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Recent Posts
- “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
- 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
Category Archives: 2) Overshoot
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 climate change, collapse, military
2 Comments
Life After Fossil Fuels: manufacturing will be less precise
Preface. This is a book review and excerpts of Winchester’s “The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers created the modern world”. The book describes how the industrial revolution was made possible with ever more precision. First came the steam engine, possible to … Continue reading
Posted in Infrastructure & Collapse, Jobs and Skills, Life After Fossil Fuels, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat
Tagged cannons, guns, machine tools, manufacturing, precision, steam engine
Comments Off on Life After Fossil Fuels: manufacturing will be less precise
Forests make the wind that carries the rain across continents
Preface. This is a controversial theory that if true, “could help explain why, despite their distance from the oceans, the remote interiors of forested continents receive as much rain as the coasts—and why the interiors of unforested continents tend to … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Deforestation
Tagged climate change, deforestation, rain, wind
Comments Off on Forests make the wind that carries the rain across continents
We’ve wiped out two-thirds of wildlife in just 50 years
Last updated 2022-4-28 Preface. Human over-consumption is driving extinction far more than climate change. Humans began reducing biodiversity 4 million years ago, when large carnivores in Africa began disappearing (Faurby, S., et al. 2020. Brain expansion in early hominins predicts … Continue reading
Slavery in the Roman Empire
Preface. After fossils decline, we go back to wood as our main thermal source of energy for cooking, heating, smelting metals, ceramics, bricks, glass and other products that need the high heat of wood charcoal. Sadly, another source of energy … Continue reading
Kurt Andersen: “Evil Geniuses” & wealth
Preface. This is a well-written book with original insights into the economic, cultural, and politics behind how we got to a right-wing wannabe fascist incredibly unfair distribution of wealth. But Andersen is unaware that energy, not money, is the basis … Continue reading
Even Pencils will be hard to make
Preface. Most of us are unaware of how complex our society is, how things are made, how food is grown, how stuff is delivered, and the people, energy, transportation, and kinds and sources of materials in every day objects. This … Continue reading
Posted in EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested, Localization, Supply Chains
Tagged collapse, EROEI, manufacturing, peak oil, pencil
2 Comments
The Fragility of Microchips
Preface. This is an introduction to how microchips are made to give you an idea of how difficult and amazing they are. This is a very high-level overview gathered mostly from the textbooks of Quirk (2001) and Van Zant (2004). … Continue reading
Posted in 2) Overshoot, An Index of Best Energyskeptic Posts, Infrastructure & Fast Crash, Interdependencies, Localization, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat, Microchips and computers, Supply Chains
Tagged collapse, computer chip, fragility, microprocessor, precision, preservation of knowledge
8 Comments
Livestock threatened by toxic invasive species on rangeland
Preface. Will cattle, sheep,goats, and horses have to be raised on feed lots in the future to prevent range land poisoning from invasive plants? Each year poisonous plants adversely affect 3-5% of the cattle, sheep, and horses that graze western … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity Loss, BioInvasion, Farming & Ranching, Peak Food
Tagged biodiversity loss, Bioinvasion, invasive species, plants
4 Comments