Education
Deffeyes holds a Bachelor of Surgery in petroleum geology from the Colorado School of Mines and a Doctor of Philosophy in geology from Princeton University, studying under F.B. van Houten.
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Kenneth Deffeyes
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In 1967 he began teaching at Princeton, where he is now professor emeritus. He claims Chickasaw ancestry. "Deffeyes is a big man with a tenured waistline.
His hair flies behind him like Ludwig van Beethoven.
He lectures in sneakers. His voice is syllabic, elocutionary, operatic.
. His surname rhymes with "the maze." "—John Mcphee, Basin and Range (1981)
In John McPhee"s 1981 book Basin and Range, about the origin of Basin and Range topography, Deffeyes teaches geology to McPhee and his readers by analyzing road cuts and the exposed geologic strata that resulted from the construction of Interstate highway 80.
On one trip, Deffeyes picked up a piece of Triassic shale near Paterson, New Jersey to demonstrate a common geologic field-test: he put the shale in his mouth and chewed lieutenant "If it"s gritty, it"s a silt bed, and if it"s creamy it"s a shale," Deffeyes said.
McPhee tried it and said he wouldn"t "have thought to put it in coffee."
Deffeyes Doctor of Philosophy dissertation research concerned volcanic ashfalls in Nevada that had been altered to zeolites.
Not much was known about the potential uses of zeolites, so Deffeyes wrote a review paper on zeolites in sedimentary rocks.
This resulted (according to both Deffeyes and John McPhee) in the founding of the natural zeolite industry. Zeolites have important uses in water purification, as catalysts in the petrochemical industry, and as molecular sieves. He is the author of Hubbert"s Peak, published in 2001.
In 2005 he published the book Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert"s Peak.
On February 11, 2006 Deffeyes claimed that world oil production had peaked on December 16, 2005. "Crude oil is much too valuable to be burned as a fuel."
"The economists all think that if you show up at the cashier"s cage with enough currency, God will put more oil in ground."
Jean Laherrère
Dale Allen Pfeiffer.
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Quotations:
"Crude oil is much too valuable to be burned as a fuel."
"The economists all think that if you show up at the cashier"s cage with enough currency, God will put more oil in ground.".
