cool, nice link - I'll have to add that to my 'to read later' list

i think that table 9 and the conclusion on page 87 are what we should aim for with this book - if we can convince people that PO is even a remote potability in 15 years time, then the conclusion is still the same as any other : 'we need to start preparing now' (sais me who's preparation consists of my parents house with a solar hot water system...)

re: the book.
who is the target audience? the average person who might be becoming interested in the topic, or more scientifically minded individuals like the person who wrote the linked document?

or both?

-
a quick introduction.

i think it would be good if the first chapter was a brief-ish explanation that we could point people who are not familiar with the concept of peak oil to. While a scientific discourse like what is presented in the above document is needed, there needs to be somewhere where someone with only 1/2 an hour on their hands can sit down and read the basics of the problem (and at 130 pages, i think this may take a while to read)...
personally, i found the introduction at http://energybulletin.net/primer.php to be a good length, outlining the basics while reading around TOD provided detail in production, the current state of the oil fields, politics over gas pipes, etc.
the relatively regular 'current state of oil predictions' i found to be quite useful, and helped me to see that even the optimists are sill predicting a supply situation on which we will need to act within my working lifetime (the next 20 years) (personal comments added because i think this sort of thing would be useful for writing a segment which would be helpfull to other people)

IMHO the following are probably a good summery of the current state of the oil industry from whats been posted to TOD recently

How to Address Contrarian Arguments - part I and II
http://europe.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/20/91748/298
http://europe.theoildrum.com/story/2006/12/13/44528/872
and
Peak Oil Update - December 2006: Production Forecasts and EIA Oil Production Numbers
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/30/8324/0934

there may be better posts around, but those are the ones i can find/remember (i've been visiting TOD for less than 6 months)

-

i think a chapter on who the various groups/people are and where they stand on peak oil would be useful
<-safe (for now) (in trouble) doomed->
cera iea eia aspo deffeyes

-

are we thinking of presenting a range of opinions and our analysis of them, as there have been articles ie: predictions from everyone from cera(its all peachy) through to some of the more extreme (PO is two years ago, we're doomed), or should we talk in more general terms with scenarios of 'pollyana' through to 'head for the hills'?

possibly i think there is room for both approaches, so that people can a) get an overview of the possible outcomes (even the theoretically good ones can turn out bad, but just in 30 years when the end of oil hits harder)
b) get an idea of which scenario various groups are predicting

that way the predictions and the outcomes of those predictions are some what decoupled

-

will the book promote 1 specific line of thought - i.e. deffeyes predicted PO at the end of last year, and we haven't seen anything to suggest he is wrong, so thats what we think will happen - or will it be more of a most probable approach (the meggaprojects is probably a good idea for short term project predictions, but ultimately there's an exponential wedge where the uncertainties lie in any prediction.)

-

if we post large-ish sets of links, chunks of text, etc. will these build up under the main body of work, or would it be better to have a separate 'discussion on the book' page where the comments can go?

lol, i need to stop procrastinating and go back to work...

Andrew
---
the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Excellent idea. A real book might also be appropriate. Kevin Kelly over at CoolTools has review of self-publishing at LuLu and Blurb:

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001520.php

and it seems pretty cheap to me. Hey maybe TOD could make some money! :)

Layout help offered

Hi, I`d like to offer my knowledge and expertise on LaTeX for the layout of the book. I`ve done similar projects during my study and a have TeX-System running atop of my Windows machine. The next 4 months I have enough spare time at hand (1-2h per day).

LaTeX: http://www.tug.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf

This result in a well structured (toc, index, glossary, captions) book in PDF with the best typography and hyperlinks that`s available for free.

A much better choice would of course be InDesign or Framemaker (both costly). StarOffice/Openoffice would also be a good choice (free).

If you want a really portable solution SGML would be good
(http://www.ibiblio.org/godoy/sgml/docbook/howto/introduction.html), but I do not have the time to dig into that.

Best regards,

J. Dähn, Solothurn, Switzerland

Someone has already suggested this, and I heartily agree, but am too ADHD when it comes to arranging something like that (plus a slow internet connection) to really do it justice...

[new] SamuM on Friday November 24, 2006 at 4:45 AM EST Comments top
Great post.

We have a small group locally in Finland, who are facing the exact same issues as everybody else talking about PO:

How to deal with the counter arguments (and for us: also how to learn from them).

For our own use, we've gathered an initial 'Frequent Counter Arguments' or FCA:

Here is a quick draft / summary. It can and should be extended.

Also, all counter arguments should be analysed based on proven information and disproved, IF possible. If it can't be disproved, it may have some validity (even if only partial). We try to take an analytical approach.

If somebody knows already of a similar list in one place with proper counter arguments, using graphs for illustration and calculations from proven data, we'd sure be glad to read it.

We've seen many pages dealing with one or more of the below, sometimes using data or even helpful illustrations, but not a single place, that does it all: - all counter arguments in logical order - disproof against each counter argument (if possible) - ... using proven data and calculations - with illustrations to show the magnitude and help people understand - all in clear, concise English. Easy for anybody to understand - no shouting, no blaming, no doom scenarios (these can't be proven)
We think it would be immensely useful. At least in the climate/culture we face here locally.

Frequent Counter Arguments against Peak Oil and it's significance

0. How come it's not all over the front page - it can't be true
- i.e. 'crackpot conspiracy' argument

1. Oil is a renewable resource, hence it will not run out (ever)
- i.e. 'abiotic oil' argument

2. Estimates about the timing of Peak are wrong, because:

2.1. There's more oil than pessimists (or even optimists like IEA or CERA) claim. Hence, PO is at least 50+ years away - with plenty of time to find alternative sources for all uses of oil.
- i.e. 'cornucopia' argument

2.2. Oil peaking or reserves/resources estimates are inaccurate and cannot be trusted, because there is such a huge range of variance in the reserve & peaking estimates between various sources. Hence, PO is probably just an inaccurate event some time in the future, which is likely to be very far into the future.
- i.e. 'estimation is inaccurate' argument

2.3. People in the PO community are untrustworthy and they're estimates cannot be trusted. Either because they've been wrong before on the date of peaking or because they have a hidden agenda.
- i.e. 'ad hominem' argument

2.4. Technology of prospecting, drilling, recovery and refinement is advancing so rapidly, that we will find more, get more out of what we find and even improve recovery of the wells already in decline. Hence, all of this combined will just push the peak so much further into the future that we have again enough time to switch to alternatives.
- i.e. 'oil technology will fix it' argument

3. Free market mechanism of supply and demand will prevent oil from becoming a critical scarce resource. When the demand is too high for the supply to meet, prices will rise so high that alternatives become profitable to be produced or even invented. Hence, any long enough supply side slump will cause alternative energy source supply and new invention to substitute the amount of oil market is demanding.
- i.e. 'market will fix it (overnight)' argument

4. Alternative energy sources are will replace oil (continuation from 3)
- i.e. 'easy replacement' argument

4.1. Hydrogen cells will be in every car
- i.e. 'hydrogen revolution' argument

4.2. We can grow bio-diesel to substitute for oil
- i.e. 'we'll just grow the alternatives' argument

4.3. We can process ethanol (out of farm produce or food) as a substitute
- i.e. 'we'll just process the alternative fuels' argument

4.4. We'll make oil from coal
- i.e. 'Fischer-Tropsch' argument

4.5. We'll make oil from (natural) gas or use gas as a substitute
- i.e. 'we'll use gas - plenty of it' argument

4.6. Electricity will replace oil - it's cleaner too (no electricity source specified)
- i.e. 'we'll switch to batteries and electric motors' argument

4.7. Solar energy is the future
- i.e. 'more light arrives on earth every day than we can use' argument

4.8. Wind energy is the future
- i.e. 'if we could harness all the winds...' argument

4.9. Biomass (burning) is the futuree
- i.e. 'wood pellets, felt, etc.' argument

4.10. Unconventional oil of Venezuela and Canada will meet our needs
- i.e. 'tar sands and oil shale' argument

4.11. We'll build more nuclear energy power plants (fission)
- i.e. 'we'll build hundreds of new fission power plants' argument

4.12. We'll just use hydrogen nuclear energy (fusion)
- i.e. 'isn't the ITER almost ready and it provides endless amounts of clean energy' argument

4.13. Geothermal energy is plentiful
- i.e. 'we'll at least heat our houses using geo-energy' argument

4.14. Tidal wave energy is the future
- i.e. 'we could just tap into all those wave' argument

4.1x. New source of energy X will solve it - somebody will invent something
- i.e. 'energy out of nothing' argument

5. We will conserve as much energy as the oil production depletes. We can do this easily, while national and global economy still keeps growing healthily and climate becomes greener (less CO2 and methane to air). We can do this without big, systemic and significant change to our culture or economy.
- i.e. 'business almost as usual' argument

6. Oil not used directly to energy production (e.g. fertilizers, pesticides, plastics, medicine, etc.) will be replaced by synthetic/biological sources, or completely new materials from materials science.
- i.e. 'technology will solve the raw material problem' argument

PS Just to make sure people understand we are not trying to re-invent the wheel. There's plenty of books, ASPO slides, presentations, videos, web sites and articles about this, but it's spread all over and when put together it is generally way too much for any single individual to dive into. If we want more people to understand this, we need clear, understandable and approachable list of counter arguments with data against them. This really needs a Wiki page, if it doesn't exist already.
[ Reply to This ]

that's one reason we moved to drupal, and it's in the plans. If someone has any experience with drupal, wiki, and/or related workings...drop us a note. (I know we've asked before, but we're actually closer to implementation now.)

I agree that this sounds like a perfect job for a wiki. For one, it makes it very easy to share the burden among several contributors. For two, it is easy to update. Having maintained documentation as HTML and PDFs, usually via Latex, and integrated into a wiki, there is no contest. The wiki wins.

Actually the opinions are important if you can group them and rationalize them. By covering opinions on peak oil it divorces the problem peak oil from peoples view of the problem. Right now if someone is peak oil aware they tend to focus on the opinion side not the event itself.

Mitigation strategies would also have their own opinion section sense they have to have a social component.

It can show you can believe in peak oil and not be a doomer :)

A point that should be made about peak oil is its similar to global warming what you believe will not change the facts in the long run.
Both will happen or not regardless of peoples opinions.

Done correctly discussing opinions would can be very helpful and useful.
Since overall they are tied to speculation about the effects and responses to peak oil not the event itself.

> The book must also be flexible in structure and easy to update.

But also easy to "roll back" to see what we were saying yesterday, least week, a month ago, a year ago... that's the nive thing about wiki, don't know anything about drupal.

Version control is a very noisy bee in my personal bonnet

Because we all do other things as day jobs, the amount of time that we can devote to evolution of the site and the steps to help resolve the problem are rather limited. Thus this seemed to be a logical step in bringing the information in the site to a common place where it can be accessed, since otherwise it can be a bit of a pain trying to find previous posts on an issue. (And to be honest I have no clue on how to put a Wicki together).

When we started there was a sort of unwritten division of the areas of interest. Those that now form TOD-New York, for eg, are more interested in the practical, local societal interests; Prof G is much more into the political stuff - I (as you may start to becoming aware) am much more into the technical issues. This ties from the site into what we actually could do to move discussion further into the public presence. Stuart, for example, has on a number of occasions been good enough to be our spokesperson in public debate. Thus there is are activities and opportunities that do pop up to spread the message, and to take action.

In my own particular case I do work, during the day, on some projects that may have some impact, but for a number of reasons, try to keep those, and my day job separate from what I post here.

And I do lecture on the subject - one such tomorrow.