The Oil Drum

I can't believe it, I have been coming here over half of TOD's lifetime?

It looked so pro a year ago, I thought it had been here since the birh of the web! :-)

Congrats is the word, I have read some absolutely veiwpoint altering and widening stuff since I have been here...and more links than I can find time to follow, many of them with promise of fascinating new developments and technologies...

Of course, with a bigger and bigger voice comes bigger responsibility. I will say that most folks here (compared to the broader standard of behavior on the web) take the responsibility seriously. TOD and it's writers now influence peoples thinking and perceptions and is seen by many newcomers as the "educated class" of old timers on these energy issues. But, and I know, I have sang this tune before with little effect, but we should always keep in mind how our words affect the more vulnerable among us. I read a post here by a father of an autistic little girl. It brought tears to my eyes, actually. He was deeply concerned about medication and care for the child should we face "the worst case" scenario. What was moving was the sincerity of his words, he was not greatly worried about himself, but about his very vulnerable child.

On another site, I read a post by a college girl, living alone for the first time in her life, who had come upon one of the, shall we say, "darker" sites concernign energy depletion and the great crash. She was beside herself with fear, unable to concentrate, and thinking of dropping out of college (what good would it do in a world in catastrophic collapse, on the edge of a new dark age?

So please, if you can, think about the effect words have on often lonely, non-technical and vulnerable people. It seems this is one of the first little services that we can perform for humanity.

I know that most folks here care about people. How do I know that? Because the greedy thing to do would be to be silent, not givel others warning of the danger, and hoard and protect ourselves.

But most folks at TOD are at heart "community builders", either on the web or in the real world. It is a community that bring real information to many, act as a trading board of technical information and available options, and perhaps cause someone who has never had any interest in energy and energy solutions to jump in the puzzle solving fun, and accidently stumble into a really big breakthrough. Remember, the home computer was born from the cross chatter of hobbyists, and created a revolution. We can only hope for so much!

Again, congratulations on a fascinating and informative place on the web, and great to meet all the extremely bright folks I have met here, at least in the virtual sense! :-)

Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom