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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: Infrastructure
Germany’s wind energy mess: As subsidies expire, thousands Of turbines to close
Preface. This means that the talk about renewables being so much cheaper than anything else isn’t necessarily true. If wind were profitable, more turbines would be built to replace the old ones without subsidies needed. Unless they can be dumped … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid & EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Energy Infrastructure, Wind
Tagged Energiewende, germany, recycling, subsidies, wind
8 Comments
Fresh water depletion, contamination, saltwater intrusion, & subsidence
Map of the U.S. showing cumulative groundwater depletion from 1900 through 2008 in 40 aquifers. Source: Groundwater Depletion in the United States (1900-2008), USGS Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5079. Preface. This isn’t mentioned in the subsidence paper below, but half of USA … Continue reading
Posted in Groundwater, Peak Water, Water Infrastructure, Water Pollution
Tagged aquifer, climate change, depletion, flood, groundwater, storm surge, subsidence, water
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Peak Oil, Coal and Natural gas in China
Preface. Below are excerpts from 2 articles. You may want to read Tverberg’s article here since I left out the charts and included just a few excerpts. Some key points: The world needs growing energy supply to support the world … Continue reading
Posted in EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested, Peak Coal, Peak Natural Gas, Peak Oil
Tagged china, EROEI, EROI, peak coal, peak natural gas, peak oil
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Korowicz: A study of global system collapse
Preface. I’ve extracted about half of Korowicz’s paper, left out the references, math, charts, and tables, so you might want to read the original document yourself. This is a great explanation – one of the best – of the intertwined … Continue reading
U.S. Industrial farming destroys future food production for centuries
Preface. Below are excerpts from a devastating critique of current farming practices by the National research council who show the myriad ways that industrial farming is harming the land and future food production.
Peak Cobalt
Preface. Electric vehicles use many other finite platinum group elements, precious elements, and rare earth elements. And there are many challenges batteries must overcome. In addition, the electric grid can’t stay up without utility scale energy storage of at least … Continue reading
Posted in Peak Critical Elements
Tagged battery, cobalt, critical element, peak
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Will the Navy go out with a whimper instead of a bang?
Preface. This house hearing is about the continuing decline of the Navy There are fewer and fewer ships. The remaining ships are overused, some past their normal lifespan, and under-maintained. As the U.S. descends into fascist plutocracy enabled by the … Continue reading
Posted in Infrastructure & Fast Crash, Transportation Infrastructure
Tagged fantasyland, house hearing, infrastructure, navy, ships
1 Comment
Is Peak Oil dead? Not by a long shot! Remember Ladyfern?
Preface. Oil is finite. Period. Don’t be fooled by news stories that peak oil is dead, or we have reached peak demand. They’re all nonsense. Gail Tverberg at ourfiniteworld.com is especially good at explaining this. Worse yet, what we have … Continue reading
Posted in Oil & Gas Fracked, Peak Natural Gas
Tagged fracked gas, ladyfern, shale gas, tragedy of the commons
1 Comment
Given the laws of physics, can the Tesla Semi really go 500 miles, and what will the price be?
Preface: Most people think that electric truck makers need to tell us the specs — the battery kWh, price, performance, and so on — before we can possibly know anything about their truck. But that’s simply not true. We know … Continue reading