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Recent Posts
- Electrifying freight trains in the U.S. is a bad idea
- Why Nuclear Power can’t replace fossil fuels
- Energy, Water, & Climate Change are interdependent
- Why fusion power is Forever Away
- Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
- Excerpt from “The Geopolitics of Resource Wars”
- Homes & Buildings
- Book Review “The Outlawed Ocean” by Ian Urbina
- Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
- Motherboards: too complicated to make after oil
- “More and More and More” one of the best books on energy ever written
- The staggering destruction of knowledge by Christians in the Roman Empire
- Why the R/P Reserves to Production ratio does not show when oil will run out
- Catton on Collapse “Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse”
- Book Review of Grain Brain: Extraordinary claim not backed up by evidence
Category Archives: Infrastructure
Electric truck & car range less in cold weather
Preface. What follows are two articles. The first has excerpts from Calstart’s study of the effects cold weather had on lithium and Sodium Nickel Chloride e-truck batteries. The second article is from Consumer Reports, which says that half of driving … Continue reading
Book review of Door to Door and the amazing world of transportation
Edward Humes. 2016. Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation. HarperCollins. A book review by Alice Friedemann at www.energyskeptic.com author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation, 2015, Springer] I was in the … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Books, Transportation, Travel
Tagged supply chains, transportation, trucks
3 Comments
Climate change impacts on transportation 2008 U.S. Senate hearing
Senate 110-1199. June 24, 2008. Climate change impacts on the transportation sector. U.S. Senate Hearing. Excerpts from this 135 page document follow. DANIEL K. INOUYE, U.S. SENATOR FROM HAWAII The transportation sector is a major indicator of the overall economic … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Transportation, Transportation Infrastructure, U.S. Congress Transportation
Tagged climate change, energy, transportation
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China consumes mind-boggling amounts of raw materials
September 10, 2015. China Consumes Mind-Boggling Amounts of Raw Materials. Visual Capitalist. Over the last 20 years, the world economy has relied on the Chinese economic growth engine more than it would like to admit. … Continue reading
Posted in ! PEAK EVERYTHING
Tagged aluminum, china, concrete, copper, minerals, nickel, steel
4 Comments
Most energy efficient: passenger bus, rail, or auto?
Preface. Weight reduces energy efficiency, so one way to make transportation more efficient is to light-weight rail cars, buses, trucks, and cars. For every 10% reduction in weight, up to 7.6% more fuel efficiency can be gained (Joost 2012). While … Continue reading
Posted in Automobiles, Mass Transit, Railroads
Tagged auto, bus, car, efficiency, energy, mass transit, passenger, rail
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U.S. Senate hearing on our aging water infrastructure
[ Even though conventional oil production has been on a plateau since 2005, there is no sense of alarm or urgency to try to fix infrastructure before oil is rationed and not enough exists to replace or repair it. Some … Continue reading
Posted in U.S. Congress Infrastructure, Water Infrastructure
Tagged congressional record, dams, energy, infrastructure, reservoirs, water
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Shale Euphoria: The Boom and Bust of Sub Prime Oil and Natural Gas
[ U.S. house hearings have stated that the U.S. is energy independent, that shale oil and gas will give us a century of energy independence: House 112-176 in 2012, House 113-1 2013, and several others. In fact we have so … Continue reading
Posted in Oil & Gas Fracked, Peak Natural Gas, Peak Oil
Tagged bubble, deflation, fracking, gas, oil, peak natural gas, peak oil, shale
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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
Coal plants are causing water shortages in China
Wong, E. March 22, 2016. Report Ties Coal Plants to Water Shortage in Northern China. New York Times. China’s consumption of coal, a major contributor to climate change and the country’s horrific air pollution, is worsening a severe water shortage … Continue reading
Posted in China, Energy Production, Peak Water
Tagged china, coal, power, water
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