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Recent Posts
- 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
- 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
Category Archives: Books
Toasters are Toast
Preface. Thomas Thwaites’ book, “The Toaster Project” illustrates why it will be so hard, if not impossible, to bounce back from collapse in the future to anything like what we take for granted today. Thwaites set about trying to make … Continue reading
Will the Great Game be won by Cyber Attacks?
Preface. This is a book review of Joel Brenner’s “America the Vulnerable: Inside the New Threat Matrix of Digital Espionage, Crime, and Warfare”. The ransom cyber attack on the colonial pipeline forced the shutdown of a vital pipeline delivering half … Continue reading
Posted in China and War, Cyber, Cyber Attack Books, CyberAttacks, War Books
Tagged china, cyber attack, cyber war, Russia
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Book list: What to do about peak everything and limits to growth
If you search on prepping you’ll get 262 million results. That isn’t my focus, there are plenty of groups and websites devoted to that. Where best to be is important but hard to decide since initially cities might be best … Continue reading
Posted in Advice, Book List, Where to Be or Not to Be
Tagged book list, survival, what to do, where to be
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Where do we come from, who are we, and where are we going?
Preface. This is a book of review of The Social Conquest of Earth, in which E. O. Wilson answers these questions. Although tribes have invented thousands of creation myths since paleolithic times, Wilson finally has written a book explaining our … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Evolution, Natural History, Religion
Tagged evolution, religion, selection, superstition, Wilson
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Book Review: The Fall of the Roman Empire: A new history of Rome and the barbarians
Preface. Most historians see the fall of the Roman Empire as due to the invasion of barbarians from the North, partly pushed towards Italy by the brutal Huns. These lands had never been conquered by Roman armies because they were … Continue reading
Book review of “The Death of Expertise: the campaign against established knowledge and why it matters”
Preface. Those who attack experts are exactly the people who will not read this book review (well, mainly some Kindle notes) of Nichols “The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters”. They scare me, they … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Political Books, Politics
Tagged critical thinking, death of expertise, fallacies, politics
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Why the British don’t like Trump
Someone on Quora asked “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of … Continue reading
Native American enslavement
Preface. This is a book review of “The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America” by Andrés Reséndez Slavery is an important postcarbon topic because given our past history, future wood-based civilizations will certainly return to slavery, … Continue reading
A book review of “Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America“ by David J. Silverman
Preface. This is a book review of “Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America“ by David J. Silverman 2016. I found this book hard to put down. It should be read because it tells the role guns played … Continue reading
Posted in Human Nature, Military, guns, Slavery, Social Disorder, Violence, War Books
Tagged guns, Indians, Native Americans, slavery, violence, war
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Book Review of “Against the Grain. A Deep History of the Earliest States”
Preface. Energyskeptic.com is ultimately about the rise and fall of civilizations, although I didn’t know that when I first started writing this as an energy and resource blog. Our civilization too will fail as fossil fuels decline, and then we’re … Continue reading