Renewables are less renewable than we thought. That’s the starting point.
The more I learn about renewables, the more I find they rely on fossil fuels more than I thought. They don’t seem that renewable and relying on false promises looks like it’s leading us to delay acting, as we have for a centure.
I wrote about all the scams we fall for. Desiring as we are to find ways to keep society intact, we want technologies like hydrogen energy storage and market ideas like carbon offsets to work. Over and over they don’t.
For some reason, we consider spending billions of dollars to build a new power grid for wind and solar, or plants to split or fuse atoms, a straightforward, even simple, next step, but having fewer children or not buying SUVs unnatural and unfeasible.
I recently dove into the Energy Skeptic blog. I found it from listening to This Sustainable Life guest Dave Gardner‘s podcast Growthbusters. His episode, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Green New Deal, featured Megan Seibert of a project called The Real Green New Deal. That team includes Alice Friedemann, who writes the Energy Skeptic blog and the books
I haven’t read the books, but I went to town on her posts, reading dozens. My browser extension estimate reading times for many over one hundred minutes. I recommend the ones below. They aren’t peer reviewed but cite their sources. The main story: we’re running out of fossil fuels, the effects of declining oil supply will destabilize the globe, renewables aren’t renewable, and when you look at the engineering details of ways to keep society going as oil declines, almost nothing will stop catastrophe.
Here are the posts I read, as the headlines I found most interesting on
- The Depressing Booklist: War, Extinction, Pollution, Resource depletion, Limits to growth, Overpopulation, Collapse, Infrastructure, Peak minerals, Transportation, Postcarbon life
- Updates to Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy
- Vaclav Smil: Our transition away from fossil fuels will take decades—if it happens at all
- Telling others about peak oil and limits to growth
- When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation
- When Trucks Stop Running
- When Trucks Stop Running, So Does Civilization. Energy and the Future of Transportation
- Limits to Growth? 2016 United Nations report provides best evidence yet
- Lifespan of infrastructure, transportation, and buildings
- Off-Road vehicles & equipment need diesel fuel
- Heavy-duty hydrogen fuel cell trucks a waste of energy and money
- The periodic table limits battery development
- Diesel is finite. Trucks are the bedrock of civilization. So where are the battery electric trucks?
- Given the laws of physics, can the Tesla Semi really go 500 miles, and what will the price be?
- All Electric Trucks. Probably not going to happen. Ever. Why not?
- Fill ‘er up with kelp?
- Why Nuclear Power is not an alternative to fossil fuels
- Even a small nuclear war could cause 1+ billion deaths
- Why old U.S. Nuclear power plants have to shut down
- Why fusion will always be 30 years in the future
- Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change
- A transition from fossil fuels to renewables could take a century – if it ever happens
- Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and other ways to bring down the electric grid
- Natural Gas is essential for energy storage
- Why rare and valuable metals are not recycled
- The Fragility of Microchips
- Microprocessor Fab Plants need electricity 24 x 7
- Failing states, collapsing systems: biophysical triggers of political violence
- Even a small nuclear war could cause 1+ billion deaths
- How a pandemic or bioweapon could take civilization down
- A nationwide blackout lasting 1 year could kill up to 90% Americans
- Will we go out with a whimper instead of a bang? Cyberwar more likely than nuclear war
- Book Review “conservatives without Conscience†by John Dean
- Where do we come from, who are we, and where are we going?
- How Christians were manipulated by Pat Robertson into becoming right-wing Republicans
- Think covid-19 is bad? The tuberculosis pandemic is still killing millions
- Why aren’t there battery powered airplanes or flying cars?
- Hydrogen: The dumbest & most impossible renewable
- Why solar power can’t replace fossil fuels
- Solar PV requires too much land to replace fossils
- 55 Reasons why wind power can not replace fossil fuels
- Wind and Solar Power Require MORE Fossil Fuels
- Vanishing Open Spaces Population Growth and Sprawl in America
Some repeat content, but I find the stories captivating, though like looking at a train wreck slowly. How can you look away?
I’ll return to reading more, but am taking a break from reading them to work on my upcoming TEDx talk and book. In the meantime, I recommend the posts above. I find them fascinating.
What works
What works in the long term is reducing overconsumption and overpopulation, but almost everyone denounces reducing them. Nearly no one tries, and only living sustainably is living sustainably.
I hope we get it into our thick skulls that sex without children makes for a great sex life, as does not buying so much stuff or services. Let’s change our culture to embrace stewardship. We’ll live longer, more happily, and connected to more people we care about.
Enjoy
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