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Recent Posts
- Electrifying freight trains in the U.S. is a bad idea
- Why Nuclear Power can’t replace fossil fuels
- Energy, Water, & Climate Change are interdependent
- Why fusion power is Forever Away
- Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
- Excerpt from “The Geopolitics of Resource Wars”
- Homes & Buildings
- Book Review “The Outlawed Ocean” by Ian Urbina
- Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
- Motherboards: too complicated to make after oil
- “More and More and More” one of the best books on energy ever written
- The staggering destruction of knowledge by Christians in the Roman Empire
- Why the R/P Reserves to Production ratio does not show when oil will run out
- Catton on Collapse “Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse”
- Book Review of Grain Brain: Extraordinary claim not backed up by evidence
Tag Archives: mineral
Peak Helium
Preface. Attention all you capitalists who think we can grow forever on a finite planet. Stuff can run out! Helium is the only element on earth that is completely nonrenewable. A supply crisis is expected by 2060 (Hu 2025). Commercial helium … Continue reading →
Why EV Batteries aren’t being recycled
Preface. Talk to your typical capitalist / environmentalist and they will both agree that we will never run out of anything because we can recycle. But we aren’t. Especially since it’s cheaper to buy newly mined metals than to recycle … Continue reading →
Renewables: not enough minerals, energy or time and mining is destructive
Preface. Electricity generating contraptions like wind and solar can’t replace the 50% of oil used in global manufacturing, because they can’t generate the high heat needed, or run battery or catenary electric trucks as I explained in “When Trucks Top … Continue reading →
Posted in Mining
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Tagged battery, limits to growth, lithium, metal, mineral, mining, rare earth, utility scale
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5 Comments
High-Tech can’t last: limited essential elements with limited lifespans
There are 17 rare earth elements in the periodic table. About nine of those elements go into every iPhone sold… and if China were suddenly to disappear from a map tomorrow, Apple would lose about 90% of those elements. Source: … Continue reading →
Posted in Metals, Microchips and computers
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Tagged cascading failure, critical element, mineral, peak, rare earth, supply chain
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3 Comments
Mining: Waste, Pollution, Destruction from Ugo Bardi’s “Extracted”
Preface. I’ve reworded/shortened some of the wording at times from this excellent book. Here are 7 other posts from this great book: Mining: Waste, Pollution, Destruction Ugo Bardi predictions of the future Minerals and War Minerals: Natural gas Minerals: Coal … Continue reading →
Minerals & Energy from Ugo Bardi’s “Extracted”
Preface. This is a small section of Ugo Bardi’s excellent book “Extracted”. His most important observation is that: “The limits to mineral extraction are not limits of quantity; they are limits of energy. Extracting minerals takes energy, and the more … Continue reading →
Mineral: Soil from Ugo Bardi’s “Extracted”
FIGURE 1. The state of soil health globally. Preface. Ugo Bardi’s book on minerals covers a wide-ranging territory, including soil, which is a mineral. In this section of the book he shows how humans have damaged the soil so much … Continue reading →