PowerSwitch

[Potemkin Villager]

"Bomb Cyclone" expected on east coast of USA.

https://inhabitat.com/bomb-cyclone-to-slam-east-coast-with-more-bitterly-cold-weather/

Sounds serious to me compared to our wee storms on this side of the Atlantic.
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"Test to destruction: engineers like to do that. Only with a test to destruction can you find the outer limits of a system's strength".Kim Stanley Robinson

[Potemkin Villager]

Very well written and easy to follow exposition on the Beast from the East and all that.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-polar-vortex-climate-change-and-beast-from-the-east?utm_source=Weekly+Carbon+Briefing&utm_campaign=447cc24f77-Carbon_Brief_Weekly_02_03_2018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3ff5ea836a-447cc24f77-303476225&ct=t(Carbon_Brief_Weekly_02_03_2018)&goal=0_3ff5ea836a-447cc24f77-303476225

When you think about it the degree of compressive warming is pretty mind boggling!
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"Test to destruction: engineers like to do that. Only with a test to destruction can you find the outer limits of a system's strength".Kim Stanley Robinson

[vtsnowedin]

[kenneal - lagger]

[emordnilap]

Bridge collapses in Italy during severe rain

What a nightmare for those people.

Expect more destruction of this kind as weather worsens and infrastructure fails to be maintained.
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"Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fụck the Buddhists" - Bjork

[kenneal - lagger]

I've amended the above from Spain to Italy for you, Em.

As the bridge was quoted as being built in the 1960s there could have been some Mafia interference in the bridge building resulting in underspec materials being used. There are at least two spans of the bridge collapsed which would be unlikely to have been caused by the lightning strike that the bridge was reported to have received immediately before collapse. Judging by the 40ft container lorry stopped on the bridge it looks more like 250m have collapsed rather than the 100m quoted.
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As Steve Keen puts it: “Capital without energy is a statue; labour without energy is a corpse.” Economics ignores this which is why economics is broken.

[emordnilap]

[adam2]

I agree that mafia involvement seems probable.
A defective structure is of course more likely to fail during extreme weather than on a calm mild day.

Two modes of failure occur to me.

Firstly a lightning strike, in passing through the steel reinforcing the current can heat the steel to the point of danger, and also the heat can turn trapped water into steam and thus shatter the concrete.
Reinforced concrete structures should of course be designed to withstand lightning, but if the steel reinforcement was already smaller than it should have been ?
Or if the lightning was intended to be conducted to earth by an external lightning conductor, and that precaution was undersized, or completely omitted, or later stolen ?

Another possibility is failure of a vertical support due to floodwater undermining the foundations, a much more likely eventuality if these were less deep or less substantial than called for by the designer.
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"Installers and owners of emergency diesels must assume that they will have to run for a week or more"

[fuzzy]

I would guess salt corrosion. Genoa is a fairly temperate historic coastal city. Very worth a visit.

[kenneal - lagger]

Just stay off motorway bridges. Or any bridge for that matter!!
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As Steve Keen puts it: “Capital without energy is a statue; labour without energy is a corpse.” Economics ignores this which is why economics is broken.

[kenneal - lagger]

I thought that it could be foundation failure in the heavy rain but, from the pictures, at least one of the foundations seems to be unmoved at its base although the structure above has collapsed.
_________________
As Steve Keen puts it: “Capital without energy is a statue; labour without energy is a corpse.” Economics ignores this which is why economics is broken.

[raspberry-blower]

Business Insider: Before and After photos of the Genoa bridge collapse
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A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.

[Potemkin Villager]

Reasons to be cheerful 1,2,3...

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/global-heatwave-is-symptom-of-early-stage-cycle-of-civilisational-collapse-efef3c1dd7eb

There is no doubt that we as a species are totally barking.
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"Test to destruction: engineers like to do that. Only with a test to destruction can you find the outer limits of a system's strength".Kim Stanley Robinson

[emordnilap]