Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but at times difficult to read and depressing
Review: I consider myself an educated lay reader, but I found large sections of this short book to be difficult to get through. As other reviewers mentioned, I might have been more willing to focus on the science if I had understood WHY the technical facts were important to the author's arguments. I felt that after reading the introduction and first chapter, I understood Goodstein's argument as well as his reliance on Hubbert's thesis. But beyond that, I didn't really gain much other than learning that all alternatives to oil are either nearly depleted, not practical, or could (literally!) spell the end of life on this planet.

Reading the book did cause me to stop and think about our reliance on oil, so in this regard, Goodstein achieves one of his goals. Unfortunately, however, I feel worried and guilty without any sense of motivation to do anything. I was left with the depressing outlook of a doomed planet where any personal conservation efforts are futile. In short, I don't recommend this book to the lay reader. There has got to be a better book out there.

Rating:
Summary: Disjointed, but accurate information
Review: I have been researching the topic of oil depletion by reading (& buying!) many books. I was hoping that this small volume would provide a nice, condensed, well-argued version to hand to friends and family. I was wrong.

While Goodstein lays out the usual scenario regarding oil depletion and correctly explains differences between "remaining years" via the Hubbert's Peak method and the R/P method, much of the information is seemingly unconnected.

Yes, I know that the Laws of Thermodynamics apply. But I have read much clearer explanations of those laws in Freshman Physics in college. While "pithy", his explanations are not exactly clear or self-evident to the casual reader. And, once Thermodynamics are explored, the reader is left wondering WHY was all that explained? How does that connect to oil depletion? I know, because I have been studying this in other books, but this book does not link the theoretical explanations clearly with the problem of a shortage in oil production, available energy, etc.

I have read books that were longer and more clear on the subject; books that are a faster, easier and more understandable read than this brief volume. The first I would recommend is "The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies" by Richard Heinberg. This is an excellent well-rounded review of all issues regarding oil depletion.

For the reader who would like to explore the geological aspects in more depth (why can't we explore for more? what about making existing fields more productive? how is oil formed and where is it found?), I would recommend "Hubbert's Peak" by Kenneth Deffeyes, an associate of King Hubbert.

I'm sorry I paid so much for this slim little volume. Those books I recommended will cost you much less, are more clear, and easier to digest than this one.

Note: "Charts, graphs, photographs" in the Editors Review should be taken with a grain of salt. Yes, there are charts and illustrations, but they are simplistic. Some of the inserted illustrations are almost child-like.

Rating:
Summary: Disjointed, but accurate information
Review: I have been researching the topic of oil depletion by reading (& buying!) many books. I was hoping that this small volume would provide a nice, condensed, well-argued version to hand to friends and family. I was wrong.

While Goodstein lays out the usual scenario regarding oil depletion and correctly explains differences between "remaining years" via the Hubbert's Peak method and the R/P method, much of the information is seemingly unconnected.

Yes, I know that the Laws of Thermodynamics apply. But I have read much clearer explanations of those laws in Freshman Physics in college. While "pithy", his explanations are not exactly clear or self-evident to the casual reader. And, once Thermodynamics are explored, the reader is left wondering WHY was all that explained? How does that connect to oil depletion? I know, because I have been studying this in other books, but this book does not link the theoretical explanations clearly with the problem of a shortage in oil production, available energy, etc.

I have read books that were longer and more clear on the subject; books that are a faster, easier and more understandable read than this brief volume. The first I would recommend is "The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies" by Richard Heinberg. This is an excellent well-rounded review of all issues regarding oil depletion.

For the reader who would like to explore the geological aspects in more depth (why can't we explore for more? what about making existing fields more productive? how is oil formed and where is it found?), I would recommend "Hubbert's Peak" by Kenneth Deffeyes, an associate of King Hubbert.

I'm sorry I paid so much for this slim little volume. Those books I recommended will cost you much less, are more clear, and easier to digest than this one.

Note: "Charts, graphs, photographs" in the Editors Review should be taken with a grain of salt. Yes, there are charts and illustrations, but they are simplistic. Some of the inserted illustrations are almost child-like.

Rating:
Summary: Urgent subject, simplistic book
Review: I ordered "The End of Oil" at the same time as "Out of Gas". I started with this book because it was smaller. In fact, once you strip out the significant digression of thast few chapters, it barely rates more than a pamphlet.

Even though I agree with the premise and the conclusions of this book, the subject treatment is simplistic. Whatever you do, don't launch into a discussion on the subject with only this book as input.

The one insight I found very worthwhile is that the talk of a Hydrogen Economy is fundamentally flawed. Hydrogen is NOT a fuel source, but an energy storage tool, something like a battery. The actual energy still has to come from traditional or alternative sources, probably natural gas. All the hydrogen will do is to let us cart around some of that energy in our cars or pipe it to market. We've GOT to do better than that if the worst-case scenarios are to be avoided.

Save yourself the trouble, buy the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0618239774/qid=1099753508/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/102-0289418-5788944?v=glance&s=books&n=507846">The End of Oil</a>. Then DO SOMETHING! Talk with your friends, co-workers. We MUST raise the flag on this most critical issue. The market, in spite of the deluded hopes of the neo-conservatives, will not bring in the changes in time to save us. Waiting for the market to change the energy economy is dooming us to more oil wars, catastrophic disruptions in society and terrible pollution.

DO SOMETHING!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and Off Topic
Review: I ordered this book expecting to get a reasonable adult level discussion on the ramifications of fossil fuel depletion. The first chapter was great but the book soon degenerated into the sort of discussion that would not be out of place in a primary school playground.
If I wanted a shallow discussion of the greenhouse effect I would have gone to a Greenpeace meeting and if I wanted to know how a steam engine works I would have ordered a book on that subject.
This book is disappointing and I cannot recommend it to anybody who is interested in the subject that this book purports to be about.

Rating:
Summary: Briefly Disappointing
Review: In the age of the paper-guzzling 600-page door-stop, Prof. Goodstein is to be congratulated for writing a brief book. However, he may have thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

The heart of the book is a discussion of thermodynamics -- but Prof. Goodstein does not tie it well to the problem of increasing demand for energy exceeding the global capacity to supply oil. His analysis of possible future energy sources seems generally correct, but his discussion is too brief to convey much information. Then there is the usual lazy political correctness that has become such an unfortunate feature of so much of the writing of US academics.

The concept for this book was great, but it was disappointingly executed -- a real missed opportunity.

Rating:
Summary: Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil
Review: In this book, David Goodstein, professor of physics at Caltech, explains the underlying scientific principles of the inevitable fossil fuel crisis we face, and the closely related peril to the Earth's climate. The discovery of any natural resource, oil included, rises rapidly at first, but the rate of discovery eventually reaches a peak that will never be exceeded, and declines forever after that. In the 1950s, when America's military and industrial might arose largely from the fact that it was the world's leading producer of oil, a geophysicists named M. King Hubbert, realizing that the discovery peak had already passed, predicted that oil production in the Lower 48 would reach its highest point around 1970 and would decrease rapidly after that. To the surprise of nearly everyone, he turned out to be right. Now a number of petroleum geologists have pointed out that worldwide discovery of oil peaked decades ago. As oil fields continue to be depleted and new discovery, including advances in oil technology, fails to keep up, the prospect of a global Hubbert's peak looms before us

Rating:
Summary: a physicist sounds the alarm
Review: Oil will soon begin to run out, and the magical "market" will not save us. Caltech physicist David Goodstein adds his voice to the growing chorus warning that official complacency is steering us like the Titanic straight for a massive iceberg. Global oil reserves are projected to hit the Hubbert Peak sometime between now (according to some oil geologists) and 2020 (the most optimistic estimates of the U.S. government and industry). After the peak, we will be on the downslope, and prices will rise as supplies diminish. Even a surprising discovery of a new 90 billion barrel/year field, the biggest ever found, would only postpone the peak by one year. Goodstein illustrates the consequences -- if there is a 5% gap annually after the peak between growing demand and diminishing supply, then in 10 years the gap will grow to 50%. In only 10 years after some point in the very near future, in other words, the world will see the available oil reduced by 1/2. Goodstein points out that the U.S., with 5% of the world's people, consumes 25% of global oil production. "Cheap gasoline is not the solution; it's a big part of the problem," he adds. This physicist is no polemicist, but it is clear he does not consider economics to be any sort of reliable science. If the market is supposed to magically set the right prices via supply and demand, then how can oil and gas possibly be so cheap when it is so crucially valuable and running out? Goodstein notes that oil companies do not produce oil. There are unspoken volumes behind some of his brief comments. Those volumes can be found in the work of Herman Daly, the ecological economist, who has been pointing out for years that mainstream economics sets itself against the basic laws of physics when it comes to natural resources and the environment, especially the second law of thermodynamics -- entropy.

Given the impending crisis as oil begins to run out, Goodstein says "the intent of this small book is to explain the relevant laws of nature." Small is right -- 122 apparent pages of text are actually only 90 when chapter divisions and graphics are subtracted. Much of this short text is devoted to introductory lessons in physics (from his many years of Caltech lectures no doubt) on topics including the the measurement of energy, the 1st Law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy), electricity, heat engines, and the 2nd Law of thermodyamics (entropy).

This leaves only some very brief comments and suggestions for what to do about the energy crisis. Natural gas is non-renewable, and will peak not too long after oil. The easiest alternative to oil is coal, but of course if we turn back to coal, we will hasten global warming, and as Goodstein notes, increase the likelihood of tipping the climate into a disastrous new steady state more like Venus than what we now enjoy. Mysteriously, he places some hope in methane hydrate, a potential source of methane, based merely on its existence -- it is currently totally unknown how much might be found under the ocean floors or anywhere else. He notes that plans for the "sequestration" of carbon from coal, upon extracting hydrogen, currently have no place to put the carbon, and most such schemes would run the risk of negative EROEI -- more energy invested than energy recovered.

This leads to the fork in the road where I take issue with Goodstein. Like many physicists, it seems, he continues to promote nuclear (fission) power, saying it is a proven technology and its risks are exaggerated. He also discusses photovoltaic solar cells -- PVCs -- another proven technology -- but seems half-hearted. These are the two main alternatives to oil, and either nuclear or solar power will have to be used to generate electricity to produce hydrogen, which can be used in fuel cells to replace gas-fueled internal combustion engines. Hydrogen is not an energy source, as it does not naturally exist like fossil fuels, but an energy carrier -- according to Goodstein, producing hydrogen with heat engines currently consumes six times as much energy as the resulting hydrogen will produce. I'm willing to compromise my opposition to toxic, radioactive nuclear power in order to provide energy in the transition to a solar future, but I do not understand why Goodstein seems to prefer nuclear. He even advocates breeder reactors, which produce bomb-grade plutonium, as a means to extend the limited supplies of uranium, a non-renewable mineral, and holds out hope for fusion, which it should be clear by now is nothing but a pipe dream.

In short, Goodstein is absolutely right to raise the alarm and push for a crash program for the development of alternative energy. He is right that "market forces" are not going to save us, although he does not propose any particular course of action such as the excellent Apollo Alliance plan for public sector R&D and construction. More questionable (a physics article of faith?) is his advocacy of nuclear power rather than getting behind solar power, which is surely the long-term answer.

For a better, more thorough book on the same subject, see Richard Heinberg's "The Party's Over." He too, though not a physicist, applies physics in the form of EROEI analysis to all the possible energy sources, and reaches a similar discouraging conclusion. We have got to get our minds focused on this problem, and keep them focused -- if renewable energy does not become the top priority, the test of neomalthusian theory we are subjecting ourselves to will have a gruesome outcome. Let's not prove that Malthus was right after all.

Rating:
Summary: Out of hot air
Review: Professor David Goodstein felt compelled to top Professor Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb". Harnessing the power of his scientific methods as well as his deep insight into thermodynamics, he came to the inescapable conclusion that the oil production will peak sometime during this decade, and then will precipitously decline. The result will be an economic chaos accompanied by hyperinflation, mega-unemployment, and other headaches. The best way to meet the challenge before the disaster hits is to massively raise the oil tax and enforce strict conservation rules. David Goodstein's credentials are as strong as they get: he is a theoretical physicist whose expertise is two-dimensional matter, surfaces and interfaces, equilibrium and dynamical behavior at phase transitions. Well passed his peak (not too high to be worth mentioning anyway...), he has apparently turned to naive environmentalist activism, and here is the fruit. Can't wait for Ehrlich's response in the form of a treatise on the inevitability of the demise of capitalism in the light of the second law of thermodynamics.

Rating:
Summary: Waste of Time and....Energy
Review: The author argues that ethanol, in addition to some other energy sources, need more energy to produce than the energy produced from them. This book is exactly like ethanol. More energy wasted to produce it than the benefits from it. In fact, the ratio is ethanol is much better!

It is not worth reading. It looks like some one expressing himself about certain issues: no evidence, no substance, no solutions. Even newspaper editorials are more serious than this monograph.