Fantastic idea, the video gives the larger audience a chance to learn about our situation. Thank you for producing this video.

An additional way to visualize the peak issue is available as a modeling tool which can be downloaded from this site. This tool graphically displays the supply graph into the future following the changes you make to the input parameters sliders (total reserves, production rate, depletion rate, etc). You can also create linearization charts from the current production graph and interactively slide the linearization data selection set along the data points to view how moving the data set effects the total calculated reserves quantity.

I posted this on TOD about a year ago, but since the readership has increased, I would like to suggest others to have a look. Sorry Apple users, this is only written for Windows OS. Anyone who would like the source code to port to Apple is welcome to, just email me.

Great idea - should bring the ideas here to a wider audience!

Great work Luis, lol you would put ridiculous jazz for the music.

-Crews

Somehow I expected the theme from 2001 :)

Luis and TOD;
I think it's a great medium to use as so many people are keyed to Sound or Picture to take in information, as opposed to reading. That said, I will mention a bit of my perspective as a Cameraman and Editor, in the hope that it gives you thoughts on how you might approach this medium.

Use visuals, if you can, that tell a basic concept very quickly. Think like cartoonists (or just use cartoons, as appropriate) The Charts are supportive, but beyond the x and y of a graph, visuals are very powerful ways to reveal relationships and solidify abstract concepts quickly. The adage of a 'picture = 1000 words' is as much about how long it takes to tell as it is about pagespace consumed ..

A small note about this edit (part one, anyway).. is that the Music needs to be lower in the Background, as Luis' (?) voice is soft and accented, so I had a tough time sticking with him. I clicked back to the blog thinking I'd just read the same info 'under the fold' a little easier.

Do feel free to contact me directly if you are working on one of these, and would allow me to preview the script and suggest imagery, simple (flash) animation or stock footage perhaps that let me back up these generalizations with suggestions.

I know there are other filmmakers, Camerapeople and Graphic Artists (Leanan?) on the site who are also able to help in this regard. Video and Film works very impressionistically, IMO, and can be very effective at communicating at levels and in languages that 'hard, cold facts' may not penetrate very well.

"Art is the lie that tells the truth" (if you want it to, and are good - and lucky)

Bob Fiske

Nice. Fantastic music. I was disappointed you didn't provide music credits at the end.

Fabulous. Please don't take my comments as other than constructive.

As an educator teaching English as a Foreign Language, let me echo the issues with regard to the voice over. I am accustomed to "interpreting" non-native English and struggled at times. If production values remain an issue, then it might be worthwhile to get a more standard accent for the voice over. Apologies to, I assume, Luis for this point, but if newbs get lost they will tune out. They are your target audience, so...

Second, it was mentioned above as the video being "slow." You don't want to lose the attention of your audience, particularly if a new one. You can cut nearly two minutes off the front of the first one just with the intro. I'd cut it all or make the transitions much, much faster. You can do this whole thing under YouTube's 10 minute limit and avoid having to split the video. I understand the point being made with the graphics of the intro, but think a faster and more effective approach might be the Saudi camel>car>airplane>camel saying quote. Or, perhaps shorten down the graphics display time to a 3 - 5 seconds total and add in the saying to add a more modern twist to the same cycle.

Third, you may want to remove the Google version. I tried that first, but the graphics were too blurry in the larger format. That's a format issue, I assume, so can probably be fixed?

Fourth, there is a point in the first where you give an equation. I suggest you add that slide in. Most won't know the math and and how to write it out, nor do they, even if they do know it, want to be bothered with stopping to grab pen and paper. If it's in the video you can just pause to copy it down. I realize it's in the original, but the KISS principle always applies.

Cheers

It's just the equivalent of talking over charts and graphs, and with a bad accent at that "equating = ekyoo-waiting??". Subjectmatter aside, it's boring. Check out "What a Way to Go" if you want to see how to make something low budget that grabs your attention.

I think its a GREAT start. Luis has worked very hard on this. He couldnt afford to get someone without an accent, or with better musical taste, but took the time to put a technical piece to voice/music. We get a good deal of readers here, but I think we could reach more with cartoons/movies/ etc. Is that an objective? I'm not sure. But I know a good deal of friends of mine that 'promise' to read posts on theoildrum but never actually do.

Steep discount rates are in our genes. Some more than others. The decisionmakers caught up in the rat race are people least able to absorb reading a 40 minute treatise on energy. A 5-10 minute video might be more palatable.

(I just read the paper "CARPE DIEM: ADAPTATION AND DEVALUING THE FUTURE " by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson discussing our evolved reasons for being 'impulsive'. It struck me, that across species, that females (via the mechanism of larger sexual investment), have more moderate discount rates. In a wider and very real way, I think the problems of climate change and peak oil should have more women calling the shots. I half-jokingly made this suggestion in a post last year but now I actually believe it has merit. I'll try and write something on it - but the point here is that Luis is on to something. We live in a culture that values time above all else. If the objective of theoildrum is to corner the truth, and expand the community of awareness of energy problems moving toward energy solutions, perhaps we need faster media than reading words and graphs....Its an open question

But good job Luis. I for one, could never have done it. (And i WOULD have chosen Thus Spak Zarathustra as the theme...;-)

Nice video.

(On a sidenote: why were my posts deleted the other day in the original Olduvai thread? We had a nice conversation going on about the energy intensity of the GDP vs. energy efficiency, there was not a single offensive word... I don't get it.)

I'm sorry. Much as I like TOD, I could not bear that film beyond the halfway point.

I think that this is a definite step in the right direction and I agree that you can get more attention with "I have a dream" than with "I have a nightmare".

However, I also believe that optimism breeds complacency, whereas pessimism breeds the kind of extreme action that the situation calls for.

IMHO your message, aside from the Olduvi reference, is heavy on the optimistic.

As in;

We just need to pick a scenario over the next few decades and we're good.

I for one would like to see a bit more urgency injected and the time frame tightened up.

P.S. The Fast Draw guys of Common Craft http://www.commoncraft.com/ put together an interesting, short, Whiteboard prez. On money, with a few words from Robert Costanza (heh, some how I thought he looked different);

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3841669n

• Brief CBS News "Fast Draw" segment  including an interview with ecological economist Robert Costanza.

Pasted from http://www.steadystate.org/CASSEVideo.html

P.S. This style is a little too cute and quick but there is something to be learned from the growing use of this concept.

There is an error at the end of movie two - it references http://theoildrum.com/[number], when the correct URL would be http://theoildrum.com/node/[number].

This should be fixed *quickly* as the movie is getting some views and people will want to know more. Perhaps just a comment with the correct URL should be made?

Good idea, horrible execution.

To slow in presentation. Very much a "death by PowerPoint" moment.
Should have stated your premise on the outset. If the audience is the general public, they don't know what you're talking about, and you will loose them in the first minute. Also needs to be dumbed down for the public.

I know this must have been a ton of work, and I'm sorry for being harsh, but this just doesn't cut it.

Great idea! Only, remove the background audio & enunciate more clearly. Provide a transcript too. Otherwise, this was a very good idea.

Just some random thoughts from watching the video. Great effort, next time you can make a better one.

A similar model like Olduvai was presented to me a few years ago by a professor of environmental engineering at Tampere university of tech in Finland. Such and such a number of new nuke plants each year and so on to keep us all a float etc. From a positivist point of view it might look feasible but anyone who has done a bit of research into peak civilization will object to its simplicity. Reality doesn't work like a computer game where you just click on 'Build more nuke plants'. There is no such thing as a coherent organized civilization making rational decisions. What there is, is a groups of individual nations or power groups, all with urgent local and personal political problems of their own. Even if they weren't blinded by their own narrow points of views and short attention spans they would be incapable to act rationally because the system doesn't allow them to.

I know people here including me are fascinated by graphs and calculations. However we all too often forget the human factor. What I would like to see is an attempt to apply the analysis made by Tainter on the collapse of Roman society and others to our present situation. In his terms, it appears to me that our society is socially (life style), politically (including financial system), and structurally (diminishing returns of technology) incapable to respond to this crisis. The crisis itself, namely depletion of limited resources and peak oil, are well documented and researched here at TOD with predictions of timelines drawn from often simplistic considerations (like the Olduvai). That is, we too often assess our ability to respond to crisis as a coherent organized completely rational society, whereas in the real world we are none of the above. It is the combination of all the factors: social, political, financial and structural (SPFS) with the physical situation of peak oil/energy/everything, which will give you a realistic picture of what is about to happen. And need I add that this picture is often a lot more pessimistic then the one derived from purely quantitative analysis of:'how much energy got we left'. A good example of this kind of wider analysis is the Export Land Model which points out the fact that no matter the what energy produced is, if it doesnt reach the market its not there to be sold.

I understand that there is a bias by many people who are so mathematical as to consider anything 'social' not a science at all. And indeed the beauty of the inevitability of purely technical calculations of the depletion of physical resources is satisfying. There is less ambiguity, allowing one to make more convincing arguments. Trying to include SPFS blurs the discussion and distracts many who otherwise might get the point. But within the cognizant, we should not ignore Tainter and others who have shows that all past collapses have involved everything and the kitchen sink as factors for the collapse - and mostly as contributing factors. There is very little the Romans can teach us, except what not to do. It is important to note that societies, who have been able to stave off collapses, have done so by expansion of their resource base, their energy consumption per capita. This includes very much our current society. The problem is, we have now used up this tactic but believe we can continue to rely on it.

I hold myself to be an optimist. However I tend to call many supposed optimists 'Positivists' instead. Let me explain. Cornered into a cave by a lion, you are either paralyzed by fear or see hope in dashing past the lion, even though you will probably get scratched. This is healthy life affirming optimism, based on rational assessment of ones experience of reality. Adapt to the situation, cut your losses etc. The positivists on the other hand put on their illusion and denial glasses that make the lion go away. Because they don't want to give up anything. They talk about alternative technologies and energy sources with a broken voice of one who knows he's deluding himself. Normally there would be no positivists around, just a bunch of well fed lions. But our civilization has allowed, through the use of virtually unlimited resources, a large section of the people to successfully resort to irrationality, illusions and denial as a successful survival tactic. Brilliant scientists and financial geniuses are the hero's of our time, delivering us from the bad dream that is unfolding around us.

We have already committed ourselves to at least a partial collapse in the complexity of our society to a lower level. This has to mean either a lower level of lifestyle or lower population. It is our option to choose which. If we don't the situation will choose for us. (see Bartlett). What is needed now is an analysis of how can we change our society's SPFS factors to adapt to this rather than where can we find more cornucopian sources or how long we have before we face the doom.

Luis;

I just found a link from several months ago, a great use of comedy and style to make this topic (His take on the topic, anyway) very accessible and watchable.

'Robert Newman's History of Oil' http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5267640865741878159

Don't have time to review it all to make sure it's all that accurate or applicable, but it's a very good demonstration (as I recall) of using the medium well. A talented performer and a budget don't hurt, clearly, but take it for what ideas it can offer anyway!

Bob Fiske

EDIT (and it also proves that you DON'T have to speak in an 'American Newscaster's ACCENT' !!) I liked your voice.. the music was just upstaging you, and a viewing with others to catch sticky sections would be helpful, of course!

Great presentation/idea ... but that bad n'loud music pissed me off(!)

I gave in after a few minutes....
Tips : get rid of that music, and speed up the start.
best regards

As much as I am a Peak Oiler, the Olduvai Theory is flawed right out of the gate by one simple premise. Energy production must decline due to reductions in finite resources.

However, what if fusion energy actually works and we have unlimited energy production? Even though net energy return fusion energy production may not be viable for 30 or more years, and in the interim the world economy may have a sharp downturn due to a lack of liquid fuel, there could be a golden age of energy production in the future. A 2nd rise of civilization that would nullify the Olduvai theory.

Hi Luis,

Very nice addition to the original post, which has had a wonderful reception.

Dave

Here's some useful mathematical explanations on Wikipedia:

The logistic or Verhulst function:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

The generalised logistic curve:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalised_logistic_curve

The Hubbert curve, which is the derivative of the logistic function:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_curve

The first 2 can be used to simulate the growth of renewable + nuclear energy, the 3rd the growth and decline of fossil fuels.

The vid needs to emphasize that living standards/quality of life remains static. Moreover there must be some reference to above ground political issues.

forgive me if my assumptions are wrong or i have misunderstood the presentation.

given that per capita or effective per capita consumption remains flat it follows that the current uneven distribution of consumption means any "flat" scenario impies no growth in living standards in the developing world OR a reduction in consumption in the developed world and a redistribution of energy consumption.

this issue is a comples socio-political one and is perhaps not the purpose of the presentation but i feel it should be touched on.

frankly its a bigger hurdle than building the 92 nuke reactors per year or whatever at peak.

perhaps your mathematical way of analysis can address this by producing scenarios that assume a growth in per capita consumption?

despite the production shortcomings already touched on by other posters the basic information on what needs to be done is there. well done

Boris
london