Category Archives: Climate Change

Why carbon capture contraptions are absurd

Preface.  At the first peak oil conference in Denver (ASPO 2005), many of the other attendees speculated that renewable energy would be the last chance for Wall Street to make money before limits to growth and energy decline put a … Continue reading

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The Green New Deal is not a solution for the real problem: Overshoot

Preface.  Seibert & Rees’ paper is very important.  And also well-written, unlike the usual scientific jargon perfect for putting you to sleep at night.  It’s short too. In just 13 pages Siebert and Rees cover the most important issues we … Continue reading

Posted in Climate Change, Electric & Hydrogen trucks impossible, Limits To Growth, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat, Overpopulation, Overshoot, Peak Critical Elements, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Green New Deal is not a solution for the real problem: Overshoot

Water Theft

Preface. As fresh water supplies are depleted worldwide and water crises increase, water theft is becoming more common.  And damage to marine environments as well. It is estimated that between 30% and 50% of the global water supply is stolen … Continue reading

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Not enough fossil fuels left to trigger another mass extinction

Preface. Since both conventional and unconventional oil peaked in 2018, we clearly won’t be burning fossils at exponentially increasing rates until 2400 as the IPCC expected. Quite the opposite, currently the decline rate of oil is 8% a year, which … Continue reading

Posted in But not from climate change: Peak Fossil Fuels, CO2 and Methane, Global Warming, Mass Extinction, Planetary Boundaries, Runaway Greenhouse | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Increased flooding

Preface. It’s not just sea level rise, but increased precipitation, sinking land, hurricanes, and dam failures that will cause more floods in the future. Dams will fail more often in extreme rain as at least half are older than their … Continue reading

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Global Ice melting

Preface. As the Arctic ice melt accelerates due to climate change it could release more than 1 trillion pieces of plastic into the ocean over the next decade, possibly posing a major threat to marine life (Lewis 2014). The rate … Continue reading

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945 U.S. Superfund sites vulnerable to climate change

Preface. The energy crisis is likely to strike soon since global peak oil production was reached in November 2018 (EIA 2020). Let’s use energy to clean up these Superfund sites and nuclear waste, rather than wasting energy on wind turbines … Continue reading

Posted in Chemicals, Climate Change, Hazardous Waste | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Population explosion to destroy 11% of remaining ecosystems and biodiversity

Preface. According to a recent paper in Nature Sustainability (Williams et al 2020), we are on the verge of destroying 11% of earth’s remaining ecosystems by 2050 to grow more food. We already are using 75% of Earth’s land. What … Continue reading

Posted in Chemicals, Deforestation, Food production, Overpopulation | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Why we aren’t mining methane hydrates now — or perhaps ever

Preface. Methane hydrates are far from being commercial, and probably always will be. Scientists and companies have been trying to exploit them since the first energy crisis in 1973 to no avail. Nor are they likely to trigger a runaway … Continue reading

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Pentagon report: collapse within 20 years from climate change

Preface. The report that the article by Ahmed below is based on is: Brosig, M., et al. 2019. Implications of climate change for the U.S. Army. United States Army War College. It was written in 2019, before covid-19 and so … Continue reading

Posted in Arctic, Blackouts, Climate Change, Infrastructure & Fast Crash, Military, Over Oil | Tagged , , | 2 Comments