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Recent Posts
- Losing the Iran War May Be the Best Outcome for the World
- A New Explanation for Tariffs and Bombings
- Understanding Deglobalization: The Role of Diesel and Jet Fuel
- 2026: Expect a very uneven world economic downturn
- Too many promises; too few future physical goods
- A lack of very cheap oil is leading to debt problems
- What has gone wrong with the economy? Can it be fixed?
- Sierra Club talk that may be of interest
- Why oil prices don’t rise to consistently high levels
- Worrying indications in recently updated world energy data
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Category Archives: Alternatives to Oil
Worrying indications in recently updated world energy data
The Energy Institute recently published its updated energy report, the 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy, showing data through the year 2024. In this post, I identify trends in the new data that I consider worrying. These trends help explain the strange behaviors that we have been seeing from governments recently. Continue reading
Posted in Alternatives to Oil, Energy policy, Financial Implications
Tagged copper, diesel shortage, nuclear energy
1,300 Comments
Nuclear electricity generation has hidden problems; don’t expect advanced modular units to solve them.
It is easy to get the impression that proposed new modular nuclear generating units will solve the problems of nuclear generation. Perhaps they will allow more nuclear electricity to be generated at a low cost and with much less of … Continue reading
Models Hide the Shortcomings of Wind and Solar
A major reason for the growth in the use of renewable energy is the fact that if a person looks at them narrowly enough–such as by using a model–wind and solar look to be useful. They don’t burn fossil fuels, so it appears that they might be helpful to the environment.
As I analyze the situation, I have reached the conclusion that energy modeling misses important points. I believe that profitability signals are much more important. In this post, I discuss some associated issues. Continue reading
Posted in Alternatives to Oil, Financial Implications
Tagged energy profitability, EROEI, EROI, government debt
3,344 Comments
The economy is moving from a tailwind pushing it along to a headwind holding it back
When the Crisis Stage occurs, there are fewer goods and service per capita to go around, so some members of the world economy must come out behind. Conflict of all kinds becomes more likely. Political leaders, if they happen to discover the predicament the world economy is in, have little interest in making the predicament known to voters, since doing so would likely lead them to lose the next election.
Instead, the way the physics-based self-organizing economic system works is that alternative narratives that frame the situation in a less frightening way gain popularity. Political leaders may not even be aware of how dependent today’s economy is on fossil fuels. Researchers may not be aware that their “scientific” models are misleading because they look at too small a portion of the overall system and make unwarranted assumptions. Continue reading
How Renewable Energy Models Can Produce Misleading Indications
The energy needs of the world’s economy seem to be easy to model. Energy consumption is measured in a variety of different ways including kilowatt hours, barrels of oil equivalent, British thermal units, kilocalories and joules. Two types of energy … Continue reading
