Venezuela has an incredibly high oil reserves-to-production ratio
This is calculated b dividing proved oil reserves by its annual production. That tells us how many years proved reserves would last if production stayed constant, and no new reserves were discovered or became economic. Since these numbers can change it shouldn’t be interpreted as the number of years before the country “runs out”. Source: Ritchie H (2026) Five(ish) charts that give some context to Venezuelan oil.
Preface. Below is a very short summary of a book written by the founding father of human ecology, William R Catton Jr called Bottleneck: Humanity’s impending Impass written in 2009. His first book in 1980, Overshoot, introduced basic concepts of ecology, exponential growth, carrying capacity, and Liebig’s law to explain how finite fossil fuels have temporarily allowed us to overshoot ecological limits. In his latest book, explains why it is too late to avoid the collapse of industrial civilization, mainly from fossil decline.
The second article, Hooke (2012) Land transformation by humans, delves into the ways in which our degradation of land is leading to collapse.
This is my book review of David Perlmutter’s (2013) Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar–Your Brain’s Silent Killers. At the New York Times, this book was the #1 best seller in the Dining list and #9 in the Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous list in November 2013. The idea that you should eat more fat and meat is still quite popular.
Given all the Fake News circulating, I thought I’d republish this so you can see how I analyzed the claims made, including every citation. Not one backed up what was written and often had nothing to do with it. But the citations looked good, many from trustworthy sources. So do check the references in what you’re reading, especially to learn even more about a topic.
Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Women in ecology Podcasts: WGBH, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity
Preface. This post summarizes the top 26 reasons why population growth was abandoned the past 50 years. Further reasons can be found in Beck & Kolankiewicz (2000) “The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization” and Weisman’s “Countdown: Our last, Best hope for a future on Earth.”
Preface. In “Why You Should Love Trucks” I showed that essential supply chains depend on trucks nearly completely. Because of little inventory and dependence on just-in-time deliveries, our civilization would almost immediately feel the repercussions of trucks stopping. In fact, civilization would crash within a week. So finding a drop-in replacement for finite diesel ought to be the top priority. A
Although I use the term peak oil, the real issue is peak diesel, and not just for road trucks. Even more important are agricultural tractors, harvesters, and other diesel equipment, mining trucks, construction, logging, and all other heavy-duty trucks used across every industry and sector. Plus locomotives and ships (and airplanes, but they can be done without). Like cars. And electrifying them frees up gasoline. Diesel engines can only run on diesel, and have been refined for over a century to do so with twice the efficiency and much greater power and torque than gasoline.
Preface. New Zealand and other countries in the southern hemisphere are expected to be safer since they are far from nuclear targets. But they would still experience extreme temperature drops and less sunlight, though less than the Northern hemisphere. Still, there would be plenty of challenges from a global economic collapse, imports such as medicine, food, fossil fuels and other essential goods, and less food grown. In the northern hemisphere ozone losses would peak at 75%, but even the southern hemisphere would reach 20-40% ozone loss and consequent protection from UV rays for humans, animals, and plants leading to less crop production.
Posts on nuclear war can be found here, and on nuclear winter here.
Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Women in ecology Podcasts: WGBH, Financial Sense, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity, Index of best energyskeptic posts
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Preface. Below are excerpts from two articles on why and how the extinction of insects could lead to our own extinction and many other species. Although climate change is more deadly now, an insect apocalypse will kill far more people and other species in the future. Billions of people, birds, plants, animals, fish, and more will starve since 75% of crops depend on insect pollination. They also control insect pests, break down organic matter to recycle their nutrients for new plants, aerate the soil, disperse seeds and more (Goulson D (2019) The insect apocalypse, and why it matters. Current Biology).
E. O. Wilson explained the problem in greater detail: “If invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could last more than a few months. Most of the fishes, amphibians, birds, and mammals would crash to extinction about the same time. Next would go the bulk of the flowering plants and, with them, the physical structure of the majority of the forests and other terrestrial habitats of the world. The earth would rot. As dead vegetation piled up and dried out, narrowing and closing the channels of nutrient cycles, other complex forms of vegetation would die off, and, with them, the last remnants of the vertebrates. The remaining fungi, after enjoying a population explosion of stupendous proportions, would also perish. Within a few decades, the world would return to a state of a billion years ago, composed primarily of bacteria, algae, and a few other very simple multicellular plants.”
Source: Tim Kelly
Preface. The founder of the War on Drugs in the U.S., Harry Anslinger, wanted to build as large a bureaucracy as possible. But a war on narcotics alone—cocaine and heroin, outlawed in 1914—wasn’t enough. They were used only by a tiny minority, and you couldn’t keep an entire department alive on such small crumbs.
Preface. Using EIA International Data for world crude oil + condensate oil monthly production to compare January through October in 2024 and 2025, it looks like about 850 million more barrels will be produced in 2025 than in 2024. And add on some refinery gains, which I did not include. But 2026 will most likely be peak USA oil. And world oil due to the Iran War and shut-down of wells that will produce less after the Strait of Hormuz opens due to loss of pressure and other technical problems to re-open them.
Preface. In August 2017 President Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio for disobeying a 2011 court order that barred his deputies from detaining people based on their immigration status. He was found guilty of continuing these traffic patrols for 18 months after the order was issued. Although he faced a possible jail sentence, he was pardoned by President Donald Trump before he could be sentenced. resulting in the charge being dismissed.
But he committed much worse crimes. The New York Times has a description of what prisons were like here, and below is an account from Johann Hari’s 2016 book “Chasing the Scream: The First and Last days of the War on Drugs”, a book I highly recommend since explains how the war on drugs started way back in 1930, mainly a war to suppress minorities. Continue reading
