Gail Tverberg

Latest articles from Gail

• How The Human Population Explosion Defies Nature

  Published 16 February 2012 | viewed 12,960 times

  There are seven billion people on earth now. I originally thought that the primary reason for the recent human population explosion was that fossil fuels…

• Shedding Some Light on Peak Oil

  Published 09 February 2012 | viewed 12,305 times

  On January 26, Bloomberg Businessweek printed an editorial by Charles Kenny titled, "Everything You Know About Peak Oil Is Wrong". This editorial reflects several common…

• An Abundant Supply of Cheap Oil is the Most Important Resource for Our Future

  Published 02 February 2012 | viewed 23,187 times

  Our economy runs on oil. Most of the tractors used for growing food run on oil. Nearly all of today’s cars and trucks run on…

• Is a Reduction in Population Numbers the only Sustainable Solution?

  Published 30 January 2012 | viewed 18,178 times

  In a recent post, I talked about why we may be reaching Limits to Growth of the type foretold in the 1972 book Limits to…

• How will the Economy Fare if High Oil Prices Continue

  Published 19 January 2012 | viewed 10,358 times

  We know high oil prices have an adverse impact on the economy, often leading to recession. According to Economist James Hamilton, 10 out of 11…

• The Faustian Bargain has Enabled an Unsustainable Economic System, but Not for Much Longer

  Published 09 January 2012 | viewed 26,461 times

  Historically people have shifted their belief systems in various ways. The Greeks and Romans believed in numerous gods and goddesses and attributed all kinds of…

• A Look at Some of the Obstacles Facing Wind Energy in the U.S.

  Published 05 January 2012 | viewed 23,351 times

  In the United States, we have been working on scaling up wind energy but not getting very far. In 2010, wind energy supplied only 2.3%…

• Is it Possible to Buy Our Way Out of Our Energy Problems?

  Published 20 December 2011 | viewed 5,817 times

  The world has many ideas for solving our energy shortfall, but they all seem to involve investment: • Drill for more oil and gas;• Develop alternative energy…

• Price of Oil to Remain High as OPEC Limits World Production

  Published 15 December 2011 | viewed 19,845 times

  The results of OPEC’s latest meeting to set oil production quotas were on Thursday last week. Instead of production targets for individual countries, a group…

• Is Saudi Arabia Heading for a Downfall?

  Published 06 December 2011 | viewed 10,155 times

  Saudi Arabia recently announced that it had halted a $100 billion oil production expansion plan to raise capacity to 15 million barrels a day by…

• How GDP is Linked to CO2 Emissions

  Published 01 December 2011 | viewed 27,960 times

  In a recent post, I discovered something rather alarming - the fact that in the last decade (2000 to 2010) both world energy consumption and…

• What is Happening with Brent and WTI Oil Prices and what Can We Expect

  Published 22 November 2011 | viewed 9,520 times

  Back in February, I wrote a post called Why are WTI and Brent Prices so Different? In it, I talked about a number of issues,…

• Decoupling GDP Growth and Energy Growth - Is it possible?

  Published 17 November 2011 | viewed 10,550 times

  In recent years, we have heard statements indicating that it is possible to decouple GDP growth from energy growth. I have been looking at the…

• Economic Growth Being Choked by High Oil Prices and Falling Supply

  Published 09 November 2011 | viewed 9,077 times

  I gave a talk on expected financial implications of the oil limits that we are now reaching at a recent meeting of the Association for…

• 2012 and the Coming Financial Crises

  Published 25 October 2011 | viewed 18,812 times

  It looks to me as though 2012 is likely to be a truly awful financial year, with several crises converging: 1. Either very high oil prices…

• IEA Wrong to Expect Oil Production Growth to Come from MENA

  Published 20 October 2011 | viewed 8,504 times

  Recently, the International Energy Agency’s Chief Economist Fatih Birol was quoted as saying, In the next 10 years, more than 90% of the growth in…

• The 65 Year Debt Bubble and a New Financial System

  Published 12 October 2011 | viewed 15,077 times

  When I write about high oil prices having an adverse impact on the economy, quite a few readers respond by saying, “No, most (or all)…

• Serious Flaws in Department of Energy’s Latest Report on Energy Priority Setting

  Published 05 October 2011 | viewed 4,545 times

  The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently issued a report called Report on the first Quadrennial Technology Review (QTR), which has as its purpose helping…

• Daniel Yergin and Oil Supply: Should we Really not Worry About Peak Oil

  Published 03 October 2011 | viewed 10,134 times

  Saturday, September 17, the WSJ ran an essay by Daniel Yergin called, “There Will Be Oil.” In the essay, Yergin argues that the advocates of…

• Why the EIA’s Latest Forecast of a 53% Jump in Energy Demand is Misleading

  Published 22 September 2011 | viewed 9,411 times

  The EIA published International Energy Outlook 2011 (IEO 2011) on September 19, showing energy projections to 2035. One summary stated, “Global Energy Use to Jump…