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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
Book review of “Livewired. The inside story of the ever-changing brain”
Preface. This book conveys a sense of wonderment and awe about our brains work and how we become who we are. I think if you read the excerpts below you will understand why Artificial Intelligence will probably never come close … Continue reading
Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Evolution
Tagged artificial intelligence, brain, neurons
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Net Energy Cliff & the Collapse of Civilization
figure 1. The remaining oil is poor quality, and the energy to get this often remote oil so great that more and more energy (blue) goes into oil production itself, leaving far less — the grey area — available to … Continue reading
Giant oil field decline rates, peak oil, & reserves
Preface. Of the roughly 47,500 oil fields in the world, 507 of them, about 1%, are giant oil fields holding nearly two-thirds of all the oil that has ever been, or ever will be produced, with the largest 100 giants, … Continue reading
Posted in Flow Rate, How Much Left, Peak Oil
Tagged deline rates, depletion, giant oil fields, land, non-opec, offshore, OPEC, peak oil
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Hydrogen. The dumbest renewable
Preface. This post originally appeared in Skeptic Magazine in 2008 as “The Hydrogen Economy. Savior of Humanity or an Economic Black Hole?” I’ve updated it quite a bit since then. Hydrogen is the stupidest, most ridiculous, and most impossible energy … Continue reading
Fill ‘er up with kelp?
Preface. Here are just a few of the dozens of reasons why seaweed can’t make a dent in energy supplies: A negative return on investment like corn ethanol No commercial biofuels are being made from it. Kelp is mainly used … Continue reading
Posted in Biomass, Energy, Peak Biofuels, Seaweed
Tagged EROEI, ethanol, kelp, macro-algae, macroalgae, nuclear war, peak biofuels, seaweed
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European Power plants are burning American forests
Preface. More than half of Europe’s “green” energy comes from burning wood, a lot of it imported from America. Now Denmark would like to import methanol made from pinyon pines and junipers from hundreds of thousands of acres in the … Continue reading
Posted in CO2 and Methane, Deforestation, Wood
Tagged biomass, burning, coal, deforestation, electricity, methanol, pinyon-juniper, wood
4 Comments
Permafrost & lack of gravel will limit arctic natural gas, oil, and coal extraction
Preface. For many people, it’s comforting to know that about 25% of remaining oil and gas reserves (we have the know-how and economics to get it) and resources (beyond our technical and/or monetary capability) are in the arctic. They assume … Continue reading
Posted in Arctic, EROEI remaining oil too low, How Much Left, Peak Natural Gas, Peak Oil, Reserves Lower than stated, Roads, Transportation Infrastructure
Tagged coal, natural gas, oil, permafrost, reserves
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The pillaging of Native American coal, water, uranium and more
Preface. This is a book review of: “Unreal City: Las Vegas, Black Mesa, and the Fate of the West” by Judith Nies. This book is about how stealing the resources of native Americans lands was made legal, despite enormous Native … Continue reading
Posted in An Index of Best Energyskeptic Posts, Biodiversity, Coal, Energy Books, Energy Infrastructure, Global Warming, Infrastructure & Fast Crash, Mass migrations, Peak Resources, Pumped Hydro Storage (PHS), U.S. Congress Energy Policy, Water Pollution
Tagged aquifer, Black Mesa, coal, electricity, Hopi, Las Vegas, Native Americans, Navajo
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Oil choke points vulnerable to war, chaos, terrorism, accidents, & piracy
Source: Ballout, D. 2013. Choke Points: Our energy access points. Oil Change. Preface. Below are several articles I’ve collected since 2005 on oil chokepoints. If oil tanker traffic were stopped on one or more, much of the world would plunge … Continue reading
Posted in Chokepoints, Oil & Gas, Oil Shocks, Threats to oil supply
Tagged abqaiq, chokepoint, Ras Tanura, strait
6 Comments
Wood, the fuel of preindustrial societies, is half of EU renewable energy
Preface: By far the largest renewable energy resource used in Europe is wood. In its various forms, from sticks to pellets to sawdust, wood (or to use its fashionable name, biomass) accounts forhalf of Europe’s renewable-energy consumption. Although Finland is … Continue reading