Tag Archives: drought

Collapse of Mayan civilization: drought, mercury poisoning, toxic algae

Preface. Drought is probably reason #1, but collapse is complex, I’ve seen lists of over 200 reasons for the Fall of the Roman Empire, and our own fall will have even more causes, though triggered by energy decline, since for … Continue reading

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Hydrogen hopium: Storage

Source: Russel Rhodes (2011) Explosive Lessons in Hydrogen Safety. https://appel.nasa.gov/2011/02/02/explosive-lessons-in-hydrogen-safety/ Preface.  What is hopium? Irrational or unwarranted optimism. An addiction to false hopes. A metaphorical substance that causes people to believe in a false hope (H + opium). And Hopium … Continue reading

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Climate change will damage energy infrastructure, costing trillions

Preface. Climate change and extreme weather will harm oil and gas exploration and production, electric power generation and increase energy demand due to sea level rise, heat, drought, floods, more storms, and blackouts.  Extreme heat and drought will force electric … Continue reading

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Dust Bowls

Preface. As if there weren’t enough to worry about, more Great Dust Bowls may be on the way.  The irony is that some of it will likely be due to planting corn and soybeans to produce biofuels, yet another reason … Continue reading

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Coming Food Crises from Drought

Preface. As climate change heats the planet, and groundwater depletes from aquifers that won’t be recharged until after the next ice age, it’s clear that food crises from drought (and many other problems) will be upon us soon. As long … Continue reading

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Megadrought invades the West

Preface. Mother Nature has had enough and is biting us back. Climate change will increase the chance of a Southwest megadrought that lasts longer than those in the past. Keep up with the latest drought news at the U.S. Drought … Continue reading

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15 Nations that Collapsed because of Drought: will we be the 16th?

Preface.  Another repercussion of drought may be the Muslim religion as Fleitmann (2022) proposes below. This post began with 10 civilizations that collapsed due to drought (below), and I’ve added 5 more. Will the American South West be #16? Lynn … Continue reading

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Climate change effects on conflict, social unrest, health, mass migration, food, and national security

[ Since oil shortages from exponential decline rates of conventional oil will affect every aspect of civilization from farming to electricity to supply chains far harder and sooner than sea-level rise and other climate change problems, think “energy shortage” whenever … Continue reading

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Failing states, collapsing systems: biophysical triggers of political violence

Preface. In this post I summarize the sections of Nafeez’s book about the biophysical factors that bring nations down (i.e. climate change drought & water scarcity, declining revenues after peak oil, etc.) The Media tend to focus exclusively on economic … Continue reading

Posted in Cascading Failure, Caused by Scarce Resources, Collapse of Civilizations, Collapsed & collapsing nations, Drought & Collapse, Exports decline to ZERO, Food production, Interdependencies, Limits To Growth, Middle East, Net Energy Cliff, Other Experts, Over Oil, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Violence, War & Violence | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

New land converted to cropland to grow biofuel crops equal to 34 coal-fired power plants

Summary of article below: Between 2008 and 2012 over 7 million acres new land, much of it grasslands, were converted to croplands, damaging native ecosystems, and mimics the extreme land-use change that led up to the Dust Bowl in the … Continue reading

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