Some of my past blog posts on the subject...

For a brief time in late 2004 and early 2005, I had a blog (my first blog really) on Hamblog.com, a site for amateur radio operators. About half the posts that I put on that site were on amateur radio, and half were on PeakOil. A few months ago the administrator of the Hamblog.com decided to rebuild the site, putting on newer software and reorganizing things. As a result, all previous members were removed, and their blog posts wiped out. I had thought I had lost what I had typed. But through the help of Google, I found that all my posts up through January 1, 2005, were cached by Google, and I have subsequently retrieved those posts.

So that they are not entirely lost a second time, let me reproduce them here. Here are two posts I had earlier written on the subject of Peak Oil and the changes that are coming:

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25 November 2004:

The Coming End of the Oil Age

As I alluded to in my introduction on HamBlog, the end of the Oil Age is coming. Some say it is already here, in that we are at (or have already passed) the midpoint in availability of readily accessible oil. From now on (or from soon to be and after), oil will quickly become more expensive and not as available. Eventually (likely in this century, possibly even by mid-century) it will run out. Life as most of us know it is going to take a drastic turn.

Our entire economy is dependent on oil - transportation, plastics and other products, food production, medicine and health care, etc. Food production = Oil production. Even our cities have been designed and built over the last 60 years in a way that is heavily dependent on transportation. When this all changes, we are in trouble. And in the meantime we are told to be consumers, drive our vehicles, eat food, etc., because our economy depends on it. (A conflict of interest, perhaps?)

A slippery slope is ahead. How steep? No one knows for sure. But soon [very?] life is going to change in ways that very few of us, at least in the heavily developed parts of the world (in particular the U.S., but also Europe), are prepared to deal with. Many deaths will occur (some say up to 80% of the population) because we won't have the resources to feed people, nor to provide necessary care to fight illness - because both are now dependent on petroleum. And no substitute "miracle" fuel will have the same energy production or portability as oil currently does - and may likely require energy (which we won't have) to produce energy. Entropy will trip us up.

"A change is coming, and we won't be able to avoid this one, I'm afraid, Bunky."

Even science is not going to come through on this one in the 11th hour. There is just too much population on this Earth -- any savings or efficiencies are lost the next day by the sheer increase in demand or use from population increase alone. A delay in the coming is possible, and maybe some decrease in the severity of change, but this change in life is still coming.

I'm not happy. In fact I'm pissed. I feel very sorry for my kids. It is a little too late to stop it completely from happening. But at least I'm aware, hopefully, of both the problem and the likely changes that are coming. I would like you (any reader of this post) to also become aware of what is coming, even though we cannot say with certainly exactly when or how bad.

You can become aware, first of all, by reading about this. For instance, the book, The Oil Age is Over, is a pretty good one. See the website http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ for more information about this book, or plug this title into Google to find online pieces of the book. The author, Matt Savinar, brings together many of the facts and questions many of the assumptions (or miracles) that people think will save us. A must read in my mind!

Another good site is http://www.culturechange.org/. Jan Lundberg used to work in the oil industry (was one of the founding editors of the Lundberg Letter). While Jan goes off on tangents at times, most of what he says is spot on and persuasive.

The website, http://www.dieoff.org/, is also good, pulling together all kinds of facts, figures, charts, and diagrams.

An older site, but one that still contains a lot of other good information and ideas about how to create or live in a "humane sustainable culture" is http://www.context.org/. This website contains an online archive of all the articles from the issues of In Context, a previously published quarterly journal on the subject.

A good dead-tree book on the subject is Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future, by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, and Jørgen Randers. This is an update of the original study, Limits to Growth, the Club of Rome report from the early 70s that alerted people to this coming problem. Dana and Dennis Meadows were two of the authors of the original report. Criticised then, the City of Rome report is in fact coming true!

There are other online sites and books to read as well -- these just happen to be my favorites. Plug "peak oil" into Google or your favourite search engine and you'll get hits on plenty of books and websites on the topic.

An online community discussing all this is the RunningOnEmpty2 group on Yahoo Groups. You may want to join this group and join in the conversation.

Most of all, read and become aware yourself. And lets keep talking and speading the word.

Kevin
Dubuque, Iowa

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3 December 2004:

It is a Population Problem, but....

In my earlier post, The Coming End of the Oil Age, I brought up how we are facing the end of easily accessible oil, and how our world is now going to begin to drastically change.

A commentor on my post asked if this wasn't in fact a population problem: "However, is it just me or does anyone else around realize what the problem really is. It's not the oil, pollution,over fishing,resource limitations, and rapid species extinction, but PEOPLE. Five Billion of anything is just way too much for a small rock to support for eons...."

I agreed with him that it is. Let me say more:

This is most definitely a population problem. No doubt about it.

The estimated carrying capacity of the Earth is thought to be somewhere between 1 and 2 billion people. We passed that point some time ago (1804 in the case of 1 billion people, and 1927 in the case of 2 billion people). These numbers are based on a size of people able to be supported by the Earth's resources by a long-term, sustainable and renewable rate of use. The oil-based industrial era started in earnest about 1930. (A good website on population issues is http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/.)

But in the short term this is also very much an oil problem. We exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth in large part *because* we used oil. We substituted oil, and all its by-products and related advances, for "normal" resources that the Earth provided, creating a population that is not sustainable.

In a simple way of looking at, over 4 billion to 5 billion people are here today largely because of oil.

And it will be the loss of oil that will bring about the expected dieoff of people, as population will once again have to adjust downward to match the carrying capacity of the Earth.

So it is more than just a population, as it is also a result of decisions made on how "modern society" should live. And the dependencies (which didn't need to have happened) that are in place because of our reliance on technology.

What adds to the severity of the oil age ending is what is called the Olduvai Theory, and an expected phenomenon that is variously call the Olduvai "Cliff" or "Gorge" (depending on the rapidity of change). A good paper on this subject is http://dieoff.com/page224.htm, which is a presentation by the scientist, Richard C. Duncan. It is not only the coming end to accessible oil, but the timing also of similar endings to accessible natural gas, along with the related ramifications of oil.

For instance, without low-cost or accessible oil, we won't have an economical means to mine coal and ship it to power plants. This affects the ability to generate electricity, and certainly affects its price. Blackouts will likely result as power generation becomes less predictable. Without electricty, you can't pump or transport natural gas. At the same time the demand will go up for natural gas to be used to fuel auxiliary electric generation plants, which in turn will reduce supply, changes the priority of use, and puts in jeopardy the availability for natural gas for home furnace and cooking use. Similarly, the production of liquid propane (also a common fuel for home heating and auxiliary power generation) will also end, or get significantly more expensive, as it takes electricty to create liquid propane. And this list goes on.... A snowballing effect. Hence the prediction of a cliff or gorge-like descent into a very stressed world.

A good webpage the summarizes these energy issues is http://www.dieoff.org/synopsis.htm.

As fuel production = food production, medicine, etc., population will be stressed. Hence the predicted dieoff of population back to levels that can be potentially sustained by the carry capacity of the earth. Some predict that the dieoff of population might actually result ultimately in only 500,000 or so survivors before it might rebound back up to the Earth's carrying capacity.

And then there is the threat of nuclear war as countries fight to retain power and resources, and maybe decide that if they can't have it, why should someone else. (They may be asking, "What do we have to lose?", at that point.) Or the ardent conspiracy theorists think that governments themselves may decide to get into the act of killing their own population in the attempt to save what's left for the "elite" or deserving.

I don't know what will come. But I am concerned about what is coming, and want as many people as I can let know hear about these changes that are coming. Better to be aware now, than be caught futher unprepared. And I don't mean this in a "survivalist" or bastian mentality. But instead in concern for people, and hope for communities of people coming together to help each other weather the changes that coming.

Besides, we might (I hope) continue to affect further preemptive changes in our lifestyle that will lessen the effect and make us better able to handle the harder life, and associated death around us, that is very likely coming.

Thanks for reading. Again, feel free to comment or let others know about this.

Kevin, K9IUA
Dubuque, Iowa

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That's it. The rest of my earlier posts on Hamblog.com on the subject of PeakOil appear to be lost. However I do recall typing at least one more blog post on the subject, announcing the fact that Representative Bartlett (from Maryland) had spoken on the subject in the House of Representatives. You can read his speeches and other material he is presenting on this website page: http://www.bartlett.house.gov/EnvironmentalProject.asp.

Well, more to come I hope.

Kevin Anderson
Dubuque, Iowa