Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
All of humanity’s feats, whether a record-setting deadlift by the world’s strongest man or the construction of a gleaming city by a technologically advanced economy, originate from a single hidden source: positive net energy.
The implications for the future of the global economy will not be pretty — but if we face up to it, the transition to more sustainable societies will be all the better for facing reality, rather than continuing with our heads in the sand.
The B.P. 2016 Energy Outlook both shows the incredible scale and difficulty in replacing our carbon-dependent infrastructure while providing an optimistic assessment of fossil-fuel supplies, net enertgy and the acceptance of natural gas usage.
A few months from now, this blog will complete its tenth year of more-or-less-weekly publication. In words the Grateful Dead made famous, it’s been a long strange trip…
It’s common to read on blogs dealing with global warming that the only thing preventing renewable energy from replacing fossil fuels in short order within the U.S. is the political muscle of the fossil fuel industries.
David Fridley on alternative energy, what it can do, and what it can’t.
Panarchy is a concept that recognizes the cycle of growth, collapse and renewal inherent in complex systems. What can this concept tell us about human society’s cycles?
Net pay is what you have to pay your bills today. And, net energy is what society has in order to conduct its business (and its fun) on any given day. Is net energy still increasing?
The more we expand our populations and built space over the landscape, the less the biosphere can offer its free services to the human economy.
[Many longtime followers of the Crash Course have asked Chris to update his forecasts for Peak Oil in light of the production increases in shale oil and gas over recent years. What started out as a modest effort at clarification morphed into a much more massive 3-report treatise as Chris sifted through mountains of new data that ultimately left him more convinced than ever we are facing a global net energy crisis–despite misguided media efforts intended to convince us otherwise. His reports are being released in series over the next several weeks; the first installment is below.]
