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Recent Posts
- The history of rope making
- What will future societies be like after fossil fuels are gone?
- Phosphate: All hopes for food and LFP batteries rest on Morocco with up to 85% of remaining reserves
- Floating Solar Farms add plastic, metal, PFAS & cut off light and oxygen to life below
- Peak Lithium
- Trump eliminates birth control abroad
- In a world without people, how long would NYC last?
- Network States to replace democratic governments with billionaire Silicon Valley CEO dictators & Republicans
- Why the kerogen in oil shale will never fill up your tank
- ‘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
Category Archives: Infrastructure
“More and More and More” one of the best books on energy ever written
Preface. This is about Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s book “More and More and More”, an amazing history of energy and explanation of why there never has been an energy transition or will be. We just keep burning more and more and more … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Books, Interdependencies
Tagged coal, Fressoz, history of energy, More and More and more, natural gas, oil, wood
1 Comment
What would happen if trucks stopped running?
Preface. In “Why You Should Love Trucks” I showed that essential supply chains depend on trucks nearly completely. Because of little inventory and dependence on just-in-time deliveries, our civilization would almost immediately feel the repercussions of trucks stopping. In fact, … Continue reading
Posted in Cascading Failure, Dependence on Oil, Electric & Hydrogen trucks impossible, Infrastructure & Fast Crash, Oil Shocks, Transportation Infrastructure, Transportation Supply chain, Trucks, When Trucks Stop Running
Tagged civilization, electric trucks, life without lorries, trucks, trucks stop running
2 Comments
Book review “They poisoned the world: Life & death in the age of Forever Chemicals”
Preface. This is a book review of Blake’s 2025 They Poisoned the World: Life & Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals. This is a history of how the existential threat of PFAs and other forever chemicals came to be. … Continue reading
Posted in Chemical Pollution, Extinction Books, Health, Planetary Boundaries, Pollution
Tagged 3M, cancer, DuPont, forever chemical, PFAS, planetary boundary, TFA, Trump
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Will California’s high-speed rail go off the tracks?
Preface. Way down below is the original post, a 2014 U.S. House hearing I summarized that revealed so many flaws with the California high-speed rail project I was sure funding would end. It is so bad, so flawed, that in … Continue reading
Vaclav Smil on why there will be no energy transition
Preface. This post has excerpts from energy expert Vaclav Smil‘s 2024 free paper “Halfway between Kyoto and 2050“. Smil’s book is free, here. Below is a shortened, reworded article from Scientific American in 2014 written by Smil on this topic … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Energy Books, Mining, Vaclav Smil
Tagged carbon capture, climate change, coal, energy transition, natural gas, oil, wind
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Book review of 2024 Scheyder “The War Below”
Preface. This post has excerpts from Scheyder’s 2024 “The War Below” about the metals and minerals renewables will need – over 6 times more than fossil fueled internal combustion vehicles, natural gas and coal plants, and nuclear power (IEA 2021). … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Books, Mining
Tagged antimony, cobalt, copper, lithium, mining, rare earth, tailings dams
1 Comment