Categories
-
Recent Posts
- Electrifying freight trains in the U.S. is a bad idea
- Why Nuclear Power can’t replace fossil fuels
- Energy, Water, & Climate Change are interdependent
- Why fusion power is Forever Away
- Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
- Excerpt from “The Geopolitics of Resource Wars”
- Homes & Buildings
- 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
- 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
Category Archives: Polycrisis
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
Posted in Pandemics
Comments Off on Tuberculosis
Syrian conflict due to climate change drought
Fountain, H. March 2, 2015. Researchers Link Syrian Conflict to a Drought Made Worse by Climate Change. New York Times. Drawing one of the strongest links yet between global warming and human conflict, researchers said Monday that an extreme drought … Continue reading
Posted in Drought, Drought & Collapse, Syria
Tagged Africa, climate change, collapse, drought, Syria
Comments Off on Syrian conflict due to climate change drought
Wind turbines hit limits to growth before 50% wind power penetration
Material requirements of 50% wind power in the USA hit limits to growth Also see: Davidsson, S., et al. 2014. Growth curves and sustained commissioning modelling of renewable energy Investigating resource constraints for wind energy. Energy Policy. Fizaine, F., et … Continue reading
Posted in Electrification, Limits To Growth, Renewable Integration, Wind
Tagged cement, concrete, copper, dysprosium, expoxy, fiberglass, iron, limits to growth, neodymium, steel, turbines, wind
2 Comments
Michael Webber on Energy + Water + Food interdependency
Webber, Michael E. February 2015. Our future rides on our ability to integrate Energy + Water + Food. Scientific American. Michael E. Webber is deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. His Yale University … Continue reading
Posted in Drought & Collapse, Interdependencies, Limits To Growth
Tagged drought, energy, food, interdependencies, limits to growth, water
Comments Off on Michael Webber on Energy + Water + Food interdependency
Homeland Security and Dept of Energy: Dams and Energy Sectors Interdependency Study
[Below are excerpts from this 45 page document. Dams not only provide power but also water for agriculture, drinking water, cooling water for thermal power plants, ecosystem health, fisheries, and so on. All dams have a finite lifespan of 50 … Continue reading
Posted in Dams, Energy Production, Interdependencies
Tagged dams, hydropower, infrastructure, interdependency
Comments Off on Homeland Security and Dept of Energy: Dams and Energy Sectors Interdependency Study
Over 21 essential resources have peaked including fish, milk, eggs, wheat, corn, rice, soy
Nature summary of this article: “The rates at which humans consume multiple resources such as food and wood peaked at roughly the same time, around 2006. This means that resources could be simultaneously depleted, so achieving sustainability might be more … Continue reading
Posted in Limits To Growth, Peak Food
Tagged food, limits to growth, overpopulation, peak
2 Comments
Limits to Growth
Preface. What follows are a bunch of articles on limits to growth, sometimes just a link, sometimes excerpts. Today Wall Street Journal and other neocapitalists scorn the idea, insisting that human ingenuity and substitution can overcome all obstacles, and they … Continue reading
1177 B.C. The year civilization collapsed
[ These are my notes that are disjointed but can give you an idea of how fast our fossil-fueled civilization could collapse. We are far more interdependent on much longer global supply chains (a wind turbine has 8,000 parts). We … Continue reading
Posted in Cascading Failure, Collapse of Civilizations, Collapsed & collapsing nations, Drought & Collapse, Interdependencies, Supply Chains
Tagged 1177, collapse, complexity, interdependence, supply chains
Comments Off on 1177 B.C. The year civilization collapsed
Naomi Oreskes on “The Collapse of Western Civilization”
A Chronicler of Warnings Denied: Naomi Oreskes Imagines the Future History of Climate Change By Claudia Dreifus, Oct 27, 2014, New York Times “I get from the scientific community a feeling that things are going from bad to worse. I … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Scientists, Scientists Warnings to Humanity
Tagged climate change, collapse, free market, merchants of doubt oreskes, prevent regulation
Comments Off on Naomi Oreskes on “The Collapse of Western Civilization”
Sandra Postel: Wildfires in the Western U.S. Threaten Drinking Water
Sandra Postel. May 1, 2014. Wildfires in the Western U.S. Are on the Rise, Posing Threats to Drinking Water When the Las Conchas Fire scorched some 151,000 acres of northern New Mexico in 2011, it wasn’t just the direct fire damage that … Continue reading
Posted in Wildfire
Comments Off on Sandra Postel: Wildfires in the Western U.S. Threaten Drinking Water