Must read: Michael Ruppert: Peak Oil Revisited – The Bill Collector Calls: Special Report, Berlin Conference on Peak Oil

"FTW began writing about Peak Oil in the summer of 2002. It was much more difficult then to discuss Peak Oil, what it means or how certain, quick and defiant was to be its arrival. Denial in many minds was so instant and overwhelming that only a trained eye could see its millisecond appearance before encountering the brick wall of a closed mind.
That was then. This is now.
By the spring of 2004 things had changed dramatically. This is both the good news and the bad news. In May of 2004 I attended the third annual conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) in Berlin Germany. Although I have a great many friends in ASPO, I tend to leave these conferences feeling as though I’ve had a big meal but am still hungry. Governed as they were by scientific protocols, the 2003 and 2004 conferences seemed to occur in vacuums. With the cool professionalism that’s proper to scientific discourse, the conferences marshaled excellent resources of data and analysis while remaining eerily detached from political and economic developments in the outside world; detached from 9/11; from violence and intrigue in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia, in West Africa, in Venezuela; detached from bitter conflict and bloodshed, and from economic disintegration
That disconnect was nowhere near as obvious in Paris in May of 2003 as it was in Berlin a year later.
From May 24th 2004, as people arrived for the conference, through the final day on May 26th, the hottest conversations were as much about what was going on in the headlines as was what being discussed inside the room. The two didn’t converge nearly enough. Peak Oil - Berlin was almost twice as large as Paris had been. Many of the 250-plus attendees arrived on both mornings with papers under their arms containing stories about oil shortages and economic issues connected thereto. They tended to meet outside for drinks or meals asking, “Have you seen the cover of the June 2001 National Geographic? It’s Peak Oil!”; “Did you see the International Herald Tribune today on global production and supply?”; “Do you think the Saudis really can increase production or are they bluffing?”; “Did you see where Shell has downgraded their reserves, again!?” “Did you notice that someone finally attacked a Saudi oil facility? Now the Saudis won’t have to prove that they can increase production, either to their people or the markets. It’s the perfect excuse.”

A packed house in Berlin.

This had been no overnight development. For almost the entire year between the Paris and Berlin conferences the icons of the mainstream press – the ones known and employed to mold public and business perception – had been acknowledging Peak Oil’s reality, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes less than directly, but also sometimes very boldly. CNN, the BBC, the New York Times, the Economist; dozens of media giants had begun to respond, like a giant ship turning slowly in the water. The ship had clearly changed course, but was it enough? Was it in time? I had saved close to 200 of these stories and I asked my staff to prepare a list of the headlines. But the list soon got out of hand – it’s too long. Looking at just a few of them makes the point well enough."

* “The End of Cheap Oil” – National Geographic (Cover Story) – June 2004.
* “What to Use When the Oil Runs Out” – BBC – April 22, 2004
* “Adios Cheap Oil” – Interpress News Agency – April 27, 2004
* “Refining Shortfall Goes Global, Drives Oil Strength” – Reuters – April 26, 2004
* “G7: Oil Price Threatens World Economy” – Moscow Times – 4/26/04
* “World Oil Crisis Looms” – Jane’s  -- 4/21/04
* “US Procuring the World’s Oil” – Foreign Policy in Focus – January 2004
* “Are We Running Out of Oil?  Scientist Warns of Looming Crisis” – ABC News.com – 2/11/04
* “Alarm as US gas supplies hit low” – Financial Times – 6/09/03
* “American Account: Iraqi crude won’t flow fast enough to cut oil prices” –The Sunday Times – 6/29/03
* “Big oil’s dirty secrets” – Economist – 5/18/03
* “Shell bosses ‘fooled the market’” – BBC – 4/19/04
* “Blood, money, and oil” – US News – 8/18/03
* “Black gold is king” – Asia Times Online – 4/28/04
* “Not in Oil’s Name” – Foreign Affairs – July-Aug 2003
* “Soaring Global Demand for Oil Strains Production Capacity” – Wall Street Journal – 3/22/04
* “Check That Oil” – Washington Post – 11/14/03
* “War of Wars, China Builds Up Oil Reserves” – AP – 3/11/03
* “Asia: Strapped for Energy Resources, China and India Look for Alternatives” – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – 4/20/04
* “China, Japan Both Eye Russian Oil” – The Korea Times – 9/20/03
* “China’s demand for foreign oil rises at breakneck pace” – Knight Ridder –1/26/04
* ’World oil and gas running out’ – CNN – 10/02/03
* “GLOBAL OIL SUPPLY: ARE WE RUNNING OUT?  Experts to Analyze Saudi Arabia’s Energy Future” – The Center for Strategic and International Studies, Media Advisory – 2/19/04
* “Debate Rages on Oil Output by Saudis in Future” – The New York Times – 2/25/04
* “Oil reserves” – The Economist – 6/21/03
* “Energy crisis ‘will limit births’” – BBC News – 2/13/04
* “Energy Agency Raises Oil Demand Estimates” – AP – 11/13/03
* “3 At Duke Energy Charged With Fraud” – Reuters – 4/22/04
* “Freeze strains northeast power grid: cold kills 5 in Michigan, AP reports” – CNN – 1/16/04
* “Fossil-Fuel Dependency: Do oil reserves foretell bleak future?” – San Francisco Chronicle – 4/02/04
* “Fuel disruption test planned [Australia]” – AAP – 3/25/03
* “The End of the Oil Age: Ways to break the tyranny of oil are coming into view.  Governments need to promote them” – The Economist – 10/23/03

(click title for link to full article @ fromthewilderness.com)