#317 Rob Gourdie is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech. He is also Director of the Center for Heart and Reparative Medicine Research at the same university. He writes under the pen name of Tom Therramus. In his “day job,” he works on the repeating waves of electrical signals that drive the heart beat. Over the last decade he has developed an interest in another repeating pattern – waves of price volatility in oil – that he speculates are a Peak Oil-related phenomenon. His writings as Tom Therramus on oil market instability, and its impacts on economics, politics and climate change, have been posted at OilPrice.net, Greentechmedia.com, Resilience.com, RealClearEnergy.org, Nouriel Roubini’s Economonitor.com, and EuanMearns.com Energy Matters. His LinkedIn page (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-therramus-602b3721/) lists his SKILLS as including “Asperger’s”, “Mild Numeracy”, “Vague Literacy” and “Being Kiwi.”

Links to articles on oil price volatility

1. 18 Feb 2019 – Waking into our new volatile age of oil price – http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/waking-into-volatile-oil-prices.php

2. 19 Feb 2018 – Is Volatility in Oil Price on the Way, Again ? http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/volatility-in-oil-price-on-the-way-again.php

3. 3 January 2016 – How oil price volatility explains these uncertain times http://oil-price.net/en/articles/how-oil-price-volatility-explains-uncertain-times.php

4. 14 January 2014 – Will Collapse in Oil Price Cause a Stock Market Crash? http://oil-price.net/en/articles/will-collapse-in-oil-price-cause-stock-market-crash.php

5. 10 July 2013 – Oil Price Volatility on the Way? http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/oil-price-volatility-on-the-way.php

6. 21 November 2011 – Is Oil Fueling the Rise in Political Partisanship? http://oil-price.net/en/articles/is-oil-fueling-rise-in-political-partisanship.php

7. 20 January 2010 – Oil Caused Recession, Not Wall Street http://oil-price.net/en/articles/oil-caused-recession-not-wallstreet.php

Links to research on electrical activation of the heart

https://elifesciences.org/articles/37610 – scientific paper on how the heart electrically drives the heartbeat

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180827091745.htm – a news article on the heart scientific paper