nature and ecology

The End of Oil is a badly-needed addition to the body of energy literature. Roberts provides comprehensive, well-thought-out, and non-ideological insight into the problems we face as we near the end of the age of cheap oil. His work covers the geological, economic, and political debates, and gives us a glimpse into a future both troubling and full of hope.

This work is not flawless, despite my praise and five-star rating. Roberts repeatedly implies that getting synthetic crude from the Alberta oil sands is a prospect for the future; in reality, current production is over 500,000 barrels/day and rising. He also seems surprised that water injection is now being used to aid production from Saudi Arabia's giant Ghawar oilfield, and takes that as a sign that Ghawar is aging badly. However, according to the Saudi national oil company, water injection had been used at Ghawar since 1965.

Notwithstanding these nitpicks, this is the best and most balanced book on the the topic. It should be read by anyone interested in the future of energy, our economy, and the world.

As someone who has taught courses on global energy use and the environment for more than 20 years, I have read a great many books on the linkages between energy, economics, environment, and politics. Usually such books suffer from either an obvious bias, an excess of technical jargon (especially books by economists), or a selective treatment of the subject (e.g., focusing on the promise of solar energy while ignoring prospects for new technology for coal). This book comes closest to balancing all of the topics critical to understanding the global energy situation, and given recent events in the middle east, could not have come out at a better time. I found particularly valuable the concise and lucid treatments of the status of oil supplies (distinguishing the end of the low cost era from plentiful but much more expensive sources), the science of climate change and its relationship to energy policy, the importance of growing demand in China for cars and other energy intensive products, and the prospects for alternatives to fossil fuels including the dream of the hydrogen economy. All topics are up-to-date and well referenced, and the credibility of the book is greatly enhanced by interviews with leading experts. This book is appropriate for students with widely diverse backgrounds and should find a large audience.

Paul Roberts is a great writer, having authored many successful books about important subjects, such as the timber industry, the auto industry, and the Florida Everglades. Like his other works, "The End of Oil", is eloquently written for the non specialist. In it, he carefully researches and delves into most of the major issues associated with energy - oil and gas supplies, distribution, processing, uses, politics, economics, renewables, etc. Clearly, his goal is to awaken America to the urgency of doing something to avoid what otherwise is likely to be a chaotic economic upheaval as we pass Peak Oil, probably just four years from now. For this purpose the book is outstanding.

However, I came at it from the perspective of a physicist who has spent 25 years involved in various sustainable energy issues, and for me the book was quite disappointing. Roberts' in-depth understanding of all the issues about which he writes is limited. As a result, there are a huge number of minor technical errors throughout the book that are at best distracting and at worst seriously misleading. For a much more detailed and accurate discussion of most major aspects of energy, see "Energy at the Crossroads" by Smil, though Smil too has serious limitations on the subject of renewables and advanced technology. Roberts' treatment of oil resources is decidedly inferior to the definitive work on petroleum resources by Campbell, "The Coming Oil Crisis". (And you don't even have to buy Campbell's book. Just go to the ASPO web site and download his last 20 newsletters.)

Roberts also does poorly when he tries to evaluate future energy options - wind, biofuels, solar, and hydrogen. Of course, it's hard to be too critical, as there has been a lot of junk science published on these subjects (much of it even coming from government sources) and Roberts is not qualified to separate the wheat from the chaff. The worst chapter by far is Chapter 3, which essentially is an advertisement for Ballard's hydrogen fuel cells. This chapter is full of garbage from start to finish, though it probably contains enough real science to fool the general reader. For a scientifically sound, expert perspective here, see "The Hype About Hydrogen" by Dr. Joe Romm or my "Fuels for Tomorrow's Vehicles". On this subject, Romm, Smil, and Roberts each have very different views, and here it seems clear that Romm is on the right track. (The recent study by the National Academy of Sciences is on his side, and that should mean something.)

Roberts' review of wind and solar in Chapter 13 also leaves a lot to be desired, though most of the information presented on these subjects (except when it comes to hydrogen energy storage to address intermittency) is sound. However, he gives the distinct impression in several places he's already decided to be negative toward wind energy simply because the wind turbines must be produced by big industry to be competitive. He apparently fails to appreciate that the same applies to solar and especially to fuel cells. But the biggest shortcoming in this chapter is his non-treatment of advanced biofuels - such as cellulosic ethanol, algal biodiesel, and methanol and biodiesel from waste and switchgrass.

So, I have to commend Roberts for doing a good job (for an outsider and non-expert) of presenting a lot of useful information on energy issues; but for those interested in real substance devoid of slanted hype, I'd recommend turning to the real experts, like Campbell, Romm, and Smil, who also are excellent writers. Of course, you may not want to read three long books, two of which (those by Campbell and Smil) are rather heavy. In that case, you might want to read the first third and the last quarter of "Out of Gas", by Goodstein (the central portion of his book is off topic and boring) to get a brief and scientifically sound introduction to the subject of Peak Oil. For a sound summary of future automotive fuels, I recommend "Fuels for Tomorrow's Vehicles". - F. David Doty, PhD, engineering physicist.