In this article, I provide Peak Oil science curriculum suitable for introductory college science classes, advanced high school classes, and adult seminars. The material requires a little background in high school chemistry, but otherwise does not have any pre-requisites. There is sufficient material for a two to four session unit on peak oil.

The written material is divided into Part 1: The Science of Oil and Peak Oil (in this article) and Part 2: Oil as a Liquid Fuel and Expected Peak Oil Impacts (found at this link). There are also discussion questions at the end of Parts 1 and 2, and numerous links to other references. A PDF version which contains both Part 1 and Part 2 can be found at this link.

Last week, I posted an earlier version of proposed peak oil curriculum. Many of the comments related to things I had left out or hadn't explained adequately. After considering the comments, I decided that folks were right, and added some more material. Since the post was already fairly long, I broke it into two parts. I also reorganized sections to make a more logical flow. The earlier version can be found at this link.

The current version incorporates changes based both on comments to this post, and on comments to the previous post. On a rapidly changing topic such as peak oil, there is no real consensus on some issues. I have tried to pick a reasonable interpretation. If readers have questions or comments, I can be reached at gailtverberg (at) comcast (dot) net.