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Recent Posts
- The history of rope making
- What will future societies be like after fossil fuels are gone?
- Phosphate: All hopes for food and LFP batteries rest on Morocco with up to 85% of remaining reserves
- Floating Solar Farms add plastic, metal, PFAS & cut off light and oxygen to life below
- Peak Lithium
- Trump eliminates birth control abroad
- In a world without people, how long would NYC last?
- Network States to replace democratic governments with billionaire Silicon Valley CEO dictators & Republicans
- Why the kerogen in oil shale will never fill up your tank
- ‘The oil we eat’. Following the food chain back to iraq
- Vanishing open spaces: population growth and sprawl in America
- Admiral Rickover 1957: Energy Resources & Our Future
- The Green New Deal is not a solution for the real problem: Overshoot
- A transition from fossil fuels to renewables could take a century – if it ever happens
- Electrifying freight trains in the U.S. is a bad idea
Category Archives: Infrastructure
The Nitrogen Bomb: fossil-fueled fertilizers keep billions of us alive
Preface. There are two articles below that explain why natural gas fertilizers are keeping at least 4 billion of us alive today. If you’re interested in this topic, here are a few more to read: Erisman JW, Sutton MA, Galloway … Continue reading
Posted in Farming & Ranching, Life After Fossil Fuels, Natural Gas, Overpopulation, Peak Food
Tagged agriculture, fertilizer, nitrogen, overpopulation, peak food
4 Comments
Diesel is finite. Trucks are the bedrock of civilization. So where are the battery electric trucks?
Last updated: 2023-1-21 Preface. Heavy-duty diesel-engine trucks (agricultural, mining, logging, construction, garbage, cement, 18-wheelers, and more) are essential for doing the actual work of our fossil-fueled civilization. Without them, no goods would be delivered, no food grown, nothing manufactured, no … Continue reading
Posted in Batteries, Electric & Hydrogen trucks impossible, Trucks: Electric
Tagged battery, BEV, drayage, e-truck, electric truck, heavy-duty, HHD, Nikola, tesla, truck
11 Comments
Aging nuclear power plants should be shut down
Preface. Below are my notes from the Greenpeace 146-page “Lifetime extension of ageing nuclear power plants”. Even if you don’t understand all the terms, read on anyhow, since it certainly conveys why nuclear plants grow more dangerous with age. Imagine … Continue reading
Posted in Energy Infrastructure, Nuclear Power Energy
Tagged corrosion, degradation, embrittlement, lifetime extension, nuclear power
Comments Off on Aging nuclear power plants should be shut down
Trucks running on CNG or LNG
Preface. My books “When Trucks stop running” and “Life After Fossil Fuels” explain why trucks can’t run on electricity — batteries simply don’t scale up, they are too heavy leaving little if any room for cargo. A catenary system has … Continue reading
Posted in Natural Gas Vehicles, Trucks
Tagged CNG, LNG, stranded natural gas, trucks
Comments Off on Trucks running on CNG or LNG
The Next Big Thing: Distributed Generation & Microgrids
Preface. Last updated 2022-9-5 The first article below explains what microgrids will look like in the future. But first a brief look at what a microgrid is, as Angwin explains in her book “Shorting the Grid. The Hidden Fragility … Continue reading
Interdependencies & supply chain failures in the News
Preface. Joseph Tainter, explains in his famous book “The collapse of complex societies” how complexity causes civilizations to collapse. Fossil fuels have created the most complex society that has ever, or will ever exist, using fossil energy that can’t be … Continue reading
Posted in Interdependencies, Microchips and computers, Supply Chains
Tagged autos, electric grid, ford, interdependency, microchip, plastic, supply chain
2 Comments
A Century from Now Concrete Will be Nothing But Rubble
Photo: road abandoned since 1984 in the Florida Keys Preface. Much of the material that follows is based on Robert Courland’s 2011 book Concrete Planet, which explains why concrete is an essential part of our infrastructure. And it’s all falling … Continue reading
Microchip fabrication plants need electricity 24 x 7 for four months
Preface. Computer chip fabrication plants need to run continuously for months to accomplish the thousands of steps needed to make microchips. A half-hour power outage at Samsung’s Pyeongtaek chip plant caused losses of over $43 million dollars (Reuters 2019). Intermittent power … Continue reading
Pentagon report: collapse within 20 years from climate change
Preface. The report that the article by Ahmed below is based on is: Brosig, M., et al. 2019. Implications of climate change for the U.S. Army. United States Army War College. It was written in 2019, before covid-19 and so … Continue reading
Posted in Arctic, Blackouts, Climate Change, Infrastructure & Fast Crash, Military, Over Oil
Tagged climate change, collapse, military
2 Comments
Updates to Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy
Updates to “Life After Fossil Fuels” Last updated 28 April 2024. Other posts related to this book here. My book is about our many dependencies on fossil fuels, quickly depicted in these very short videos: Life without Petroleum A Day … Continue reading