Categories
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Joe Clarkson on Utility scale energy storage limited by minerals and geography
- Kevin M. on Utility scale energy storage limited by minerals and geography
- Kevin M. on Lifespan of infrastructure, transportation, and buildings
- Susan Butler on Lifespan of infrastructure, transportation, and buildings
- David Higham on Lifespan of infrastructure, transportation, and buildings
Archives
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- January 2011
- January 2010
Meta
Please follow & like us :)
Category Archives: Agriculture
Will life after peak oil be like the middle ages?
Preface. Winston recreates what life was like from the 5th to the 15th centuries — from the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance. Energyskeptic.com shows why hydrogen, wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, fusion, and other alternatives … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture, Biomass, Life Before Oil
Tagged biomass, life before oil, middle ages, wood world
8 Comments
Book review of Wrigley’s “Energy and the English Industrial revolution”
Preface. I’ve made a strong case in my book “When trucks stop running” and this energyskeptic website that we will eventually return to wood and a 14th century lifestyle after fossil fuels are depleted. So if you’re curious about what … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture, Energy, Life Before Oil, Limits To Growth
Tagged coal, industrial revolution, land, wood
5 Comments
Book review of Dirt: the erosion of civilization
Preface. On average civilizations collapsed after 800 to 2,000 years because they’d destroyed their topsoil. Today, industrial agriculture is doing this far faster – in most of the United States half of the original topsoil is gone from the richest … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture, Peak Food, Soil
Tagged agriculture, erosion, peak food, peak soil, soil
4 Comments
Book review of Underbug: an obsessive tale of termites and technology
Preface. I read this book mainly to find out where “grassoline” stood. Scientists thought 10 years ago that we could recreate the termite biota system of digesting biomass to create biofuels. But this appears to be far in the future … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Wood
Tagged ethanol, grassoline, superorganism, termite
Comments Off on Book review of Underbug: an obsessive tale of termites and technology
Muscle Power
Preface. Before fossil fuels, the energy to do work came from muscle power and the heat from burning biomass, mainly wood. When I visited the Deutsches museum in Munich in 2017, I saw two animal treadmills: The first picture shows … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Energy, Life Before Oil, Muscle Power, What to do
Tagged muscle power, treadmill
3 Comments
Battling the Inland Sea, the history of why and how the levee system was built in California’s delta
[ When settlers first moved to farm the central valley, they found it was often flooded with water, not the “desert” people often claim California to be. A vast swamp over 100 miles long of half a million acres of … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture, Dams, Floods, Floods
Tagged california, flood, levee
Comments Off on Battling the Inland Sea, the history of why and how the levee system was built in California’s delta
From wood to fossil fueled civilizations — the greatest tragedy mankind will ever know
[ These are my notes from this book about how we went from an organic sustainable economy to a temporary fossil-fueled one. It’s one of the few books I’ve found that explains what life was like before fossil fuels in … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Experts, Life Before Oil, Supply Chains
Tagged agriculture, biomass, coal, food, industrial revolution, transition, wood
5 Comments
How horses changed native cultures after 1492
[ This is a very brief overview of Peter Mitchel’s “Horse Nations”. As oil and other fossils decline, will we will almost certainly return to using more horse “muscle power” as we did in the past. Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture, Muscle Power
Tagged horses, muscle power, pack animals
Comments Off on How horses changed native cultures after 1492
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
Comments Off on Book review of “1493 Uncovering the new world Columbus Created”
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, ecosystems, and a third of the crop is still 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”, … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture, Biodiversity Loss, Chemicals, Overshoot, Pesticides, Soil
Tagged agriculture, chemical, ecosystem, herbicide, insecticide, pesticide, soil, unsustainable
Comments Off on Chemical industrial farming is unsustainable. Why poison ourselves when pesticides don’t save more of our crops than in the past?