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Recent Posts
- Peak Menhaden
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- 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
- New war and energy alliances over next resource wars
- Book review of “Siege: Trump Under fire”
- Why do people vote for Trump?
- Book review of “Pandemic Politics: The Deadly Toll of Partisanship in the Age of COVID”
- The evolution of the Republican party from 1960 to 2024: from moderate democracy to extreme authoritarianism
- Why some people are conservative and others liberal
Category Archives: Biomass EROI
Do you want to eat, drink, or fly?
Preface. In this post the New York Times writes about renewable airplane fuel from corn ethanol, and questions whether there is enough water and a few other problems. First I’m going to summarize their issues with this, and then follow … Continue reading
Posted in Airplanes, Biofuels, Biomass EROI, Groundwater, Peak Water
Tagged aquifer, aviation fuel, corn, EROI, ethanol
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Biogas from cow manure is not a solution for the energy crisis
Preface. Smil’s article about biogas sums up why it won’t contribute to energy shortages as fossils decline. Biogass doesn’t scale and is easy to muck up. Hayes (2015) also makes this case, pointing out that even if every ounce of … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, Biomass EROI, Peak Biofuels, Pollution
Tagged bacteria, biofuel, biogas, cow manure, EROI, pollution
2 Comments
No, we’re not going to make ethanol out of CO2 and stop global warming
Preface. In the article below Robert Rapier debunks the research paper proposing to convert CO2 into ethanol. The researchers were honest and said “that the process is unlikely to be economically viable.” But the press spun it into a major … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, Biomass EROI, Critical Thinking, Far Out, Other Experts
Tagged critical thinking, EROEI, ethanol
2 Comments
Why studies come up with different Energy Returned on Invest (EROI) results: can it be fixed?
[ There are many issues with biofuels beyond their trivial to negative energy return on investment (EROI). In Peak Soil I point out that current industrial farming techniques are destroying topsoil about 15 times faster than pre-fossil fuel economies — … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, Biomass EROI, Charles A. S. Hall
Tagged biomass, EROEI, EROI, ethanol
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Germany National Academy of Sciences report: Don’t use biofuels
Preface. This German study explains why biomass doesn’t scale up to make biofuels, whether from algae, cellulose, or plants, as well as why trying to do so would harm the environment. Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Women in ecology author of 2021 … Continue reading
Posted in Algae, Biofuels, Biomass, Biomass EROI, Wood
Tagged algae, biodiesel, biofuel, environment, ethanol
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