Latest General Ideas Headlines

Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us

An interview with Maggie Koerth-Baker author of Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us. Maggie writes “Back in April, I got to go on Minnesota Public Radio’s “Bright Ideas” to talk about my book, Before the Lights Go Out. Now MPR has the entire hour-long interview up on video. [...]

Ten ‘Do’s’ and ‘Don’t’ for New Doomers

(1) Don’t put storage food, or any doomer supplies on a credit card. On second thought, don’t put anything on a credit card, if you can help it, and if you can’t, buy less stuff. Get out of debt is still one of the most useful bits of advice any Doomer can offer to another. [...]

Peak Oil Denial: More Almost-Truths

In his presentation to Montana Energy 2012, Michael Economides told Montanans, ‘You are already a superpower in oil production. You have already defied the trends and once again showed the can-do attitude of this industry, smashing the myth of the ‘peak oil’. ‘You have redefined and defied the trends suggesting strongly the future of energy [...]

Peak Oil and Economic Contraction Report Card

How prepared are you for Peak Oil?…… Let’s find out! The link below is a spreadsheet with several questions regarding preparedness for peak oil and its implications. Whilst this is a fairly arbitrary set of questions with no monopoly on the right or wrong way of gearing up for transition, it may serve as a useful [...]

Are you scared yet?

Perhaps it’s just me, but over the last couple of weeks I thought I could distinctly hear the sound of pennies dropping as an ever growing tiny minority of people began to realise just how godawful our situation has become. It could have begun last week Sir Mervyn King, the chief economist at the Bank [...]

Free energy does not occur in nature

[F]ree energy does not occur in nature… There’s one thing about that Orlov quote that has struck me over the years: how it applies more broadly than he originally meant it. It’s not just that what we generally think of as free energy doesn’t occur in nature, but also that free energy does occur in [...]

Tom Murphy: Time to be honest with ourselves about our looming energy risks

Chris Martenson: Hello. Welcome to another ChrisMartenson.com podcast. I am your host, of course; Chris Martenson. And today we have the very good fortune of speaking with Tom Murphy, Associate Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego, and an avid writer on energy and growth-related matters on his website, Do The Math, [...]

Translating “Peeking at Peak Oil”

The leader of the world’s foremost Peak Oil research group is Kjell Aleklett, Professor of Physics at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. He has just published a book on Peak Oil that summarises a decade of scientific research. Kjell’s book is truly remarkable but not only as an unparalleled analysis of the reality and [...]

Reflections on Peak Oil from an “Undeveloped World” Immigrant

Emotional Reactions I learned about Peak Oil (and all the other disasters: financial breakdown, climate change, resource depletion beyond oil – water, food, etc.) about five months ago. The first weeks I was numb and obsessive: I wanted to read more, know more. I watched videos and talked about the subject incessantly. I became frantic [...]

Major oil companies on peak oil

Background: Production from oil fields is known to peak and then decline. Oil production in a large and growing number of oil producing countries has peaked and declined. Because the world oil resource is finite, it is undeniable that world oil production will peak and decline also. However, it is extremely difficult to predict when [...]

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