Book Review of Grain Brain: Extraordinary claim not backed up by evidence

Posted on April 7, 2026 by

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 in the Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous list in November 2013. The idea that you should eat more fat and meat is still quite popular.

Given all the Fake News circulating, I thought I’d republish this so you can see how I analyzed the claims made, including every citation. Not one backed up what was written and often had nothing to do with it. But the citations looked good, many from trustworthy sources.  So do check the references in what you’re reading, especially to learn even more about a topic.

Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity

Continue reading →

Posted in Critical Thinking, Farming & Ranching | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Book Review of Grain Brain: Extraordinary claim not backed up by evidence

Why did everyone stop talking about Population & Immigration?

Posted on March 31, 2026 by

Preface. This post summarizes the top 26 reasons why population growth was abandoned the past 50 years. Further reasons can be found in Beck & Kolankiewicz (2000) “The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization” and Weisman’s “Countdown: Our last, Best hope for a future on Earth.”

Continue reading →

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Deforestation, Disease, Overpopulation, Pesticides, Pollution, Population, Transportation, Water Pollution, Wildfire | Tagged , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

What would happen if trucks stopped running?

Posted on March 24, 2026 by

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, civilization would crash within a week. So finding a drop-in replacement for finite diesel ought to be the top priority. A

Although I use the term peak oil, the real issue is peak diesel, and not just for road trucks. Even more important are agricultural tractors, harvesters, and other diesel equipment, mining trucks, construction, logging, and all other heavy-duty trucks used across every industry and sector. Plus locomotives and ships (and airplanes, but they can be done without).  Like cars. And electrifying them frees up gasoline. Diesel engines can only run on diesel, and have been refined for over a century to do so with twice the efficiency and much greater power and torque than gasoline.

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 , , , , | 2 Comments

How to survive a nuclear winter

Posted on March 17, 2026 by

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 would be plenty of challenges from a global economic collapse, imports such as medicine, food, fossil fuels and other essential goods, and less food grown. In the northern hemisphere ozone losses would peak at 75%, but even the southern hemisphere would reach 20-40% ozone loss and consequent protection from UV rays for humans, animals, and plants leading to less crop production.

Posts on nuclear war can be found here, and on nuclear winter here.

Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Financial Sense, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts

***

Continue reading →

Posted in Nuclear War, Where to Be or Not to Be | Tagged , , | Comments Off on How to survive a nuclear winter

The insect apocalypse will kill billions more people than climate change

Posted on March 10, 2026 by

 

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 people and other species in the future. Billions of people, birds, plants, animals, fish, and more will starve since 75% of crops depend on insect pollination. They also control insect pests, break down organic matter to recycle their nutrients for new plants, aerate the soil, disperse seeds and more (Goulson D (2019) The insect apocalypse, and why it matters. Current Biology).

E. O. Wilson explained the problem in greater detail:  “If invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could last more than a few months. Most of the fishes, amphibians, birds, and mammals would crash to extinction about the same time. Next would go the bulk of the flowering plants and, with them, the physical structure of the majority of the forests and other terrestrial habitats of the world. The earth would rot. As dead vegetation piled up and dried out, narrowing and closing the channels of nutrient cycles, other complex forms of vegetation would die off, and, with them, the last remnants of the vertebrates. The remaining fungi, after enjoying a population explosion of stupendous proportions, would also perish. Within a few decades, the world would return to a state of a billion years ago, composed primarily of bacteria, algae, and a few other very simple multicellular plants.”

Continue reading →

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Extinction, Scientists Warnings to Humanity | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

The war on drugs. A book review of “Chasing the scream”

Posted on March 3, 2026 by

Source: Tim Kelly

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 tiny minority, and you couldn’t keep an entire department alive on such small crumbs.

Continue reading →

Posted in Corruption, Drug wars and the prison system | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Peak crude oil did not happen in 2018. But we are running out of time

Posted on February 17, 2026 by

Preface.   Using EIA International Data for world crude oil + condensate oil monthly production to compare January through October in 2024 and 2025, it looks like about 850 million more barrels will be produced in 2025 than in 2024.  And add on some refinery gains, which I did not include. But 2026 will most likely be peak USA oil. And world oil due to the Iran War and shut-down of wells that will produce less after the Strait of Hormuz opens due to loss of pressure and other technical problems to re-open them.

Continue reading →

Posted in Debt, How Much Left, Peak Oil | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Sheriffs have too much power

Posted on February 10, 2026 by

Preface. In August 2017 President Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio for disobeying a 2011 court order that barred his deputies from detaining people based on their immigration status. He was found guilty of continuing these traffic patrols for 18 months after the order was issued. Although he faced a possible jail sentence, he was pardoned by President Donald Trump before he could be sentenced. resulting in the charge being dismissed.

But he committed much worse crimes. The New York Times has a description of what prisons were like here, and below is an account from Johann Hari’s 2016 book “Chasing the Scream: The First and Last days of the War on Drugs”, a book I highly recommend since explains how the war on drugs started way back in 1930, mainly a war to suppress minorities. Continue reading →

Posted in Drug wars and the prison system, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Book review “They poisoned the world: Life & death in the age of Forever Chemicals”

Posted on February 3, 2026 by

Preface. This is a book review of Blake’s 2025 They Poisoned the World: Life & Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals.

This is a history of how the existential threat of PFAs and other forever chemicals came to be. How the U.S. government collaborated with Dupont since the 1820s and more recently helped the government hide the damage they did to people’s health and the environment so that both Dupont and U.S. government could avoid the financial consequences.

No wonder people don’t trust the government and voted for extremist politicians who will only make their lives even worse as institutions that protect Americans are being dismantled, such as the EPA, CDC and other health institutions, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and many others. It is up to you to protect yourself now, a good reason to buy this book, and for those of you concerned about overshoot and where to be, another consideration to research. Hopefully far from DuPont/DOW and other chemical manufacturers…

What really got me was when whistleblowers in small towns were shunned by Dupont workers, who say their lawsuit as having the potential to take away their jobs, if Dupont might move their factory elsewhere. When you consider how much damage manufacturing does to surrounding communities, it seems crazy to try to bring manufacturing back, especially since with peak oil in 2018 they won’t be in business more than a decade or so, and most of the jobs too low-paying and miserable for people to take them. Indeed, there are almost half a million manufacturing jobs open that people are not applying for.

I was also struck by how it was DuPont that taught the Tobacco industry how to cast doubt and hide findings of their own scientists that smoking was deadly. So this book will never be out of date because it has the history of how companies that made forever chemicals kept it secret for so long

For those of you who voted for Trump, the author has this to say that might interest you:

Continue reading →

Posted in Chemical Pollution, Extinction Books, Health, Planetary Boundaries, Pollution | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Book review “They poisoned the world: Life & death in the age of Forever Chemicals”

John Howe on one child per woman: still too high to stay under limits to growth curves

Posted on February 2, 2026 by

population 1 child per woman not good enough john howe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Preface. I first published this post in 2012 and have updated it today. Below I summarize a part of a 2012 article by John Howe on having one child per woman to stay under the oil depletion curve.

In the last two years, more and more experts in mainstream media are predicting collapse, which is quite startling since in the past it was obligatory to offer happy endings, because people expect that (especially in the U.S. due to TV and Science Fiction).

In the past, it was difficult to impossible to publish articles and books about collapse outside of scientific journals and university presses, since the publisher wouldn’t make money. Plus, most mainstream media is infotainment, and when serious articles are printed, forces blinders of economic and political over everything, ignoring the actual triggering biophysical factors, such as climate change, overpopulation, and drought.  Also ignored are the dozens of factors in the overshoot polycrisis (biodiversity, freshwater and soil depletion). Only climate change is mentioned.  And you certainly won’t often read about how the planet can only support about 400 million without our fossil fueled civilization.

Continue reading →

Posted in Birth Control, Overpopulation, Population | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on John Howe on one child per woman: still too high to stay under limits to growth curves