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Recent Posts
- 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?
- What would happen if trucks stopped running?
- How to survive a nuclear winter
- The insect apocalypse will kill billions more people than climate change
- The war on drugs. A book review of “Chasing the scream”
- Peak crude oil did not happen in 2018. But we are running out of time
- Sheriffs have too much power
- Book review “They poisoned the world: Life & death in the age of Forever Chemicals”
- John Howe on one child per woman: still too high to stay under limits to growth curves
- Ted Trainer: The radical implications of a zero growth economy
- Part 5 Raven Rock. Hidey holes for government and military officials to carry on democracy after nuclear war destroys the planet
Category Archives: Energy
Solar panels in the Sahara could cause global warming
Preface. Adding tens of thousands of square miles of solar panels to replace fossil fuels could cause climate change and heat up the planet. Of course this is a fantasy, dust storms would scour the panels rendering them useless, with … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Heat, Photovoltaic Solar
Tagged climate change, energy, global warming, solar PV
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Will Artificial Intelligence destroy us?
Preface. When it comes to artificial intelligence, most articles assume it will happen, so discussions range around when and how it will happen. Often speculation that a general AI may use its ability to find patterns in data will allow … Continue reading
Bill Gates on why Electric Airplanes won’t fly
Preface. I wonder if Bill Gates has read my book “When Trucks Stop Running”? As he says in the article below: “The renaissance of electrification that we’re seeing in passenger vehicles unfortunately won’t likely adapted to heavier forms of transportation … Continue reading
Concentrated Solar Power is unreliable, full of glitches, & has a low energy return
Preface. Concentrating solar power (CSP) projects usually sprawl in a circle over several square miles and can cost over a billion dollars. They use mirrors and lenses to capture the high temperatures needed to efficiently produce or store electricity. Almost … Continue reading
Posted in Concentrated Solar Power, Solar EROI
Tagged capacity factor, concentrated solar power, CSP, EROI
2 Comments
Largest oil spill on earth: Plastics
Preface. There have been thousands of articles since I published this back in 2003. Today I read a surprising study that claims glass is more harmful than plastic because it is mined from rare materials and requires more fossil fuels … Continue reading
Dust Bowls
Preface. As if there weren’t enough to worry about, more Great Dust Bowls may be on the way. The irony is that some of it will likely be due to planting corn and soybeans to produce biofuels, yet another reason … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, Drought & Collapse
Tagged agriculture, drought, dust bowl, food shortage
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The Texas electric grid outage
Preface. In February of 2021, millions of Texans and Mexicans lost electric power in a hard freeze. Oxer (2021) on the March 2 Power Hungry podcast, said that if the Texas grid had blacked out, it would have taken until … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Grid instability, Pedro Prieto
Tagged electric grid, Prieto, stability, wind
2 Comments
Biocoal from food waste and sewage
Preface. This probably doesn’t have a net energy gain because of the energy to move waste and sewage to a common facility, and then transport these wastes from numerous places to the factory where biomass is converted to coal using … Continue reading
Wanted: Math geniuses and power engineers to make a renewable grid possible
Figure 1. OPF solution of original seven-bus system with generator at bus 4 Preface. The U.S. electric grid produced 64% of electricity in 2019 with finite fossil fuels, and another 20% from nuclear power. Since fossil fuels and uranium are … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid & EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Grid instability, Renewable Integration, Smart Grid
Tagged electric grid, electricity, math, renewable integration, solar, stability, wind
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Material and other limits to scaling wind up to 24 GW by 2050
Preface. Here are just a few of the many important points made in this excellent paper: Research showing no constraints on the materials needed to build wind turbines “dismiss potential physical constraints and issues with natural resource supply, and do … Continue reading