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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
Doomsday Clock moved closer to midnight
Since 2012 the Doomsday clock has been at 5 minutes to midnight, but on January 22, 2015 the clock moved 2 minutes forward to just 3 minutes short of midnight. This is because prominent scientists (including Nobel laureates) say that … Continue reading
Posted in Scientists Warnings to Humanity
Tagged doomsday clock
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Spain Wind Integration
2 articles below, Pedro Prieto and National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Jan 14, 2015 Pedro Prieto [energyresources] Digest Number 8957 [altered slightly] In Spain we have this mix, as of the end of 2014: INSTALLED POWER MW % GWH … Continue reading
Posted in Pedro Prieto, Renewable Integration
Tagged intermittent, renewable integration, spain, uncertain, variable, wind
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German wind and solar integration
Schiermeier, Q. April 10, 2013. Renewable power: Germany’s energy gamble. An ambitious plan to slash greenhouse-gas emissions must clear some high technical and economic hurdles. Nature 496: 156–158 The rapid rise in wind and solar power has created a nightmare … Continue reading
Posted in Blackouts Electric Grid, Distributed Generation, Renewable Integration
Tagged germany, renewable integration, wind
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Homeland Security and Dept of Energy: Dams and Energy Sectors Interdependency Study
[Below are excerpts from this 45 page document. Dams not only provide power but also water for agriculture, drinking water, cooling water for thermal power plants, ecosystem health, fisheries, and so on. All dams have a finite lifespan of 50 … Continue reading
Posted in Dams, Energy Production, Interdependencies
Tagged dams, hydropower, infrastructure, interdependency
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Solar Thermal ESOI (Energy Stored on Invested)
Barton, N. April 17, 2013. ESOI for solar thermal. http://sunoba.blogspot.com/2013/04/esoi-for-solar-thermal.html Published information is available to evaluate the ESOI score for the most common solar thermal storage technology – a molten 60-40 mixture of sodium and potassium nitrates, commonly known as … Continue reading
Posted in Concentrated Solar Power, Energy Storage
Tagged CSP, energy storage, ESOI, solar thermal
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Integrating renewable power research
Below are intermittent energy integration posts, workshops, and other research. Andrew Dodson. 2014. Issues Integrating Renewables. This is a fairly technical podcast, this link cites some of the most interesting points made, here are a couple of them: “There is … Continue reading
Posted in Renewable Integration
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Over 21 essential resources have peaked including fish, milk, eggs, wheat, corn, rice, soy
Nature summary of this article: “The rates at which humans consume multiple resources such as food and wood peaked at roughly the same time, around 2006. This means that resources could be simultaneously depleted, so achieving sustainability might be more … Continue reading
Posted in Limits To Growth, Peak Food
Tagged food, limits to growth, overpopulation, peak
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Extreme Events. CEC 2011. Variable distributed generation from solar and wind increase the chance of large blackouts
Morgan, M., et al. (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Electric Power Research Institute, BACV Solutions, Southern Company, CIEE, University of Alaska – Fairbanks, and KEMA). 2011. Extreme Events. California Energy Commission. Publication number: CEC-500- 2013-031. Figure 18: BLACKOUT … Continue reading
Posted in Distributed Generation, Grid instability
Tagged blackout, branching process, cascading failure, contingency, critical, critical corridors, earthquake, electric, extreme events, grid, heavy tail, outages, power, risk, WECC
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Electricity, fuel, and other interdependencies
Freight trucks, trains, ships, airplanes all stop when the electricity is out because the pumps depend on it. Related: Why you should love trucks and When Trucks Stop CR. September 4 & 23, 2003. Implications of power blackouts for the … Continue reading
Posted in Automobiles, Fuel Distribution, Interdependencies, Trucks
Tagged blackout, diesel, electricity, fuel, gas, generator, interdependency, telecommunications
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Solar Photovoltaics (PV) limited by raw materials
This paper (excerpts below) shows that there are limits to growth — there simply aren’t enough minerals in the world that can be produced physically and/or at a reasonable cost for the many of the most common kinds of PV … Continue reading
Posted in Peak Rare Earth Elements, Photovoltaic Solar
Tagged rare earth
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