Tag Archives: limits to growth

Peak oil sands, low EROI, high debt, limited pipeline and refinery capacity

Posted on June 22, 2015 by

Peak tar sands, a.k.a. oil sands Techno-opmtimists claim that technology will enable nasty, sour, gunky, expensive, difficult unconventional oil to fill in the gap of declining conventional oil. Conventional oil is declining too quickly for unconventional to match But that’s … Continue reading →

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Biofuels do not scale up enough to power society

Posted on April 9, 2015 by

Richard, T. August 23, 2010. Challenges in scaling up biofuels infrastructure. Science. (329)   Below are excerpts from this paper.  Look at the impossible scale of biomass required: 150 EJ/year = 15 billion metric tons of plant biomass = 200 billion … Continue reading →

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Wind turbines hit limits to growth before 50% wind power penetration

Posted on February 27, 2015 by

Material requirements of 50% wind power in the USA hit limits to growth Also see: Davidsson, S., et al. 2014. Growth curves and sustained commissioning modelling of renewable energy Investigating resource constraints for wind energy. Energy Policy. Fizaine, F., et … Continue reading →

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Michael Webber on Energy + Water + Food interdependency

Posted on February 5, 2015 by

Webber, Michael E. February 2015. Our future rides on our ability to integrate Energy + Water + Food. Scientific American. Michael E. Webber is deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. His Yale University … Continue reading →

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Over 21 essential resources have peaked including fish, milk, eggs, wheat, corn, rice, soy

Posted on January 16, 2015 by

Nature summary of this article: “The rates at which humans consume multiple resources such as food and wood peaked at roughly the same time, around 2006. This means that resources could be simultaneously depleted, so achieving sustainability might be more … Continue reading →

Posted in Limits To Growth, Peak Food | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Limits to Growth

Posted on January 12, 2015 by

Preface. What follows are a bunch of articles on limits to growth, sometimes just a link, sometimes excerpts. Today Wall Street Journal and other neocapitalists scorn the idea, insisting that human ingenuity and substitution can overcome all obstacles, and they … Continue reading →

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The Race to Adapt, a book review of Klare’s “The Race for What’s Left”

Posted on October 6, 2013 by

Coltan mining Preface. This is a book review of Michael Klare’s “The Race For What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources” . Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, … Continue reading →

Posted in Energy Books, Peak Critical Elements | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Exponential growth and carrying capacity

Posted on July 28, 2013 by

Watch it happen — see the populations of major cities grow in these animated maps that reveal in 60 seconds how cities have exploded in size over the last 130 years Al Bartlett, Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Colorado, … Continue reading →

Posted in Exponential Growth, Limits To Growth | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Ugo Bardi: Quite likely we’ll have a fast collapse, a “Seneca Cliff”

Posted on July 16, 2013 by

Excerpts from: Ugo Bardi. August 28, 2011. The Seneca effect: why decline is faster than growth. Ugo Bardi. July 15, 2013.The punctuated collapse of the Roman Empire. Could it be that the Seneca cliff is what we are facing, right … Continue reading →

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