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

U.S. Senate 2006 hearing on energy independence

[This is one of the most important hearings on U.S. Energy Policy I’ve read so far.  The title should have been Energy Dependence though. Senator Lieberman has many important points to make, too long to excerpt in this introduction, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Limits To Growth, U.S. Congress Energy Dependence, U.S. Congress Energy Policy | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

We’ll all be Flint Michigan someday: U.S. water infrastructure is falling apart

NRC. 2006. Drinking Water Distribution Systems: Assessing and Reducing Risks Committee on Public Water Supply Distribution Systems: Assessing and Reducing Risks.  National Research Council, National Academies Press. [ According to this Free National Research Council report, most water systems and … Continue reading →

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Peak Aquifers: Very little Ground water is renewable, perhaps only 1.5%

Gleeson, Tom, et al. November 2015. The global volume and distribution of modern groundwater. Nature Geoscience. The water in aquifers and wells billions of people depend upon is mostly a non-renewable resource that could run out. Underground water is renewed … Continue reading →

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The Great Game and future wars over oil: Will China and the U.S. collide?

[ I don’t think we will go to war with China because it would be over before we started it — they’d start a cyberwar and take down our electric grid, and we can’t retaliate because their grid is run … Continue reading →

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Energy generation water consumption

[ Notice how much water biofuels use, especially soybeans for biodiesel Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer] Notes from “Working Document of the NPC Future Transportation Fuels Study. Topic … Continue reading →

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Climate-water impacts on electricity sector capacity expansion NREL 2014

NREL. 2014. Modeling climate-water impacts on electricity sector capacity expansion. To be presented at the ASME 2014 Power Conference Baltimore, Maryland July 28–31, 2014. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. 12 pages. Excerpts follow: ABSTRACT Climate change has the potential to exacerbate … Continue reading →

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Peak fossil fuels limits climate change to low-to-medium outcomes in IPCC report

Excerpts from 24 page:  Höök, M., Tang, X. 2013. Depletion of fossil fuels and anthropogenic climate change: a review. Energy Policy, 52: 797-809 Conclusion of paper: Fossil fuel constraints will limit anthropogenic climate impact towards the low-medium outcomes presented by … Continue reading →

Posted in ! PEAK EVERYTHING, But not from climate change: Peak Fossil Fuels, Climate Change, Supply Chains, Transportation | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Peak fossil fuels limits climate change to low-to-medium outcomes in IPCC report

Livestock diseases, Science Mag Review of “Arresting Contagion”

Science 17 April 2015: Vol. 348 no. 6232 p. 294 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa7672 The fever on the farm Arresting Contagion Science, Policy, and Conflicts over Animal Disease Control Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode Harvard University Press, 2015. 477 pp. … Continue reading →

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Richard Heinberg: Only less will do

Richard Heinberg. March 16, 2015. Only Less Will Do. Post Carbon Institute. [portions of this article were cut, reworded, and rearranged] Almost nobody likes to hear about the role of scale in our global environmental crisis, because if growth is … Continue reading →

Posted in Birth Control, By People, Climate Change, Overpopulation, Richard Heinberg | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Tuberculosis

The fear is that a fast-spreading, anti-biotic resistant strain will spread via mutation or bioterrorism. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that two billion people — one third of the world’s population — are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. 25 January … Continue reading →

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