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Recent Posts
- Thorium nuclear bombs and reactors have too many challenges
- Who Killed the Electric Car & more importantly, the Electric Truck?
- President Carter’s energy solutions 1977
- Peak Menhaden
- Hemp for paper, textiles, the war on drugs, and more
- Why towns have a hard time adding EV, solar, heat pumps
- Building a national super grid in America
- The Mayflower from the book The Barbarous Years
- Deep Sea Oil
- Book review of “Livewired. The inside story of the ever-changing brain”
- The conveyor belt may be slowing down — Yikes!
- Battery Energy storage batteries (BESS) too complex to ever be commercial
- New war and energy alliances over next resource wars
- Book review of “Siege: Trump Under fire”
- Why do people vote for Trump?
Author Archives: energyskeptic
Where do we come from, who are we, and where are we going?
Preface. This is a book of review of The Social Conquest of Earth, in which E. O. Wilson answers these questions. Although tribes have invented thousands of creation myths since paleolithic times, Wilson finally has written a book explaining our … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Evolution, Natural History, Religion
Tagged evolution, religion, selection, superstition, Wilson
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Offshore wind turbines: Expensive, risky, and last just 15 years
Preface: The Department of Energy high wind penetration plans require a lot of offshore wind. But is it possible, affordable, or wise to do this? Corrosion leads to a short lifespan of just 15 years. To reduce maintenance, offshore windmills … Continue reading
Book Review: The Fall of the Roman Empire: A new history of Rome and the barbarians
Preface. Most historians see the fall of the Roman Empire as due to the invasion of barbarians from the North, partly pushed towards Italy by the brutal Huns. These lands had never been conquered by Roman armies because they were … Continue reading
Renewable costs don’t include transmission & energy storage backup from Nat Gas & Coal plants
Preface. Wind and solar advocates don’t include transmission and backup costs in their net energy and cost calculations. But without fossil backup, the electric grid will come down due to lack of storage. There is almost nowhere left to put … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid & Fast Collapse, Energy Storage, Solar, Solar EROI, Wind, Wind EROI
Tagged energy storage, fossil fuel backup, renewable, solar, wind
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The Invisible oiliness of everything
Preface. Even a simple object like a pencil takes hundreds of actions and objects requiring fossil energy to do and make. Not electricity. This is on of many reasons why wind, solar, or other contraption that make electricity can’t replace … Continue reading
Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
Preface. In the half dozen science magazines and newspapers I get, almost the only environmental stories are about climate change. Yet there are 8 other ecological boundaries (Rockström 2009) we must not cross (shown in bold with an asterisk below) … Continue reading
What can California do about sea level rise?
Projected sea level rise from one meter (dark red) to six meters (light orange) in California’s Bay Area. (Weiss and Overpeck 2011) Preface. Nearly all, if not all, possible solutions to rising sea levels along all the coasts in the … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Infrastructure, Infrastructure & Collapse, Rail, Roads, Sea Level Rise, Transportation
Tagged dike, elevated, floating, infrastructure, levees, sea level rise, seawalls, sewage
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Book review of “The Death of Expertise: the campaign against established knowledge and why it matters”
Preface. Those who attack experts are exactly the people who will not read this book review (well, mainly some Kindle notes) of Nichols “The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters”. They scare me, they … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Political Books, Politics
Tagged critical thinking, death of expertise, fallacies, politics
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Far Out #4: Power out of thin air, power out of freezing air, & Fruit power
Preface. To get power out of thin air after oil, the 90% of people who have had to go back to farming are going to be making protein nanowires from microbes in the chicken coop in their spare time. Scaling … Continue reading
Why the British don’t like Trump
Someone on Quora asked “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of … Continue reading