Author Archives: energyskeptic

Food shortages as the energy crisis grows and supply chains break?

Preface. This is a long preface followed by two articles about how supply chains and complex tractors may be affected by energy shortages and consequent supply chain failures in the future.Which we’re already seeing as massive numbers of ships sit … Continue reading

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Review of Wrangham’s The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue & Violence in Human Evolution

Preface. This is a fantastic, must read book if you’re at all interested in how we evolved to be who we are today, how we domesticated ourselves, gossip, conformity, violence and more.  It reminds me of why I don’t read … Continue reading

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Why liquefied coal (CTL) and natural gas (GTL) can’t replace oil

Preface. Here are just a few of the reasons why we aren’t likely to convert enough coal to diesel to matter as oil decines (see Chapter 11 Liquefied Coal: There Goes the Neighborhood, the Water, and the Air for more … Continue reading

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So you don’t want to be a farmer postcarbon? City jobs of the future

Preface. This book summarizes the work of Henry Mayhew from 1849 to 1852. He wrote about the people and goods  being sold on the streets of London, interviewing hundreds of street vendors. He estimated there were about 30,000 of them … Continue reading

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The Good News About Peak Oil

As oil declines, the threat of a greenhouse earth & extinction from climate change decline Carbon sequestration, wind, solar, geo-engineering, and other remedies are trivial compared to the effect declining fossil fuels will have on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The … Continue reading

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Rees on Overshoot: Growth through contraction: conceiving an eco-economy

Preface.   William Rees writes some of the best and most comprehensible papers of all on the overshoot crisis we are in.  We should have begun a U-turn in the 60s after The Population Bomb, or the 70s when Limits to … Continue reading

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Lithium-ion battery recycling, environmental impact, energy used

Preface. The future of both electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage are depending on lithium-ion batteries because of their high energy-density, and even though lithium is limited, it’s about the only kind of battery being made for transport (because it … Continue reading

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Heat effects on habitability, biodiversity, and invasive species

Preface. Due to limits of human heat tolerance, much of Earth’s surface may not be habitable by 2300 if we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the current rate. But we can’t continue at the current rate. Peak oil production … Continue reading

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Why the world can’t run on biodiesel from algae

Preface. This is an article I published in a peer-reviewed journal, and it’s also similar to “Chapter 25 Biodiesel from Algae” in my book Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy. And within this post is a … Continue reading

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Jellyfish in the news

Preface.  As we overfish, eutrophy and acidify the ocean with fertilizer and pesticides we risk a tipping point where jellyfish dominate the oceans and fish are scarce. Related: Why and how Jellyfish are taking over the world Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  … Continue reading

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