Top all-time · #6245
Peak Everything, Overshoot, & Collapse
Personal blog · energyskeptic.comeconomicsscience
Peak Everything, Overshoot, & Collapse is a personal blog at energyskeptic.com about economics and science. Since 2014, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 20 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for skeptical writing on energy limits and infrastructure, such as solar's energy return, grid transformer fragility, and fusion fuel. Mostly cited as sources in comments.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Preservation of Knowedge, peak oil, ecology -
What Hacker News says?
A comment of his previous book that whitewashed in the most absurd way modern era's industrialized warfare and other horrors, through data selection about thunders and other less important metrics: http://energyskeptic.com/2015/13-fallacies-of-steven-pinkers...
Comment linking /2015/13-fallacies-of-steven-pinkers-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined-and-slate-the-world-is-not-falling-apart/
on “My new favorite book of all time”Submitted High-Tech can’t last: there are limited essential elements as a story · 82 points
HN discussionSolar has a barely positive EROI. When all costs are considered it typically uses more energy than it produces. This has been studied extensively in multiple European countries. http://energyskeptic.com/2018/solar-pv-has-a-net-energy-loss... These articles making claims to the contrary basically don't make any sense. If solar panels and wind farms resulted in large amounts of cheap energy they would be going up at a…
Comment linking /2018/solar-pv-has-a-net-energy-losse-in-germany-and-switzerland-eroei-is-less-than-1/
on “Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheaper than coal”Submitted Vaclav Smil on why there will be no energy transition as a story · 15 points
HN discussion> modern society is so incredibly fragile http://energyskeptic.com/2016/when-trucks-stop-running-so-do... "When Trucks Stop Running, So Does Civilization" and also http://energyskeptic.com/2015/power-transformers-that-take-u... "Large power transformers are essential critical infrastructure to the electric grid, and are huge, weighing up to 820,000 pounds. If large power transformers are destroyed by a geomagnetic d…
Comment linking /2015/power-transformers-that-take-up-to-2-years-to-build/
on “Severed fibre cables disrupted internet access in eastern Europe, Iran, Turkey”Submitted Preservation of Knowledge as a story · 2 points
HN discussioncf. Peter Turchin http://energyskeptic.com/2016/peter-turchin-violence-and-soc...
Comment linking /2016/peter-turchin-violence-and-social-unrest-in-the-u-s-and-europe-likely-by-2020/
on “Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality”Submitted USGS says Powder River Basin has 35 years of coal left, not 250 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSuch things are often claimed. But every single statement here is false: ad 1) Nuclear fusion as we know it does not rely only on deuterium, it needs tritium. Tritium needs to be produced by uranium fission, and after having a hypothetical fusion power plant running, by a breeding process. The technology of that breeding process is today completely unsolved. 2) Fusion reactors, if they aver will exist. will be large…
Comment linking /2014/why-fusion-is-still-30-years-away/
on “Wendelstein 7-X achieves world record”> We already know that energy production is viable if we can solve the containment problem. No. That's only a small part of the problems. What is probably a far more difficult problem is the fact that any nuclear fusion which is remotely viable in this century will use a Deuterium-Tritium reaction. And tritium is an isotope which does not occur in nature - it is unstable. Therefore tritium has to be bred, using heav…
Comment linking /2014/why-fusion-is-still-30-years-away/
on “Wendelstein 7-X achieves world record”Big fan of gravity well storage, it seems simple and elegant. https://energyskeptic.com/2019/gravity-energy-storage/ The above link has some numbers (2019 had it bookmarked so maybe it has improved)
Comment linking /2019/gravity-energy-storage/
on “Geothermal may beat batteries for energy storage”That is problematic in areas, including much of North America. http://energyskeptic.com/2016/electrification-of-freight-rai...
Comment linking /2016/electrification-of-freight-rail/
on “A Quest to Make Gasoline Out of Thin Air: Prometheus (YC W19)”Don't worry, CA can't do it forever as that water is coming out of a giant underground sea that is collapsing, it will never fill up again. https://energyskeptic.com/2021/aquifer-decline-in-california... https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/c... https://revealnews.org/article/9-sobering-facts-about-califo...
Comment linking /2021/aquifer-decline-in-california/
on “Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans”http://energyskeptic.com/2016/why-is-passenger-rail-so-damne...
Comment linking /2016/why-is-passenger-rail-so-damned-inefficient/
on “Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever”> Doesn't scale. Not enough sites. Terrible energy density, massive land use. To store the energy contained in 1 gallon of gasoline requires over 55,000 gallons to be pumped up 726 feet (CCST 2012). [1] Itaipu Dam has 14,000 MW installed power, 1,350 square kilometres (520 sq mi) were flooded. [2] [1] http://energyskeptic.com/2015/hydropower-has-a-very-low-ener... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaipu_Dam
Comment linking /2015/hydropower-has-a-very-low-energy-density/
on “It can make more sense to build new renewable capacity than run old coal plants”> If you think the U.S. is in technological decline... how come oil production has drastically increased? I read a fair amount about energy issues, but mainly for my own understanding and less so to be able to readily explain it, so forgive me if I get something wrong and for the lack of citations, but I believe it's basically that the increase in oil production is pretty much completely due to unconventional source…
Comment linking /2014/why-fusion-will-never-work-and-fry-planet-if-it-did/
on “The Rise and Fall of Industrial Research Labs”I pretty much agree with your overall view. There are very few examples of species which consciously self-limit. Humans are distinctive for a number of reasons, including that we've got the ability to model complex relationships and project forward into the future. Jared Diamond's Collapse looks at a number of civilizations which have fairly effectively managed to live within their means, though they do so by adopti…
Comment linking /2014/david-korowicz-2013-catastrophic-shocks-through-complex-socio-economic-systems/
on “Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep”I recommend the Energy Skeptic blog, they often provide sources and links to papers: https://energyskeptic.com/ They also pass my personal test of not advocating for dumb feel-good ideas. Recently they published a well-sourced article on why the US rail system isn’t a good candidate for electrification.
Comment linking /
on “The UK's War on Anonymity Has Come to America”
