Category Archives: 3) Fast Crash

The case for a fast, rather than a slow one. Most societies crashed in 20 years or less. There has never been or will be again a crash like ours, where the world of 7 billion people became utterly dependent on a non-renewable source of energy — fossil fuels.

Peak Aquifers: Very little Ground water is renewable, perhaps only 1.5%

Gleeson, Tom, et al. November 2015. The global volume and distribution of modern groundwater. Nature Geoscience. The water in aquifers and wells billions of people depend upon is mostly a non-renewable resource that could run out. Underground water is renewed … Continue reading

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The Great Game and future wars over oil: Will China and the U.S. collide?

[ I don’t think we will go to war with China because it would be over before we started it — they’d start a cyberwar and take down our electric grid, and we can’t retaliate because their grid is run … Continue reading

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Will we go out with a whimper instead of a bang? Cyberwar more likely than nuclear war

Preface.  This is a book review of Clarke & Knake’s “Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About IT”. The ransom cyber attack on the colonial pipeline forced the shutdown of a vital pipeline delivering … Continue reading

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Just 16,000 catenary trucks (out of 5.6 million) would use 1% of California’s electricity generation

Preface. We must electrify trucks since fuel from oil, coal, and natural gas is finite, and biomass doesn’t scale up.  Without transportation, electricity contraptions like wind turbines, solar facilities, and nuclear power plants can’t be built. A wind turbine, for … Continue reading

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When will the Alaska pipeline turn into an 800-mile-long Popsicle?

[Below are excerpts on the Alaskan pipeline from Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman.  This is a great book, yet leaves so many possible rust stories uncovered, that I hope Waldman writes Rust II (or any other topic — … Continue reading

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Rising oil prices and dependence on hostile regimes — the urgent case for Canadian oil

Preface. Sullivan has an interesting overview of the instability in the Middle East, which could lead to an oil shock quickly along with the economic and sky-high prices that entails. He also mentions “peak oil” and its implications, a term … Continue reading

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Economic peak shale natural gas and oil from yet another bank & Wall Street scam

[ “Shale drillers companies are struggling to pay $235 billion of high-yield, high-risk debt taken on during the past 3 years of the U.S. shale boom. Shale drillers have consistently spent money faster than they’ve made it, even when oil … Continue reading

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The electric grid, critical interdependencies, vulnerabilities: U.S. House hearing 2003

Preface.  Of course, this website explains why the grid can’t stay up without fossil fuels, so by 2050 the grid will only be up in a few places, perhaps China, the Middle East, and Russia if war hasn’t brought on … Continue reading

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The difference between depletion and decline rate in oil fields

Notes from 26 page: Höök, M., Davidsson, S., Johansson, S., Tang, X. 2014. Decline and depletion rates of oil production: a comprehensive investigation. Philosophical Transactions. Series A: Mathematical, physical, and engineering science, 372 Depletion rate is the rate that the … Continue reading

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Hirsch, R.L. Mitigation of maximum world oil production: shortage scenarios

Notes from: Hirsch, R.L., 2008. Mitigation of maximum world oil production: Shortage scenarios. Energy Policy, 36(2): 881–889.  World GDP Growth & World Oil Production Growth Have Tracked For Decades:   A 1% change in current world oil production equates to … Continue reading

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