The logo of The Oil Drum web site, www.theoildrum.com. Graphic: The Oil Drum The end of an era. The Oil Drum was the single best source for intelligent discussions about the future of world energy production, with a contrapuntal theme of global warming chat. Rembrandt broke the news that TOD is closing:

…due to scarcity of new content caused by a dwindling number of contributors. Despite our best efforts to fill this gap we have not been able to significantly improve the flow of high quality articles. …The board has unanimously decided that the best course of action is to convert the site to a static archive of previously published material as of 31st July 2013. We will continue to post articles up to this date. Afterwards any articles will be held as a public archive into the foreseeable future, so that others can continue to learn from the breadth and depth of knowledge published by our many authors, over the 8+ history of this remarkable volunteer effort.

A remarkable effort it was. The Oil Drum set the standard for blogging about the thermodynamic future of the human species. Hopefully, the TOD archive will inspire other bloggers to carry the torch. An End to Eight Years of The Oil Drum