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Recent Posts
- Telling others about peak oil and limits to growth
- Why coal was only created once
- Failed State Index: nations ranked from failed to stable
- 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
- The deep sea is a desperate place to drill for more
Category Archives: Far Out
Escape to Mars after we’ve trashed the Earth?
The idea that we can go to Mars is touted by NASA, Elon Musk, and so many others that this dream seems just around the corner. If we destroy our planet with climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, soil erosion, aquifer … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Extinction, Far Out, Hopium, Human Nature, Planetary Boundaries, Where to Be or Not to Be
Tagged biosphere, colonize, Earth, Mars, radiation, space, terraform
11 Comments
Far out #7: Ammonia power & recycle wind turbines by eating them
Preface. This optimistic article is honest enough to say that the new process of not emitting NOx when using ammonia for energy is a long way from commercial viability, and has myriad hurdles. This is not the most promising way … Continue reading
Posted in Far Out, Hydrogen, Natural Gas, Peak Platinum Group Elements, Recycle, Recycling
Tagged ammonia, fiberglass, hydrogen, natural gas, platinum group, recycle, Ruthenium, skeptic, wind turbine
1 Comment
The orbiting solar power fantasy
Preface. This 2020 article “Solar Power Beamed Down To Earth From Space Moves Forward” will leave you all warm, fuzzy, and unworried about the future. The Scientists Will Come Up With Something. But that’s because you know little to nothing … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Critical Thinking, Far Out, Orbiting Solar
Tagged far out, orbiting solar, solar power
2 Comments
Far Out power #6: Stale beer, crayfish shells, and burning metal powder
Preface. Unfortunately, turning beer into biogas requires a pandemic so that it isn’t drunk at pubs instead. Scientists assure us there will be more pandemics as we mow down (rain)forests for shopping malls and come into contact with new viruses, … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, Far Out
Tagged beer, biogas, renewable power
Comments Off on Far Out power #6: Stale beer, crayfish shells, and burning metal powder
Far Out #4: Power out of thin air, power out of freezing air, & Fruit power
Preface. To get power out of thin air after oil, the 90% of people who have had to go back to farming are going to be making protein nanowires from microbes in the chicken coop in their spare time. Scaling … Continue reading
Far out #3: Sugar power
Preface. No, you object, sugar in the gas tank will destroy the engine. Not true. Snopes.com says that won’t happen because sugar doesn’t dissolve in automotive fuel or caramelize, and so it does not turn into the debilitating gunk this … Continue reading
Far out #5 (satire): Biofuels made from the victims of climate change, potato power, founding fathers spinning in graves
Preface. The “breakthroughs” you read about in batteries, hydrogen, and other so-called renewables are just as unlikely to happen Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and … Continue reading
Far out power #2: Soap, Raindrops, Hyperloops, and Fitness Centers
Preface. Anything goes at a time when the energy crisis hasn’t even hit. Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan … Continue reading
Nuclear powered airplanes, cars, and tanks
Preface. If trucks, tractors, ships, locomotives, and airplanes can’t run on electricity or the electric grid stay up without natural gas to balance wind & solar (see When Trucks Stop Running), if cement and steel and other products requiring the … Continue reading
Posted in Airplanes, Automobiles, Far Out, Nuclear Power Energy
Tagged airplane, car, nuclear
4 Comments
Far out power #1: human fat, playgrounds, solar wind towers, perpetual motion, thermal depolymerization
Preface. Plans for hydrogen, wind, solar, wave and all the other re-buildable contraptions that use fossil fuels in every single step of their short 15-25 year life cycle and hence are non-renewable, are just as silly as the ideas below, … Continue reading