Category Archives: ! PEAK EVERYTHING

Food, topsoil, aquifers, phosphorus, rare metals essential to microchip fabrication, windmills, solar, and other products; sand; oil; natural gas

Peak Gold

Preface.  Both articles below offer the usual techno-optimism of more gold supplies from Man’s Cleverness: robots, AI, and Big and Smart Data Mining. But both are energy blind. Ores are decreasing in gold concentrations, and found in deeper and more … Continue reading

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Book Review “The Outlawed Ocean” by Ian Urbina

Note: Peak fish happened in 1996 at 130 million tonnes a year. Pauly D, Zeller D (2016) Catch reconstructions reveal that global marine fisheries catches are higher than reported and declining. Nature communications. Preface. This is a book review of … Continue reading

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The Green New Deal is not a solution for the real problem: Overshoot

Preface.  Seibert & Rees’ paper is very important.  And also well-written, unlike the usual scientific jargon perfect for putting you to sleep at night.  It’s short too. In just 13 pages Siebert and Rees cover the most important issues we … Continue reading

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Water Theft

Preface. As fresh water supplies are depleted worldwide and water crises increase, water theft is becoming more common.  And damage to marine environments as well. It is estimated that between 30% and 50% of the global water supply is stolen … Continue reading

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Aquifer decline in California

Preface. On top of aquifer depletion, water shortages in California are also expected in the future as rainfall and snowfall decline and snow melts earlier. Over half of Americans rely on underground aquifers for drinking water (Glennon 2002). Seventy percent … Continue reading

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Soil salinity and erosion

Preface.  Civilizations fail when their soils are ruined or eroded.  One way conquerors made sure that those they enslaved during wars was to salt their land and burn their homes so they had nowhere to escape to. Erosion is an … Continue reading

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The Nitrogen Bomb: fossil-fueled fertilizers keep billions of us alive

Preface. There are two articles below that explain why natural gas fertilizers are keeping at least 4 billion of us alive today.  If you’re interested in this topic, here are a few more to read: Erisman JW, Sutton MA, Galloway … Continue reading

Posted in Farming & Ranching, Life After Fossil Fuels, Natural Gas, Overpopulation, Peak Food | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Energy abundance depends entirely on the RATE of energy flow

Preface. Below are excerpts from two articles on why the FLOW RATE of oil is what matters for our fossil-fueled civilization. It’s like how, when filling up a bathtub, you want to turn the faucet on as high as it … Continue reading

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Biogas from cow manure is not a solution for the energy crisis

Preface. Smil’s article about biogas sums up why it won’t contribute to energy shortages as fossils decline. Biogass doesn’t scale and is easy to muck up. Hayes (2015) also makes this case, pointing out that even if every ounce of … Continue reading

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A Century from Now Concrete Will be Nothing But Rubble

Photo: road abandoned since 1984 in the Florida Keys Preface. Much of the material that follows is based on Robert Courland’s 2011 book Concrete Planet, which explains why concrete is an essential part of our infrastructure. And it’s all falling … Continue reading

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