Author Archives: energyskeptic

Climate Change and Infrastructure

Matthew Wald. 25 July 2012. Weather Extremes Leave Parts of U.S. Grid Buckling. New York Times. From highways in Texas to nuclear power plants in Illinois, the concrete, steel and sophisticated engineering that undergird the nation’s infrastructure are being taxed … Continue reading

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Drought and the Food Supply

Lesk, C. January 7, 2016. Influence of extreme weather disasters on global crop production. Nature.   Drought and extreme heat events slashed cereal harvests in recent decades by 9% to 10% on average in affected countries with the greatest impact … Continue reading

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Natural Gas — How Much is Left in the USA?

Although there’s been a fracking boom for shale gas in America, many are skeptical.   We need local gas since it’s very expensive to import from overseas sources like Qatar, and we’re competing with other nations for delivery, which drives the … Continue reading

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Liebig’s Law Of the Minimum

Liebig’s Law of the Minimum originally applied to plants, which require 21 nutrients — if any of them are missing the plant won’t grow to it’s full potential, or not be able to grow at all.  It’s similar to the … Continue reading

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History of Drought in America since 1899 – Worst ever now

The dust bowls of the 1950s were worse than the famous dust bowls of the Great Depression.  The conditions for a new dust bowl are happening again, only this time we’ve cut down the trees so that 27 ton tractors … Continue reading

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Extinction has Nearly Happened Before: The Human Bottleneck

Sam Kean. 19 Jul 2012.  Blogging the Human Genome Entry 10: The chromosomal evidence that mankind nearly went extinct.  Slate.com Take your pick for the cause of our near-extinction—ice ages, plagues, Indonesian gigavolcanoes. But humans have far less genetic diversity … Continue reading

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Methane’s potential for another major extinction event

June 22, 2016. As Alaska warms, methane emissions appear stable, study finds. phys.org. Excerpts: One reason no increase has been seen may be that “Bacteria that produce methane and bacteria that consume methane will both become more active as temperatures … Continue reading

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Hirsch predicts Oil Shocks by 2017, panic, and stock market crash

I believe oil shocks could lead to a FAST CRASH Robert L. Hirsch was the author of the first US government report on peak oil in 2005, which recommended taking action to mitigate Peak Oil at least 20 years before … Continue reading

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Don’t worry, be happy, there’s plenty of oil, natural gas, & coal left

These posts and links rebut the studies of cornucopians like Magueri and Daniel Yergin at CERA, who say there’s lots of oil left. Richard Kerr. 10 Aug 2012. Are World Oil’s Prospects Not Declining All That Fast? Science vol 337 … Continue reading

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Tad Patzek: Our complex civilization will cease to exist 20-30 years from now

Tad Patzek. 9 July 2012. What to do? Without the high energy density, fungible fuels flowing at high rates through our complex civilization, our society will cease to exist within 20-30 years from today. A Public Agenda survey in 2009 … Continue reading

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