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Recent Posts
- 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
- 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 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
Category Archives: Books
Book: John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”
Preface. This contains excerpts from John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”. It’s one of my favorite books about natural resources, exploring the role wood has played in the rise and fall of civilizations since they … Continue reading
Book review of “White Trash. The 400-year untold history of class in America”
Preface. This book makes the case that the poor arrived 500 years ago when America was first settled, and most of them never rose to the middle or upper classes because “land was the principal source of wealth, and those … Continue reading
Posted in Distribution of Wealth, Financial, Politics, Poverty
Tagged distribution of wealth, poverty, white trash
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Book review of Hillbilly Elegy and why hillbillies voted for Trump
Source: David Horsey / Los Angeles Times Preface. I bought “Hillbilly Elegy: A memoir of a family and culture in crisis” because I’d like to understand why anyone would vote for Donald Trump. Before the election, it was well-known that … Continue reading
Posted in (Auto)biography, Human Nature, Politics
Tagged book review, hillbilly elegy, Republican, Trump
1 Comment
Fantasyland Part 1. How America Went Haywire. A 500-Year History.
Preface. This a review of the “Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. A 500-Year History”. If you want to understand what’s wrong with America, and be highly entertained at the same time, this is the book for you, one of my … Continue reading
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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Lab Girl by Hope Jahren (excerpts)
Preface. Here are some excerpts to give you a taste of how delightful and well written this book is, hope it inspires young women to go into science. And something good to read when the grid goes down… Warning: these … Continue reading
Booklist: Agriculture
Preface. Industrial agriculture is destroying topsoil, aquifers, and biodiversity with land use changes, heavy equipment, and pesticides — which only work for 5 years on average (see Dyer’s “Chasing the Red Queen” below), and scientists are running out of new … Continue reading
Posted in Book List
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