A Crude Awakening

A Crude Awakening is a 1 hour 22 min documentary all about oil: its uses, our dependence, the implications of peak oil, and the consequences of a petro system. It is very high-quality and well done, with a nice soundtrack of Philip Glass. It is relatively bias-free, as in it doesn't demonize any one group; I found it more informative and education-orientation than persuasive and action-oriented. It is a great, easy-to-watch, powerful documentary that I highly recommend.

Agenda: explore our socio-economic integration with petroleum, explore the topic of peak oil and its possible consequences on the world, review current alternatives to oil.

Chris Martenson's Crash Course

As my first real post, I unhesitatingly recommend the Crash Course by Chris Martenson. I cannot stress enough the importance of this video seminar, freely available at

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

This 20 chapter video seminar is the most comprehensive, far-reaching, thorough, even-handed, and level-headed look at the economy, energy, the environment, and the future. All this is accomplished in an educational, apolitical manner. Chris presents facts and graphs, not to shock and awe you, but to educate. He teases so much meaning out of each graph, it has changed my views of the graphs from "dry data" to "profound conclusions based in fact"

You must see this video seminar.

Be warned though, the first quarter of the seminar is slow and can take some effort to slog through. This is by far the weakest part of the entire course but it is not representative of the rest of the course.
Also, the overall length is about 3.5 hours which seems daunting at first but you will be compelled to finish once you get into the meat of presentation. (The previous statement is me speaking from witnessing people so drawn in by the series that they drop whatever plans they originally had just so they can finish the course.) In other words, the length becomes perfectly justifiable once you understand the breadth and depth of the seminar.

Watch the Crash Course

The chapters titles will give you a good idea what the course is all about:

• Chapter 1: Three Beliefs (Time: 1:46)
• Chapter 2: The Three "E"s (Time: 1:38)
• Chapter 3: Exponential Growth (Time: 6:20)
• Chapter 4: Compounding is the Problem (Time: 3:06)
• Chapter 5: Growth vs. Prosperity (Time: 3:40)
• Chapter 6: What is Money? (Time: 5:55)
• Chapter 7: Money Creation (Time: 4:19)
• Chapter 8: The Fed - Money Creation (Time: 7:13)
• Chapter 9: A Brief History of US Money (Time: 7:14)
• Chapter 10: Inflation (Time: 11:48)
• Chapter 11: How Much Is A Trillion? (Time: 3:28)
• Chapter 12: Debt (Time: 12:32)
• Chapter 13: A National Failure To Save (Time: 12:06)
• Chapter 14: Assets & Demographics (Time: 13:41)
• Chapter 15: Bubbles (Time: 14:10)
• Chapter 16: Fuzzy Numbers (Time: 15:52)
• Chapter 17: PART A: Peak Oil (Time: 17:52)
• Chapter 17: PART B: Energy Budgeting (Time: 12:15)
• Chapter 17: PART C: Energy And The Economy (Time: 7:05)
• Chapter 18: Environmental Data (Time: 16:22)
• Chapter 19: Future Shock (Time: 8:02)
• Chapter 20: What Should I Do? (Time: 19:48)