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The Soft Belly of The Oil Industry: an Upcoming Seneca Collapse?

November 20, 2017

The Soft Belly of The Oil Industry: an Upcoming Seneca Collapse? Ugo Bardi explains his idea of an impending “Seneca Collapse” of the world’s oil industry at the session on climate change of the meeting of the Club of Rome in Vienna, on 10 Nov 2017. What follows are not the exact words said, […]

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Are you ready for a new round of mass exterminations?

November 13, 2017

Are you ready for a new round of mass exterminations? The great “pulse” of mass exterminations that occurred during the 20th century (graph created by Rummel). According to this chart, 262 million people were exterminated during the last century, mainly by governments in a series of actions that Rummel defines as “democides”. The question is, […]

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The Seneca Paradox: If mineral depletion is a problem, how is it that we don’t see its effects?

November 8, 2017

The Seneca Paradox: If mineral depletion is a problem, how is it that we don’t see its effects? The recent workshop held in Oxford, “Strategic Minerals in a Low Carbon Future” saw a very interesting debate on resource availability in which two opposite views emerged: one says that the gradual depletion of natural resources is […]

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A Seneca Cliff for the Web as we know it?

November 1, 2017

A Seneca Cliff for the Web as we know it? We can’t ignore the evidence any longer. The “Web”, intended as a constellation of independent information providers is dying. It is going through a Seneca Cliff of its own, being replaced by a “Trinet”, controlled by the three giant companies, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. I […]

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Biofuels: Can They Save the Airlines from the Seneca Collapse?

October 31, 2017

Biofuels: Can They Save the Airlines from the Seneca Collapse? Painting planes green is much easier than making them run on biofuels. “Can the airlines be run on biofuels?” As it often happens, this simple question doesn’t have a simple answer. First of all, it is a question that makes sense only in terms of […]

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Linking Hurricanes to Climate Change? Not So Easy.

October 23, 2017

Linking Hurricanes to Climate Change? Not So Easy. The text below a reposting of something that I published on Oct 2, 2017 on “Medium”. On the basis of data from Google Trends, I proposed that, on the average, the public had not perceived the link of climate change with the spate of hurricanes of 2017. A […]

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The Seneca Cliff as an Effect of Bureaucracy

September 27, 2017

The Seneca Cliff as an Effect of Bureaucracy The idea of the “Seneca Cliff” is that a certain entity, from a company to an empire, tends to fall rapidly when it is subjected to a dearth of resources and, at the same time, affected by pollution. More than once I noted that there are many […]

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We’ll always have the Sun: solar energy and the future of humankind

September 24, 2017

We’ll always have the Sun: solar energy and the future of humankind Above, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) speaks to Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) in the movie “Casablanca” (1942). Here, the sentence has been a little changed. In the film, the phrase refers to “Paris”, not “The Sun”. But in the debate on the future of civilization, […]

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The Way Nature Works: How Common is the Seneca Curve? Ugo Bardi’s Speech at the Summer Academy of the Club of Rome in Florence

September 16, 2017

The Way Nature Works: How Common is the Seneca Curve? Ugo Bardi’s Speech at the Summer Academy of the Club of Rome in Florence Ugo Bardi at the Summer Academy of the Club of Rome in Florence, September 2017. My talk at the Summer Academy of the Club of Rome was mainly a presentation of my […]

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What fuels civil war? Energy and the rise of Fascism

August 24, 2017

What fuels civil war? Energy and the rise of Fascism Italian Blackshirts in the early 1920s. There is a Fascist song from those times that says (translated), “Fascists and Communists were playing cards. The Fascists won with the ace of clubs.” But the clubs used by the Fascists were only a marginal elements in a […]

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Which EROI do we need to collect berries?

August 16, 2017

Which EROI do we need to collect berries? My wife, Grazia, collecting berries in the woods of Tuscany in a hot day of August. Maybe her ancestors were doing exactly the same, more or less in the same place, hundreds or thousands of years ago. Here, I present some reflections and some calculations showing that […]

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We’ll always have the Sun: solar energy and the future of humankind

August 16, 2017

We’ll always have the Sun: solar energy and the future of humankind Above, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) speaks to Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) in the movie “Casablanca” (1942). Here, the sentence has been a little changed. In the film, the phrase refers to “Paris”, not “The Sun”. But in the debate on the future of civilization, there […]

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Peak Uranium by Ugo Bardi from Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet

January 12, 2017

Peak Uranium by Ugo Bardi from Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet Figure 1. cumulative uranium consumption by IPCC model 2015-2100 versus measured and inferred Uranium resources [ Figure 1 shows that the next IPCC report counts very much on nuclear power to keep warming below 2.5 C. The black […]

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Another Example of a Seneca Cliff

October 16, 2016

Another Example of a Seneca Cliff The results of a Google Trend search for “Friendster”, an old social network. It is a nearly perfect “Seneca Shape.” Ruin is rapid, indeed! “Friendster” was a social network that, in many ways, pre-dated Facebook. Friendster collapsed rapidly, starting in around 2009, providing us with an impressive example of […]

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When did you discover that there is something badly wrong with democracy?

October 1, 2016

When did you discover that there is something badly wrong with democracy? For me, it was in 2009. I had been invited to speak at a meeting called “The Festival of Energy;” a thinly disguised public relation stunt for the fossil fuel lobby, designed to show that renewable energy is a cute thing and that, […]

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