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Electrical Engineer Duncan: Peak-oil Blackouts
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Richard C. Duncan, the third most popular Peak-Oil prophet on the web, and an
electrical engineer, has done a great service by providing a graphical
representation of the peak-oil hunch, which he calls the "Olduvai Theory" of
energy, population and industrial civilization.
The End of the World is Nigh (How
Peak Oil Solves Global Warming)
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As shown in the illustration
above, total energy per capita will drop sharply after 2008. According to the
theory, “world population peaks at 6.9 billion circa 2015, and thereafter
declines to 2.0 billion in 2050.” In the process 4.9 billion people die for lack
of oil.
In his paper "The Olduvai Theory: Energy, Population, and Industrial Civilization," Duncan claims the “world population will decline to about two billion circa 2050” based on his “postulate” that world population will decline “proximate with” world energy production. Strangely, his own data show that world energy production “easily outpaced world population growth from 1700 to 1979,” but then, in 1979, OPEC stopped per-person energy growth without slowing the growth of the world economy.
Strangely, although very little electricity is produced from oil, Duncan claims that the world collapse will be cause be electrical blackouts, and not a shortage of gasoline. This may be because he is an electrical engineer, although the idea was not added until the version of his theory published in November 2000 during California's electricity crisis--which had nothing at all to do with peak oil.
(Google reports 450,000 pages if you search for [Richard Duncan oil olduvai OR peak]. Duncan is a mainstay of the cult side of peak oil.)
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http://zfacts.com/p/852.html | 01/18/12 07:21 GMT
Modified: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 22:11:41 GMT
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