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Recent Posts
- 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
- 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: Dependence on Oil
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
Robert Rapier: Oil demand is growing, not shrinking. There is no peak oil demand in sight.
[ Yes, this article was published 10 months ago, but with all the attention to fake news today, I thought it would be worthwhile pointing out that peak demand is propaganda, not based on facts. Since the goal of fake … Continue reading
Posted in Dependence on Oil, Electric Vehicles, Other Experts, Peak Oil, Transportation
Tagged electric cars, peak demand, peak oil
1 Comment
What would happen if trucks stopped running?
Preface. In “Why You Should Love Trucks” I showed that essential supply chains depend on trucks nearly completely. Because of little inventory and dependence on just-in-time deliveries, our civilization would almost immediately feel the repercussions of trucks stopping. In fact, … Continue reading
Posted in Cascading Failure, Dependence on Oil, Electric & Hydrogen trucks impossible, Infrastructure & Fast Crash, Oil Shocks, Transportation Infrastructure, Transportation Supply chain, Trucks, When Trucks Stop Running
Tagged civilization, electric trucks, life without lorries, trucks, trucks stop running
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Former President Carter on U.S. energy security & policy now and in the past
[Former President Carter and General Wald both say the American public need to be better informed about the energy crisis to motivate them to stop buying gas-guzzling vehicles, since that’s … Continue reading
Posted in Congressional Record U.S., Dependence on Oil, Energy Policy & Politicians, President Jimmy Carter
Tagged energy crisis, energy security, history, jimmy carter
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Admiral Rickover 1957: Energy Resources & Our Future
Preface. I’ve shortened and reworded this speech. All of Admiral Rickover’s speech is prescient and important, a few paragraphs: “We live in what historians may some day call the Fossil Fuel Age. Today coal, oil, and natural gas supply 93% … Continue reading
Conservation? Maybe not: Jevon’s Paradox & the Rebound Effect
Conservation? Maybe not: Jevon’s Paradox & the Rebound Effect by Alice Friedemann, October 7, 2014 The rebound effect makes it much more difficult to solve our energy problems, because the full energy savings aren’t realized, and the energy savings can … Continue reading
Posted in Conserve Energy, Dependence on Oil, Net Energy Cliff
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