1st post

If you are reading this you are probably wondering who I am and why this site is important. Global Power Down is here to give a true and factual accounting of my unbiased views about a global disaster in the making.

Some of the things I am going to discuss are new stories, Wikipedia articles, books, and documentaries. This site isn’t going to waste your time with rhetoric, unsubstantiated rumor or ads. Global Power Down is here to provide a window into this civilization’s past and a look at a probable…ok possible future.

So who are you already?

My name is David Corby. I grew up in and around Sacramento California. I currently make my home in San Francisco. Mostly of the jobs I am going to admit to have been IT related. On the weekends I take trips down to Monterey California and lead scuba diving tours.

What is a Global Power Down?

A Global Power Down happens when the energy that our civilization uses becomes too expensive, too rarefied, or too difficult to get to. In essence it happens when we fail to plan ahead. There is a lot more to the theory than that but it is a start.

Aren’t you just talking about Peak Oil?

Peak Oil certainly plays a part in a Global Power Down. It is by far not the only contributing factor. I am also talking about civilization’s (and by civilization I mean you.) complete lack of planning for a shift in energy usage among other things. Needless to say there are a lot of factors that go into a Global Power Down. That is why there is a new and growing site dedicated to the education of the issue.

So what makes you qualified to run this site?

In early 2004 I was a help desk engineer for a mortgage software company called Ellie Mae. Ellie Mae ran a chunk of loans sent to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac among other lenders across its Epass network. As a result when a loan didn’t quite fit the requirements part of my job was to figure out why the software was spitting out the numbers that it would give any given broker using it.

At the height of the housing boom in late 2005 Ellie Mae had a company meeting. This meeting was in part because everybody seemed to be getting rich off this housing boom except the people writing the mortgage software. As a company we had some questions for the CEO as to where the heck our promised raises were at.

Ellie Mae’s CEO painted a grim picture for the mortgage industry. Ellie Mae had compiled data from their Epass network about all of the loans that were being transmitted over it. The people at Ellie Mae were very skilled data miners. They actually projected most of the mortgage industry was going to be in collapse within two years. The way Ellie Mae spun that meeting was something like since nobody is going to be around in two years you guys do not get a raise.

What ensued after that meeting was me sounding like a crazy person trying to convince my family and friends to sell their house and rent for a few years until this mortgage thing gets cleared up. I was thinking they could get out of debt with the equity they made in the sale plus get a new house for fairly cheap within another five years.

Getting out of debt plus making a profit for a few years of paying somebody rent sounded like good advice to me. I nearly lost every friend I had and my family had told me that they did not want to hear another word about the issue. It is now quarter 3 of 2008 and I am sitting high on a pile of “I told you so”.

Something else happened in 2005. It did not go unnoticed by me because I was burning a lot of fuel at the time. Oil and therefore gasoline prices went on an upward swing. Until recently in 2008 prices for this rather important commodity have not substantially dropped.

I despised working for Ellie Mae. Dealing with low brow greedy mortgage brokers had left me emotionally drained. I actually saw what was happening to the industry and had a full understanding of what a mortgage industry collapse would have on me would have. Correction was having because of lack of higher pay.

I had always dreamed about a career in writing. In late 2005 I started work on a book about doomsday scenarios. For me the subject matter was easy to write about. Most of the scenarios revolved my favorite subject astronomy. Each scenario could be divided up into a chapter each about ten to twenty pages long. For a first time writer all I needed to do was the research. Most of which I already knew.

As I was gathering information about various end of the world subjects I decided to throw a few non astronomy scenarios into the mix. For good measure I was going to incorporate plagues and nuclear war into the book. I was about ready to begin writing my book when I came upon something with a fairly innocuous name. I would later come to rue the day I learned the words Peak Oil and everything that comes along with it.

I can write about an asteroid impact capable of wiping out the planet. I can give numbers and statistics. It is all simple high school physics. I realized early on that the theories relating to a Global Power Down could never span the pages of a single book. Just to get a sense of Peak Oil theory it would take an entire book.

Ok so you had foreknowledge where are you going with this?

I want to point out that I had volumes of data at my disposal. Even though I saw a major housing downturn years before it actually happened. Even though I saw oil on a permanent upward swing I still failed to act accordingly. I did not save as much as I should have. I ran up a credit card debt. Those around me called me insane and shunned me for what was seen as my eccentric views on the subject of civilization. When you have a dozen people tell you that your views are simply fantasy people tend to believe what the group tells you. As a result I failed to prepare earlier for today's world. I failed to prepare for the end of cheap oil and rising food costs. I failed to prepare in any way because up until recently I was in a Group Think mode.

It is not too late to prepare for any future. Granted I had a chance to become wealthy from my foreknowledge but did not know it. There is a major change in our civilization yet to come. I do not know if a Global Power Down is going to mean Mayberry or Mad Max for all of us. What are the skills one would need for either scenario? Keep reading. There is more to come.

David