Currently, the list of academic institutions offering relevant and up-to-date information and courses geared to confront the imminent energy slope is awfully short. If you have ever tried to enroll in your local university for some hands-on Peak Oil learning experience, you may have found yourself disappointed in knowing that no such course is offered.  Even in certain high-level economics courses that scrape at energy depletion and natural resources, you will probably be able to teach your professor a thing or two (if you are a keen reader of TOD). :)

In this article, I provide Peak Oil science curriculum suitable for introductory college science classes, advanced high school classes, and adult seminars. The material requires a little background in high school chemistry, but otherwise does not have any pre-requisites. There is sufficient material for a two to four session unit on peak oil.

The written material is divided into Part 1: The Science of Oil and Peak Oil (in this article) and Part 2: Oil as a Liquid Fuel and Expected Peak Oil Impacts (found at this link). There are also discussion questions at the end of Parts 1 and 2, and numerous links to other references. A PDF version which contains both Part 1 and Part 2 can be found at this link.

Last week, I posted an earlier version of proposed peak oil curriculum. Many of the comments related to things I had left out or hadn't explained adequately. After considering the comments, I decided that folks were right, and added some more material. Since the post was already fairly long, I broke it into two parts. I also reorganized sections to make a more logical flow. The earlier version can be found at this link.

The current version incorporates changes based both on comments to this post, and on comments to the previous post. On a rapidly changing topic such as peak oil, there is no real consensus on some issues. I have tried to pick a reasonable interpretation. If readers have questions or comments, I can be reached at gailtverberg (at) comcast (dot) net.

Change, it seems to be the word of the moment. And it seems to be one of those popular words that pop up every time there is a likelihood of a change in the Administration. But when we change we should know what to expect from that change, and that does require more than a little knowledge of the consequences. One thinks of the Bay of Pigs debacle, or the politicization that led to the disaster that has been the Federal response to the damage Katrina imposed on New Orleans.

I was thinking of the ignorance of consequences as I read Baron Wormser’s book The Road Washes Out in the Spring. As one of the “hippy culture” of the 60’s he chose to build a house in rural Maine, discovering after having put it up that they could not afford to run a power-line to the house. Thus, through the raising of a family, they did without electricity (apart from a small generator to run a hand-iron, a Skil saw for large carpentry, and a blender). Water was pumped by hand, and heating and cooking used wood stoves. But, when they first went through a winter, they had no appreciation of the amount of wood that would be required, and so, accompanied by a flash-light, he ended up sawing and splitting wood into the night, for they had no backup furnace. They also became very dependent on the condition of the road of the title, the typical rural dirt road, with culverts and infrequent maintenance.