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Recent Posts
- Why fusion power is Forever Away
- 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?
Author Archives: energyskeptic
Book Review of Englund’s “The Beauty and the Sorrow”
Confusion, chaos, rumor, fear, hope, terror, perhaps that’s exactly what you’d expect of war, but far more real when you’re reading ordinary people’s diaries, not accounts of generals or dry facts of history. Even though I’m old enough not to … Continue reading
Posted in War Books
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Book Review of Paleofantasy: What Evolution really tells us about sex, diet, and how we live
Alice Friedemann’s review of: Marlene Zuk. 2013. Paleofantasy: What Evolution really tells us about sex, diet, and how we live. My first introduction to Evolutionary Psychology was “The Adapted Mind” which posited we’re unhappy because of the tremendous difference between … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Evolution, Health
Tagged agriculture, diet, evolution, grain, nutrition, paleofantasy
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Stephen Leeb & Charles Hall on EROI & Investing
Stephen Leeb. 5 Jun 2013. Dangerous Times As Energy Sources Get Costlier To Extract. Forbes. The optimists believe that our energy problems have been largely solved. I wouldn’t bet on that. The real issue with oil isn’t how much we … Continue reading
Posted in EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested
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Over 10 million people evicted from 4.4 million homes since 2007
The statistics on this vary. Given that the “fix” to the September 2008 crisis was merely kicking the can down the road, with no meaningful reform having taken place, and banks in even worse shape than before by “recovering” by … Continue reading
Posted in Foreclosures & Evictions
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Lloyd’s of London EMP solar storm risk to North America
2013. Lloyd’s Solar Storm Risk to the North American Electric Grid. Atmospheric and Environmental Research. Society depends on electricity for everything from communication, banking and business transactions to basic necessities like food and water. Executive Summary A Carrington-level, extreme geomagnetic … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid & EMP Electromagnetic Pulse
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Global Warming increases violence and wars
2 Aug 2013. Seth Borenstein. Global warming may fuel wars. A massive new study finds that aggressive acts like committing violent crimes and waging war become more likely with each added degree of temperature. The study was published online yesterday … Continue reading
Posted in War & Violence
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Northern California marijuana harms ecosystem, has huge carbon footprint. Legalize ASAP!
A book review by Alice Friedemann of Emily Brady’s 2013 book: “Humboldt. Life on America’s marijuana frontier.” The tales I hear from my friends in Mendocino and Humboldt counties fascinate me. There are stories of mayors and sheriffs on opposite … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture
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Eric Sibul on the history of replacing railroads with roads: a disaster
A review of: Sibul, Eric. 26 Apr 2013. Transportation Readings for American Conservatives – How did we get in such a Mess? The American Conservative. My main problem with this article is that it heaps all the blame on liberals, … Continue reading
Posted in Railroads
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Exponential growth and carrying capacity
Watch it happen — see the populations of major cities grow in these animated maps that reveal in 60 seconds how cities have exploded in size over the last 130 years Al Bartlett, Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Colorado, … Continue reading
Posted in Exponential Growth, Limits To Growth
Tagged exponential growth, limits to growth
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Photovoltaic solar has many problems
Although sunlight is renewable, photovoltaic panels aren’t. PV isn’t ready yet. NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab) lists the technical barriers below in: PV Roadmap. U.S. Dept of Energy National Center for Photovoltaics. Lack of widespread availability of low-cost feedstock and … Continue reading
Posted in Photovoltaic Solar
Tagged solar, subsidies
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