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Recent Posts
- Electrifying freight trains in the U.S. is a bad idea
- Why Nuclear Power can’t replace fossil fuels
- 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
- 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
Category Archives: Energy
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a waste of time and money, and explosive
Preface. Below are several articles about hydrogen. Today in 2019 it is still far from commercial. A massive amount of infrastructure needs to be in place before people will consider buying hydrogen fuel cell cars, and because of explosions in … Continue reading
Getting Arctic oil and natural gas will take decades or more
Preface. Only one exploratory well can be drilled in the short arctic summers, and many more need to be drilled to even find and then explore the size of a potential oil field to see if it is worth extracting. … Continue reading
Posted in Arctic
Tagged arctic oil, drilling, ice
Comments Off on Getting Arctic oil and natural gas will take decades or more
Russia has been bombarding Ukraine with fake news since 2014. Sound familiar?
Preface. Long before Russia bombarded the U.S. with fake news in the 2016 election campaign, Ukraine was the target, where Russia honed its propaganda skills. The parallels with their fake news assault on the U.S. are striking, perhaps if more … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Oil shock collapse, Politics
Tagged critical thinking, fake news, propaganda, Russia, Ukraine
2 Comments
When wood is again our main energy source, how long will it last?
Preface. Just when civilization is decades from returning to wood as the main energy source (due to peak oil in 2018), climate change is allowing invasive beetles to survive winters and kill trees, with drought and wildfires increasing the damage. … Continue reading
Posted in BioInvasion, Drought & Collapse, Nate Hagens, Where to Be or Not to Be, Wildfire, Wood
Tagged biomass, climate change, fuel, heat, wildfire, wood
Comments Off on When wood is again our main energy source, how long will it last?
Generating electricity with biomass at utility-scale in California limited to direct combustion in small 50 MW plants
Preface. It’s obviously much easier and more energy efficient to set logs on fire for heat and electricity than to turn them into ethanol. Burning biomass can’t do much to solve our energy crisis. To produce just 10% of … Continue reading
Steam powered farm tractors
Preface. Steam engines weren’t very efficient, 10 to 20% at best, which is why they went away beginning around 1920 when oil-powered engines came along. At the very best steam engines for transportation reached 10 to 20% efficiency. They were … Continue reading
Posted in Biomass-powered Steam Engines
Tagged agriculture, biomass, steam power, tractor, wood
8 Comments
Biomass charcoal to create manufacturing high heat
Preface. The following industries need heat of up 1800 to 3275 F: Chemicals, Forest products, Iron and Steel, Plastics & Rubber, Fabricated metals, Transport Equipment, Computers, electronics & equipment, Aluminum, Cement, Glass, Machinery, Foundries. For nearly all of these products, … Continue reading
Posted in Manufacturing & Industrial Heat, Peak Biofuels, Wood
Tagged biomass, charcoal, industrial heat, wood
3 Comments
Why self-driving cars may not be in your future
Preface. Below are excerpts from several articles about why a completely automated vehicle is unlikely. Heaven forbid they are invented. Researchers have found that people will drive 76% more miles, stop using bicycles and mass transit, waste a considerable amount … Continue reading
Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Automobiles
Tagged AI, artificial intelligence, automated, NASA, not ready, reaction time, self-driving, tesla
1 Comment
Vaclav Smil on natural gas (ethane) and plastics
Preface. Vaclav Smil doesn’t mention using plastic for heat, but in a letter to The Guardian, David Reed suggests: “The effort of collecting, transporting and cleaning plastics for possible recycling has largely failed, created much more pollution and contributed massively … Continue reading
Rust Power
Preface. This is yet another article with an energy generation idea that will probably never work out and become commercial. But it gives hope and dreams to ordinary people who think what a cool idea, and who will never check … Continue reading