Resources and anthropocentrism
Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a...
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Throwing our energy at impossible dreams...
"as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold"read more
View ArticleJob Losses Push Need for Energy Bill
Millions of job losses are pushing the U.S. Senate to consider a Jobs and Energy bill, even though Cap and Trade appears to be on life support. What are Five Key Measures that must be in a new Bill to...
View ArticleAn Exergy Crisis
One of the least understood dimensions of the crisis of industrial society is the role of energy concentration, rather than the simple quantity of energy, in making the modern world possible. Renewable...
View ArticleBarbarism and good brandy
A great deal of discussion of renewable energy these days focuses on massive, centralized projects, relying on habits of thought we inherit from the departing age of cheap abundant energy. With the aid...
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Improving the Performance of Solar Thermal Electrical Power
Solar thermal is a way of harnessing the largest source of energy available to us, so in this post I'll have a look at the upswing in interest in the use of this technology for electricity generation...
View ArticleEnergy concentration revisited
The difference between diffuse and concentrated energy sources, the theme of last week's Archdruid Report post, means that some of today's highly touted alternative energy schemes may be worth much...
View ArticleThe Logic of Abundance
Too many discussions of the future after peak oil start from the assumption that the only alternative to collapse is maintaining the arrangements for energy distribution and use we have today. This...
View ArticleMerlin's time
People in the Dark Ages filled in the gaps in the very limited knowledge base available to them with the help of wizards and soothsayers. As we close in on a future for which most people are hopelessly...
View ArticleThe ways of the Force
Luke Skywalker had to master the ways of the Force to save the galaxy. We face a similar challenge -- mastering the ways of energy, which are surprisingly counterintuitive to people raised in current...
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