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- 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
- The staggering cost of Net Zero in Britain
- Why the R/P Reserves to Production ratio does not show when oil will run out
- Catton on Collapse “Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse”
- Book Review of Grain Brain: Extraordinary claim not backed up by evidence
- Why did everyone stop talking about Population & Immigration?
- What would happen if trucks stopped running?
- How to survive a nuclear winter
Author Archives: energyskeptic
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
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Dmitry Orlov: How Russians survived the collapse of the Soviet Union
[ A great post by Dmitry Orlov about what collapse may be like, the best strategies to survive, and why the Russian way of life and culture prepared them far better for hard times than will be the case in … Continue reading
Posted in Expert Advice, Oil shock collapse, Where to Be or Not to Be
Tagged America, collapse, orlov, Russia, survival, what to do, where to be
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When will the Alaska pipeline turn into an 800-mile-long Popsicle?
[Below are excerpts on the Alaskan pipeline from Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman. This is a great book, yet leaves so many possible rust stories uncovered, that I hope Waldman writes Rust II (or any other topic — … Continue reading
Utility, large-scale battery energy storage
Hodson, H. July 25, 2015. Power to the people. NewScientist. Demand for electricity varies every second, minute, hour, day, and season. Production is easy to provide from always-ready natural gas and coal. But as we move towards a 100% renewable … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Storage
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Robert McNally on energy at U.S. Congressional Hearings
Preface. I think it is interesting to know what Congress hears about energy from experts, and what the official U.S. energy policies are. It is frustrating that Energy Return on Invested (EROI) is never discussed, even by intelligent analysts like … Continue reading
Posted in Congressional Record U.S., Other Experts
Tagged congress, energy security, house of representatives, national security, oil, Rapidan Group, Robert McNally
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Kunstler: Potemkin Party
James Howard Kunstler. July 27, 2015. Potemkin Party. www.kunstler.com How many of you brooding on the dreadful prospect of Hillary have chanced to survey what remains of Democratic Party (cough cough) leadership in the background of Her Royal Inevitableness? Nothing … Continue reading
Posted in Other Experts
Tagged Clinton, Democrat, kunstler, Sanders
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A review of life cycle assessments on wind energy systems by Simon Davidsson 2012
[below is a very short excerpt of this 22 page paper, I was interested in how much recycling can contribute to a high EROI but there are many other important points made in this paper] Davidsson, S., Höök, M., Wall, … Continue reading
Posted in Wind EROI
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The crude oil export ban: Helpful or hurtful 2015 House hearing
House 114-22. April 14, 2015. The Crude oil export ban: Helpful or hurtful? House of Representatives. [ Excerpts from the 73-page transcript of the hearing follow ] Ted Poe, Texas. The United States is now the largest crude oil producer … Continue reading
Posted in Threats to oil supply, U.S. Congress Transportation
Tagged export oil
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