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- 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?
- How to survive a nuclear winter
- The insect apocalypse will kill billions more people than climate change
- The war on drugs. A book review of “Chasing the scream”
Author Archives: energyskeptic
North Korea: what happened when the oil was cut off?
Preface. All nations will eventually run low and then out of petroleum, so it is worthwhile to see what happened to those countries where oil was scarce first to get glimpses of our own fate and perhaps try to mitigate … Continue reading
Posted in North Korea, Oil shock collapse
Tagged collapse, cuba, japan, North Korea, peak oil, Venezuela
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An extremist Republican gun industry will lead to a dark future in the U.S.
Preface. This is a book review of Busse’s 2021 “Gunfight. My battle against the industry that radicalized America”. I have always wondered why stricter gun laws haven’t been passed after horrifying mass shootings at schools and workplaces. This book explains … Continue reading
Posted in War Books
Tagged book review, Busse, civil war, gun control, gunfight, guns, NRA, Republican
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An Amazonian community in balance with nature
Preface. Now that limits to growth and energy have arrived, it’s past time to invent a sustainable society living in balance with nature without fossil fuels and electricity. The Dawn of Everything showed us such civilizations from the past. Today … Continue reading
Posted in Dawn of Everything
Tagged Amazon, Ashaninka, dawn of everything, new community, steady state
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Is the USA energy independent?
Preface. Below are excerpts from U.S. House & Senate hearings where various speakers made the case that due to tight fracked gas & oil the United States had 100 or 200 or even 250 years of Energy Independence ahead. For … Continue reading
Posted in Natural Gas, Oil & Gas Fracked, Peak Natural Gas, U.S. Congress Energy Independence
Tagged congress, energy independence, house, natural gas, oil, senate
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Dawn of Everything Miscellaneous
Preface. I’ve put interesting bits that don’t belong in a single category here as well as summaries and links to new archeological discoveries, societies today living in balance sustainably, etc. Starting with the review from Science which summarizes the book … Continue reading
Posted in Dawn of Everything
Tagged dawn of everything, dreams, yanomani
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States do not evolve from Bands to Tribes to Chiefdoms to States
Preface. The bulk of this book is dedicated to showing why the idea of the evolution from tribes to states is false. If the authors are correct, then the flexibility of societies to invent ways of living with more freedom … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Dawn of Everything, Farming & Ranching, Slavery
Tagged dawn of everything, state evolution
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The freedom to travel enabled people to flee to better tribes
Preface. One of my favorite books was Bruce Chatwin’s “Songlines” about how aborigines were included by the Australian government in the building of a new railroad so that sacred sites could be avoided and they could add the rail line … Continue reading
Posted in Dawn of Everything
Tagged Australia, clans, dawn of everything, sign language, travel
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How past societies avoided the Agricultural trap
Preface. There’s a great deal of evidence that past tribes did grow food but deliberately chose not to make that the entirety of the way they lived, preferring a more seasonal styles of life with hunting and gathering, and governance … Continue reading
Posted in Dawn of Everything, Farming & Ranching
Tagged agriculture, dawn of everything
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Why were California & Pacific NW Native tribes so different from each other?
Preface. Why do many societies near each other have such different values, beliefs, mythology, and governance? In “Dawn of Everything”, the authors suggest that it’s because:
Posted in Dawn of Everything
Tagged agriculture, dawn of everything, slavery
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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.