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: March 2017
Tax reform & federal energy policy: incentives to promote energy efficiency. U.S. Senate hearing.
[ By far the best strategy to cope with energy decline is to prepare by making homes, businesses, appliances, vehicles, and so on more energy efficient. If it turns out that renewable energy has too low an EROI to sustain … Continue reading
Posted in Conserve Energy, U.S. Congress Energy Policy
Tagged energy efficiency
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Gail Tverberg: Why peak coal, oil, and natural gas will all happen at the same time
China: Is peak coal part of its problem? by Gail Tverberg, OurFiniteWorld.com | Jun 20, 2016 The world’s coal resources are clearly huge. How could China, or the world in total, reach peak coal in a timeframe that makes a … Continue reading
Posted in China, Gail Tverberg, Peak Coal, Peak Natural Gas, Peak Oil
Tagged peak coal, peak natural gas, peak oil
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Why studies come up with different Energy Returned on Invest (EROI) results: can it be fixed?
[ There are many issues with biofuels beyond their trivial to negative energy return on investment (EROI). In Peak Soil I point out that current industrial farming techniques are destroying topsoil about 15 times faster than pre-fossil fuel economies — … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, Biomass EROI, Charles A. S. Hall
Tagged biomass, EROEI, EROI, ethanol
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Murphy & Hall 2011 Adjusting the economy to the new energy realities of the second half of the age of oil
[ Below are excerpts from this 5 page paper, slightly rearranged, go here to see all of the text, figures, and tables. Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation, 2015, Springer] Murphy, … Continue reading
Chemical industrial farming is unsustainable. Why poison ourselves when pesticides don’t save more of our crops than in the past?
Pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides destroy soil and ecosystems. Yet a third of crops are lost to pests just as in the many millennia of farming before chemicals Preface. This is a book review of Dyer’s “Chasing the Red Queen”, and … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Biodiversity Loss, Chemicals, Overshoot, Peak Food, Pesticides, Soil
Tagged agriculture, chemical, ecosystem, herbicide, insecticide, peak food, pesticide, soil, unsustainable
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U.S. House hearing on how to get Central Asian oil before Russia and China do, 2006
[ Make no mistake: one of the main focuses of the U.S. government is to keep crude oil flowing, because without oil, civilization as we know it collapses. This is because the transportation that matters most – heavy-duty diesel-engine trucks … Continue reading
Posted in U.S. Congress Energy Dependence, U.S. Congress Energy Independence, U.S. Congress Energy Policy
Tagged energy dependence, energy independence
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The electromagnetic pulse EMP Threat: House of Representatives hearing 2005
[ Related articles: Russian hackers suspected in attack that blacked out parts of Ukraine How the weapon works (pdf): CRASHOVERRIDE Analyzing the Threat to Electric Grid Operations The EMP Commission estimates a nationwide blackout lasting one year could kill up … Continue reading
Posted in Blackouts, EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Nuclear spent fuel fire
Tagged electromagnetic pulse, EMP, geomagnetic storm, nuclear, spent pool
1 Comment
The Devil’s Scenario – near miss at Fukushima is a warning for U.S.
[ The most likely event to trigger a loss of power long enough to cause a spent fuel pool zirconium fire meltdown and release of radioactive particles into the atmosphere is a nuclear or natural geomagnetic storm electromagnetic pulse (see … Continue reading
After collapse: plunder or feudalism?
IWW poster “Pyramid of Capitalist System” (c. 1911), depicting an anti-capitalist perspective on statist/capitalist social structures Preface. In this post an anonymous author looks at what will happen if society collapses and we have to suddenly go back to … Continue reading
Posted in Farming & Ranching, Peak Food, Peak Phosphorus, Soil, Where are the rich going
Tagged agriculture, billionaires, collapse, farming, feudalism, greenhouse
6 Comments