Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 286 pages
- Published by: Wiley May 2, 2008
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0470127368
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0470127360
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Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
- Weighs: 1.1 pounds
Reader Reviews
First of all, as to the reviewer who advised the authors should question the environmental impact of our voracious appetite for energy: The human race could adopt a simpler life. The only way that can happen is if we have a massive die-off of most of the human population. Also, it would be a society where people die young due to lack of modern-day health care, and so forth. I believe the assumption the authors have made regarding energy demand are sound. People WANT to live what they perceive to be a better life. Some of the aspects of such a life are: advanced health care, the ability to travel, the ability to have a career involving challenging intellectual pursuits, as opposed to having to devote one's life to doing grunt work in order to put food on one's own table. I am totally prejudiced on this matter. I believe the amenties of modern society have been of tremendous benefit to me. (frankly, if I had lived in older days, due to my physical frailties, I no doubt would have died long ago). Now a few people may prefer the simpler life, but the vast majority of the people of the world want the amenities that we in the developed world have. I don't see the people of China saying, "hey, we'd rather spend our lives harvesting rice and living in mud huts". ----- OK, so much for the rant, now on to my review. The book is a good overview of the peak oil situation. For those not familiar with peak oil, it provides a lot of the fundamental facts that those who have studied this issue have discovered. For example, the fact that once we can no longer run our society on fossil fuels, IF there is a path to a comparable standard of living in the future, the mainstay of our energy use will be in the form of electricity. There are a couple of beefs I have with the book, though, which led me not to give it 5 stars. 1). It really is essentially a book about peak oil, not investing. Upon reading the book, it seems clear to me that the book is motivated primarily by the desire to expand awareness of the peak oil problem to a broader cross-section of the public, not to provide people investment ideas for how to profit from the transition. And that is all to the good in my view, because I think the former is a much more important goal. So the title strikes me as a bit disingenuous, perhaps trying to snare people out to make a buck on alternative energy and then give them a tutorial on peak oil, with the names of a few companies thrown in in order to justify the title of the book. In my case both causes interest me. I am retired and I am spending some of my time trying to become knowledgable about peak oil in case I can find a way to do anything constructive to help fix the problem. And, I am also an investor, and focused heavily on commodities. I tend to be skeptical about investing in new technologies, however, because it seems to me it is very hard to anticipate who the real winners are going to turn out to be, and stocks in hot new areas that seem to hold promise for solving important problems of society (the biggest of which is energy) tend to be bid up to sky high prices and thus are extremely risky. One specific mention was about the oil refiners like Valero who can process heavy sour crude. Well, right now the refiners are in the dumpster due to low crack spreads, so who knows maybe Valero is a good buy right now (I have been on the fence about buying some myself). On the other hand, the oil producing nations are seeking to do more of the downstream processing of oil themselves. I can't remember whether the book mentions this, I think it probably does. The Middle East states have a population explosion and need jobs for their huge population of young people. So they want to build refineries and sell us gasoline instead of oil. Hence, I think there is no guarantee that US refiners will even have oil to process in the future. When I hear Bush talk about how we need to build more refineries, well it's no more idiotic than most all the other garbage you are hearing from the politicians, but does Bush realize that the oil producing nations are building refineries and want to just sell us finished products like gasoline? (in his defense, I am sure McCain and Obama are equally clueless on that) Another point, before I forget: The reviewer that said the book was US centric I do agree had a good point. I live in the US and an pretty US centric myself, but I do recall thinking a couple times while reading the book that in some places it focused on the US when it should have been focusing globally. Now, my last criticism and perhaps biggest: The authors have a definite bias for renewables and against fossil fuels and nuclear. Now in the long run I totally agree that we need to switch over to renewables because the nonrenewables won't be there any more. However, the authors express all the pitfalls in terms of cost, timetables, etc. associated with the big existing sources of energy with great zeal, while they speak glowingly about renewables with very little discussion of the huge pitfalls and challenges. The most obvious example is that they say very little about the fact that since most renewables produce intermittently (when the wind blows, when the sun shines), for us to transition to a future based on renewable energy requires the development of massive energy storage facilities. And I would say that right now even though renewable sources such as large-scale solar generation are not particularly far along in implementation, large-scale energy storage is at a far earlier stage of infancy. So in my view the development of large-scale energy storage is liable to be an even bigger challenge than the development of large-scale renewable energy production facilities. But all in all, it was nevertheless a very good book. It covers the issues associated with peak oil to a moderate level, so it is perfect for someone new to peak oil to get a solid grounding in most of the important issues, and someone who has already studied the issue somewhat is liable to learn a few new things from the book as I did.
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