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Recent Posts
- Excerpt from “The Geopolitics of Resource Wars”
- Homes & Buildings
- 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
Author Archives: energyskeptic
Bill Gates on why Electric Airplanes won’t fly
Preface. I wonder if Bill Gates has read my book “When Trucks Stop Running”? As he says in the article below: “The renaissance of electrification that we’re seeing in passenger vehicles unfortunately won’t likely adapted to heavier forms of transportation … Continue reading
Concentrated Solar Power is unreliable, full of glitches, & has a low energy return
Preface. Concentrating solar power (CSP) projects usually sprawl in a circle over several square miles and can cost over a billion dollars. They use mirrors and lenses to capture the high temperatures needed to efficiently produce or store electricity. Almost … Continue reading
Posted in Concentrated Solar Power, Solar EROI
Tagged capacity factor, concentrated solar power, CSP, EROI
2 Comments
Alaskan tsunamis threaten even California
Preface. A 9.1 magnitude earthquake in Alaska send a tsunami all the way to the California coast and cause at least $10 billion in damage, forcing at least 750,000 people to evacuate flooded areas, destroy port facilities in the Bay … Continue reading
Posted in Tsunami
Tagged climate change, earthquake, permafrost, Tsunami
Comments Off on Alaskan tsunamis threaten even California
Structurally Deficient Bridges
Preface. As I explained in my book “When Trucks Stop Running”, if diesel fuel ran out, civilization would end within a week as grocery shelves, pharmacies, gas stations, and all other businesses ran out of supplies. The millions of miles … Continue reading
Largest oil spill on earth: Plastics
Preface. There have been thousands of articles since I published this back in 2003. Today I read a surprising study that claims glass is more harmful than plastic because it is mined from rare materials and requires more fossil fuels … Continue reading
Dust Bowls
Preface. As if there weren’t enough to worry about, more Great Dust Bowls may be on the way. The irony is that some of it will likely be due to planting corn and soybeans to produce biofuels, yet another reason … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, Drought & Collapse
Tagged agriculture, drought, dust bowl, food shortage
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Predicting who will become a violent terrorist
Preface. This study was clever in predicting the political and religious outlook of people using abstract tests that were not political or emotional, such as memorizing visual shapes. This study of worldviews was able to predict political preferences 4 to … Continue reading
The Texas electric grid outage
Preface. In February of 2021, millions of Texans and Mexicans lost electric power in a hard freeze. Oxer (2021) on the March 2 Power Hungry podcast, said that if the Texas grid had blacked out, it would have taken until … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Grid instability, Pedro Prieto
Tagged electric grid, Prieto, stability, wind
2 Comments
Biocoal from food waste and sewage
Preface. This probably doesn’t have a net energy gain because of the energy to move waste and sewage to a common facility, and then transport these wastes from numerous places to the factory where biomass is converted to coal using … Continue reading