Gail Tverberg is a writer and speaker about energy issues. She is especially known for her work with financial issues associated with peak oil. Prior to getting involved with energy issues, Ms. Tverberg worked as an actuarial consultant. This work involved performing insurance-related analyses and forecasts. Her personal blog is ourfiniteworld.com. She is also an editor of The Oil Drum.
Resource limits are invisible, so most people don’t realize that we could possibly be approaching them. In fact, my analysis indicates resource limits are really…
Based on the sound of the name renewable, a person might think that using only “renewable” energy is ideal–something we should all strive to use…
Globalization seems to be looked on as an unmitigated “good” by economists. Unfortunately, economists seem to be guided by their badly flawed models; they miss…
In my view, wages are the backbone an economy. If workers have difficulty finding a job, or have difficulty earning sufficient wages, the lack of…
We are used to expecting that more investment will yield more output, but in the real world, things don’t always work out that way.Figure 1.…
United States oil consumption in 2012 will be about 4.7 million barrels a day, or 20%, lower than it would have been, if the pre-2005…
There is ample evidence that spikes in oil prices leads to recession, at least in the US, which is an oil-importing nation. James Hamilton has…
A person might think from looking at news reports that our oil problems are gone, but oil prices are still high.Figure 1. US crude oil…
We have been hearing a lot about escaping the fiscal cliff, but our problem isn’t solved. The fixes to date have been partial and temporary.…
A primary reason why coal consumption is rising is because of increased international trade, starting when the World Trade Organization was formed in 1995, and…
Most of us have heard that Thomas Malthus made a forecast in 1798 that the world would run short of food, and that great famine…
If an employer wants to maximize profits, it will want to leverage its use of high-priced energy sources. From an employer’s point of view, there…
The United States’ fiscal cliff is very much related to several changes we have been going through recently, and will likely continue to experience:1. High…
World leaders seem to have their minds made up regarding what will fix world CO2 emissions problems. Their list includes taxes on gasoline consumption, more…
The International Energy Agency (IEA) provides unrealistically high oil forecasts in its new 2012 World Energy Outlook (WEO). It claims, among other things, that the…
We seem to hear two versions of the story of limited oil supply:1. The economists’ view, saying that the issue is a simple problem of…
We keep hearing about the many benefits of natural gas–how burning it releases less CO2 than oil or coal, and how it burns with few…
Prof. James Hamilton of University of California recently wrote a post called Thresholds in the economic effects of oil prices. In it, he concludesAs U.S.…
Governments and economists around the world have not figured out that what the world economy is suffering from, to varying degrees, is “high-priced fuel syndrome“.High-priced…
The number of jobs available to job-seekers has been a problem for quite a long time now—since 2000 in the United States, and longer than…