Category Archives: Alternatives to Oil

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

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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

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Understanding Why the Green New Deal Won’t Really Work

The reasons why the Green New Deal won’t really work are fairly subtle. A person really has to look into the details to see what goes wrong. In this post, I try to explain at least a few of the … Continue reading

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Eight Pitfalls in Evaluating Green Energy Solutions

Does the recent climate accord between US and China mean that many countries will now forge ahead with renewables and other green solutions? I think that there are more pitfalls than many realize. Pitfall 1. Green solutions tend to push … Continue reading

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Update on US natural gas, coal, nuclear, and renewables

On August 6, I wrote a post called Making Sense of the US Oil Story, in which I looked at US oil. In this post, I would like to look at other sources of US energy. Of course, the energy … Continue reading

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