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- Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
- Excerpt from “The Geopolitics of Resource Wars”
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- 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
- 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?
Category Archives: Energy
Steam engines. Exergy power. and work in the US
Preface. At some point of fossil fuel decline future generations will be tempted to build steam engines again, and perhaps just as in America initially they’ll use wood to fuel the engines, since coal will be scarce at some point … Continue reading
60 minutes promotes biomass scam
Preface. Hey 60 minutes, do some fact checking first. Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, … Continue reading
What on earth is exergy?
Preface. This is one of the best explanations of exergy I’ve been able to find. This paper makes the case that exergy ought to be considered by just about every industry and government to achieve greater energy efficiency, and makes … Continue reading
Posted in Exergy
2 Comments
Solar PV requires too much land to replace fossils
Preface. This is a brief summary of the Capellan-Perez paper that calculates the land needed to use solar to replace electricity as well as the land needed if solar were to replace all of societies use of energy (i.e. transportation, … Continue reading
India wants to build dangerous fast breeder reactors
Preface. India was planning to build six fast breeder reactors in 2016, but now in 2018, they’ve reduced the number to 2. This is despite the high cost, instability, danger, and accidents of the 16 previous world-wide attempts that have … Continue reading
Germany’s wind energy mess: As subsidies expire, thousands Of turbines to close
Preface. This means that the talk about renewables being so much cheaper than anything else isn’t necessarily true. If wind were profitable, more turbines would be built to replace the old ones without subsidies needed. Unless they can be dumped … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid & EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Energy Infrastructure, Wind
Tagged Energiewende, germany, recycling, subsidies, wind
8 Comments
Book review of Vaclav Smil’s “Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects”
Preface. In my extract of the 178 pages in the book below, Smil explains why renewables can’t possibly replace fossil fuels, and appears to be exasperated that people believe this can be done when he writes “Common expectations of energy … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Energy Books, Vaclav Smil
Tagged biofuels, coal, energy, geothermal, hydropower, kinetic, LNG, muscle power, nuclear, solar, vaclav smil, wind
13 Comments
Why tar sands, a toxic ecosystem-destroying asphalt, can’t fill in for declining conventional oil
This is a book review of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent by Andrew Nikiforuk. Many “energy experts” have said that a Manhattan tar sands project could prevent oil decline in the future. But that’s not … Continue reading
Book: John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”
Preface. This contains excerpts from John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”. It’s one of my favorite books about natural resources, exploring the role wood has played in the rise and fall of civilizations since they … Continue reading