Author Archives: energyskeptic

Vaclav Smil on wood

[ I’ve extracted bits about wood from Smil’s book about materials below, read the book for the larger context.  Enormous amounts of wood were used in former civilizations with much smaller populations than today, so it’s clear we can’t go … Continue reading

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Threats to America’s drinking and sewage treatment infrastructure

[ Here are a few of the points made in this 170 page document about improving the nation’s water system security (excerpts follow): There are many potential threats to water infrastructure, including terrorism, failure of aging infrastructure, flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes, … Continue reading

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American Arsenal: A Century of Waging War by Patrick Coffey

Source: www.compoundchem.com/2014/05/17/chemical-warfare-ww1 Preface. These are my notes from “American Arsenal: A Century of Waging War” (2013) by Patrick Coffey . Absolutely horrifying, especially chemical warfare. Here’s the publishers weekly blurb of what this book is about: “Science historian Coffey surveys … Continue reading

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Department of Homeland Security bioterrorism risk assessment

[So much of this was calculus calculating odds that very little of this document was extracted. Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and … Continue reading

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Civil war coming?

Preface. I read Turchin’s latest book which attempts to show why his past theories about the rise and fall of agrarian nations also applies to our modern civilization.  But there was not one mention of fossil fuels, natural resources, or … Continue reading

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Not only are telecom companies screwing us on net neutrality, they refuse to get rid of robocalls

Preface. It’s four years after the 2013 Senate hearing below and the telecomm industry has still refused and congress and/or the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have not demanded robocalls be blocked despite over 10 years of complaints.  In fact, unwanted … Continue reading

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U.S. Senate 2014 Freight rail service: improving the performance of America’s rail system

Preface. This Senate hearing is mainly full of oil and grain industry leaders bashing the rail industry and asking Senators to do something about it. But the railroad industry is four times more energy efficient than trucks, and not guilty … Continue reading

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China is securing energy resources. A potential threat to Europe and U.S. interests.

Preface. China is vastly expanding its fleet of natural gas heavy-duty trucks to 700,000 in 2018 and similar or more amounts after that.  They are building pipelines to Russia and other Central Asian countries to keep the gas coming.  I … Continue reading

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If we really cared about CO2, we’d reduce car size and weight, not make electric cars

Preface. Since my book “When trucks stop running: Energy and the future of transportation makes the case that it’s trucks that need to be electrified to keep civilization going, since biofuels don’t scale up, natural gas and liquefied coal are … Continue reading

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Will the Navy go out with a whimper instead of a bang?

Preface. This house hearing is about the continuing decline of the Navy There are fewer and fewer ships. The remaining ships are overused, some past their normal lifespan, and under-maintained. As the U.S. descends into fascist plutocracy enabled by the … Continue reading

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