Gail the Actuary’s real name is Gail Tverberg. She has an M. S. from the University of Illinois, Chicago in Mathematics, and is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries.
Gail is involved with oil and other limits in several different ways:
- As a researcher. Gail regularly goes back to data from government and other web sites, and creates her own graphs and does her own analysis. She also follows the work of others doing research.
- As an actuary. Gail is interested in what the implications of reduced oil supply are for the economy and for financial institutions.
- As an educator. Gail is interested in bringing the message about what is happening to as broad an audience as possible.
Gail Tverberg, Charles Hall, Mario Giampietro, and Joe Tainter in auditorium in Barcelona, Spain. They would later answer questions from students from 11 high schools in the area. Translation from Catalan to English was provided by headphone.
Gail became aware of the impact oil shortages could have on insurance companies back in the 1973 – 1974 period, when oil shortages were first a problem. In 2005, she began reading books on the subject, including Jeremy Leggett’s The Empty Tank.
Gail did further research about the situation, and wrote her first article about the potential impact on the property-casualty insurance industry in early 2006. This article was called Oil Shortages: The Next Katrinna? Since then, she has written a number of other articles from an insurance or actuarial perspective. Several of these are listed in the sidebar.
In early 2007, Gail decided to devote full-time to issues related to oil shortages, and other shortages, and their impact on the economy. She initially wrote primarily on this blog, but eventually devoted more and more of her time to TheOilDrum.com first as a contributor, and later as an editor. Because of recent changes at The Oil Drum, she has more time available, and has come back to writing on this blog.
Many of the articles on this site have been published by the The Oil Drum. Quite a few have also appeared in EnergyBulletin.net. This a link to a list of her posts on Energy Bulletin.
Gail Tverberg also speaks on finite world issues, including the connection between oil shortages and the economy. She has been an invited speaker to many groups, including the Seventh Biennial International Workshop in Energy Studies in Barcelona, Spain; the 2nd International Biophyisical Economics Conference; and to groups on the Big Island in Hawaii. (See this link.) She has also been interviewed on the Canadian television station BNN.
Most of Gail’s work is now on a volunteer basis. She can, however, provide consulting services. Her consulting firm is Tverberg Actuarial Services.
She can be reached at GailTverberg at comcast dot net or at (407) 443-0505.
What a great post! You need to join us in the campaign! Be a Netizen Hero!
http://www.worldwithoutoil.org/addhero.aspx
Thanks!
RedHatty
Keep up the great work. If you stand back from all the data and just take a general over view of whats happening it all starts to make sense. The sudden massive rush into ethanol plants,Iraq, the calm on the markets of a $93 dollar barrel of oil, Where is the panic? Why is there no panic?
GAIL GREAT WRITING AND RESEARCH BUT IF THE SUBJECT ISNT ABOUT OVERPOPULATION NOT WORTH TALKING ABOUT. YOU GIVE ALL THESE BS CHARTS BUT YOUR NOT ADDRESSING THE ONLY PROBLEM
WE ARE TOO MANY AND WE CONSUME TOO DAM MUCH! GO TELL THAT TO THE COLLEGE GROUP, THATS REALITY AND THE ONLY TRUTH!
Hello Gail,
I have been lurking on TOD for quite some time and just read your article on the limits to growth. I published a three part series in the journal Quest (a magazine for members of Global Underwater Explorers)a couple of years ago entitled Growth and Sustainablility: An Ecological Perspetive. I have these articles in PDF format and Quest would not mind if they were released to The Oil Drum. If you are interested in seeing them I would be happy to email the PDF’s to you for your review.
As a short biography I have a Ph.D. in Ecological Sciences from Old Dominion University and currently work as a biology professor at Spartanburg Community College in Spartanburg S.C.
Best,
Tom
Gail, I am a lurker in disagreement with your March TOD piece on the economic impact of peak oil. I hoped to write a detailed reply, but for various valid reasons cannot find the time. Also I don’t know how to submit a contribution to TOD. As a result I have come up with the following quick summary of another scenario that I feel is more likely than yours. Please give it due consideration.
USA present production is >5mb/d. Running that down carefully and working over all of our old fields with modern technology should provide 2-3 mb/d for at least 30 years. Canadian tar-sand can provide us with 2-3 mb/d for the foreseeable future by 2015 or so.. The Bakken shales should have recoverable oil of >20 Gb, and can likely supply 2-3 mb/d for > 20 years, starting in 20 years starting in say 10 years. We should be able to maintain imports of >2 mb/d for decades. Biofuels of all kinds can easily provide 1 mb/d for as long as we need. That adds up to 60% of present consumption. Our imports ex-Canada can drop from the present 13 mb/d to 2 mb/d over 15-20 years, while we increase fuel use efficiency by factor 3 and we can continues to grow our economy at a modest rate, giving us some decades to evolve to a no growth economy. Trip efficiency and intelligent conservation can provide a cushion as needed of up to 4 mb/d during the transition. This scenario allows for non-Canadian imports dropping 8%/yr for 20 years while we make the needed adjustments. Even staying 100% with ICEs we can triple automotive fuel efficiency. Hybrids, BEVs, switch to rail, etc., will provide the needed additional efficiency for trucks and planes to get the entire transport sector to >3x.
As global warming ceases to be an issue, and scarcity/price bite, we will open all of the off-limits prospects to development.
The IEA has a world oil survey available as a free download showing oil flow of products by country.
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/stats/surveys/oilsurv.pdf
I’m curious where you’re coming up with all of this information.
Well, the only comment I have is, good stuff on oil, but now what do you know about credit markets because the oil bubble has subsided and the issue of finite quantities has shifted to credit markets which are seizing up.
I’m totally and completely overpowered by what I see as the TOTAL lack of interest in the PRIMARY problem here.
The problem is really OVERPOPULATION. We would not be *NEAR* peak oil if we had listened to Paul R. Ehrlich and the Club of Rome. Of course we didn’t listen to Jimmy Carter or even Richard Nixon about this.
With 74% of oil producing countries past peak oil, I would think it would be obvious to most casual observer, that we have to many people being born.
I think offshore drilling is a must. I live on the Gulf Of Mexico, in Brownsville,Tx and I know Texans are all for it.
Cheers,
Richard A. Weisberg
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