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Recent Posts
- 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
- 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
Category Archives: 2) Overshoot
Book review of Mikhail’s “The beekeeper: rescuing the stolen women of Iraq”
Preface. This is a gruesome post you may want to skip. My main interest in this book was what will happen to the hundreds of millions forced to flee in the future because of the crash of civilization as oil … Continue reading
Posted in Collapse of Civilizations, Mass migrations, Middle East, Refugee Camps, Social Disorder, Terrorism
Tagged collapse, Iraq, refugees
8 Comments
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
The global threat of invasive species to marine biodiversity
Preface. Although I consider peak oil to be the largest threat, since all other resources and economic activities depend on it, we’re faced with a convergence of hundreds of other problems enabled by fossil fuels, which caused the the huge … Continue reading
Concrete: the most destructive material on Earth
Preface. Some of the points I found most alarming or interesting: After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on Earth. Concrete is a thirsty behemoth, sucking up almost a 10th of the world’s industrial water use. This often … Continue reading
Civilizations last just 336 years on average
Preface. I stopped trying to find out why each civilization failed because it’s not always clear and historians bicker over it, so I was glad to run across this article that attempts to summarize this broad topic. It’s clear drought, … Continue reading
Part 1. How long do civilizations last?
This is most, but not all of Kemp’s BBC article, which you ought to read in its entirety at the link in the title below. I disagree with him when he says that: “The collapse of our civilization is not … Continue reading
Hydropower dams and the ways they destroy the environment
Preface. Hydropower comprises 71% of renewable energy worldwide. Nations like the U.S. and Europe have dams that have reached the end of their lifespan — more are being torn down than built. In the U.S. 546 dams were removed between … Continue reading
Posted in CO2 and Methane, Dams, Hydropower
Tagged biodiversity, china, environment, hydropower, Three Gorges dam
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California’s central valley aquifers may be gone in 2030s, Ogallala 2050-2070
Preface. Clearly the human population isn’t going to reach 10 billion or more. California grows one-third of the nation’s food, the 10 high-plains states over the Ogallala about a quarter of the nations food, and exports a great deal of … Continue reading
Posted in Groundwater, Peak Water, Water Infrastructure
Tagged aquifer, california, depletion, groundwater, Ogallala, peak water
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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