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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
A third of Nuclear Reactors are going to die of old age in the next 10-20 years
70% of reactors are over 25 years old, 23% are over 35 years old, so within 10 to 20 years about a third will have to be decommissioned, far more than the 63 under construction. Some are bound to fail … Continue reading
Wind turbines hit limits to growth before 50% wind power penetration
Material requirements of 50% wind power in the USA hit limits to growth Also see: Davidsson, S., et al. 2014. Growth curves and sustained commissioning modelling of renewable energy Investigating resource constraints for wind energy. Energy Policy. Fizaine, F., et … Continue reading
Posted in Electrification, Limits To Growth, Renewable Integration, Wind
Tagged cement, concrete, copper, dysprosium, expoxy, fiberglass, iron, limits to growth, neodymium, steel, turbines, wind
2 Comments
Wind’s dirty secret: it goes on vacation in the summer and year-round in the South East
Figure 1. Summer wind across the USA is barely to not economically viable Class 3 (light blue), or not at all economically viable Class 2 (orange) and class 1 (blank) (NREL), with very limited darker blue (class 4) and … Continue reading
Posted in Electric Grid & EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Electrification, Seasonal, Wind
Tagged monthly, seasonal, wind resource maps, wind speed
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Michael Webber on Energy + Water + Food interdependency
Webber, Michael E. February 2015. Our future rides on our ability to integrate Energy + Water + Food. Scientific American. Michael E. Webber is deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. His Yale University … Continue reading
Posted in Drought & Collapse, Interdependencies, Limits To Growth
Tagged drought, energy, food, interdependencies, limits to growth, water
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Homeland Security and Dept of Energy: Dams and Energy Sectors Interdependency Study
[Below are excerpts from this 45 page document. Dams not only provide power but also water for agriculture, drinking water, cooling water for thermal power plants, ecosystem health, fisheries, and so on. All dams have a finite lifespan of 50 … Continue reading
Posted in Dams, Energy Production, Interdependencies
Tagged dams, hydropower, infrastructure, interdependency
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Over 21 essential resources have peaked including fish, milk, eggs, wheat, corn, rice, soy
Nature summary of this article: “The rates at which humans consume multiple resources such as food and wood peaked at roughly the same time, around 2006. This means that resources could be simultaneously depleted, so achieving sustainability might be more … Continue reading
Posted in Limits To Growth, Peak Food
Tagged food, limits to growth, overpopulation, peak
2 Comments
Electricity, fuel, and other interdependencies
Freight trucks, trains, ships, airplanes all stop when the electricity is out because the pumps depend on it. Related: Why you should love trucks and When Trucks Stop CR. September 4 & 23, 2003. Implications of power blackouts for the … Continue reading
Posted in Automobiles, Fuel Distribution, Interdependencies, Trucks
Tagged blackout, diesel, electricity, fuel, gas, generator, interdependency, telecommunications
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1177 B.C. The year civilization collapsed
[ These are my notes that are disjointed but can give you an idea of how fast our fossil-fueled civilization could collapse. We are far more interdependent on much longer global supply chains (a wind turbine has 8,000 parts). We … Continue reading
Posted in Cascading Failure, Collapse of Civilizations, Collapsed & collapsing nations, Drought & Collapse, Interdependencies, Supply Chains
Tagged 1177, collapse, complexity, interdependence, supply chains
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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