Category Archives: Polycrisis

Google AI: A polycrisis is a single situation where multiple, distinct global crises occur simultaneously and interact in ways that amplify each other, making the overall damage significantly worse than the sum of its individual parts. Instead of dealing with isolated, sequential emergencies, a polycrisis features intersecting networks of stress across economic, geopolitical, ecological, and technological systems.
Core Characteristics
Causal Entanglement: A crisis in one system (e.g., a geopolitical conflict) directly triggers or worsens a crisis in another system (e.g., energy prices and global food supply chains).
Feedback Loops: The compounding effects bounce back and forth between systems, creating highly volatile and unpredictable domino effects.
Systemic Overwhelm: Because the crises are deeply linked, they cannot be successfully resolved one at a time, frequently paralyzing traditional governance and risk-management strategies

Population explosion to destroy 11% of remaining ecosystems and biodiversity

Posted on June 19, 2021 by

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

Posted on June 10, 2021 by

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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Reforestation for the return to biomass after fossil fuels

Posted on May 29, 2021 by

Preface. Below are excerpts from a New York Times article about forests. My book “Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy” explains why the myriad ways we use fossil fuels can’t be electrified (or hydrogenized or anything … Continue reading →

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Pentagon report: collapse within 20 years from climate change

Posted on May 23, 2021 by

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

Updates to Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy

Posted on May 14, 2021 by

Updates to “Life After Fossil Fuels” Last updated 28 April 2024. Other posts related to this book here. My book is about our many dependencies on fossil fuels, quickly depicted in these very short videos:  Life without Petroleum  A Day … Continue reading →

Posted in Biofuels, Fusion, Groundwater, How Much Left, Hydrogen, Life After Fossil Fuels, Peak Water | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Forests make the wind that carries the rain across continents

Posted on April 29, 2021 by

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 →

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We’ve wiped out two-thirds of wildlife in just 50 years

Posted on April 11, 2021 by

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 →

Posted in Biodiversity, Extinction, Food production, Scientists Warnings to Humanity | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Fragility of Microchips

Posted on February 6, 2021 by

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 An Index of Best Energyskeptic Posts, Infrastructure & Fast Crash, Interdependencies, Localization, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat, Microchips and computers, Society, Supply Chains | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

How are microchips made?

Posted on January 31, 2021 by

Preface. Computer chip fabrication plants need to run continuously for weeks to accomplish the thousands of steps needed to make microchips. A half-hour power outage at Samsung’s Pyeongtaek chip plant caused losses of over $43 million dollars (Reuters 2019). Chip … Continue reading →

Posted in Chemicals, Microchips and computers | Tagged , | 16 Comments

Livestock threatened by toxic invasive species on rangeland

Posted on January 4, 2021 by

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, BioInvasion, Farming & Ranching, Peak Food | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments