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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: Transportation
Electric Cars and Biofuels switch dependence from foreign oil to domestic water and weather risks
Figure 1. Energy/Water Nexus Amy Hardberger, Matthew E. Mantell, Michael Webber, Carey W. King, Karl Fennessey [ This Senate hearing covers a lot of ground. I found the most interesting testimony to be the intersection of water and energy, … Continue reading
Posted in Drought, Energy Production, Hydropower, Transportation, Water Infrastructure
Tagged hydropower, peak oil, peak water, water dependence
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U.S. House meeting on terrorist threats to energy security
[ Even though this hearing was over a decade ago, the issues are still the same. Nothing has changed. Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation, 2015, Springer] House 109-70. July 27, … Continue reading
Posted in Caused by Scarce Resources, Chokepoints, Middle East, Oil Shocks, Transportation
Tagged oil dependence, oil shock, Ras Tanura, saudi arabia, SPR, strategic petroleum reserve, terrorism
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Review of “The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World” by Steve LeVine
Preface. This is a book review of Steve Levine’s 2015 “The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World”. If you ever wondered why batteries are still not even close to powerful enough to replace fossil fuels, … Continue reading
Posted in Automobiles, Batteries, Energy Books
Tagged battery, electric car
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U.S. House looks at how to improve the nation’s highway freight network
[ Like all books and articles I read on transportation for my book, this session assumes endless growth and worries about future congestion, which will not be a problem on the other side of peak oil, which is coming soon. … Continue reading
Posted in Trucks, U.S. Congress Transportation
Tagged freight, transportation, trucks
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Why is passenger rail so damned inefficient?
[ This is about passenger rail, not freight rail, which is incredibly efficient. Freight rail is efficient because to reduce aerodynamic drag and diesel fuel use (USDOT 2008), they travel on average only 23 miles per hour (to reduce aerodynamic … Continue reading
Posted in Mass Transit, Railroads, Transportation
Tagged auto, bus, mass transit, passenger, rail
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Effects of biodiesel on diesel engines: John Deere
[ Since petroleum is finite, the most important focus of U.S. energy research ought to be keeping trucks operating, since civilization ends when trucks stop running. Ideally this would be done with a “drop-in” fuel that can be burned in … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiesel, Trucks
Tagged biodiesel, diesel engine, John Deere
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Natural gas is a stupid transportation fuel
[ My comment: The only reason natural gas has come up as a transportation fuel at all is the false belief that there is 100 years of natural gas (even this article does, but natural gas may last far less … Continue reading
Posted in Automobiles, Natural Gas Vehicles, Transportation
Tagged cars, natural gas, transportation
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Ecological cost of new roads in Africa
[ What follows are excerpts from the January 8 2014 issue of Newscientist’s “Africa’s road-building frenzy will transform continent” by Andy Coghlan. ] China is funding most of the new roads to get the minerals they’ve mined, and transport food … Continue reading
Posted in Roads, Transportation Infrastructure
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Hybrid electric trucks are very different from HEV cars
Preface. The National Research Council paper I review in this post explains why it is hard to transfer auto hybrid technology to trucks. They are entirely different animals — medium-duty trucks weigh up to 10 times more, have up to … Continue reading
Posted in Batteries, Electric & Hydrogen trucks impossible, Trucks: Electric
Tagged battery, electric truck, HEV, hybrid
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