Category Archives: Infrastructure & Collapse

90% of why we live past 50 due is clean water (and food) from water treatment facilities and sewage treatment plants that are all falling apart. Oil & gas pipes essential to heating and cooking are rusting apart. Dams, bridges, roads — all built when the EROEI of oil was 100:1 need replacing at a time when the EROEI has fallen below 15:1

Super Rust Corrodes hundreds of ships and could sink the oil industry

Posted on October 4, 2014 by

Blame it on super-rust, a virulent form of corrosion that has destroyed hundreds of ships and could sink the oil industry. By Richard Martin, June 2002. Wired Magazine. Key points (see the full article at http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/superrust.html): Ships that cost hundreds … Continue reading →

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American Physical Society: has the Battery Bubble Burst?

Posted on July 15, 2014 by

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 →

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Biggest Waste of Wealth in All of history: America’s Interstate Highway system

Posted on June 9, 2014 by

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 →

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$46 Trillion Infrastructure in USA, $6 Trillion is Transportation

Posted on June 3, 2014 by

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 →

Posted in Transportation Infrastructure | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Oil and Gas Infrastructure are Rusting Apart

Posted on March 27, 2014 by

Oil And Gas “Rust”: An Evil Worse Than Depletion Offshore Technology Conference May 5, 2008 Houston, Texas by Matthew R. Simmons Chairman Simmons & Company International Some of the slides are: If Infrastructure Not Rebuilt It Creates A Double Whammy … Continue reading →

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Our interlinked infrastructure is so vulnerable one piece can take the others down with it

Posted on October 31, 2013 by

This article by Robinson et al is a very prescient article written back in 1998, long before 9/11 and he also points out how vulnerable U.S. infrastructure is to cyberwar and cyberattacks at a time when our infrastructure wasn’t nearly … Continue reading →

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Oil and Gas infrastructure are falling apart

Posted on July 11, 2013 by

Beneath Cities, a Decaying Tangle of Gas Pipes March 23, 2014. Patrick McGeehan et al. New York Times It is a danger hidden beneath the streets of New York City, unseen and rarely noticed: 6,302 miles of pipes transporting natural … Continue reading →

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Why is modern concrete falling apart?

Posted on January 20, 2013 by

Here’s more information from Courland’s book “Concrete Planet” and other information I found on the web since I wrote Enough energy after Peak Oil to rebuild and repair concrete infrastructure? Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory has been trying to figure out … Continue reading →

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How long will concrete last if it isn’t maintained?

Posted on January 20, 2013 by

As energy grows scarcer and is devoted to growing food and other life-support services, our infrastructure will crumble. Bob Holmes. 12 Oct 2006. Imagine Earth without people. NewScientist.com Lack of maintenance will spell an early demise for buildings, roads, bridges … Continue reading →

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Oil Built Our Infrastructure Back When it was Cheap & Abundant

Posted on August 7, 2012 by

Most of our infrastructure was built many decades ago, when the energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) of oil was 100:1, and now it’s down to roughly 30:1 in the gulf, and much less elsewhere (at 10:1 civilization collapses). What … Continue reading →

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