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Recent Posts
- The history of rope making
- What will future societies be like after fossil fuels are gone?
- Phosphate: All hopes for food and LFP batteries rest on Morocco with up to 85% of remaining reserves
- Floating Solar Farms add plastic, metal, PFAS & cut off light and oxygen to life below
- Peak Lithium
- Trump eliminates birth control abroad
- In a world without people, how long would NYC last?
- Network States to replace democratic governments with billionaire Silicon Valley CEO dictators & Republicans
- Why the kerogen in oil shale will never fill up your tank
- ‘The oil we eat’. Following the food chain back to iraq
- Vanishing open spaces: population growth and sprawl in America
- Admiral Rickover 1957: Energy Resources & Our Future
- The Green New Deal is not a solution for the real problem: Overshoot
- A transition from fossil fuels to renewables could take a century – if it ever happens
- Electrifying freight trains in the U.S. is a bad idea
Author Archives: energyskeptic
Look Before you Eat
Preface. This post is a book review of Be Wilson’s Swindled. From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee – The Dark History of the Food Cheats. Wilson explains why cheating has always gone on and always will, especially in societies with … Continue reading
Posted in Health, Health What to do, Peak Food
Tagged food, health
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How the grid works, why a distributed grid won’t work
Preface. This is a book review of Angwin’s 2020 “Shorting the Grid. The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid”. It is a good primer on how the grid works, especially why Volt-Ampere Reactives (VARs) are important and why renewables don’t … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Books, Grid instability
Tagged Angwin, blackouts, distributed generation, electric grid, solar, wind
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After the Reich. The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation
Preface. This is a book review of: Giles MacDonogh (2007) After the Reich. The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation. In trying to understand what life might be like as energy declines, I’ve read a lot of books about … Continue reading
Book review of “Agrarian Dreams”
Preface. This is a book review of Guthman’s “Agrarian Dreams. The Paradox of Organic Farming in California”. Since world oil production likely peaked in 2018, and renewables can’t replace fossil fuels (read my books), there’s no choice but to go … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Books, Farming & Ranching
Tagged agriculture, back to the land, california, organic farming
2 Comments
Book Review of “War: How Conflict Shaped Us”
Preface. This is a very profound and wide-ranging book about many aspects of war, the reasons for fighting, what it’s like to be a soldier, women’s roles during wars, the history and future of war, and more, a really outstanding … Continue reading
Criticism of Dawn Of Everything
I’d read a lot of anthropology decades ago so much of “Dawn” sounded right and plausible. But it seemed too good to be true, and I’ve been looking since then for criticism. Much of what I’ve found was full of … Continue reading
Posted in Dawn of Everything
Tagged dawn of everything, egalitarian, hierarchy, matriarchy, patriarchy
6 Comments
Venezuela – when will it collapse?
Preface. This is a book review of Newman’s 2022 “Things are never so bad that they can’t get worse”. He lived in Venezuela from 2012 to 2016 as a correspondent for The New York Times. Venezuela and Canada have the … Continue reading
Posted in Corruption & Finance, Crime, Gangs, Corrupt police, Private security, Venezuela
Tagged Chavez, collapse, corruption, gangs, refugees, Trump, Venezuela
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Booklist: Pollution, Resource Depletion, Infrastructure, Transportation, Peak Minerals, Life after Fossil Fuels
More booklists Pollution G Pitron. The Rare Metals War: the dark side of clean energy and digital technologies T Colborn. Our Stolen Future: Are we threatening our fertility, survival? J McCormick. Acid Earth: The Global Threat of Acid Pollution. J … Continue reading
Posted in Book List
Tagged infrastructure, Life After Fossil Fuels, peak minerals, pollution, resource depletion, transportation
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Peak Rubber
Rubber trees can’t be grown anywhere. They require 100 inches (250 cm) of rain year round. Dry seasons not allowed. The average monthly temperature should be 77 to 82 Fahrenheit (25-28 C), with 6 hours a day of bright sunshine, … Continue reading