[Top 5 Peak Oil Books?]

Lokutus · Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 5:04 pm Post subject: [Top 5 Peak Oil Books?]

I've only read The Long Emergency so far.

What books would you say are the 5 best ones on PO?

Should I go with The Party's Over as my next read?

FireJack · Heavy Crude Joined: Mar 16, 2005 Posts: 451

I would say it depends on what you want to know. I would say books of self sufficiency would be more usefull. I just bought "the self-sufficient life and how to live it" by john seymour, lots of useful info in there. There is the SAS survival handbook.
For me I don't think any more books will help right now. I need to go out and actually do this stuff.

Armageddon

please list your favorite, or better yet, your top 3 . I need more reading materials , and dont want to waste my time on just any book.
i have read two already, crossing the rubicon, and twilight in the desert.

Tanada

Heineken

I started a forum on this same subject several months ago.

The best, most eye-opening book (of any sort) that I've read in the past few years is "The Sorrows of Empire," by Chalmers Johnson. It will rock your Weltanschauung.

I also think everyone should read Heinberg's radical-leaning "The Party's Over." You may not agree with it, but you should read it.

"Petrodollar Warfare" should be on any PO reading list. It clarifies the real reasons behind Bush's Iraq War.

I finished "Twilight in the Desert" a few weeks ago. It is a very, very important book, but be prepared for a lot of incredibly boring, technical details about individual Saudi oil fields. I frankly had to skip over some pages. On the other hand, I learned a lot about oil that I never knew before.

Armageddon

i also want something that is very current that shows new data. any suggestions ?

Armageddon

i just googled petrodollar warefare and read the info on it. Sounds interesting, i think im going to order it. Do you think major bookstores will have it, or do i have to order it online ? thanks for the info

Armageddon · Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 9:59 pm Post subject: Re: [Top 5 Peak Oil Books?]

crossing the rubicon ties it all togather. it explains why and how bush and cheney needed to attack iraq, and the whole 911 conspiracy ( which i totally agree with ) They were either behind it ( likely ) or at the very minimum, allowed it to happen.

Heineken

amazon has it, last time I checked.

untothislast

'Harry Potter & The Mysterious Data of Ghawar'

medicvet

clv101 · Posted: Fri Dec 23, 2005 3:04 am Post subject: Re: [Top 5 Peak Oil Books?]

The single best peak oil book I've read (well I'm half way through it at the moment) and I've read most of them is Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis by Jeremy Leggett (in the US the same book has a different title, The Empty Tank : Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Global Financial Catastrophe).
_________________
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locomotive · Coal Joined: Dec 28, 2005 Posts: 1

my top 5 on peak oil :

5 copies of Crossing the Rubicon, Michael C. Ruppert !!

Read one, give away 4 !

100, 000 copies sold and no review whatsoever !

it explains the whole landscape of peak oil : ressource depletion, economic collapse... and the covert mechanism that inextricably agravates it all.

absolutely must read & discuss !

PS : the Hirsh Report is also a very valuable source on the issue :
http://www.energybulletin.net/4638.html

Guest · Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 11:49 am Post subject: Re: [Top 5 Peak Oil Books?]

Heinberg "Party's Over" is the best of the peak oil books I've read so far. He also wrote a followup called Powerdown which attempts to chart the possible scenarios that result out the peak oil premise - but I thoughth this book was weaker.

Julian Darley "High Noon for Natural Gas" is a pretty good read too.

"Twilight in the Desert" had a lot of interesting information but it may be a bit too specialised for the more generalist reader.

"The Long Emergency" had some interesting speculations on how the US would look post-peak. But Kunstler's alignment with neocon ideology of late has me more than a little distraught though I guess his book is still worth getting. Bruce Sterling's fiction book "Dies the Fire" is not about peak oil, but it is an excellent extrapolation of how things could look in a post-economic collapse world. What it did for me was to go beyond the first year or so of 'survivalism' to how things would develop after this initial period.

Even though I have yet to read it "petrodollar warfare" is high on my list and I am recommending it to friends.

I've also read part of "Oil, Jihad and Destiny" but couldn't get into it.

Leanan · News Editor Joined: May 20, 2004 Posts: 4533

I like Ken Deffeyes (Hubbert's Peak) and David Goodstein (Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil). IMO, they complement each other. Deffeyes knows geology. He explains how we find oil, where we find oil, and why we know we will not make any major new oil discoveries. Goodstein is a physicist, and takes a thermodynamic view. He runs the numbers, and shows why solar, nuclear, wind, coal, etc., will not be enough to replace oil.

These books are not as fun to read as Kunstler's tales of pirate attacks, but IMO they are very useful in understanding the scope of the problem.

More generally, I recommend Jared Diamond's Collapse, and Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies. Diamond's book is easier to read, and blames societal collapse largely on depletion of natural resources. Tainter is more theoretical, and makes what is basically a thermodynamic argument: that complexity has an energy cost, and that increasing complexity requires increased energy resources. A great book to read if you're wondering if technology can save us again.