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Our only hope for long term survival
Our only hope for long term survival Language warning: Many may find the following article offensive, such as: Technocornucopians – eg geoengineering and carbon drawdown fantasists, blinkered university academics and engineers, TZM, Elon Musk etc People who think reducing population and/or consumption are sacred cows which should never be mentioned People who are shocked […]
The ERoEI of Mining Uranium
The ERoEI of Mining Uranium In 2009, in the comments to this post on The Oil Drum we stumbled upon a mine of information on the operation of the Rossing uranium mine in Namibia. The data table provided numbers for the amount of energy used on site together with the amount of uranium mined. This […]
Will the World Economy Continue to “Roll Along” in 2018?
Will the World Economy Continue to “Roll Along” in 2018? Once upon a time, we worried about oil and other energy. Now, a song from 1930 seems to be appropriate: Today, we have a surplus of oil, which we are trying to use up. That never happened before, or did it? Well, actually, it did, back […]
WORLD’S LARGEST OIL COMPANIES: Deep Trouble As Profits Vaporize While Debts Skyrocket
WORLD’S LARGEST OIL COMPANIES: Deep Trouble As Profits Vaporize While Debts Skyrocket The world’s largest oil companies are in serious trouble as their balance sheets deteriorate from higher costs, falling profits and skyrocketing debt. The glory days of the highly profitable global oil companies have come to an end. All that remains now is a […]
Energy and Authoritarianism
Energy and Authoritarianism Could declining world energy result in a turn toward authoritarianism by governments around the world? As we will see, there is no simple answer that applies to all countries. However, pursuing the question leads us on an illuminating journey through the labyrinth of relations between energy, economics, and politics. The International Energy […]
The Dynamics of Depletion
The Dynamics of Depletion Paul Klee Ghost of a Genius 1922The Automatic Earth has written many articles on the topic of EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) through the years, there’s a whole chapter on it in the Automatic Earth Primer Guide 2017 that Nicole assembled recently, which contains 17 different articles. Still, since EROEI […]
Joseph Tainter: The Collapse Of Complex Societies
Joseph Tainter: The Collapse Of Complex Societies What history predicts about our future prospects By popular demand, we welcome Joseph Tainter, USU professor and author of The Collapse Of Complex Societies (free book download here). Dr. Tainter sees many of the same unsustainable risks the PeakProsperity.com audience focuses on — an overleveraged economy, declining net energy per […]
Go Long Chain Makers
Go Long Chain Makers Leonardo da Vinci Head of a Woman 1470s This is turning into a very rewarding series, it opens up vistas I could never have dreamed of. First, in “Not Nearly Enough Growth To Keep Growing”, I posited that peak wealth for the west, and America in particular, was sometime in the early ’70s or […]
Not Nearly Enough Growth To Keep Growing
Not Nearly Enough Growth To Keep Growing Jackson Pollock Shooting Star 1947 It’s amusing to see how views start to converge, at the same time that it’s tiresome to see how long that takes. It’s a good thing that more and more people ‘discover’ how and why austerity, especially in Europe, is such a losing and […]
What is this ‘Crisis’ of Modernity?
What is this ‘Crisis’ of Modernity? Workmen next to the screws of the RMS Titanic at Belfast shipyard, 1911The people at Conflicts Forum, which is directed by former British diplomat and MI6 ‘ranking figure’ Alastair Crooke, sent me an unpublished article by Alastair and asked if the Automatic Earth would publish it. Since I like his […]
EROEI Calculations for Solar PV Are Misleading
EROEI Calculations for Solar PV Are Misleading The Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) concept is very frequently used in energy studies. In fact, many readers seem to think, “Of course, EROEI is what we should be looking at when comparing different types of energy. What else is important?” Unfortunately, the closer to the discussions of […]
How Researchers Could Miss the Real Energy Story
How Researchers Could Miss the Real Energy Story I have been telling a fairly different energy story from most energy researchers. How could I possibly be correct? What have other researchers been missing? The “standard” approach is to start from the amount of resources that we have of a particular type, for example, oil in the ground, […]
The Global Oil Supply: Implications for Biodiversity?
The Global Oil Supply: Implications for Biodiversity? The following is an overview of my recent lecture to the Linnean Society of London, which is named in honour of Carl Linneus, who among many other accolades has been described as “The father of modern taxonomy”, and is also considered as one of the founders of modern ecology. It is the world’s […]
The Boundaries and Future of Solution Space – Part 3
The Boundaries and Future of Solution Space – Part 3 Energy – Demand Collapse Followed by Supply Collapse As we have noted many times, energy is the master resource, and has been the primary driver of an expansion dating back to the beginning of the industrial revolution. In fossil fuels humanity discovered the ‘holy grail’ […]
Energy Economics – Crash Course Chapter 19 | Peak Prosperity
Energy Economics – Crash Course Chapter 19 | Peak Prosperity. The central point to this latest video is this: as we’ve shown in previous chapters of the Crash Course, our global economy depends on continual growth to function. And not just any kind of growth; but exponential growth. But in order to grow, it must receive an […]
