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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
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
Trains Rock! Trucks suck: 4x less efficient. Shift freight from truck to rail
A proposed National System of Interstate and Defense RAILROADS, as an infrastructure project for the next fifty years by J. William Vigrass To the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, USDOT Bldg., L’Enfant Plaza, 400 7th St. N.W. … Continue reading
Posted in Railroads, Transportation What To Do
Tagged efficiency, energy, freight, rail, train, truck
3 Comments
Almost half of Rail Freight is Energy, increasingly Crude Oil
Source: American Association of Railroads. 46% of all tonnage hauled by freight trains is Energy: In 2014, crude oil will likely be 650,000 carloads — 2% of all carloads, 2.2% of tonnage. In addition 2.6% of rail tonnage was refined … Continue reading
Out of time: 50 years to make a transition, 210 years at the current rate
If transportation is to be electrified, then electric generation and the electric grid must be doubled, or even tripled. So by Cobb’s calculation, that would push back the transition time to renewables 420 to 630 years. Alice Friedemann. By Kurt … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Electric Grid & EMP Electromagnetic Pulse, Peak Oil
Tagged alternative energy, peak oil, renewable energy, transition time
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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
Posted in Trucks
4 Comments