What this blog is for

Energy is essential to life. It's no exaggeration to say that that much of life is a continual struggle for enough energy to survive, and to reproduce - whether that's a plant competing with others for sun, an animal trying to eat enough without being eaten, or a share investor trying to make more money than the other guy (money is really just a claim on goods and services that are made possible with energy).

We have largely forgotten this, as fossil energy sources seemed abundant for much of the 20th Century. Energy seemed not to be a limiting factor at all. Probably as a result, the general level of energy literacy in the news media has fallen to a pretty low level - usually plagued with misunderstandings, misrepresentations and outright errors. The academic research literature is only a little better. It's often hyper-specialised, focusing on technical details that are often not that important when you step back and look at the broader context. The purpose of academic research is all too often just to publish research papers rather than being a serious effort to communicate.

It's the project of this blog to fill the gap in the middle. Not to try to sell anything, but to explain what everyone needs to know about energy and energy-related issues, in a way that everyone can understand. The aim will be to explain things in a way which is correct in every way that matters, without getting stuck in too much detail or mathematics.

This will help you call out energy-related bullshit whenever you hear it, and hold our leaders to a higher level of public discussion. Perhaps that can help in developing a realistic plan for what to do about the energy and climate mess that we now find ourselves in.

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