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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: June 2020
Distribution – why it is so hard to add E15 or E85 at a gas station
Preface. One of the huge hurdles to shifting from oil to “something else” is the chicken-or-egg problem of no one buying a new-fuel vehicle with few places to get it, so few are made, so service stations don’t add the … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels
Tagged distribution, ethanol, service station
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Can Geothermal power replace declining fossil fuels?
Preface. Today the electric grid stays up because of months of backup power from natural gas, coal, and uranium. Most of all natural gas because it can quickly balance wind and solar as they suddenly appear or die out. Natural … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Energy, Geothermal
Tagged EGS, electricity, Enhanced Geothermal, geothermal, heat, renewable
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Global oil discovered 7.7 times less than consumption in 2019
Source: Rystad Energy (2020) in “Global oil and gas discoveries reach four-year high in 2019, boosted by ExxonMobil’s Guyana success“. Preface. The global conventional discovery chart above lists natural gas and oil discoveries since 2013. The fossil fuel that really … Continue reading
The U.S. May Soon Have the World’s Oldest Nuclear Power Plants
Preface. This is nuts. Sea level rise threatens many nuclear power plants and drought has shut plants down since they need cooling to operate. As nuclear reactor age, they require more intensive monitoring and preventive maintenance to operate safely. But … Continue reading
Posted in Nuclear Power Energy
Tagged aging, nuclear, safety
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High-level nuclear waste storage degrades faster than thought
Preface. Burying nuclear waste ought to be a top priority, now that it appears peak oil may have happened in November of 2018 (Patterson 2019) and perhaps even sooner if covid-19 crashes the world economy (Tverberg 2020). It won’t happen … Continue reading
Concentrated Solar Power is dying out in the U.S.
Preface. Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) contributes only 0.06 % of U.S. electricity, mainly in California (64 %) and Arizona (24 %) because extremely dry areas with no humidity, haze, or pollutants are required. Of the 1861 MW power they can … Continue reading