What Can California Do about Sea Level Rise?
By Alice Friedemann, Energy Skeptic
Nearly all, if not all, possible solutions to rising sea levels along all the coasts in the world are listed below, along with their challenges. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the Rockefeller foundation will award $4.6 million dollars to the ten best ideas for how the Bay Area could adapt to sea level rise in May. I am eager to see their solutions given the challenges below, and whether they come up with alternatives.
Chemical Industrial Agriculture is Unsustainable. Here’s why
By Alice Friedemann, energyskeptic.com
Even without pesticides, industrial agriculture is doomed to fail from extremely high rates of soil erosion and soil compaction at rates that far exceed losses in the past, since soil couldn’t wash or blow away as easily on small farms that grew many crops.
Peak Uranium: The Uncertain Future of Nuclear Energy
By Ugo Bardi, Michael Dittmar, Alice Friedemann, Cassandra's legacy
Declining uranium production will make it impossible to obtain a significant increase in electrical power from nuclear plants in the coming decades.
Just 16,000 Catenary Trucks Would Use All of California’s Electricity with only 2400 to 8300 Miles of Overhead Wires
By Alice Friedemann, www.energyskeptic.com
It makes sense to electrify trucks since fuel from oil, coal, and natural gas is finite and biomass doesn’t scale up. Trucks make electricity possible.
So where are the battery electric trucks?
By Alice Friedemann, www.energyskeptic.com
Heavy-duty trucks are the main engines of civilization....If trucks stopped running, businesses would shut down within a week.
Unpave Low Traffic Roads to Save Energy and Money
By Alice Friedemann, www.energyskeptic.com
The U.S. has 4.1 million miles of roads (1.9 million paved, 2.2 million gravel). About 3 million miles of roads have less than 2,000 vehicles a day, less than 15% of all traffic. The paved portion of these low-volume roads ought to be evaluated for their potential to be unpaved.
When Trucks Stop Running, So Does Civilization. Energy and the Future of Transportation
By Alice Friedemann, Energy Skeptic
Virtually everything in our homes, everything in our stores, got there on a truck.
The Oiliness of Everything: Invisible Oil and Energy Payback Time.
By Alice Friedemann, Energy Skeptic
You can’t understand the predicament we’re in until you can see the oil that saturates every single aspect of our life. What follows is a life cycle of a simple object, the pencil.