Where to be? Links to Superfund, hazardous waste and other toxic sites in U.S.

Posted on December 28, 2023 by

Preface. If you’re thinking of moving to another state that is under carrying capacity, where agriculture depends on rainfall rather than irrigation, with good topsoil and other ecologically important factors in the approaching postcarbon world, also make sure you’re not near a superfund or other hazardous site. The links below are for the USA, and there are certainly other sites to be concerned about I haven’t listed, but this is a start.

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Why methanol cannot replace petroleum as a transportation fuel

Posted on December 20, 2023 by

Preface. Methanol, or CH₃OH, is primarily used to make chemicals for plastics, paints, and cosmetics. It is made from coal or natural gas. “Green” methanol is made from biomass or biogas from landfills or sewage plants. Or it can be made by combining hydrogen created with renewable electricity and carbon dioxide.

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Why is everyone afraid of AI taking over? It makes stuff up!

Posted on December 13, 2023 by

Preface. AI is not intelligent, it is stupid! AI not only makes stuff up as explained below, but I have found it to be highly inaccurate and incomplete. For example, I asked about hours and costs of wine tasting in Paso Robles and it got about a quarter of them wrong, and left out quite a few vineyards. When I’ve asked scientific questions for my research, it can’t tell me what sources the information came from. Though once it did — and none were from scientific papers, so of no use to me. With no sources at all, how can I trust the reply? Or use it, since as you know from reading my posts, I cite everything so the reader can check my work and do additional research, because often the citation will have additional, important ideas I left out due to only so much space in a chapter or post. Continue reading →

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Do you want to eat, drink, or fly?

Posted on December 6, 2023 by

Preface.  In this post the New York Times writes about renewable airplane fuel from corn ethanol, and questions whether there is enough water and a few other problems.  First I’m going to summarize their issues with this, and then follow with some of what I’ve written about ethanol at my website www.energyskeptic.com and in my books Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; and When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”

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The 10th planetary boundary: Salt

Posted on November 29, 2023 by

Preface.

In 2009, Johan Rockström proposed that there were nine planetary boundaries we must not cross.  In 2023, Richardson et al found that 6 of the 9 boundaries had been transgressed: Climate change CO2 and radiative forcing, Biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, and novel entities (synthetic chemicals, pollutants, endocrine disruptors, microplastics, nuclear waste, etc). Of the remaining three still within the safe operating space, ocean acidification is very near to crossing the boundary. Only atmospheric aerosol loading and stratospheric ozone depletion are still within it.

Now Kaushal (2023) has proposed that there may be a 10th: Salt. Human activities are making Earth’s air, soil and freshwater saltier, which could pose an “existential threat” if current trends continue.

The study’s authors called for the creation of a “planetary boundary for safe and sustainable salt use” in much the same way that carbon dioxide levels are associated with a planetary boundary to limit climate change.

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Unpave concrete & asphalt to save energy and money

Posted on November 22, 2023 by

Preface. The U.S. has 4.1 million miles of roads (1.9 million paved, 2.2 million gravel). About 3 million miles of roads have less than 2,000 vehicles a day, less than 15% of all traffic. The paved portion of these low-volume roads ought to be evaluated for their potential to be unpaved.

Many of these roads should have never been paved to begin with, but the costs of construction, asphalt, and energy were so cheap it was done anyway.  Now many rural roads are past their design life and rapidly deteriorating, especially in the Midwest from enormously heavy trucks taking corn and soybeans to biorefineries.  It is both difficult and expensive to maintain them, and dangerous to let these roads fall apart and degrade into gravel on their own.

For more drainage/less flooding, wildlife, trees, and more plants, concrete and asphalt are being removed from parking lots, driveways, parking lots and more. Depaving can also keep sewage and other pollutants from washing off of concrete into waterways. Portland has had a depave group since 2008.  It’s good for the climate too (Baraniuk 2024).

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Subsistence life in West Virginia before capitalism

Posted on November 15, 2023 by

Preface.  These are a few of my kindle notes from Steven Stoll’s “Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia” that may give you an idea of how people might survive after collapse. It is a damning critique of capitalism.

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Will Congress ever create a new independent agency to store nuclear waste permanently?

Posted on November 8, 2023 by

Preface. The lack of permanent geological storage of nuclear waste will be yet another nightmare for those living after fossils have declined and civilizations go back to biomass fuels and muscle power. They will already be dealing with heat making parts of the planet unlivable, rising sea levels, floods, and dam failures that release hazardous chemical and nuclear waste, depleted aquifers and topsoil, natural disasters, wars, mass migrations, and death by a thousand other cuts.

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Nuclear waste will harm future generations for a million years without underground storage

Posted on November 1, 2023 by

Preface. This is a book review of “Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste” and the best book I’ve read on the topic, as well as additional research on the topic.

Now that world wide production of conventional and unconventional oil probably peaked in 2018 (coal in 2013, and perhaps natural gas in 2019), our top priority should be to bury nuclear wastes as soon as possible. Once severe shortages arrive,  remaining oil will to to agriculture and other essential needs.  This short window of time now may be our only chance to bury nuclear wastes — our descendants certainly won’t have the energy, diesel equipment, or technology.

Yucca mountain is the best possible place to put nuclear waste in the U.S.  The only place to put it actually, a $15 billion facility that models put through thousands of permutations of multiple calamities such as earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding and more.  Yucca was found to be a safe place to put nuclear waste.

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A Nuclear spent fuel pool fire could force millions to evacuate & cost $2 trillion

Posted on October 25, 2023 by

Preface. Nuclear cheerleaders love to talk about how safe nuclear power is.  You will never ever hear them talk about nuclear fuel pools because that would destroy their argument. Though like Limits to Growth and Malthusian overpopulation dismissed by capitalists, they would probably use the same “it hasn’t happened so it will never happen”. Continue reading →

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