Albert Bates

A different kind of childhood

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If you ever wanted to see what the world might look like after the Tribulation, you could do worse than visit the Burren land on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. … the Burren has only rock, with thin soil in the cracks –a rippling moonscape of pale hills that stretches to the sea, with few trees to slow the screaming Atlantic winds. It’s lovely to visit, but living here would seem to us like being marooned on an alien planet, and raising children unthinkable.

Peak Oil Review: 24 June 2019

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Until last Thursday, the oil markets largely ignored the increasing tensions between the US and Iran, including the attacks on six oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz. Then Iran downed an unmanned US surveillance drone, and oil prices soared on the possibility that a war which could potentially halt the 18 million b/d of oil exports was imminent. After a day of vacillation, Washington backed off a retaliatory attack on Iran, allowing the situation to cool.

Bicyclopolis

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Doomer porn has limited appeal and shelf life; you can only get so miserable before there’s nowhere to go and no point. One of the most appealing subsets of speculative fiction, then, is what we might call the “good old future,” where our descendants have come through a crisis and created a better world that looks a lot like the past.

Is there a way to counter the Chinese stranglehold on rare earth metals?

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Rare earth metals which are crucial to modern electronics are in the news because the Chinese, the dominate world supplier, are threatening to cut off exports in retaliation for tariffs on Chinese goods imposed by the Trump administration. Is there any way to counter Chinese control of these crucial metals?