Categories
-
Recent Posts
- How concrete damages the planet by TC Fishman
- The history of rope making
- What will future societies be like after fossil fuels are gone?
- Phosphate: All hopes for food and LFP batteries rest on Morocco with up to 85% of remaining reserves
- Floating Solar Farms add plastic, metal, PFAS & cut off light and oxygen to life below
- Peak Lithium
- Trump eliminates birth control abroad
- 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
Author Archives: energyskeptic
David L. Greene, ORNL: Raise cafe standards and gas tax
Excerpt from: U.S. House. February 9, 2005. Improving the nation’s energy security: can cars and trucks be made more fuel efficient? Committee on science, House of Representatives, Serial No. 109-3. 140 pages. DAVID L. GREENE, OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY, CENTER … Continue reading
Posted in Automobiles, Congressional Record U.S., Conserve Energy, Transportation What To Do
Tagged cafe standard, energy security, gas tax
Comments Off on David L. Greene, ORNL: Raise cafe standards and gas tax
CAFE standards: 54.5 mpg cars exist, but public prefers gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks
[Passenger vehicles sold in 2025 in the United States are supposed to get 54.5 miles per gallon on average. But they won’t. It will be closer to 35.4 miles per gallon, as the Union of Concerned Scientists explains in Translating … Continue reading
Posted in Automobiles
Tagged cafe standards, china, Europe, japan, korea, mexico
Comments Off on CAFE standards: 54.5 mpg cars exist, but public prefers gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks
Tilting at Windmills, Spain’s disastrous attempt to replace fossil fuels with Solar PV, Part 1
Book review by Alice Friedemann at energyskeptic of “Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution. The Energy Return on Investment”, by Pedro Prieto and Charles A.S. Hall. 2013. Springer. Conclusion: the EROI of solar photovoltaic is only 2.45, very low despite Spain’s ideal sunny … Continue reading
The Great Game and future wars over oil: Will China and the U.S. collide?
[ I don’t think we will go to war with China because it would be over before we started it — they’d start a cyberwar and take down our electric grid, and we can’t retaliate because their grid is run … Continue reading
Posted in China and War, War & Violence
Tagged china, japan, military, peak oil, resource war, USA, war
Comments Off on The Great Game and future wars over oil: Will China and the U.S. collide?
Some of my favorite passages from H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
When walking the forest you come across all sorts of things you don’t expect. Great tracts of reindeer moss, for example: tiny stars and florets and inklings of an ancient flora growing on exhausted land. Crisp underfoot in summer, the … Continue reading
Posted in Natural History
Tagged birds, hawk, macdonald
Comments Off on Some of my favorite passages from H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
Book Review of Kleveman’s 2003 “The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia”
[I posted this book review at yahoo group energyresources back in 2004 when the average American still thought the Iraq war was about weapons of mass destruction. It is still relevant today. Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com ] Lutz Kleveman. 2003. “The … Continue reading
Posted in War Books
Tagged book review, oil, war
Comments Off on Book Review of Kleveman’s 2003 “The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia”
Rise of high-tech civilization helped by moderately cold climate, rainfall all year, navigable water ways
What follows is a review by Rembrandt Koppelaar of Christian Welzel’s 2013 book: “Freedom Rising Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation” on a private forum, followed by some comments of members of this group. The basic paradigm of the … Continue reading
Posted in Collapse of Civilizations
Tagged rise of civilization, slavery
Comments Off on Rise of high-tech civilization helped by moderately cold climate, rainfall all year, navigable water ways
Will we go out with a whimper instead of a bang? Cyberwar more likely than nuclear war
Preface. This is a book review of Clarke & Knake’s “Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About IT”. The ransom cyber attack on the colonial pipeline forced the shutdown of a vital pipeline delivering … Continue reading
Posted in Cyber, Cyber Attack Books, CyberAttacks, War
Tagged china, cyber attack, cyber war, cyberwar, infrastructure, Russia, scenario
2 Comments
Just 16,000 catenary trucks (out of 5.6 million) would use 1% of California’s electricity generation
Preface. We must electrify trucks since fuel from oil, coal, and natural gas is finite, and biomass doesn’t scale up. Without transportation, electricity contraptions like wind turbines, solar facilities, and nuclear power plants can’t be built. A wind turbine, for … Continue reading
Posted in Electric & Hydrogen trucks impossible, Trucks: Electric
Tagged battery, BEV, catenary, CNG, drayage, electric truck, electricity, transportation, trucks
2 Comments
Pedro Prieto – what life used to be like decades ago in small Spanish villages
[I’m reading James Howard Kunstler’s excellent trilogy “A World Made By Hand” now to get an idea of what life might be like post-peak when the worst of the crisis is over. Prieto’s vivid descriptions are wonderful, I wish he’d … Continue reading
Posted in Pedro Prieto
Tagged agriculture
Comments Off on Pedro Prieto – what life used to be like decades ago in small Spanish villages