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Recent Posts
- We already have a date for the zenith of civilization: 2025-2026
- Escape to Mars after we’ve trashed the Earth?
- Spermageddon: Sperm is declining around the world
- Thorium nuclear bombs and reactors have too many challenges
- Who Killed the Electric Car & more importantly, the Electric Truck?
- President Carter’s energy solutions 1977
- Peak Menhaden
- Hemp for paper, textiles, the war on drugs, and more
- Why towns have a hard time adding EV, solar, heat pumps
- Building a national super grid in America
- The Mayflower from the book The Barbarous Years
- Deep Sea Oil
- Book review of “Livewired. The inside story of the ever-changing brain”
- The conveyor belt may be slowing down — Yikes!
- Battery Energy storage batteries (BESS) too complex to ever be commercial
Category Archives: What to do
Book review: the stranger in the woods. The extraordinary story of the last true hermit
Preface. On March 16, 2020 it was announced that the residents of most San Francisco Bay Area counties were expected to shelter in place for a few weeks to stop the Covid-19 pandemic. Three weeks? You can do it, Christopher … Continue reading
Replacing diesel tractors with horses or oxen – what will that be like?
Preface. Since fossil fuels are finite, at some point increasing numbers of farmers with diesel vehicles and equipment will want to replace them with horses, which can do the work of six people. Below is what energy expert Vaclav Smil … Continue reading
Posted in Farming & Ranching, Life Before Oil, Muscle Power, Peak Food, Vaclav Smil
Tagged agriculture, horsepower, muscle power, oxen
1 Comment
Using manure for fertilizer in the future – it won’t be easy
Preface. At John Jeavons Biointensive workshop back in 2003, I learned that phosphorous is limited and mostly being lost to oceans and other waterways after exiting sewage treatment plants. He said it can be dangerous to use human manure without … Continue reading
Posted in Life Before Oil, Soil, Waste, Water Pollution
Tagged eutrophication, excrement, fertilizer, manure, phosphorus, sewage, water
8 Comments
Book review of Wrigley’s “Energy and the English Industrial revolution”
Preface. I’ve made a strong case in my book “When trucks stop running” and this energyskeptic website that we will eventually return to wood and a 14th century lifestyle after fossil fuels are depleted. So if you’re curious about what … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Energy Books, Farming & Ranching, Life Before Oil, Limits To Growth
Tagged coal, industrial revolution, land, wood
5 Comments
From Horsepower to Horse Power. When Trucks stop, Horses start.
Preface. Before the industrial revolution there were only four sources of mechanical power of any economic significance. They were human labor, animal labor, water power (near flowing streams) and wind power. Work done by animals, especially on farms, was still … Continue reading
Muscle Power
Preface. Below is a review of “Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle: from Natural History Magazine. Since both my books explain why we will be returning to biomass and muscle power, here’s yet another preparation opportunity: breed horses and … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Energy Books, Life Before Oil, Muscle Power, What to do
Tagged muscle power, treadmill
3 Comments
Vaclav Smil. Making the modern world: materials and dematerialization
Preface. I can’t believe I read this book, it is just a long litany of the gigantic amounts of materials we exploit, with no analysis, implications, or the meaning of what impact this will have on the planet. I certainly … Continue reading
Posted in Infrastructure Books, Life Before Oil, Limits To Growth, Peak Resources, Vaclav Smil
Tagged materials, recycling, vaclav smil
9 Comments
Rex Weyler on “what to do” about limits to growth, peak energy
Preface. Professor Nate Hagens is teaching a class at the University of Minnesota about the state of the world that may be expanded to all incoming freshmen. Many despair when they learn about limits to growth and finite fossil fuels. … Continue reading
Book: John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”
Preface. This contains excerpts from John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”. It’s one of my favorite books about natural resources, exploring the role wood has played in the rise and fall of civilizations since they … Continue reading
Part 4 Raven Rock. The government abandons plans to aid the public, only the government to survive
Preface. This is the fourth part of my book review of: Graff, G.M. 2018. Raven Rock. The Story of the U.S. Governments Secret Plan to Save Itself–While the Rest of Us Die. Simon and Schuster. Clearly if the U.S. government … Continue reading
Posted in Nuclear Books, Nuclear War, Politics, Where to Be or Not to Be
Tagged bomb shelter, continuation of government, nuclear war
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