Category Archives: 1) Decline

Decline will be death by a thousand cuts as too many problems occur and overwhelm societies ability to fix them (i.e. Tainter’s “complexity”). Already our infrastructure (oil and gas pipelines, electric grid, roads, bridges, etc) has a Report Card of D from the American Society of Civil Engineers. All 18 components of essential infrastructure, from the electric grid to the financial system are vulnerable to cyber-attack, The end of growth means bankruptcy for cities, pensions, families, and businesses, and no credit for energy companies to borrow for new projects to obtain oil, coal, and natural gas, the real drivers of the economy (just try putting dollar bills in your gas tank)

Reforestation can cause rivers to disappear

Preface. We’ll need a lot of forests in the future when wood once again becomes our may source of energy and infrastructure as it was before fossil fuels. But care needs to be taken on where trees are planted. Alice … Continue reading

Posted in Deforestation, Farming & Ranching, Wood | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Think covid-19 is bad? The tuberculosis pandemic is still killing millions

Preface.  These are my kindle notes from “The Plague and I” by Betty MacDonald.  Her great sense of humor, beautiful writing, and finding out what it would have been like to be in a Tuberculosis (TB) sanitarium in 1937 are … Continue reading

Posted in Health, Pandemic Fast Crash, Pandemics | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Nuclear winter could kill 2 to 5 billion people

Preface. Carl Sagan introduced the idea of a “nuclear winter”, which helped to end the cold war.  The smoke from fires started by bombs would absorb so much sun the earth wold grow cold, dry, and dark, killing plants on … Continue reading

Posted in Extinction, Farming & Ranching, Fisheries, Nuclear War, Nuclear Winter | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Heavy-duty hydrogen fuel cell trucks a waste of energy and money

Preface. There are 3 articles that I summarize below: ARB. November 2015. Medium- and heavy-duty fuel cell electric vehicles. Air Resources Board, California Environmental Protection Agency. NRC. 2003. Energy and Transportation: Challenges for the Chemical Sciences in the 21st Century. … Continue reading

Posted in Batteries, Electric & Hydrogen trucks impossible, Hydrogen, Trucks: Electric | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

A billion new autos by 2030 will kill climate change

Preface. The article below argues that electric cars aren’t going to replace gas and diesel vehicles enough to lessen greenhouse emissions. The average electric vehicle requires 30 kilowatt-hours to travel 100 miles — the same amount of electricity an average … Continue reading

Posted in Automobiles, Climate Change | 13 Comments

Super heavy trucks ruin roads

Preface. I’m writing a book now which concludes that only biomass and biofuels can replace diesel and other fossil fuels.  But 3 billion people are expected to arrive by 2050, consuming a good chunk of the biomass, plus it will … Continue reading

Posted in Roads, Trucks | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Climate change impacts on agriculture

Preface. There are three articles below on this topic.  Plus these articles in the news: Nakagawa T et al (2021) The spatio-temporal structure of the Lateglacial to early Holocene transition reconstructed from the pollen record of Lake Suigetsu and its … Continue reading

Posted in BioInvasion, Drought & Collapse, Extreme Weather, Food production, Heat, Peak Topsoil, Soil, Water, Where to Be or Not to Be | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Climate change impacts on agriculture

Nuclear powered airplanes, cars, and tanks

Preface. If trucks, tractors, ships, locomotives, and airplanes can’t run on electricity or the electric grid stay up without natural gas to balance wind & solar (see When Trucks Stop Running), if cement and steel and other products requiring the … Continue reading

Posted in Airplanes, Automobiles, Far Out, Nuclear Power Energy | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Oil consumption of containerships

Preface.  Since 90% of international goods move by ships, I was curious about how much fuel they burned.  It’s a lot: The very large container ship CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin above, which can carry 18,000 20-foot containers, carries approximately 4.5 … Continue reading

Posted in Electrification, Ships and Barges | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Life before Cars: When Pedestrians Ruled the Streets

Preface.  The past is future after fossil fuels, but minus the horses for a while, since before cars they required about a sixth of U.S. farmland for their feed.  My grandfather, Francis J. Pettijohn, used to fondly reminisce about how … Continue reading

Posted in Automobiles, Transportation What To Do | Tagged | 1 Comment