The Oil Drum

146 comments on Tuesday Open Thread

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Leanan on March 8, 2006 - 8:29am

It has been studied, but I don't know if the information is on the Web. The federal and state DOTs have studied it, as part of their planning processes.

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Donal on March 8, 2006 - 8:38am

I'd imagine the present level of product availability probably requires a lot more intermediate storage and transfer facilities.

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Leanan on March 8, 2006 - 11:42am

Just-in-time delivery, "rolling warehouses," etc., are distribution systems designed around cheap energy. (Wal-Mart has perfected this system.) It works because it's cheaper to send a truck out every day than to rent more storage space on-site. As fuel prices rise, I expect that to change.

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“This order [i.e. capitalism] is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with the economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.”

—Max Weber, 1905