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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: Chemicals
The toxic chemicals harming you are yet another symptom of overshoot
Source: Byrd J (2022) What is PFAs in Drinking Water? Water filter Guru. Preface. PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. The compounds are ubiquitous, and linked at … Continue reading
Posted in 1) Decline, Chemicals
Tagged Arlene Blum, BPA, flame retardant, forever chemicals, overshoot, PFA
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Toxic chemicals threaten health, reproduction, cause cancer, diabetes
Preface. This post could have thousands more entries, but devoting energyskeptic to the tens of thousands of chemicals that are legally polluting our environment would be a full-time job. However scary the transition from fossils back to wood world may … Continue reading
Posted in Chemicals
Tagged bisphenol A, BPA, CFC, chemicals, EDC, endocrine disrupting chemicals, health, phthalates, pollution, reproduction
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945 U.S. Superfund sites vulnerable to climate change
Preface. The energy crisis is likely to strike soon since global peak oil production was reached in November 2018 (EIA 2020). Let’s use energy to clean up these Superfund sites and nuclear waste, rather than wasting energy on wind turbines … Continue reading
There are over 300,000 contaminated groundwater sites in the U.S.
Preface. If peak oil did indeed happen in 2018 as the EIA world production data shows, then let’s use the oil we still have, before it is rationed, to clean up the 126,000+ sites that threaten to pollute groundwater for … Continue reading
Posted in Chemicals, Hazardous Waste, National Academies of Sciences, Water Pollution
Tagged chemicals, drinking water, groundwater, pollution
1 Comment
Population explosion to destroy 11% of remaining ecosystems and biodiversity
Preface. According to a recent paper in Nature Sustainability (Williams et al 2020), we are on the verge of destroying 11% of earth’s remaining ecosystems by 2050 to grow more food. We already are using 75% of Earth’s land. What … Continue reading
Posted in Chemicals, Deforestation, Food production, Overpopulation
Tagged agriculture, birth control, climate change
4 Comments
How are microchips made?
Preface. Computer chip fabrication plants need to run continuously for weeks to accomplish the thousands of steps needed to make microchips. A half-hour power outage at Samsung’s Pyeongtaek chip plant caused losses of over $43 million dollars (Reuters 2019). Chip … Continue reading
Toxic textiles: the lethal history of Rayon
Preface. This is a book review from Science magazine of Paul David Blanc’s 2016 book “Fake Silk The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon”, Yale University Press. I’ve shortened the review and changed some of the text. This book exposes how … Continue reading
Posted in Chemicals
Tagged carbon disulfide, rayon, viscose
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Tackling mine wastes
Preface. This barely scratches the problems of mining wastes, but for what it’s worth, here are a few of the articles I’ve run across on this topic. Like burying nuclear waste deep underground while we still have cheap energy and … 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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