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Recent Posts
- We already have a date for the zenith of civilization: 2025-2026
- Escape to Mars after we’ve trashed the Earth?
- Spermageddon: Sperm is declining around the world
- Thorium nuclear bombs and reactors have too many challenges
- Who Killed the Electric Car & more importantly, the Electric Truck?
- President Carter’s energy solutions 1977
- Peak Menhaden
- Hemp for paper, textiles, the war on drugs, and more
- Why towns have a hard time adding EV, solar, heat pumps
- Building a national super grid in America
- The Mayflower from the book The Barbarous Years
- Deep Sea Oil
- Book review of “Livewired. The inside story of the ever-changing brain”
- The conveyor belt may be slowing down — Yikes!
- Battery Energy storage batteries (BESS) too complex to ever be commercial
Category Archives: Alternative Energy
Movie review of Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans”
Preface. This documentary was made by Jeff Gibbs, a writer and environmentalist, with Michael Moore as the executive producer. This movie is worth watching, and an entertaining and quick way to understand why rebuildable “renewables” are neither green or a … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Biomass, Coal, Natural Gas, Solar, Wind
Tagged green power, Michael Moore, Planet of the Humans, renewables, solar, wind
15 Comments
Fossil-fueled industrial heat hard to impossible to replace with renewables
Preface. Cement, steel, glass, bricks, ceramics, chemicals, and much more depend on fossil-fueled high heat (up to 3200 F) to make. Except for the electric-arc furnace to recycle existing steel, there aren’t any renewable ways to make cement, other metals, … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat
Tagged electricity, heat, hydrogen, manufacturing
2 Comments
Foreign Policy: The limits of clean energy
Preface. This article appeared in the magazine Foreign Policy. Some key points: Renewables to power the world would require 34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc, 162 million tons of aluminum, … Continue reading
Germany’s renewable energy program, Energiewende, is a big, expensive failure
Preface. After reading this post, or better yet the original 44-page document, you’ll understand why the Green New Deal isn’t working out despite being crazy expensive. The goal of Energiewende was to make Germany independent of fossil fuels. But it … Continue reading
Hydropower can’t help with the energy crisis
Preface. When fossil fuels are gone, there aren’t many ways to balance the unreliable, intermittent, and often absent for weeks at a time power from wind and solar. Biofuels and burning biomass is one solution, it’s dispatchable and can kick … Continue reading
High-Tech can’t last: limited essential elements with limited lifespans
There are 17 rare earth elements in the periodic table. About nine of those elements go into every iPhone sold… and if China were suddenly to disappear from a map tomorrow, Apple would lose about 90% of those elements. Source: … Continue reading
Vaclav Smil: from wood to coal to oil, energy transitions take a long time
Preface. This post has a shortened, reworded, and heavily commented on article from Scientific American in 2014. You can also see two much longer articles about energy transitions by Smil from n 2008 and 2010 here: A transition from fossil … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Coal, Dependence on Oil, Energy Infrastructure, Vaclav Smil
Tagged coal, gas, oil, renewables, solar, transition, vaclav smil, wind, wood
1 Comment
Book review of Vaclav Smil’s “Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects”
Preface. In my extract of the 178 pages in the book below, Smil explains why renewables can’t possibly replace fossil fuels, and appears to be exasperated that people believe this can be done when he writes “Common expectations of energy … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Energy Books, Vaclav Smil
Tagged biofuels, coal, energy, geothermal, hydropower, kinetic, LNG, muscle power, nuclear, solar, vaclav smil, wind
13 Comments