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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
Peak soil: Industrial agriculture destroys ecosystems and civilizations: Biofuels make it worse
Preface. In 2018 I thought it was time to reorganize this post, as it grew more and more bloated and disorganized with new information. Eventually it turned into my 2021 book Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Biofuels, Biomass, Energy, Peak Biofuels, Peak Topsoil, Soil
Tagged aquifer depletion, biodiesel, biofuel, climate change, EROEI, EROI, erosion, ethanol, fertilizer, hunger, peak soil, pollution, topsoil
2 Comments
Responding to arctic oil spills
Preface. It is nuts to put oil rigs in an area with such vast amounts of ice on the move, and all the additional dangers listed below. No wonder there’s little to no drilling. It’s too expensive to keep oil … Continue reading
How reasonable are oil production scenarios from public agencies?
So far both the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and International Energy Agency (IEA) are on target in their predictions. In 2014 (the last year for which there is data), world production of crude oil and lease condensate was 77.833 … Continue reading
Posted in How Much Left, Peak Oil
Tagged EIA, how much oil left, IEA, peak oil
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No, we’re not going to make ethanol out of CO2 and stop global warming
Preface. In the article below Robert Rapier debunks the research paper proposing to convert CO2 into ethanol. The researchers were honest and said “that the process is unlikely to be economically viable.” But the press spun it into a major … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, Biomass EROI, Critical Thinking, Far Out, Other Experts
Tagged critical thinking, EROEI, ethanol
2 Comments
Richard Heinberg: Will the US really be a major energy exporter?
[ I read this the day it was published (January 16, 2017) at resilience.org here, but thought it would be interesting to post in the future to see if the EIA predictions were as optimistic as Heinberg and Hughes thought … Continue reading
Posted in How Much Left, Natural Gas, Oil & Gas Fracked, Richard Heinberg
Tagged fracked, heinberg, natural gas, oil
3 Comments
Wind and solar need natural gas to balance intermittent, variable, and seasonal power
Preface. The highest wind states are getting more and more dependent on natural gas to balance wind and solar as they live and die. Yet conventional natural gas in the U.S. has peaked (half of our national gas, and declining … Continue reading
Posted in Natural Gas, Solar, Wind
Tagged energy storage, intermittent, natural gas, solar, wind
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The effects of Middle East events on U.S. Energy markets
[ Of note from this U.S. House 2011 hearing: John Hofmeister, former President of Shell Oil. Matt Simmons, who passed away this past summer, used to speak of the Straits of Hormuz as, we live one day away from an … Continue reading
Posted in Chokepoints, Threats to oil supply, U.S. Congress Energy Policy
Tagged oil chokepoint
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Minerals: Natural gas from Ugo Bardi’s “Extracted”
Preface. This is just a small sampling of what Bardi thinks might happen post fossil fuels, mostly shortened and reworded. Here are 7 other posts from this great book: Mining: Waste, Pollution, Destruction Ugo Bardi predictions of the future Minerals … Continue reading
Posted in EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested, Oil & Gas Fracked
Tagged EROEI, EROI, fracked gas, shale gas, shale oil, tight gas, tight oil
1 Comment