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- 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
- Why Nuclear Power can’t replace fossil fuels
- Energy, Water, & Climate Change are interdependent
- Why fusion power is Forever Away
- Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
- Excerpt from “The Geopolitics of Resource Wars”
- Homes & Buildings
Author Archives: energyskeptic
Far Out power #6: Stale beer, crayfish shells, and burning metal powder
Preface. Unfortunately, turning beer into biogas requires a pandemic so that it isn’t drunk at pubs instead. Scientists assure us there will be more pandemics as we mow down (rain)forests for shopping malls and come into contact with new viruses, … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, Far Out
Tagged beer, biogas, renewable power
Comments Off on Far Out power #6: Stale beer, crayfish shells, and burning metal powder
Not enough rare metals to scale up solar power
Preface. Sunshine may be free, but the materials to make solar contraptions sure aren’t. Since sunshine arrives in a diluted form, vast expanses of solar photovoltaic panels will be needed to produce the world’s 24,000 Terawatt hours of electrical … Continue reading
Posted in Photovoltaic Solar
Tagged gallium, indium, photovoltaic, PV, rare earth, Ruthenium, solar, tellurium
5 Comments
Toasters are Toast
Preface. Thomas Thwaites’ book, “The Toaster Project” illustrates why it will be so hard, if not impossible, to bounce back from collapse in the future to anything like what we take for granted today. Thwaites set about trying to make … Continue reading
Even Pencils will be hard to make
Preface. Most of us are unaware of how complex our society is, how things are made, how food is grown, how stuff is delivered, and the people, energy, transportation, and kinds and sources of materials in every day objects. This … Continue reading
Posted in EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested, Localization, Supply Chains
Tagged collapse, EROEI, manufacturing, peak oil, pencil
2 Comments
The Fragility of Microchips
Preface. This is an introduction to how microchips are made to give you an idea of how difficult and amazing they are. This is a very high-level overview gathered mostly from the textbooks of Quirk (2001) and Van Zant (2004). … Continue reading
How are microchips made?
Preface. Computer chip fabrication plants need to run continuously for weeks to accomplish the thousands of steps needed to make microchips. A half-hour power outage at Samsung’s Pyeongtaek chip plant caused losses of over $43 million dollars (Reuters 2019). Chip … Continue reading
Many steps using fossil fuels to make cans & potato chips
Preface. I am gobsmacked by how much energy goes into making beverage cans and potato chips, look at all the steps, each one using energy! Why haven’t we run of oil yet? Especially when you look at everything else out … Continue reading