Category Archives: Experts

experts in energy, ecology, collapse, carrying capacity, biophysical and neoclassical economics, etc.

Should America Export Oil? Senate hearings 2014-2015

Posted on April 14, 2017 by

[ There are excerpts from two senate hearings on exporting crude oil below. Much of the testimony is either from industries that will make money off of exports, or industries that will lose money because they use (cheap) oil as … Continue reading →

Posted in U.S. Congress Energy Independence | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

How are energy storage batteries coming along? U.S. House hearing 2015

Posted on April 5, 2017 by

[ My favorite quotes from this U.S. House of Representatives session: THOMAS MASSIE, KENTUCKY. I want to say this has been a very enlightening hearing, and it confirms my personal experience, which is batteries are not sexy. Buckets of acid … Continue reading →

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Energy as a weapon: Implications for U.S. policy U.S. House hearing 2006

Posted on April 2, 2017 by

[ My favorite quotes from this session: Mr. Lynch: E.F. Schumacher said in 1964: “There is no substitute for energy: the whole edifice of modern life is built upon it. Although energy can be bought and sold like any other … Continue reading →

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Tax reform & federal energy policy: incentives to promote energy efficiency. U.S. Senate hearing.

Posted on March 30, 2017 by

[ By far the best strategy to cope with energy decline is to prepare by making homes, businesses, appliances, vehicles, and so on more energy efficient.  If it turns out that renewable energy has too low an EROI to sustain … Continue reading →

Posted in Conserve Energy, U.S. Congress Energy Policy | Tagged | Comments Off on Tax reform & federal energy policy: incentives to promote energy efficiency. U.S. Senate hearing.

Gail Tverberg: Why peak coal, oil, and natural gas will all happen at the same time

Posted on March 27, 2017 by

China: Is peak coal part of its problem? by Gail Tverberg,  OurFiniteWorld.com  | Jun 20, 2016 The world’s coal resources are clearly huge. How could China, or the world in total, reach peak coal in a timeframe that makes a … Continue reading →

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Why studies come up with different Energy Returned on Invest (EROI) results: can it be fixed?

Posted on March 21, 2017 by

[ There are many issues with biofuels beyond their trivial to negative energy return on investment (EROI). In Peak Soil I point out that current industrial farming techniques are destroying topsoil about 15 times faster than pre-fossil fuel economies — … Continue reading →

Posted in Biofuels, Biomass EROI, Charles A. S. Hall | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Why studies come up with different Energy Returned on Invest (EROI) results: can it be fixed?

Murphy & Hall 2011 Adjusting the economy to the new energy realities of the second half of the age of oil

Posted on March 18, 2017 by

[ Below are excerpts from this 5 page paper, slightly rearranged, go here to see all of the text, figures, and tables.   Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation, 2015, Springer] Murphy, … Continue reading →

Posted in Charles A. S. Hall, EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested, How Much Left | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

U.S. House hearing on how to get Central Asian oil before Russia and China do, 2006

Posted on March 15, 2017 by

[ Make no mistake: one of the main focuses of the U.S. government is to keep crude oil flowing, because without oil, civilization as we know it collapses. This is because the transportation that matters most – heavy-duty diesel-engine trucks … Continue reading →

Posted in U.S. Congress Energy Dependence, U.S. Congress Energy Independence, U.S. Congress Energy Policy | Tagged , | Comments Off on U.S. House hearing on how to get Central Asian oil before Russia and China do, 2006

EROI explained and defended by Charles Hall, Pedro Prieto, and others

Posted on February 21, 2017 by

[ If you found this post interesting, the following posts are even better (more detailed and in-depth): Tilting at Windmills, Spain’s disastrous attempt to replace fossil fuels with Solar PV, Part 1 Tilting at Windmills, Spain’s disastrous attempt to replace … Continue reading →

Posted in Charles A. S. Hall, EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested, Pedro Prieto | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Failing states, collapsing systems: biophysical triggers of political violence

Posted on January 31, 2017 by

Preface. In this post I summarize the sections of Nafeez’s book about the biophysical factors that bring nations down (i.e. climate change drought & water scarcity, declining revenues after peak oil, etc.) The Media tend to focus exclusively on economic … Continue reading →

Posted in Cascading Failure, Caused by Scarce Resources, Collapse of Civilizations, Collapsed & collapsing nations, Drought & Collapse, Exports decline to ZERO, Food production, Interdependencies, Limits To Growth, Middle East, Other Experts, Over Oil, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Violence, War & Violence | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments