Author Archives: energyskeptic

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

Posted in Alternative Energy, An Overview, EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat, Wind | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments

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 , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What can California do about sea level rise?

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

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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

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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

Posted in Political Books | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Why we need more women leaders

Preface. Hector Garcia makes the case that women make better leaders in an excerpt from his book below. His conclusion is that “scientific literature shows that when women are allowed greater political and economic power, which is inseparable from the … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Donald Trump: Sexual Predator

Preface.  This is a book review of “All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the making of a Predator”.  Trump is clearly as much a sexual predator as Jeffrey Epstein (who he hung out with for a long time) and … Continue reading

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Republicans way ahead of Democrats on voter data

Preface.  This is a book review and Kindle notes of Nelson’s “Shadow Network:  Media, money and the secret hub of the Radical Right”. It tells the sad history of how Republicans got Trump elected and took over the House, and … Continue reading

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Kurt Andersen on Trump & Covid-19 in “Evil Geniuses”

Preface. If you want to know all the economic and political history that got us to the right-wing extremist Trump and Republican party, there’s no more entertaining way to do so than Kurt Anderson’s latest book “Evil Geniuses”.  Better yet, … Continue reading

Posted in Disease, Politics | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

A Strong Case for the Anthropocene: no other species has ever consumed so much of earth’s resources so quickly

Figure 1. Produced energy and the pattern of human population growth from 1750. Utilization of these energy sources, together with the energy used by humans from net primary production, is now approaching the entire energy available to the global ecosystem … Continue reading

Posted in ! PEAK EVERYTHING, Climate Change, Human Nature | Tagged , | 10 Comments