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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
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
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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
The 10 states with the most farms
Preface. Of course there are many considerations: how climate change will affect farming in each state, the cost of the farmland, and other ecological factors discussed in the book by Hall & Day’s “America’s Most Sustainable Cities and Regions: Surviving … Continue reading
Wanted: Math geniuses and power engineers to make a renewable grid possible
Figure 1. OPF solution of original seven-bus system with generator at bus 4 Preface. The U.S. electric grid produced 64% of electricity in 2019 with finite fossil fuels, and another 20% from nuclear power. Since fossil fuels and uranium are … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid & EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Grid instability, Renewable Integration, Smart Grid
Tagged electric grid, electricity, math, renewable integration, solar, stability, wind
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