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Recent Posts
- Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
- Excerpt from “The Geopolitics of Resource Wars”
- Homes & Buildings
- Book Review “The Outlawed Ocean” by Ian Urbina
- Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
- Motherboards: too complicated to make after oil
- “More and More and More” one of the best books on energy ever written
- The staggering destruction of knowledge by Christians in the Roman Empire
- The staggering cost of Net Zero in Britain
- Why the R/P Reserves to Production ratio does not show when oil will run out
- Catton on Collapse “Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse”
- Book Review of Grain Brain: Extraordinary claim not backed up by evidence
- Why did everyone stop talking about Population & Immigration?
- What would happen if trucks stopped running?
- How to survive a nuclear winter
Author Archives: energyskeptic
Jared Diamond Why Societies Collapse
[ Whoops, Diamond left out peak oil: Book review of “In order to live: A North Korean girl’s journey to freedom” by Yeonmi Park Inside North Korea’s Environmental Collapse Who Lives, Who dies in a never-ending energy crisis. Book review … Continue reading
Posted in Collapsed & collapsing nations, Other Experts
Tagged collapse, Jared Diamond, why
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The Empire of the United States, Roman Empire, War, etc.
[Several articles and comments from energy groups follow] Steven Strauss. December 31, 2012. 8 Striking Parallels Between the U.S. and the Roman Empire. Is our republic coming to an unceremonious end? History may not be on America’s side. Lawrence Lessig’s … Continue reading
Posted in Roman Empire
Tagged collapse, roman empire, united states
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CSP Barriers and Obstacles
Location must be in the desert Southwest Unlike solar PV, CSP can’t cope with humidity or cloud cover, so it is limited to the southwest were the solar irradiation is high and there is no dust, haze, or smog. Solar … Continue reading
Posted in CSP with thermal energy storage
Tagged concentrated solar power, cost, CSP, land, location, water
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Concentrated Solar Power: Water Constraints
“Concentrating solar power plants that use wet cooling could significantly increase water demand, consuming up to twice as much water per unit of electricity produced as traditional fossil fuel power plants. Concerns with concentrating solar power plants are particularly acute … Continue reading
Posted in Concentrated Solar Power
Tagged CSP, thermal storage, water use
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Concentrated Solar Power: location, location, location
Location, Location, Location: What follows is from: SBC. June 2013. Concentrating Solar Power. SBC Energy Institute. The best sites are between 10° and 40°, South or North. As you can see in the chart below, this makes a huge difference, … Continue reading
Posted in Concentrated Solar Power
Tagged concentrated solar power, CSP, DNI, irradience, solar thermal
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Short-circuiting a solar boom in Japan
Spain is still feeling the painful effects of the costs of overbuilt solar PV, and now Japan is finding itself in the same position. This article does a lousy job of explaining that the grid must be in exact supply … Continue reading
Posted in Distributed Generation, Grid instability, Photovoltaic Solar, Renewable Integration
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Tuberculosis
The fear is that a fast-spreading, anti-biotic resistant strain will spread via mutation or bioterrorism. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that two billion people — one third of the world’s population — are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. 25 January … Continue reading
Posted in Pandemics
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Syrian conflict due to climate change drought
Fountain, H. March 2, 2015. Researchers Link Syrian Conflict to a Drought Made Worse by Climate Change. New York Times. Drawing one of the strongest links yet between global warming and human conflict, researchers said Monday that an extreme drought … Continue reading
Posted in Drought, Drought & Collapse, Syria
Tagged Africa, climate change, collapse, drought, Syria
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Charles A. S. Hall Conventional oil peak was 2005
The global production of conventional oil began to decline in 2005, and has followed a path over the last 11 years very close to our scenarios assuming low estimates of extractable ultimate resource (1.9 Gbbl) John L. Hallock Jr., Wei … Continue reading
Posted in Charles A. S. Hall, Peak Oil
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Charles A. S. Hall “EROI of different fuels and the implications for society”
Charles A.S. Hall, Jessica G. Lambert, Stephen B. Balogh. 2014. EROI of different fuels and the implications for society. Energy Policy 64: 141-152. Highlights: For nations examined, the EROI for oil and gas has declined during recent decades. Lower EROI … Continue reading
Posted in Charles A. S. Hall
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