Category Archives: Energy

the posts in this category used to be in “Energy in A Nutshell” at my former web site.

Risks of cyber attack on Infrastructure

Posted on June 5, 2023 by

Delacourt TP (2022) Cyberattacks on Critical Infrastructure as the New WMD. Homeland Security. Preface. What follows are several articles on how cyber attacks could harm our infrastructure across at least 16 systems we depend on.  Although it is the decline … Continue reading →

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Infrastructure interdependencies: an attack on one is an attack on all

Posted on May 29, 2023 by

An Attack on Energy Infrastructure would affect all other Infrastructure I should consolidate my many posts on cyber attacks, EMPs, and other ways the electric grid could come down, but our dependencies are just so widespread that I don’t want … Continue reading →

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Why biofuels can not scale up to replace petroleum

Posted on May 22, 2023 by

Preface. This is my favorite paper on why we can’t replace crude oil with biofuels.  Of course, oil is a biofuel. But alas, not renewable, since it took over 100 million years to make them. Every year we burn fossil … Continue reading →

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Skyscrapers: A bad idea as energy declines

Posted on May 8, 2023 by

Preface. One reason Paris is such a lovely city is that it was built to human scale, with buildings of five stories or less, because that was about as high as people were willing to climb, so not surprisingly, rents … Continue reading →

Posted in Blackouts, Blackouts Electric Grid, Concrete, Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Infrastructure & Collapse, Infrastructure & Fast Crash, North Korea | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Skyscrapers: A bad idea as energy declines

Review of Lights out: the electricity crisis, the global economy, and what it means to you

Posted on April 3, 2023 by

Preface. My books and energyskeptic.com explain why the electric grid can’t stay up.  This is a book review of Makansi’s “Lights out: the electricity crisis, the global economy, and what it means to you”. He explains why the grid is … Continue reading →

Posted in Alternative Energy, Blackouts Electric Grid, Books, Electric Grid, Electricity Infrastructure, Energy Books | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Deforestation in the news

Posted on March 5, 2023 by

Preface. I wrote in “Life after fossil fuels” that as energy declined, it would be hard to cut down distant forests with limited oil supplies.  I thought this because even in Britain, so denuded of trees people turned to filthy … Continue reading →

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Review of “Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads”

Posted on February 26, 2023 by

Preface.  This is a book review of Rundell’s “Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads”. If this book is right, things have gotten a lot better in Saudi Arabia than when my other review on Saudi Arabia was written … Continue reading →

Posted in Middle East, Peak Oil, Peak Resources, Threats to oil supply | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Nuclear waste storage plans in the news

Posted on January 23, 2023 by

Preface.  With world peak oil of conventional likely to have happened in 2008 (90% of our oil) and all oil, including conventional in 2018, there’s not much time left to clean up nuclear wastes to keep future generations for the … Continue reading →

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Horses will be essential to wars in the future

Posted on January 2, 2023 by

Source: De Decker K (2008) Bring back the horses. Low-Tech Magazine. Preface. Horses will not only play a key role in agriculture in the future after oil decline, they’ll replace the dozens of kinds of trucks that exist today, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Muscle Power | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Nuclear Waste Disposal and Peak Oil

Posted on December 22, 2022 by

Preface. One the greatest tragedies of energy decline will be the nuclear waste left to harm thousands of future generation for hundreds of thousands of years. We owe it to them to clean up our mess while we still have … Continue reading →

Posted in Nuclear Waste | Tagged , , , , , , | 17 Comments