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.

1177 B.C. The year civilization collapsed

[ These are my notes that are disjointed but can give you an idea of how fast our fossil-fueled civilization could collapse.  We are far more interdependent on much longer global supply chains (a wind turbine has 8,000 parts). We … Continue reading

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Shale “fracked” natural gas peak by 2020: Mason Inman’s “Natural gas, the fracking fallacy”

[ In 2005 the U.S. was making desperate plans to build dozens of Liquefied Natural Gas plants for importing gas. Fracked gas changed that for the past 10 years, indeed, now the U.S. is talking about exporting natural gas.  But … Continue reading

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Giant Oil Field Decline Rates

Summary of article 1, Cobb’s “Aging Giant Oil Fields” 2013 The world’s 507 giant oil fields comprise a little over 1% of all oil fields, but produce 60% of current world supply Of the 331 largest fields, 261, or 79%, … Continue reading

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Gail Tverberg: Eight Pieces of Our Oil Price Predicament

Eight Pieces of Our Oil Price Predicament October 22, 2014, by Gail Tverberg A person might think that oil prices would be fairly stable. Prices would set themselves at a level that would be high enough for the majority of … Continue reading

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Will Republican “Hate Talk” be the spark of violence in the future?

Will Republican “Hate Talk” be the spark of violence in the future? by Alice Friedemann, Oct 9, 2014 As long as trucks keep delivering goods, enough food is grown and distributed, then even if times get a lot worse, I … Continue reading

Posted in Violence, Who is to Blame? | 1 Comment

Super Rust Corrodes hundreds of ships and could sink the oil industry

Blame it on super-rust, a virulent form of corrosion that has destroyed hundreds of ships and could sink the oil industry. By Richard Martin, June 2002. Wired Magazine. Key points (see the full article at http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/superrust.html): Ships that cost hundreds … Continue reading

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Out of time: 50 years to make a transition, 210 years at the current rate

If transportation is to be electrified, then electric generation and the electric grid must be doubled, or even tripled. So by Cobb’s calculation, that would push back the transition time to renewables 420 to 630 years.  Alice Friedemann. By Kurt … Continue reading

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Signs of Peakiness, oil companies are running out of cash

Andrew Nikiforuk, August 29, 2014. A big summer story you missed: Soaring oil debt. The Tyee.  Over 100 of the world’s largest energy companies are running out of cash. Photo of Keystone pipeline in Nebraska by Shannon Ramos. Creative Commons … Continue reading

Posted in Debt, Energy Markets, Peak Oil | 1 Comment

Michael Klare: Twenty-First-Century Energy Wars

Twenty-First-Century Energy Wars by Michael Klare, originally published by Tomdispatch Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ukraine, the East and South China Seas: wherever you look, the world is aflame with new or intensifying conflicts.  At first glance, these upheavals appear … Continue reading

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Increasing population + declining fossil fuels = less population

[ This essay looks at the human footprint on the planet, how it grew so large, the problems it causes, and the consequences. Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer … Continue reading

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