overcoming political barriers to that transition." That's what they're saying about themselves. This is a worthy goal as I think most people just fill up their tanks and don't think a thing about what they're doing.

Technosanity #18: Matt Simmons discussing oil supply disruptions

Matt Simmons is Chairman of Simmons & Company International, a specialized energy investment banking firm. Mr. Simmons' recently published book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy has been listed on the Wall Street Journal's best-seller list. He has also published numerous energy papers for industry journals and is a frequent speaker at government forums, energy symposiums and in board rooms of many leading energy companies around the world. Mr.

Technosanity #17: QA session with Ken Verosub, Jeremy Gilbert

Q&A session with Ken Verosub and Jeremy Gilbert immediately following the presentations they gave and which were broadcast in immediately prior Technosanity Podcast episodes.

Technosanity #16: Peak Oil Global Overview, An American Wake Up Call

A presentation at ASPO-USA 2008 by Mr. Jeremy J Gilbert, Managing Director, Barrelmore Ltd Jeremy Gilbert. Jeremy is the recently retired Chief Petroleum Engineer from British Petroleum (BP) where he was responsible for the company's worldwide petroleum engineering performance and associated research and development program. He joined BP in 1964.

"We have to leave oil before oil leaves us." 'Petroapocalypse Now' is a story about cheap oil and the biggest party humanity has ever known.

We have built our world around the car & the airplane. Has enabled 'us' to colonize the entire planet. These cars and planes etc would be useless lumps of metal w/o oil. Cheap oil has put the burden of work onto machines and broke barriers of space and time.

Technosanity #14: Petroleum & Peak Oil 101

Petroleum 101

Mr. Ken Verosub, Geology Professor, University of California, Davis
http://www.aspo-usa.com/aspousa4/ConfirmedSpeakers.cfm?bid=522

slides: http://www.aspo-usa.org/aspousa4/proceedings/Verosub_Ken_Petro_101_ASPOUSA2008.pdf

Specialist in paleomagnetism of sediments, the history of the geomagnetic field. He presents an introductory lecture in Petroleum Geology giving an overview of how geology & biology came together to create the gift of oil.