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Recent Posts
- 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
- Book Review “The Outlawed Ocean” by Ian Urbina
- Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
- Motherboards: too complicated to make after oil
- “More and More and More” one of the best books on energy ever written
- The staggering destruction of knowledge by Christians in the Roman Empire
Author Archives: energyskeptic
Tom Murphy Stubborn Expectations (on population)
U.N.Total fertility rate projections Preface. Tom Murphy has one of the best blogs on limits to growth, energy resources and more in his blog Do The Math. He is a professor emeritus of the departments of Physics and Astronomy & … Continue reading
Posted in Overpopulation, Scientists
Tagged collapse, fertility, limits to growth, population
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NIMBY Hydrogen production
Preface. Now that Trump has slashed the hydrogen budget this is not an issue, but perhaps will be again if Democrats gain power in 2028. Which is fine with me, hydrogen is the dumbest of all the proposed alternatives as … Continue reading
Posted in Hydrogen
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Can Geothermal power replace declining fossil fuels?
Preface. Today the electric grid stays up because of months of backup power from natural gas, coal, and uranium. Most of all natural gas because it can quickly balance wind and solar as they suddenly appear or die out. Natural … Continue reading
Posted in Geothermal
Tagged EGS, electricity, Enhanced Geothermal, geothermal, heat, renewable
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Telling others about peak oil and limits to growth
Preface. Obviously the planet is finite. World crude oil production peaked in 2018, and been on a plateau since 2008. Other resources, such as food, are peaking while the polycrisis depletes fisheries, forests, groundwater and more. Yet this reality is … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Limits To Growth, Peak Oil
Tagged denial, limits to growth, peak oil, population, telling others
9 Comments
Why coal was only created once
Preface. Coal only formed once on Earth over hundreds of millions of years because they had lignin and cellulose that microbes hadn’t yet evolved to consume. Eventually they did, and today termites, cows and other creatures are able to digest … Continue reading
Failed Nations
Preface. This is the Fund for Peace Fragile States Index. The “Download data in excel” column has years 2006 to 2023. In 2007, there were 17 nations, of 180, more stable than the USA, in 2023, 38 states more stable.
Posted in Collapsed & collapsing nations
Tagged collapse, Failed states
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We have a date for the zenith of civilization: 2025-2026
Source: Chart made by Gail Tverberg here showing the general pattern of secular cycles based on information given in the book Secular Cycles by Peter Turchin & Sergey Nefedov, Princeton University Press, 2009. Preface. I have no idea who wrote … Continue reading
Escape to Mars after we’ve trashed the Earth?
Preface. The idea that we can go to Mars is touted by NASA, Elon Musk, and so many others that this dream seems just around the corner. If we destroy our planet with climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, soil erosion, … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Extinction, Far Out, Hopium, Human Nature, Planetary Boundaries, Where to Be or Not to Be
Tagged biosphere, colonize, Earth, fermi paradox, Mars, radiation, space, terraform
11 Comments
Spermageddon: Sperm is declining around the world
The rate sperm concentration is falling globally from samples collected from 1972 to 2000 (orange) and since 2000 (red) Source: Davies 2022 Preface. I’ve been seeing this issue in science news for years now. Scientific data has accumulated long enough … Continue reading
Posted in Extinction, Limits To Growth
Tagged decline, extinction, sperm
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