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Recent Posts
- ‘The oil we eat’. Following the food chain back to iraq
- Vanishing open spaces: population growth and sprawl in America
- Admiral Rickover 1957: Energy Resources & Our Future
- The Green New Deal is not a solution for the real problem: Overshoot
- A transition from fossil fuels to renewables could take a century – if it ever happens
- 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
Category Archives: Energy
Aside
Preface. After seeing the film “The Power of Community: How Cuba survived Peak Oil” in 2006, I thought about how those lessons might apply to California, which grows about a third of U.S. food. Much of what follows in the … Continue reading
Refrigeration uses up to 30% of world electricity
Preface. This is a book review of Twilley’s 2024 book Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves. It is a really great book, highly recommended. Refrigeration plays a much larger role in our lives than people realize. … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid, Energy Books
Tagged agriculture, air-conditioning, climate change, cold chain, electricity, peak food, refrigeration
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Trump & Project 2025 want to destroy energy efficiency & raise your utility bills
Source: (NYT 2017, LBL 2025) The Department of energy (DOE) under Chris Wright is proposing to get rid of energy efficiency standards that have saved consumers over 1.5 trillion dollars (CFA 2017). The average American home saves $321 a year … Continue reading
Posted in Demand Reduction, Electric Grid & EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Politics
Tagged art rosenfeld, electricity, energy efficiency, project 2025
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NIMBY Hydrogen production
Preface. Now that Trump has slashed the hydrogen budget this is not an issue, but perhaps will be again if Democrats gain power in 2028. Which is fine with me, hydrogen is the dumbest of all the proposed alternatives as … Continue reading
Posted in Hydrogen
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Telling others about peak oil and limits to growth
Preface. Obviously the planet is finite. World crude oil production peaked in 2018, and been on a plateau since 2008. Other resources, such as food, are peaking while the polycrisis depletes fisheries, forests, groundwater and more. Yet this reality is … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Limits To Growth, Peak Oil
Tagged denial, limits to growth, peak oil, population, telling others
9 Comments
Why coal was only created once
Preface. Coal only formed once on Earth over hundreds of millions of years because they had lignin and cellulose that microbes hadn’t yet evolved to consume. Eventually they did, and today termites, cows and other creatures are able to digest … Continue reading
Escape to Mars after we’ve trashed the Earth?
Preface. 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, … 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, fermi paradox, Mars, radiation, space, terraform
11 Comments
Why towns have a hard time adding EV, solar, heat pumps
Preface. This article from IEEE does a good job of explaining how and why it is incredibly expensive for cities to cope with with L2 chargers, EV, solar, and heat pumps by zeroing in on Palo Alto, where there are … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid & EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Electric Vehicles
Tagged electric grid, EV, heat pump, solar, transformer
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Building a national super grid in America
Preface. Renewables are not evenly distributed. Just 10 states have 80% of hydropower (Homeland Security 2011), 10 states produce 75% of wind power (EIA 2017), and 10 states produce 79% of solar power (CE 2020). With a national grid, instead … Continue reading
The deep sea is a desperate place to drill for more
Preface. Peak crude oil is on a plateau that is likely to peak soon, but when it happens we won’t be out of oil, just halfway through. Giant fields continue to be found, but in the deep ocean or arctic … Continue reading