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Recent Posts
- The insect apocalypse will kill billions more people than climate change
- The war on drugs. A book review of “Chasing the scream”
- Peak crude oil did not happen in 2018. But we are still running out of time
- Sheriffs have too much power
- Book review “They poisoned the world: Life & death in the age of Forever Chemicals”
- John Howe on one child per woman: still too high to stay under limits to growth curves
- Ted Trainer: The radical implications of a zero growth economy
- Part 5 Raven Rock. Hidey holes for government and military officials to carry on democracy after nuclear war destroys the planet
- Become a Bison rancher
- Part 4 Raven Rock. The government abandons plans to aid the public, only the government to survive
- Prisoners are treated worse than slaves in America
- Part 3 Raven Rock. The government’s plans for after a nuclear holocaust
- Part 2 Raven Rock. The U.S. government’s plans to save civilians from nuclear war
- Legal & Illegal Immigration numbers must drop to carrying capacity
- Part 1 Intro. Raven rock: the story of the U.S. governments secret plans to save itself after a nuclear war and let the rest of us die
Category Archives: Agriculture
Book review of Wrigley’s “Energy and the English Industrial revolution”
Preface. I’ve made a strong case in my book “When trucks stop running” and this energyskeptic website that we will eventually return to wood and a 14th century lifestyle after fossil fuels are depleted. So if you’re curious about what … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Energy Books, Farming & Ranching, Life Before Oil, Limits To Growth
Tagged coal, industrial revolution, land, wood
5 Comments
Book review of Dirt: the erosion of civilization
Preface. On average civilizations collapsed after 800 to 2,000 years because they’d destroyed their topsoil, some of it caused by deforestation to grow more food, make metals, ceramics, glass and other objects requiring high heat, which fossils provide today. Today, … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Peak Food, Soil
Tagged agriculture, erosion, peak food, peak soil, soil
4 Comments
Book review of Underbug: an obsessive tale of termites and technology
Preface. I read this book mainly to find out where “grassoline” stood. Scientists thought 10 years ago that we could recreate the termite biota system of digesting biomass to create biofuels. But this appears to be far in the future … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Wood
Tagged ethanol, grassoline, superorganism, termite
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Muscle Power
Preface. Below is a review of “Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle: from Natural History Magazine. Since both my books explain why we will be returning to biomass and muscle power, here’s yet another preparation opportunity: breed horses and … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Energy Books, Life Before Oil, Muscle Power, What to do
Tagged muscle power, treadmill
3 Comments
Book review: the politics of California’s central valley levees
Preface. This is a book review of Robert Kelly’s “Battling the Inland Sea”. But it is much more than that, better than any book I know if explaining the human nature of “conservatism vs liberalism”. It drives me nuts that … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture Infrastructure, Dams, Earthquakes, Floods, Politics, Sea Level Rise
Tagged california, earthquake, flood, levee, sea level rise
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From wood to fossil fueled civilizations — the greatest tragedy mankind will ever know
Preface. These are my notes from this book about how we went from an organic sustainable economy to a temporary fossil-fueled one. It’s one of the few books I’ve found that explains what life was like before fossil fuels in … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Life Before Oil, Supply Chains
Tagged agriculture, biomass, coal, food, industrial revolution, transition, wood
5 Comments
How horses changed native cultures after 1492
[ This is a very brief overview of Peter Mitchel’s “Horse Nations”. As oil and other fossils decline, will we will almost certainly return to using more horse “muscle power” as we did in the past. Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Farming & Ranching, Muscle Power
Tagged horses, muscle power, pack animals
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Book review of “1493 Uncovering the new world Columbus Created”
[ This book will be included in the “must read” category of my giant booklist when I get around to updating it. This book isn’t just about the past, the implications reverberate into the postcarbon future. Will slavery return without … Continue reading
Posted in 2) Collapse, Agriculture, Disease, Pesticides, Soil
Tagged ecology, Famine, pesticides, potatoes, rubber, slavery
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After the harvest – protecting food from rats, mold, insects, fire, and bacteria
Preface. It’s hard enough to protect crops before a harvest. In New South Wales, Australia a plague of millions of mice has multiplied after a bumper grain harvest and eating whatever they can find. Mice can produce 500 offspring a … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Books, Farming & Ranching, Peak Food
Tagged food, grain elevator, post-harvest, storage
2 Comments
The Back to the Land Movement: why it failed and why we need to try again
[ This is my book review of “Back from the Land: how young Americans went to nature in the 1970s, and why they came back”. Some succeeded, but most failed, and there are lessons to be learned from the previous … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Books
Tagged agriculture, back to the land, energy, farms, peak oil, what to do
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