Humanities 1

Oil and Energy

Course Assignments and Additional Readings

Optional reading and course material

As a group we will assemble some material here that can be used to probe more deeply into some of the subjects that we are investigating. These might be useful for your individual research projects. Copies of lecture PowerPoint slides are also included here.

• Lecture on the Oil Futures Market
• Lecture about the Connection of Energy Trade to International Trade and Financial Balances
• The Art of Energy Efficiency, by Arthur H. Rosenfeld: This Berkeley Physics professor offers an excellent historical survey of energy conservation measures. Good background material.
• Global Cooling: Effect of Urban Albedo on Global Temperature, by Akbari, Memon, and Rosenfeld: A prelude to their soon-to-be-famous publication about the ambient effects of white roofs and streets.

Required reading and course assignments

Everything below here is required and will be discussed in class.

1. Read the Annual Energy Outlook and peruse the EIA website.

Download and read the Annual Energy Outlook 2008 published by the Energy Information Agency in Department of Energy. If you decide to print this, you may want to print only the first 96 pages. The remaining pages of this 224-page document are tables and appendices that at some point you may want to refer, although almost all of this material is also available in Excel format on the EIA website.

Also, at sometime soon, peruse the Energy Information Agency website and look at the information and data available there. For example, select Natural Gas and Monthly Wholesale and Retail Prices and see what data are available. As you will see, it can be downloaded in Excel format. We can use this site to mine a lot of data.