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Recent Posts
- Self-driving cars in San Francisco cause accidents, congestion, and more
- “Star Wars” missile defense won’t stop incoming nukes
- Lab-grown meat is energy intensive – and up to 25 times worse for the climate than beef
- The Biblical Revelations, critical thinking, and how this affects us today
- 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?
Monthly Archives: November 2020
Offshore wind turbines: Expensive, risky, and last just 15 years
Preface: The Department of Energy high wind penetration plans require a lot of offshore wind. But is it possible, affordable, or wise to do this? Corrosion leads to a short lifespan of just 15 years. To reduce maintenance, offshore windmills … Continue reading
Book Review: The Fall of the Roman Empire: A new history of Rome and the barbarians
Preface. Most historians see the fall of the Roman Empire as due to the invasion of barbarians from the North, partly pushed towards Italy by the brutal Huns. These lands had never been conquered by Roman armies because they were … Continue reading
Renewable costs don’t include transmission & energy storage backup from Nat Gas & Coal plants
Preface. Wind and solar advocates don’t include transmission and backup costs in their net energy and cost calculations. But without fossil backup, the electric grid will come down due to lack of storage. There is almost nowhere left to put … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid & Fast Collapse, Energy Storage, Solar, Solar EROI, Wind, Wind EROI
Tagged energy storage, fossil fuel backup, renewable, solar, wind
2 Comments
The Invisible oiliness of everything
Preface. Even a simple object like a pencil takes hundreds of actions and objects requiring fossil energy to do and make. Not electricity. This is on of many reasons why wind, solar, or other contraption that make electricity can’t replace … Continue reading
Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
Preface. In the half dozen science magazines and newspapers I get, almost the only environmental stories are about climate change. Yet there are 8 other ecological boundaries (Rockström 2009) we must not cross (shown in bold with an asterisk below) … Continue reading
Telling others about peak oil and limits to growth
Preface. Obviously the planet is finite. We’re using many times more oil than we’re discovering, and therefore at some point global oil production will peak and decline. In fact, global oil production peaked in 2018 (EIA 2020) or 2008 (EIA) … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Limits To Growth, Peak Oil
Tagged denial, limits to growth, peak oil, population, telling others
3 Comments
What can California do about sea level rise?
Projected sea level rise from one meter (dark red) to six meters (light orange) in California’s Bay Area. (Weiss and Overpeck 2011) Preface. Nearly all, if not all, possible solutions to rising sea levels along all the coasts in the … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Infrastructure, Infrastructure & Collapse, Rail, Roads, Sea Level Rise, Transportation
Tagged dike, elevated, floating, infrastructure, levees, sea level rise, seawalls, sewage
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Book review of “The Death of Expertise: the campaign against established knowledge and why it matters”
Preface. Those who attack experts are exactly the people who will not read this book review (well, mainly some Kindle notes) of Nichols “The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters”. They scare me, they … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Political Books, Politics
Tagged critical thinking, death of expertise, fallacies, politics
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Far Out #4: Power out of thin air, power out of freezing air, & Fruit power
Preface. To get power out of thin air after oil, the 90% of people who have had to go back to farming are going to be making protein nanowires from microbes in the chicken coop in their spare time. Scaling … Continue reading