Tag Archives: Climate Change

Stuttering Energy Transitions: Germany

2015 is knocking at the door. I just got The Economist’s “The World in 2015” special issue both in print and digital form. It’s full of numbers, predictions and stories. Most of its numbers and predictions are optimistic extrapolations of … Continue reading

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The Price of Wobbling

Thanksgiving is around the corner (at the time of writing – by the time this is posted it will be a few days after) and the semester is just about over. This time of the year the students are focusing … Continue reading

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Yes We Can 3: The Alcohol Debate

This will be the last in the series of blogs on EROI that started with John Morgan’s guest blog (November 4). The set of data in all three blogs was based on a paper by Weißbach et al. that suggested … Continue reading

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Yes We Can 2: The Weißbach Paper

A few weeks ago, John Morgan wrote a guest blog here (November 4, 2014) called “The Catch-22 of Energy Storage and EROI.” My conversation with him started by way of a Twitter discussion of David MacKay’s paper on the long … Continue reading

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Yes We Can! :(

Yesterday (November 4th) was Election Day in the US. It ended in a big victory for the Republicans, with a matching defeat for the Democrats and President Obama. It will be much more difficult for the President to push an … Continue reading

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Back to Sustainable Energy Transition: Scenarios and Progress

The IPCC’s original charge is as follows: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization … Continue reading

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Back to the Sustainable Energy Transition: The Physics of Sustainability and Some Tweets About it.

In the last blog I strongly advocated simplifying the conversation about climate change, focusing on how we can get from the present “business as usual” scenario to an “environmentally friendly” scenario that will not result in an environment inhospitable to … Continue reading

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Make it Simple, Please!

Many years ago, I was invited to a small gathering of scientists that did work on solar cells. The invitation came from the Department of Energy (DOE), which coordinates funding to these projects. The conference was focused on creating a … Continue reading

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Assessment: Fall 2014

In my July 8, 2014 blog, I promised to check in with four self-assessment reports throughout the year, at the following times: The commemorations of the American and French Revolutions (first two weeks of July) The Jewish religion’s holy day, … Continue reading

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The World and Me

As I mentioned in my last blog, it’s been a busy month. Among other events, the semester started, and there was an enormous climate change march in Manhattan (paired with others globally) in anticipation of the United Nations special session … Continue reading

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