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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
Peak soil: Industrial agriculture destroys ecosystems and civilizations: Biofuels make it worse
Preface. In 2018 I thought it was time to reorganize this post, as it grew more and more bloated and disorganized with new information. Eventually it turned into my 2021 book Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Biofuels, Biomass, Energy, Peak Biofuels, Peak Topsoil, Soil
Tagged aquifer depletion, biodiesel, biofuel, climate change, EROEI, EROI, erosion, ethanol, fertilizer, hunger, peak soil, pollution, topsoil
2 Comments
Transportation: How long can we adapt before we fall off the Net Energy Cliff?
Preface. There are too many factors besides geological depletion to predict a future timeline of collapse. Plus each region will be more or less affected by each factor, sooner or later as well. This is a unique crash – there … Continue reading
Pigeon towers to cope with peak phosphate and natural gas fertilizer?
[ Natural gas based fertilizers intensified crop production per acre up to 5-fold, yet natural gas, like phosphate, is finite. We are going to be forced to reinvent our fossil-based agriculture, why not start with pigeon towers? Beats going to … Continue reading
Water resources infrastructure deteriorating
[ Water infrastructure has inter-dependencies with other essential infrastructure, if dams or levees fail, agriculture and electric power suffer, towns and homes flooded. If ports along the ocean and inland water ways aren’t maintained and waterways dredged, the by far … Continue reading
Posted in Dams, Interdependencies, Water Infrastructure
Tagged dams, hydropower, infrastructure, levees
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Nuclear Regulatory Commission accused of putting millions of lives and trillions of dollars at risk
[ Edwin Lyman and his co-authors in Science magazine have accused the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of putting millions of American lives at risk, due to “pressure from the nuclear utilities and a Congress sympathetic to the utilities’ complaints of … Continue reading
Posted in Nuclear spent fuel fire
Tagged NRC, nuclear, nuclear regulation, nuclear safety, spent pool fire
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Theo Henckens: do we need mining quotas to prevent mineral depletion?
Preface: Ugo Bardi writes: “Currently, the problem of resource depletion is completely missing from the political debate. There has to be some reason why some problems tend to disappear from the public’s radar as they become worse. Unfortunately, the depletion … Continue reading
Posted in Mining
Tagged antimony, limits to growth, molybdenum, peak minerals, zinc
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70 million people may need emergency food in 2017
Emergency food assistance needs unprecedented as Famine threatens four countries. January 25, 2017. Famine Early Warnings systems network (fews.net) The Famine Early Warning Systems Network is a leading provider of early warning and analysis on food insecurity. Created by USAID … Continue reading
Anyone who whines about airplanes should have to take the Oregon Trail
Source: Book cover of “Oregon Or Bust: True Short Stories from the Descendants of Oregon Trail Pioneers, Prospectors, Trappers, and Settlers in the Great Northwest Hardcover” by Gentry Ward Cutsforth (2012), XLibris. Preface. Also listen to the Louis CK rant … Continue reading
Posted in Airplanes, Lithium-ion, Transportation What To Do
Tagged airplane, battery, oregon trail, transportation
3 Comments