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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?
Category Archives: Global Warming
Solar panels in the Sahara could cause global warming
Preface. Adding tens of thousands of square miles of solar panels to replace fossil fuels could cause climate change and heat up the planet. Of course this is a fantasy, dust storms would scour the panels rendering them useless, with … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Heat, Photovoltaic Solar
Tagged climate change, energy, global warming, solar PV
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Not enough fossil fuels left to trigger another mass extinction
Preface. Since both conventional and unconventional oil peaked in 2018, we clearly won’t be burning fossils at exponentially increasing rates until 2400 as the IPCC expected. Quite the opposite, currently the decline rate of oil is 8% a year, which … Continue reading
Why we aren’t mining methane hydrates now — or perhaps ever
Preface. Methane hydrates are far from being commercial, and probably always will be. Scientists and companies have been trying to exploit them since the first energy crisis in 1973 to no avail. Nor are they likely to trigger a runaway … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Global Warming, Methane Hydrates
Tagged clathrate, climate change, gas hydrate, global warming, greenhouse, hothouse, methane apocalypse, methane hydrate
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Clouds may not curb global warming as much as hoped for
The following article, Clouds Play Lesser Role in Curbing Warming, Study Finds, is from climatecentral.org Analysis of the first seven years of data from a NASA cloud-monitoring mission suggests clouds are doing less to slow the warming of the planet than … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming
Tagged climate change, clouds, global warming
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Set the planet on fire: Burn underground coal to gasify it. Worse than Fracking.
Fire in the hole: After fracking comes coal. 13 February 2014 by Fred Pearce. NewScientist. Setting fire to coal underground could answer our energy prayers, or start an environmental disaster on a bigger scale than ever before. Without a way to … Continue reading
Posted in Coal, Global Warming
Tagged 10 degrees, coal gas, coal to gas, underground coal gasification
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Peak fossil fuels means global warming less than projected
This Science article states we could emit CO2 at the same rate we are now for another 50 years before going over the 2 degrees Celsius level we need to avoid a runaway greenhouse. Since we are at peak world fossil … Continue reading
Posted in CO2 and Methane, Coal, Global Warming, Oil
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Phytoplankton have declined 40%: they provide food and oxygen for all creatures on Earth
This article from NewScientist discusses how phytoplankton are disappearing — and they provide half of the food animals both in the ocean and on land depend on, plus produce a great deal of the oxygen we breathe. Throw in overfishing, … Continue reading
Posted in Extinction, Fishery destruction, Global Warming, Mass Extinction, Oceans
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Peak Coal already happened or likely soon, so worst IPCC scenarios may never happen
[ The good news is that The IPCC has greatly exaggerated the amount of coal reserves we actually have The scientists below find that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has greatly exaggerated coal reserves, so the IPCC scenario … Continue reading
Posted in But not from climate change: Peak Fossil Fuels, Climate Change, CO2 and Methane, Coal, Global Warming, Peak Coal, Planetary Boundaries, Runaway Greenhouse
Tagged peak coal
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