Category Archives: 2) Overshoot

The polycrisis/overshoot, collapse of the financial system, breakdown of supply chains, blackouts, end of being able to make computer chips, and so on are symptoms of the underlying cause: peak energy and peak everything, especially peak diesel since trucks, rail, and ships make this one-time only fossil fueled civilization possible. Wind, solar, nuclear, and so on also need fossil fuels for every single step of their life cycle, so that is a dead end. It is back to before the 15th century — wood world. Whether the house of cards collapses from chokepoints in the middle east such as the Suez canal, the financial shock of a natural disaster or from debt and corruption, Export Land Model, or nuclear war — there is certain to be a series of dislocations that ultimately bring population down to 400 million (population before fossil fuels) or less (due to overshoot factors such as top soil erosion, pollution, etc) Let’s hope there are some islands of sanity and that you are living on one of them!

Collapse of Mayan civilization: drought, mercury poisoning, toxic algae

Preface. Drought is probably reason #1, but collapse is complex, I’ve seen lists of over 200 reasons for the Fall of the Roman Empire, and our own fall will have even more causes, though triggered by energy decline, since for … Continue reading

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Review of “Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads”

Preface.  This is a book review of Rundell’s “Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads”. If this book is right, things have gotten a lot better in Saudi Arabia than when my other review on Saudi Arabia was written … Continue reading

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Human sprawl and wildlife destruction: a book review of “Nature Wars”

Preface.  This is a book review of Sterba’s “Nature Wars” and our interaction with wildlife as our insanely huge population growth wipes out nature.

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Nuclear waste storage plans in the news

Preface.  With world peak oil of conventional likely to have happened in 2008 (90% of our oil) and all oil, including conventional in 2018, there’s not much time left to clean up nuclear wastes to keep future generations for the … Continue reading

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Will women be accused of witchcraft after energy descent?

Preface. This is a book review of “In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial.”  The author Chollet writes that the book won’t spend much time on witchcraft today, but explore … Continue reading

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The staggering level of corruption & kleptocracy in the world

Preface.  This is a book review of Frank Vogl’s 2021 book “The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption – Endangering Our Democracy” (well, mostly kindle notes).  They couldn’t get away with it if there weren’t so many places … Continue reading

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China is destroying itself

Preface. China has been destroying itself for many decades now.  In Mao’s “great leap forward” about 35 to 50 million are estimated to have died from starvation from 1958 on, as you’ll read in my book review of” Shapiro J … Continue reading

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The nine boundaries we must not cross or we may go extinct

Preface. This post has excerpts from the famous paper by Rockström et al (2009) as well as a more recent proposal by Running (2012) on an easier measure of how close we’re coming to rendering the planet uninhabitable. We have … Continue reading

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Hydrogen hopium: Storage

Source: Russel Rhodes (2011) Explosive Lessons in Hydrogen Safety. https://appel.nasa.gov/2011/02/02/explosive-lessons-in-hydrogen-safety/ Preface.  What is hopium? Irrational or unwarranted optimism. An addiction to false hopes. A metaphorical substance that causes people to believe in a false hope (H + opium). And Hopium … Continue reading

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Hydrogen hopium: green hydrogen from water

Additional energy consuming steps not shown: pumping water to the electrolyzer, purifying the water, compressing or liquefying to -423 F, pumping into storage container, the trucks to deliver H to stations costing $75 million each, since pipelines are super expensive … Continue reading

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