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Recent Posts
- 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
- Why Nuclear Power can’t replace fossil fuels
Category Archives: Society
What will future societies be like after fossil fuels are gone?
Preface. I was writing about how deadly and brutal wars are today, nuclear bombs, and all the mafia totalitarian and gangster states like Russia and Mexico, Ecuador, various African states that make the lives of their people miserable and getting … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Vaclav Smil, War
Tagged agriculture, civlization, energy, food, smil, war
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In a world without people, how long would NYC last?
Preface. The best book I have read on this topic of how fast the world would recover is Alan Weisman’s “World Without Us.” But this article from Popular Science is a god summary of what to expect. And since NYC … Continue reading
Posted in Infrastructure & Collapse
Tagged cities, collapse, infrastructure
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Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
Preface. Almost all environmental stories in the media are about greenhouse gases. Yet there are dozens of others in the meta/polycrisis and existential boundaries (Rockström 2009). Overpopulation is the driver, but the severity and magnitude is made possible by fossil … Continue reading
Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
Preface. This is another “Scientists Warnings to Humanity” by many famous scientists, including Paul & Anne Erlich, John Harte, Peter Raven, and Mathis Wackernagel. Some of the challenges they point to are loss of biodiversity and consequent 6th mass extinction, … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Extinction, Overshoot, Scientists, Scientists Warnings to Humanity
Tagged biodiversity, overpopulation
5 Comments
The staggering destruction of knowledge by Christians in the Roman Empire
Preface. Ever since reading Gibbons “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” I’ve been fascinated by the complexity of reasons for why the Roman Empire fell. But so many books and writings were lost that much remains unknown. Mainly … Continue reading
Posted in Preservation of Knowledge, Roman Empire
Tagged book burning, Christianity, collapse, preservation of knowledge, roman empire
1 Comment
Book Review of Grain Brain: Extraordinary claim not backed up by evidence
This is my book review of David Perlmutter’s (2013) Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar–Your Brain’s Silent Killers. At the New York Times, this book was the #1 best seller in the Dining list and #9 … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Farming & Ranching
Tagged critical thinking, diet, Dr Oz, grain, MAHA, quackery
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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
How to survive a nuclear winter
Preface. New Zealand and other countries in the southern hemisphere are expected to be safer since they are far from nuclear targets. But they would still experience extreme temperature drops and less sunlight, though less than the Northern hemisphere. Still, there … Continue reading
Posted in Nuclear War, Where to Be or Not to Be
Tagged nuclear war, nuclear winter, survival
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The insect apocalypse will kill billions more people than climate change
Preface. Below are excerpts from two articles on why and how the extinction of insects could lead to our own extinction and many other species. Although climate change is more deadly now, an insect apocalypse will kill far more … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Extinction, Scientists Warnings to Humanity
Tagged biodiversity, climate change, extinction, insects, pollinators
6 Comments
The war on drugs. A book review of “Chasing the scream”
Preface. The founder of the War on Drugs in the U.S., Harry Anslinger, wanted to build as large a bureaucracy as possible. But a war on narcotics alone—cocaine and heroin, outlawed in 1914—wasn’t enough. They were used only by a … Continue reading
Posted in Corruption, Drug wars and the prison system
Tagged anslinger, cocaine, corruption, drug wars, heroin, marijuana, prison system, prohibition
4 Comments