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- New war and energy alliances over next resource wars
- Book review of “Siege: Trump Under fire”
- Why do people vote for Trump?
- Book review of “Pandemic Politics: The Deadly Toll of Partisanship in the Age of COVID”
- The evolution of the Republican party from 1960 to 2024: from moderate democracy to extreme authoritarianism
- Why some people are conservative and others liberal
- Book review: Bring the War Home: The white power movement & paramilitary America
- Book review: How Democracies Die
- Book Review “Conservatives without Conscience” by John Dean
- Book review of “The Power Worshippers. Inside the dangerous rise of religious nationalism”
- Fox news estranges millions of families and instills hate and fear in its cult members
- Book review of “Deer Hunting with Jesus” Best book on why people vote for Trump
- Population growth creates climate crisis, says environmental scientist
- Book review of “Democracy in Chains”, the history of how extremist Republicans stealthily stole our Democracy
- Net Energy Cliff & the Collapse of Civilization
Category Archives: Manufacturing & Industrial Heat
Not enough rare metals to scale up solar power
Preface. Sunshine may be free, but the materials to make solar contraptions sure aren’t. Since sunshine arrives in a diluted form, vast expanses of solar photovoltaic panels will be needed to produce the world’s 24,000 Terawatt hours of electrical … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Mining, Peak Critical Elements, Peak Rare Earth Elements, Photovoltaic Solar, Recycle, Recycling
Tagged gallium, indium, photovoltaic, PV, rare earth, Ruthenium, solar, tellurium
5 Comments
What are rare earth metals and how are they used?
Preface. After oil, the main feature of new products will be drastic simplification. The re-use of existing stuff. Lack of precision machine tools as they rust away. Back to basics: wood, iron, and clay. Yet every high-tech object depends on … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Mining, Peak Rare Earth Elements
Tagged gallium, indium, mining, rare earth, solar
Comments Off on What are rare earth metals and how are they used?
Toasters are Toast
Preface. Thomas Thwaites’ book, “The Toaster Project” illustrates why it will be so hard, if not impossible, to bounce back from collapse in the future to anything like what we take for granted today. Thwaites set about trying to make … Continue reading
The Fragility of Microchips
Preface. This is an introduction to how microchips are made to give you an idea of how difficult and amazing they are. This is a very high-level overview gathered mostly from the textbooks of Quirk (2001) and Van Zant (2004). … Continue reading
Posted in 2) Collapse, An Index of Best Energyskeptic Posts, Infrastructure & Fast Crash, Interdependencies, Localization, Manufacturing & Industrial Heat, Microchips and computers, Supply Chains
Tagged collapse, computer chip, fragility, microprocessor, precision, preservation of knowledge
8 Comments
How are microchips made?
Preface. Computer chip fabrication plants need to run continuously for weeks to accomplish the thousands of steps needed to make microchips. A half-hour power outage at Samsung’s Pyeongtaek chip plant caused losses of over $43 million dollars (Reuters 2019). Chip … Continue reading
Motherboards: too complicated to make after oil
Preface. The wood-based world of the future simply won’t have the energy and minerals required not just to make electronic devices, but the precision machine tools to make them. As diesel fuel grows scarce and the economy fails, supply chains … Continue reading
Posted in Microchips and computers
Tagged computer, computer chip, high-tech, motherboard
3 Comments
Many steps using fossil fuels to make cans & potato chips
Preface. I am gobsmacked by how much energy goes into making beverage cans and potato chips, look at all the steps, each one using energy! Why haven’t we run of oil yet? Especially when you look at everything else out … Continue reading