Categories
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Recent Posts
- Rare Earth updates: recent research on why complex & intelligent life are rare in the Universe
- Book review of “Chip War” and the Fragility of microchips
- The tremendous material and energy toll of the digital economy
- Nuclear attack on U.S. could kill 90% of Americans
- What percent of Americans are rational?
- Book review of Lights Out. A Cyberattack. A Nation Unprepared. Surviving the Aftermath
- Off-Road vehicles & equipment need diesel fuel
- Book review of “Prime Movers of Globalization: the History & Impact of Diesel Engines & Gas Turbines”
- Mental Health. Coping with the future: notes from Jackson & Jensen’s “An Inconvenient Apocalypse”
- Tesla Semi trucks hauling corn chips
- What is the plan for an electric grid outage that lasts for months?
- Where to be? Links to Superfund, hazardous waste and other toxic sites in U.S.
- Why methanol cannot replace petroleum in shipping
- Why is everyone afraid of AI taking over? It makes stuff up!
- Do you want to eat, drink, or fly?
Monthly Archives: January 2017
Failing states, collapsing systems: biophysical triggers of political violence
Preface. In this post I summarize the sections of Nafeez’s book about the biophysical factors that bring nations down (i.e. climate change drought & water scarcity, declining revenues after peak oil, etc.) The Media tend to focus exclusively on economic … Continue reading
Posted in Cascading Failure, Caused by Scarce Resources, Collapse of Civilizations, Collapsed & collapsing nations, Drought & Collapse, Exports decline to ZERO, Food production, Interdependencies, Limits To Growth, Middle East, Net Energy Cliff, Other Experts, Over Oil, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Violence, War & Violence
Tagged climate change, drought, Export Land Model, peak oil, population, water scarcity
3 Comments
After the harvest – protecting food from rats, mold, insects, fire, and bacteria
Preface. It’s hard enough to protect crops before a harvest. In New South Wales, Australia a plague of millions of mice has multiplied after a bumper grain harvest and eating whatever they can find. Mice can produce 500 offspring a … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Books, Farming & Ranching, Peak Food
Tagged food, grain elevator, post-harvest, storage
2 Comments
Tilting at Windmills, Spain’s disastrous attempt to replace fossil fuels with Solar PV, Part 2
[ Pedro Prieto presented an update on June 20, 2017 at the International Society for Biophysical Economics “Spain’s Solar Revolution Revisited: six years later” here: Pedro-Prieto_ISBPE_2017-Spains-solar-revolution-revisited.pdf. See the pdf for more information Losses in book overestimated and revised Before / … Continue reading
Posted in Charles A. S. Hall, EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested, Pedro Prieto, Photovoltaic Solar, Solar EROI
Tagged capacity credit, EROEI, EROI, solar PV
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Agricultural Transportation and Energy Issues. Senate hearing 2005.
Preface. What follows are excerpts from this hearing. Over and over senators warn of our dependence on oil. The question is: what are they doing about it? I’d guess given the crackdown on immigration that the government is aware of … Continue reading
Posted in Transportation, Trucks, U.S. Congress Energy Dependence, U.S. Congress Transportation
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Doomsday: Will peak phosphate get us before global warming?
Price, Ed. July 22, 2013. Doomsday: Will Peak Phosphate Get us Before Global Warming? oilprice.com Although climate change catches the headlines, it is not the only doomsday scenario out there. A smaller but no less fervent band of worriers think … Continue reading
Sand mines used to frack oil & gas are destroying the best topsoil in the Midwest
Preface. Frac sand is a high-purity quartz sand that is injected into wells to blast and hold open cracks in the shale rock layer during the fracking process. In the United States, frac sand is being mined intensively from sandstone … Continue reading
HSBC bank report predicts another financial crisis in 2018
[ Bill Hill of the Hill’s group predicted in June 2016 (at a peakoil.com forum): “We expect to have reached permanent depression by the end of 2017. The reduction will not hit all nations the same way. The richer Western … Continue reading
Posted in Crash Coming Soon, Economic Decline
Tagged HSBC bank, peak oil
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Peak coal 2013-2045 — most likely 2025-2030
Preface. The amount of coal reserves is far less than what the IPCC has assumed in their models, where they used RESOURCES, which is coal that can’t be economically and/or technologically obtained. Typical economists, they assume humans are so smart … Continue reading
Why Nuclear Power can’t replace fossil fuels
Last updated August 2022. Preface. Economic reasons are the main hurdle to new nuclear plants now, with capital costs so high it’s almost impossible to get a loan, especially when natural gas is so much cheaper and less risky. But … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Energy, Nuclear Power Energy, Renewable Integration
Tagged breeder, nuclear
14 Comments