The Oil Drum

As happened at the last ASPO meeting in Boston, the Conference organizers had arranged for a mystery reporter to act at the end of today’s papers as a Mystery “Guest Responder,” to review and comment on the papers of the day. It turned out to be James Kunstler , and while I had hoped his summary might have made it easier to cover a day where there was a vast quantity of information, and though he gave a concise and effective summary, our views on what was most interesting appear to differ quite a bit. And so, gentle readers, you are stuck once again with my perception. But since there are a lot of TOD readers and contributors here (a pleasure to put a face to the name) please do chip in with your views and comments, particularly if you disagree with what I write.

The atmosphere seemed a little different today, perhaps the influence of more “energy professionals”, investment advisors and professionals made it seem more of a business conference, perhaps the nature of the message that came at us as the papers proceeded were a sobering influence. After the ASPO meeting in Cork I had become a little more worried about the approaching problems, and had, as I noted, begun to see 2009 and 90 mbd as the critical numbers. Today I think I added the first twinge of terror to my emotional lexicon. We talk about it with an academic dispassion, we list the numbers and plot the curves but the numbers that we heard today have an immediacy and an impact that indicate the anonymity with which we exist in many media is perhaps going to change sooner than many of us have anticipated. This was the day of revising numbers, of reviewing past data in light of the changes since last year, and so let me, “start at the beginning” with the first paper of the day.