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Recent Posts
- Spermageddon: Sperm is declining around the world
- Thorium nuclear bombs and reactors have too many challenges
- Who Killed the Electric Car & more importantly, the Electric Truck?
- President Carter’s energy solutions 1977
- Peak Menhaden
- Hemp for paper, textiles, the war on drugs, and more
- Why towns have a hard time adding EV, solar, heat pumps
- Building a national super grid in America
- The Mayflower from the book The Barbarous Years
- Deep Sea Oil
- Book review of “Livewired. The inside story of the ever-changing brain”
- The conveyor belt may be slowing down — Yikes!
- Battery Energy storage batteries (BESS) too complex to ever be commercial
- New war and energy alliances over next resource wars
- Book review of “Siege: Trump Under fire”
Category Archives: Books
Book review of Jaczko’s “Confessions of a rogue nuclear regulator”
Preface. After presenting a lot of evidence for why nuclear power plants are inherently unsafe, Jaczko concludes: “There is only one logical answer: we must stop generating nuclear waste, and that means we must stop using nuclear power. You would … Continue reading
Book review: the stranger in the woods. The extraordinary story of the last true hermit
Preface. On March 16, 2020 it was announced that the residents of most San Francisco Bay Area counties were expected to shelter in place for a few weeks to stop the Covid-19 pandemic. Three weeks? You can do it, Christopher … Continue reading
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 “The Soul of an Octopus”
Preface. The octopus is an amazing creature, more than can be conveyed in the bits and pieces I’ve selected below. The only downside to reading it is that you may not want to eat octopus anymore! 2018: A team of … Continue reading
Book review of Bryce’s “Power hungry: the myths of green energy and the real fuels of the future”
Preface. This is a book review of: Robert Bryce. 2009. Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future. This is a brilliant book, very funny at times, a great way to sharpen your critical … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Books, Other Experts
Tagged electric car, electricity, green energy, power density, wind
9 Comments
Book review of Heinberg’s “Afterburn: society beyond fossil fuels”
Preface. This book has 15 essays Heinberg wrote from 2011 to 2014, many of them available for free online. These are some of my Kindle notes of parts that interested me, so to you it will be disjointed and perhaps … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Books, Peak Oil, Richard Heinberg
Tagged heinberg, localization, peak oil
9 Comments
Why and how Jellyfish are taking over the world
Preface. The more climate change kicks in, the more we over-fish, pollute, acidify and warm the ocean, create vast dead zones, and trawl ocean bottoms, the better the jellyfish do. It is quite possible that the ocean ecosystem will shift … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Extinction Books, Fisheries, Jellyfish, Peak Food
Tagged extinction, jellyfish, peak fish
4 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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