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Recent Posts
- Why the U.S. is ignoring nuclear winter in nuclear policies & strategies
- Oil choke points vulnerable to war, chaos, terrorism, accidents, & piracy
- Nuclear weapons must be reduced or we risk nuclear winter
- Fusion is already running out of fuel
- Peak Oil is Officially Here! World oil production peaked November of 2018
- Wood, the fuel of preindustrial societies, is half of EU renewable energy
- 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”
Category Archives: Soil
Book: John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”
Preface. This contains excerpts from John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”. It’s one of my favorite books about natural resources, exploring the role wood has played in the rise and fall of civilizations since they … Continue reading
U.S. Industrial farming destroys future food production for centuries
Preface. Below are excerpts from a devastating critique of current farming practices by the National research council who show the myriad ways that industrial farming is harming the land and future food production.
Peak soil: Industrial agriculture destroys ecosystems and civilizations: Biofuels make it worse
Preface. In 2018 I thought it was time to reorganize this post, as it grew more and more bloated and disorganized with new information. Eventually it turned into my 2021 book Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Biofuels, Biomass, Energy, Peak Biofuels, Peak Topsoil, Soil
Tagged aquifer depletion, biodiesel, biofuel, climate change, EROEI, EROI, erosion, ethanol, fertilizer, hunger, peak soil, pollution, topsoil
2 Comments
Book review of “1493 Uncovering the new world Columbus Created”
[ This book will be included in the “must read” category of my giant booklist when I get around to updating it. This book isn’t just about the past, the implications reverberate into the postcarbon future. Will slavery return without … Continue reading
Posted in 2) Collapse, Agriculture, Disease, Pesticides, Soil
Tagged ecology, Famine, pesticides, potatoes, rubber, slavery
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Nitrogen fertilizer poses significant threats to humans and the environment
NRC. 2015. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System. National Research Council, National Academies Press. 19 pages. Nitrogen (N) is essential for agricultural productivity, but in its more reactive forms, it can pose significant threats to humans … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Fisheries, Groundwater, Planetary Boundaries, Pollution, Soil
Tagged agriculture, fertilizer, nitrogen, runoff
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Because we’ve stuffed staggering numbers of cows on factory farms we live in a cow toilet
[ Book review of “Cowed: The hidden impactof 93 million cows” by Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer] Hayes, Denis and Gail. 2015. Cowed: The Hidden Impact of 93 … Continue reading
Posted in Antibiotics, Biodiversity Loss, CO2 and Methane, Pollution, Soil
Tagged antibiotic resistance, cattle, cows
1 Comment
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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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
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