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- 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
Dawn of Everything: self-governance not Kings & Slavery
Preface. After the Great Simplification new societies will arise, and I hope copy past civilizations that deliberately avoided slavery, war and autocratic kings. I’ve extracted a few examples of this from The Dawn of Everything below.
What did Native Americans make of the French in the 16th century?
Preface. My first exposure to philosophy was in High School, about the philosophies that helped shape the U.S. constitution. This led me to read Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and others. “Dawn of Everything” points out that Native American philosophies should … Continue reading
Posted in Dawn of Everything
Tagged French, philosophy, Wendat
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Dawn of Everything Conclusion
Preface. Clearly for their conclusion to make sense you’ll need to read the book and see the evidence for yourself. Since they challenge just about all of the ideas currently in fashion, you can find some pretty damning reviews of … Continue reading
Posted in Dawn of Everything
Tagged agriculture, cahokia, wendot
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Dawn of Everything Introduction
Preface. It is likely that all world oil, both conventional and unconventional, peaked in 2018. The good news is that this means there isn’t enough carbon left to turn the world into a hothouse extinction, though for centuries the planet … Continue reading
Posted in Dawn of Everything
Tagged agriculture, politics
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Electric Swarm Tractors
Preface. In both my books Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy & When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation, I write that since most “renewables” generate electricity (i.e. wind, solar, nuclear, hydropower, compressed … Continue reading
Neighborhood councils to cope with energy decline
I’m reading “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” which is one of the best books I’ve read in years, and a very hopeful one – this 700 page book is full of evidence that agriculture, capitalism, slavery, … Continue reading
Posted in Government on what to do, Life Before Oil, Political Books
Tagged agriculture, bird flu, councils, dawn of everything, energy decline, monarchy, pandemic, peak oil
2 Comments
Can we eat enough fried food for biodiesel to keep trucks running?
Fatberg from London sewer If the U.S. can’t make enough biodiesel from plants, then the question becomes: Can we step up our fast-food game? Can we eat more French fries? Biodiesel is already made from used cooking oil (11.5% of … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiesel, Farming & Ranching
Tagged biodiesel, fast food, fatberg
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Why it is hard to replace diesel with biodiesel
Biodiesel is the great hope, our main hope, the only renewable fuel of all the many options, and the closest to the diesel essential for rail, trucks, and ships to do the actual work of civilization. The U.S. produces over … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiesel, Food production, Oil, Peak Biofuels, Peak Food, Transportation, Water
Tagged biodiesel, diesel, EROI
1 Comment
Corn for ethanol & soy for biodiesel tremendously destructive
In the news: Cullen A (2024) Corn Belt fertilizer is killing the Gulf of Mexico. Washington Post. About 30 percent of the nitrogen applied for raising corn is lost to water, and much of it right now is draining off … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiesel, Peak Food, Pesticides, Soil, Water Pollution
Tagged aquifer depletion, biodiesel, corn, erosion, ethanol, pollution, soybeans, topsoil
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Energy certificates as currency when oil shocks strike?
Since world oil peaked in 2018, clearly there will be a time when there are oil shortages. The price may be high at first, but that often brings on a financial crash (Hamilton 2013), unemployment rises as business shut down, … Continue reading
Posted in Oil Shocks, Rationing, U.S. Congress Energy Policy
Tagged blackouts, currency, ecological economics, energy crisis, Hubbert, money, oil shock, rationing
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