Categories
-
Recent Posts
- 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
- The staggering cost of Net Zero in Britain
- 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
- Why did everyone stop talking about Population & Immigration?
Category Archives: Alternative Energy
What are rare earth metals and how are they used?
Preface. After oil, the main feature of new products will be drastic simplification. The re-use of existing stuff. Lack of precision machine tools as they rust away. Back to basics: wood, iron, and clay. Yet every high-tech object depends on … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Mining, Peak Rare Earth Elements
Tagged gallium, indium, mining, rare earth, solar
Comments Off on What are rare earth metals and how are they used?
The Invisible oiliness of everything
Preface. Even a simple object like a pencil takes hundreds of actions and objects requiring fossil energy to do and make. Not electricity. This is on of many reasons why wind, solar, or other contraption that make electricity can’t replace … Continue reading
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