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Recent Posts
- Thorium nuclear bombs and reactors have too many challenges
- Who Killed the Electric Car & more importantly, the Electric Truck?
- President Carter’s energy solutions 1977
- Peak Menhaden
- Hemp for paper, textiles, the war on drugs, and more
- Why towns have a hard time adding EV, solar, heat pumps
- Building a national super grid in America
- The Mayflower from the book The Barbarous Years
- Deep Sea Oil
- Book review of “Livewired. The inside story of the ever-changing brain”
- The conveyor belt may be slowing down — Yikes!
- Battery Energy storage batteries (BESS) too complex to ever be commercial
- New war and energy alliances over next resource wars
- Book review of “Siege: Trump Under fire”
- Why do people vote for Trump?
Author Archives: energyskeptic
Hibernating freeze-thaw molten salt batteries for seasonal energy storage
Preface. A 100% renewable grid can’t happen without long-term energy storage. Today that’s done with natural gas (with a little help from hydropower in the 10 states that have most of it). Meanwhile nuclear and coal chug along at a … Continue reading
Most plastic isn’t recycled, burns in fires at recycling centers
Preface. Plastics are just one of 500,000 products made out of oil and gas, but very important to just about every aspect of society, from making vehicles lighter so go further using less energy, to clothes, food storage, bags, toothbrushes, … Continue reading
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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The nine boundaries we must not cross or we may go extinct
Preface. This post has excerpts from the famous paper by Rockström et al (2009) as well as a more recent proposal by Running (2012) on an easier measure of how close we’re coming to rendering the planet uninhabitable. The media … Continue reading
Posted in Acidification, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Extinction, Planetary Boundaries, Pollution, Sea Level Rise, Water, World's Best Scientists
Tagged atmospheric aerosol loading, biogeochemical nitrogen cycle, biological diversity, boundaries, chemical pollution, climate change, Earth, extinction, global freshwater use, global warming, IPCC, land system change, ocean acidification, ozone hole, peak oil, phosphorus cycle, stratospheric ozone, sustainability
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Track congress: the bills and congressional members
Now that the right-wing authoritarians are getting dangerously powerful and in general the military, political, and economic systems are increasingly corrupt, govtrack.us is one way to see what Congress is up to, help you how to decide to vote in … Continue reading
Heinberg on how to avoid an energy crisis
Visualcapitalist (2022) Europe’s Energy Crisis. European gas prices have skyrocketed 8x higher than their 10-year average, throwing the continent into crisis. Preface. I sure hope that government leaders are reading Heinberg’s columns, since action needs to take place at a … Continue reading
Posted in Expert Advice, Government on what to do, Richard Heinberg
Tagged diesel, energy crisis, government, heinberg
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Hydrogen hopium: Storage
Source: Russel Rhodes (2011) Explosive Lessons in Hydrogen Safety. https://appel.nasa.gov/2011/02/02/explosive-lessons-in-hydrogen-safety/ Preface. What is hopium? Irrational or unwarranted optimism. An addiction to false hopes. A metaphorical substance that causes people to believe in a false hope (H + opium). And Hopium … Continue reading
Posted in CAES Compressed Air, Drought & Collapse, Electric & Hydrogen trucks impossible, Hopium, Hydrogen, Trucks
Tagged CAES, drought, embrittlement, explosive, hopium, hydrogen, salt dome, storage
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Hydrogen hopium: green hydrogen from water
Additional energy consuming steps not shown: pumping water to the electrolyzer, purifying the water, compressing or liquefying to -423 F, pumping into storage container, the trucks to deliver H to stations costing $75 million each, since pipelines are super expensive … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Production, Hopium, Hydrogen, Peak Water
Tagged electrolyzer, energy storage, hopium, hydrogen, utah, water
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The French Energy Sobriety Plan
Preface. Below is the announcement of the French Energy Sobriety Plan by Prime Minister Borne. The energy crisis is coming to all nations, and we should all be implementing their action plan (and family planning, birth control, abortion, limited immigration). … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Policy & Politicians, Government on what to do, Oil Shocks
Tagged energy conservation, energy sobriety plan, France, Russia, Ukraine, what to do
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Will global warming drive us extinct? A review of Peter Ward’s “Under a Green Sky”
Canfield purple ocean, Green Sky Preface. Thank goodness for world peak oil production in 2018. We’re out of time to destroy the planet! We’re about to dramatically reduce fossil fuel consumption, unwillingly, as it declines at 8% or more and … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Climate Change, Extinction Books, Runaway Greenhouse
Tagged anoxic ocean, book review, canfield ocean, climate change, global warming, mass extinction, peak oil, under a green sky
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