This is a guest post by Chris Nelder, author of Profit from the Peak: The End of Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of the Century. Chris will have another book (with Jeff Siegel) coming out soon, Investing in Renewable Energy: Making Money on Green Chip Stocks, but it doesn't come out until October. This is a media guide that Chris has been putting together that he wants feedback on, so help him out. Also, this document goes well in tandem with Gail's Peak Oil Overview that can always be found in the top guidebar that goes a bit further in depth. Gail's is meant to be extensive, this one is meant to be "short but bulletproof."

Recent media coverage of peak oil, and the energy options for the future, has been fraught with misinformation. In such an environment, the average person has little chance of knowing whether oil from ANWR or the Arctic can save the day, or whether there are 1.2 or 12 trillion barrels of recoverable oil out there. But confusion breeds apathy, and that's not something we can afford anymore. I believe that the impending energy crisis is too urgent to allow misinformation about peak oil to go unanswered. We need to bring the public up to speed on the realities of energy before we can have any sort of intelligent conversation about reforming energy policy.

It is my hope that the Guide will be a “living document” which can be updated and enhanced as time goes on by knowledgeable experts such as those on TOD, and I welcome their input. I'd like it to be as short and to the point as possible, but also as bulletproof as possible in presenting solid information.

Pause while 3,550,000 barrels of oil are consumed, (the show mentions that) and what did I think?

Well I could begin by suggesting they had the wrong buttons on the drill bit, but that would be a bit facetious. In a very small nutshell, it tracks a family during the time that the first well is drilled in ANWR, (in 2016) at the same time that President Chavez in Venezuela pulls his country out of OPEC, and that Saudi and China get together to do a goods for oil swop. Oil prices rise and the consequences are transiently illustrated through the impact on the family (losing job, long gas lines, food prices up, aspirin (an oil product) out of stock, and the like). The well is being drilled in the purported last hope for oil. And it does not find the 250 m of oil that was anticipated. But seven months later they are through the crisis and into another world.

MOVIE: OIL ON ICE Thursday, Nov. 10, 8 p.m.

TIME'S UP! Space, 49 E. Houston (between Mott & Mulberry)

This in-depth documentary examines the raging controversy over drilling for black gold in a 1.5-million-acre area of the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The film follows the efforts of environmentalists and Alaskan natives to protect the site from oil exploration and development, dramatizing the choice between fossil fuel technologies and those that take advantage of renewable energy resources.  

More Info and trailer