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Recent Posts
- Why the kerogen in oil shale will never fill up your tank
- ‘The oil we eat’. Following the food chain back to iraq
- Vanishing open spaces: population growth and sprawl in America
- Admiral Rickover 1957: Energy Resources & Our Future
- The Green New Deal is not a solution for the real problem: Overshoot
- A transition from fossil fuels to renewables could take a century – if it ever happens
- 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
Tag Archives: peak food
‘The oil we eat’. Following the food chain back to iraq
Source: The Oil We Eat – How Our Food System Depends On Oil and How Fragile It Makes Our Food Security Preface. Even though this article was published in 2004, it is still true today, only worse. This article will … Continue reading
Posted in Overpopulation, Peak Food, Peak Topsoil
Tagged overpopulation, peak food, peak soil
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Vanishing open spaces: population growth and sprawl in America
Preface. Before the fossil fuel age began, up to 90% were farmers. The end of the brief blip of oil production will send us back to that time (if we aren’t so far into overshoot we go back to … Continue reading
Posted in Overpopulation, Peak Food, Soil
Tagged agriculture, peak food, population, sprawl
5 Comments
Book Review “The Outlawed Ocean” by Ian Urbina
Preface. This is a book review of Urbina’s “The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier.” So many fishermen are enslaved for years, yet another reason to pay more for local fish at higher prices. Globally, so many fish … Continue reading
Posted in Fisheries, Fishery destruction, Natural History, Peak Food
Tagged fishery, peak fish, peak food, piracy, slavery
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Refrigeration uses up to 30% of world electricity
Preface. This is a book review of Twilley’s 2024 book Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves. It is a really great book, highly recommended. Refrigeration plays a much larger role in our lives than people realize. … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid, Energy Books
Tagged agriculture, air-conditioning, climate change, cold chain, electricity, peak food, refrigeration
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Peak food production happened, how will we feed 2-3 billion more?
Preface. Also see related article Limits to Growth? 2016 United Nations report provides best evidence yet. Nichols (2015) below shows that climate change is already affecting harvests of the world’s top 10 crops that comprise 83% of our calories: barley, … Continue reading
Posted in Limits To Growth, Peak Food
Tagged glyphosate, herbicide, limits to growth, peak food, weed
2 Comments
Chemical industrial farming does not work: Pests evolve immunity quickly
Pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides destroy soil and ecosystems. Yet a third of crops are lost to pests just as in the many millennia of farming before chemicals Preface. This is a book review of Dyer’s “Chasing the Red Queen”, and … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture
Tagged agriculture, chemical, ecosystem, herbicide, insecticide, peak food, pesticide, soil, unsustainable
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Peak Potassium threatens crops
Potassium is one of the Big 3 essential plant nutrients that has allowed human population to soar to 8 billion people,as well as phosphorus and nitrogen. Potassium is a vital nutrient for plant growth that helps with photosynthesis and respiration, … Continue reading
Posted in Peak Fertilizer, Peak Food
Tagged agriculture, peak food, peak potassium, potash
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Peak oil, food & the “King of Chemicals” sulfuric acid
Preface. I first learned of sulfur’s existence when my grandmother told me how she loved going to tent revivals on the edge of town where it was common for preachers to get converts by burning sulfur to make the fire … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Mining
Tagged peak food, peak oil, refineries, sulfur, sulfuric acid
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Limits to Growth: Natural gas fertilizer that feeds 4 billion of us
Preface. In chapter 4 of my book “Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy“, I explain how it came to be that fertilizer is made out of natural gas, using the energy of natural gas, and why … Continue reading
Posted in Life After Fossil Fuels, Limits To Growth, Natural Gas, Peak Food, Starvation
Tagged agriculture, food, peak food, peak natural gas, starvation
1 Comment
The Nitrogen Bomb: fossil-fueled fertilizers keep billions of us alive
Preface. There are two articles below that explain why natural gas fertilizers are keeping at least 4 billion of us alive today. If you’re interested in this topic, here are a few more to read: Erisman JW, Sutton MA, Galloway … Continue reading
Posted in Farming & Ranching, Life After Fossil Fuels, Natural Gas, Overpopulation, Peak Food
Tagged agriculture, fertilizer, nitrogen, overpopulation, peak food
4 Comments