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- The Green New Deal is not a solution for the real problem: Overshoot
- A transition from fossil fuels to renewables could take a century – if it ever happens
- 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
Category Archives: Pollution
The pillaging of Native American coal, water, uranium and more
Preface. This is a book review of: “Unreal City: Las Vegas, Black Mesa, and the Fate of the West” by Judith Nies. This book is about how stealing the resources of native Americans lands was made legal, despite enormous Native … Continue reading
Posted in An Index of Best Energyskeptic Posts, Biodiversity, Coal, Energy Books, Energy Infrastructure, Global Warming, Infrastructure & Fast Crash, Mass migrations, Peak Resources, Pumped Hydro Storage (PHS), U.S. Congress Energy Policy, Water Pollution
Tagged aquifer, Black Mesa, coal, electricity, Hopi, Las Vegas, Native Americans, Navajo
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Where to be? Superfund, hazardous waste & other toxic sites in U.S.
Preface. If you’re thinking of moving to another state that is under carrying capacity, where agriculture depends on rainfall rather than irrigation, with good topsoil and other ecologically important factors in the approaching postcarbon world, also make sure you’re not … Continue reading
Posted in Chemical Pollution, Hazardous Waste, Where to Be or Not to Be
Tagged pollution, superfund, toxic wastes, wildfire
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The 10th planetary boundary: Salt
Preface. In 2009, Johan Rockström proposed that there were nine planetary boundaries we must not cross. In 2023, Richardson et al found that 6 of the 9 boundaries had been transgressed: Climate change CO2 and radiative forcing, Biosphere integrity, land … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Planetary Boundaries, Pollution, Soil
Tagged biodiversity, existential threat, salt
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Book review: Atomic Days. The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America
Preface. Plutonium for nuclear weapons was produced at the Hanford Washington site for nearly four decades. Today it is the world’s most polluted site chock-a-block with radioactive waste and toxic chemicals. Chemical pollution is one of the planetary boundaries that … Continue reading
Posted in Chemical Pollution, Disasters, Energy Books, Nuclear Waste, Pollution
Tagged accident, Bechtel, DOE, Hanford, nuclear waste, plutonium
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550,000 abandoned mines, $50 billion to clean the worst ones
Preface. Below are excerpts of a US House 2010 congressional hearing on cleaning up abandoned mines. Abandoned mines can cause soil erosion, heavy metal contamination (i.e., cyanide, lead, arsenic, mercury, uranium), and acid drainage that threatens thousands of streams and … Continue reading
Uranium waste from 50+ sites contaminating groundwater
Preface. One of the top priorities of collapse from energy decline is to clean up nuclear (Superfund and other hazardous) wastes NOW, while we have the energy and technical ability to do so. Future generations will be thrown back into … Continue reading
Posted in Chemical Pollution, Hazardous Waste, Nuclear Waste, Peak Water
Tagged groundwater, nuclear waste, uranium
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Deforestation in the news
Preface. I wrote in “Life after fossil fuels” that as energy declined, it would be hard to cut down distant forests with limited oil supplies. I thought this because even in Britain, so denuded of trees people turned to filthy … Continue reading
Posted in Deforestation, Pollution, Wood
Tagged climate change, collapse, deforestion, global warming, mercury, wildfire, wood
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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
Posted in Biodiversity, Hazardous Waste, Mining, Soil
Tagged agriculture, chairman mao, mining, soil erosion
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PFAS and other forever chemicals are an existential threat
Source: Byrd J (2022) What is PFAs in Drinking Water? Water filter Guru. Preface. PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. The compounds are ubiquitous, and linked at … Continue reading
Posted in Chemical Pollution, Chemicals, Polycrisis
Tagged Arlene Blum, BPA, flame retardant, forever chemicals, overshoot, PFA, PFAS
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