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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
Book Review of “Against the Grain. A Deep History of the Earliest States”
Preface. Energyskeptic.com is ultimately about the rise and fall of civilizations, although I didn’t know that when I first started writing this as an energy and resource blog. Our civilization too will fail as fossil fuels decline, and then we’re … Continue reading
Reforestation can cause rivers to disappear
Preface. We’ll need a lot of forests in the future when wood once again becomes our may source of energy and infrastructure as it was before fossil fuels. But care needs to be taken on where trees are planted. Alice … Continue reading
Will life after peak oil be like the middle ages?
Preface. Winston recreates what life was like from the 5th to the 15th centuries — from the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance. Energyskeptic.com shows why hydrogen, wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, fusion, and other alternatives … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Biomass, Life Before Oil
Tagged biomass, life before oil, middle ages, wood world
8 Comments
Think covid-19 is bad? The tuberculosis pandemic is still killing millions
Preface. These are my kindle notes from “The Plague and I” by Betty MacDonald. Her great sense of humor, beautiful writing, and finding out what it would have been like to be in a Tuberculosis (TB) sanitarium in 1937 are … Continue reading
Wave, tidal, ocean current, in-stream, & ocean thermal power
Preface. This is mainly a review of the 2013 National Research Council’s report on harvesting marine energy from waves, tides, temperature differences, currents, and run-of-river. But also the latest projects and other evidence related to the energy that can be … Continue reading
Posted in Waves & Tidal
Tagged hydrokinetic, national academy, OTEC, tidal power, wave power
2 Comments
Nuclear winter could kill 2 to 5 billion people
Preface. Carl Sagan introduced the idea of a “nuclear winter”, which helped to end the cold war. The smoke from fires started by bombs would absorb so much sun the earth wold grow cold, dry, and dark, killing plants on … Continue reading
Posted in Extinction, Farming & Ranching, Fisheries, Nuclear War, Nuclear Winter
Tagged 1 billion deaths, agriculture, fishery, nuclear, nuclear winter, ozone loss, UV radiation, war
1 Comment
Maddow’s “Blowout”, Russian peak oil, corruption, fake news
Preface. Since this blog focuses on peak resources, I drastically rearranged my notes from this book in the order I found most interesting. I’m also interested in corruption, Putin, fake news, and more, as you’ll see below. Since the book … Continue reading
Posted in Corruption, Corruption & Finance, Oil shock collapse, Peak Oil
Tagged corruption, fake news, peak oil, Russia, Ukraine
2 Comments
Can you grow enough fruit and vegetables to be self-sufficient?
Preface. If you want to try to feed yourself, buy John Jeavons excellent book “How to Grow More Vegetables, Ninth Edition: (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land with Less Water … Continue reading
The Golden Age of Russian Oil Nears an End
Preface. One huge factor in Russia’s future oil decline not mentioned below is how incredibly corrupt and inefficient Russia’s oil and gas companies are, as Rachel Maddow describes in her book “Blowout”. A few quotes: The Russian oil and gas … Continue reading
Natural Gas essential for energy storage
Preface. The U.S. Department of energy has admitted that a renewable grid is impossible without long-duration storage (LDES) and plans to hand out half a billion dollars to commercialize (LDES) (Colthorpe 2022). Another recent report also argues that round-the-clock renewables … Continue reading