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Recent Posts
- Why the U.S. is ignoring nuclear winter in nuclear policies & strategies
- Oil choke points vulnerable to war, chaos, terrorism, accidents, & piracy
- Nuclear weapons must be reduced or we risk nuclear winter
- Fusion is already running out of fuel
- Peak Oil is Officially Here! World oil production peaked November of 2018
- Wood, the fuel of preindustrial societies, is half of EU renewable energy
- Rare Earth updates: recent research on why complex & intelligent life are rare in the Universe
- Book review of “Chip War” and the Fragility of microchips
- The tremendous material and energy toll of the digital economy
- Nuclear attack on U.S. could kill 90% of Americans
- What percent of Americans are rational?
- Book review of Lights Out. A Cyberattack. A Nation Unprepared. Surviving the Aftermath
- Off-Road vehicles & equipment need diesel fuel
- Book review of “Prime Movers of Globalization: the History & Impact of Diesel Engines & Gas Turbines”
- Mental Health. Coping with the future: notes from Jackson & Jensen’s “An Inconvenient Apocalypse”
Category Archives: Transportation Infrastructure
Corrosion eats $552 billion of infrastructure a year (6% of GDP)
Preface. United States infrastructure was built when the EROI of oil was very high and minerals and metals were cheap due to high ore concentrations. This study was done in 2002, since then, things have gotten much worse (see ASCE … Continue reading
Posted in Bridges, Oil & Gas, Rail, Transportation Infrastructure
Tagged corrosion, infrastructure, mining, nuclear waste, pipelines, transportation, utilities
2 Comments
Who Killed the Electric Car & more importantly, the Electric Truck?
Preface. Who cares about electric cars? Civilization ends when trucks stop running. Trucks can’t run on batteries because they’re too heavy (93% of the cargo weight, 25% of the cargo space), and an all-electric truck fleet would require thousands of … Continue reading
Posted in Automobiles, Batteries, Critical Thinking, Electric & Hydrogen trucks impossible, Electrification, Transportation, Transportation Infrastructure
Tagged battery, BEV, capacity, efficiency, electric car, electric truck, energy density, EV, lead-acid, lithium ion
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Why You Should Love Trains
Why You Should Love Trains by Alice Friedemann November 13, 2014 Trains rock! Trains are over 4 times more fuel efficient than trucks. On average it takes just 1 gallon to move a ton 473 miles, using just 2% of … Continue reading
Posted in Rail, Railroads, Transportation Infrastructure
Tagged efficiency, energy, infrastructure, railroad, transportation
2 Comments
Why You Should Love Trucks
source: bitsandpieces1.blogspot.com Preface. Before the age of fossil fuels, getting food, water, and shelter was simple. Nine out of ten people were self-sufficient farmers. But now there are global 24/7 just-in-time supply chains that depend on trucks and other modes … Continue reading
American Physical Society: has the Battery Bubble Burst?
Aug/Sep 2012. Has the Battery Bubble Burst? Fred Schlachter. American Physical Society. APS News Vol 21, number 8. Phys.org Three years ago at a symposium on lithium-air batteries at IBM Almaden there was great optimism. The symposium “Scalable Energy Storage: … Continue reading
Posted in Batteries, Transportation Infrastructure
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Biggest Waste of Wealth in All of history: America’s Interstate Highway system
A book review by Alice Friedemann of: Swift, Earl. 2012. The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways. Related articles $46 Trillion Infrastructure in USA, $6 Trillion is Transportation Expressways & … Continue reading
Posted in Concrete, Infrastructure Books, Roads, Transportation, Transportation Infrastructure, Trucks
Tagged damage, highway, interstate, truck
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$46 Trillion Infrastructure in USA, $6 Trillion is Transportation
James Howard Kunstler has written that Suburbia will be the largest waste of money and physical assets in human history. The end of the age of oil means that just about everything will be useless too. Below is just the … Continue reading