Peak oil is also peak food.

People have looked at the numbers here for what fertilizer contributes:

https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-people-does-synthetic-fertilizer-feed

A ballpark estimate is that around 40% of all food comes from the fossil fertilizers. This is derived from tracing the nitrogen in food proteins back to the source inputs.

Of course, you can also go through the carbon side of the food chain and there are lots of energies being spent throughout the system…

We are currently exceeding the planetary boundary for nitrogen, about 63% of our fertilizer use would need to go down in order to preserve the global ecosystem. The fertilizers are so excessive that they are killing the natural ecosystems.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05158-2

Excessive agricultural nitrogen use causes environmental problems globally, to an extent that it has been suggested that a safe planetary boundary has been exceeded

Its hard to see how we can use only 1/3 of the fertilizer rates and still make enough food.

Last time I looked the fertilizers were consuming only around 4% of annual global methane production, so 'peak oil ’ will hit for tractors, combines, refrigerated storage, transportation and other aspects (diesel fuel, electrical power) before we don’t have enough methane to make fertilizers.

THIS is why we need green energy, fossil fuel infrastructure is far too brittle.

There is actually a report that does a deep dive into some of these details:

https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-technology-perspectives-2024

Warning, this is a svelte 400-page report!

I was mentioning this because of the content of Chapter 5 & 6.

In summary, in Chapter 5 the case is made that the global supply chains for the renewables economy require an order of magnitude more shipping because most of the resources are very material intensive. For example, we will need much more dry bulk ocean freighters to transport ore, metals, coal and so on.

In Chapter 6 on the strategic considerations, it turns out that multiple new shipping lane chokepoints will be created, many of them in socially unstable and dangerous areas. In some of these areas huge ships will be passing through 100s of times a day. The location of these chokepoints shifts dramatically from the fossil fuel paradigm.

The report concludes that the “just in time” fossil fuel markets are more susceptible to short term disturbances, but the post-carbon economy will be vastly more reliant on massive massive transport supply chains with lots of lower density materials. Where already installed energy systems are not disturbed in the short term, the supply chain will be exponentially more vulnerable to shocks and there are much larger attack surfaces.

The report analyses 10 marine shipping chokepoints starting at page 385. In the charts that follow, you can see how a lot of petro shipping passes through one or more chokepoints, but the cleantech will have 3X more chance of the shipping supply chain passing through chokepoints. Solar, EVs, batteries and heat pumps are the tech that is particularly vulnerable to passing through these chokepoints.

Whenever a shipping lane is disrupted, ships have to take longer journeys to bypass the issues, and longer voyage times has the same effect as reducing the total amount of ships available globally. It also raises costs and creates domino effects in supply chains.

In summary, the cleantech economy is a massive increase in supply chain complexity. I really don’t think most people understand how much low density material will need to be moved around the globe in the future. Cleantech is a much more intense global industrial supply chain.

I have a MAGA acquaintance and I saw him today, and he still can’t stop talking about Epstein. I don’t think the distraction is working.

https://archive.fo/20260303070324/https://www.ftm.eu/articles/next-food-crisis-big-five-speculation

Assuming the stem is aluminum, and the steerer is steel?

Heat up with a torch. Soak it from the bottom using ammonia. Repeat for 2-3 days.

You can also just cut it out or drill it out.

That’s because the whole theory is wrong.

The renewables/EVs are being made in factories that are a long term investment in coal powered manufacturing. They are being shipped in oil powered ships and driven by diesel trucks on asphalt roads and mounted on concrete foundations or whatever.

The entire supply chain is the exact same supply chain that was designed in the fossil fuel era.

The renewable energy system is less than 3% of the whole thing and the system isn’t being redesigned.

Unfortunately, what we were doing was always childish and superficial.

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I consider the race results of a company like Frameworks to be a solid exemplar of what you’re suggesting.

All these multi decade bike brand behemoths got their lunch stolen by a single poor guy with a better idea.

They were so butthurt they went through the UCI and made such a startup company illegal in future world cups.

Do you pay attention to what’s going on? Literally yes, you or I or anyone can design a better product. These guys are resting on 20 year old ideas and keeping technical development stagnant. This has now been proven beyond any doubt. You don’t get small companies banned from the world cup if you’re confident in the competitive strength of your engineering!

The amount of engineering and development and marketing that goes into a 15K pro race bike is where the cost is.

For $15K, they should be better engineered. Think of the amount of engineering that goes into making a moto… It has to pass safety standards, meet all kinds of regulations and perform as expected.

Mountain bike engineering is a total joke in comparison.

Who designs the suspension kinematics for Pivot? Don’t they hire Dave Weagle for that? According to this page, they just have a few proprietary patents that are basically some static frame hardware. https://www.pivotcycles.com.au/technology/patents-and-proprietary-designs/

“The adults in the room for the last 30 to 40 years have been deeply childish on climate change.”

I wouldn’t argue against this, but basically most bike companies are really slapping commodity parts/components on frames that they outsource the manufacturing on. The basically are just designing custom label products that they get made by large factories that handle many competing brand’s orders. Often the companies don’t even own their own fixtures or do all their own engineering.

At current boutique prices in the Direct To Consumer model, you can have $1M gross revenue selling 200 bikes a year, which is like a mid-size bike shop volume of annual sales. This is very low volume.

… what I am saying is replay Fallout New Vegas, Hardcore mode, just in case.

I just ordered a case of Nuka-Cola.

When I worked in the bike shop, we used to joke that when the bike rack has mor value in the vehicle above the rack than the vehicle on the bottom, you have the right priorities.

But its absurd when you think of the precision and standards that go into the manufacture of each…

This conversation has been going on for a while, and people have all these cliché justifications for the high price of mountain bikes ‘they are lighter’, ‘the global market for motos has higher economies of scale’ etc.

End of the day I think its a “hobby tax” that bike riders have been justifying in terms of “a price the market will bear”.

A friend of mine who was working for a bike brand told me (this was a few years ago) that the company paid about $75-200 wholesale cost for a welded alloy frame and they could sell these for $2500.

I mean, that is fine, but now explain why bike companies are slow to return an email, have sloppy customer service, battle customers on warranty’s and don’t support 3 year old designs and have no spare parts. Like, how are they not providing red carpet service while charging luxury market markups? Infuriating.

Companies are super secretive on warranty and frame failure rates, but I’ve heard that a lot of modern bikes fail about 10X as much as they used to. They have shaved so many grams the products just don’t last.

I also think there is a lot of cultural and technology stagnation going on, new models and new versions never excite me as a rider. I cant figure out why I want a new bike, what’s the benefit?

Pretty interesting scorecard.

If I’m not completely mistaken, the way they have approached the “tipping points” is as if everything is logically an independent variable.

It seems as if they don’t consider that tipping a system can cascade into changes in other systems. Where is the positive feedback / runaway / correlation consideration?

Example: if the sub polar gyre slows and greenland melts, should the AMOC be just as likely to tip under 2° than if the gyre didnt slow and greenland didn’t melt and its 2° of warming?

Temperature alone cannot be the only large contributing causal factor?

So a specific thought is that they say the Boreal is susceptible to abrupt shifts and couple to permafrost melting. Much of the scientific literature treats this as if it will be a gradual source of carbon released over centuries, but for example this study implies that 40% of the carbon coming out of the thaw is ACTUALLY released to the atmosphere in the first decade. This paper says that the 3M sq km of permafrost melt at the start of the Holocene injected more carbon into the atmosphere than all the industrial sources (so far).

One of the best “all style” movies has to be:

“The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.”

Why did they need refurbishing if they weren’t broken?

Used coffee grinders get oily / have grinds inside that need cleaning. About half of them had a missing hopper, lid, knob, canister etc.

I have had a dozen+ BARATZAS, but only about 5 or so Encores.

Out of all of the machines I’ve had, I had one that had a failing motor, and one had a failed timer switch from someone forcing it to far. However I’ve replaced multiple timer switches because on 20 - 30 year old machines the new knobs don’t fit without changing the timer also (different shaft shape, same timer). It’s super cool that you can install the updated parts with no issues.

Once I had a machine where the wire had been knocked off the momentary micro switch.

A lot of the machines I’ve had have been heavily used… Like in a university break room or a corporate coffee area. Like probably equivalent to 5-10X what a home used would do.

Back around 2005-2010 I also owned one for my own use.

On the second one, the plastic burr collar broke and Baratza told me it was a common failure.

Isn’t that a $5 semi-external part that you can change without tools and without opening the machine? Like just twist off the hopper by hand and it’s accessible?

I’ve never fixed a broken Encore or Forte, I thought you were going to teach me what goes wrong on them.

So it’s the gears that break?

I know you said you have never even looked at the Forte, so how do you know they can be recommend as a BIFL grinder?

If this assessment is completely correct, we would be starting a long decline now with technical debt, hardly any sustainable energy projects, lots of infrastructure deferred maintenance, a whole civilization in overshoot and highly depenedent on a life support system running on depleting non renewable resources etc.

Basic observation would be that we failed to prepare for the end of growth in the most horrifying way possible.

However, the assessment could be way off. Perhaps he’s calling the peak 10 years too early.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

It seems as if we are setting an all time record for low ice this year.

https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph

The previous record low was 3.4 million sq km. I think BOE is < 1 million.

The drop in the ice formation this year is a large amount. I think it’s so low that it’s at a level that wouldn’t have been expected before the 2030s based on the trend. You can really see on the chart how no other years have even been close to where we are today.