[.ca] The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial ... (ISBN 0865715297)

Wake up to Renewables and Synfuel:
There's no question that within a decade at the most, and probably within two years, we'll be forced to begin utilizing alternative fuels to a much greater extent than today, as we will begin seeing the demand for oil exceed global petroleum production capabilities. But the doomsayers are simply poorly informed about the progress that has been made in renewables and other technologies over the past five years. Since Heinberg is so uninformed, I'll try to educate him briefly. Perhaps the most significant recent advance has been the order-of-magnitude drop in the cost of the enzyme needed to make cellulosic ethanol from waste and switchgrass. Equally important, wind energy in favorable locations is now competitive with natural gas. Also, the cost of photovoltaic has dropped by a factor of three in the past decade, and another factor of two drop in price can be expected in the coming decade, at which point it will begin to compete in select applications. Electric vehicles, using lithium ion batteries, with driving range over 350 miles, will be available within a year, and they will be competitive in major respects with gasoline hybrids. Within a few years, advanced, clean-coal power plants with CO2 sequestration will be more efficient than most coal-fired power plants currently in use today. About two-thirds of our current hydrogen production (from natural gas, which is a very limited resource in North America) is used to make ammonia and nitrates for fertilizers. We can use wind farms in the Dakotas to produce all the renewable fertilizer our nation needs (this would take about 250 GW of peak wind power). Of course, various raw materials would need to be transported to the wind farms, and the fertilizers would need to be transported out, but fertilizers are much more easily stored and transported (by rail) than hydrogen. We can easily eliminate the use of fossil fuels for fertilizers. The potential benefit is huge, both in terms of massive industrial jobs creation (over a 10 to 15-year period) and in terms of CO2 emissions reductions. Moreover, such a project would also eliminate our dependence on imported LNG and allow natural gas prices to decrease. Several excellent articles that have appeared recently on advanced biofuels include the following: (...) Yes, things will change, and we can expect oil to stabilize at around $60/bbl (current dollars) within a few years, but the world will deal with it. That price, along with fossil carbon taxes, will be high enough to make renewables and synfuel largely replace petroleum over the next four decades. As a result, we'll still be pumping some petroleum a hundred years from now - albeit at a greatly reduced rate. And by the way, Heinberg is absolutely right about one thing: the energy solution will not involve hydrogen. (...)

a huge oversupply:
...of bad books on the coming shortage of oil. Other reviews point out the flaws in the book including a lack of adaquet knowledge of alternative sources of fuel. For example, many reading this book may not realize that the cost of renewables has gone done 50% each decade since the 1970s. The energy future is much brighter than Heinburg portrays, and his book will soon stand next to my copy of The Coming Collapse of 1993!

Entertaining. . .:
If I were rating this book solely on entertainment value, I'd have given it 4 stars. . . it was a very enjoyable read. That said, I'm not sure I could even give the arguments in the book 2 stars. I found it particularly ironic that while he repeatedly disparages economist, he liberally quote Paul Ehrlich, who was so thoroughly embarrassed in his 1980's bet with the economist Julian Simon.

The most Provocative Book Ever:
I ordered this book after viewing the documentary, "The End of Suburbia". This was a page turner. I had an understanding about the problems with energy and how we need to change society or our inactions will change it for us. I was moved, cornered, and energized. This is the best book for a lay person who wants to know how the West was brought about and how we're sharing our glamorous view of life with the rest of the world. I hope everyone who reads this will know what to invest in. And I hope if you read this book, you have intelligent people around you who will be able to critically think and ponder the reality of this. This book really excited me, not because I'm a Luddite at heart, but as a person who deep down knows there is so much more to life than what is being packaged and delivered to the masses. This will reinforce to those who already walk lightly on the earth and to those who have no idea how life as we know is sustained and how we got here. This is the ultimate history lesson because life comes down to accessing free energy and molding it to suit us and to thrive. Only now, we have learned the hows and whys. Are we smart enough to move or are we so tied up with politics and capitalism that only a small group of the human population will know what to do. And we're locked up and muted. This book is empowering and at moments, I cried.

Read it then Judge:
Notice how almost all of the criticism of the book is not directed at what is said in the book but at some doomsayers from 30 or so years ago. Since the 1970's technology has given us a much better handle on what we have in the ground. We know from such innovations as 3-D seismic mapping that only 40% of the world's land and oceans have any potential for oil discovery and that there is a 50% chance that less than 1 trillion barrels of recoverable oil are in this 40%. This is something we had no clue about before the 1990's. As technology has enabled us to become more efficient at extracting the oil we know we have, it has ominously showed us how little is actually left. Heinberg's greatest success is in showing how the energy returned must exceed the energy spent when analyzing a source of energy. Hence it does not matter how cheap all these renewables get. Since oil is needed to build solar panels and ethanol plants and nuclear plants, we will not have enough cheap oil to upgrade the infrastructure in time to prevent a collapse.