7 ms·

Review: Energy and Civilization

71 points by tim_sw 3y ago

progrus 3y ago
Skimmed, and I can tell I’m going to like this one a lot.
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
Inadvertantly makes a good argument for renewables, but then links to an article on geothermal that disses wind and solar, despite them fitting neatly into his theory.
- philipkglass 3y ago
  I upvoted this review because I thought that Smil's book was quite good as a history and I was only half way through reading the review. The second half of the review takes a surprising turn toward "WTF Happened in 1971" and excoriating energy efficiency.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Yeah the second half is really weird. It seems to suddenly take the proposition "more energy is good" and conclude that "energy inefficiency is good" follows. Both energy abundance and efficiency are good; efficiency is a multiplier of the positive effects of increased abundance. The detachment of energy use per capita from gdp per capita after the 70s is a good thing. That gap is pure upside, where each unit increase of energy is strictly more valuable than it would otherwise have been. In general, I find this false dichotomy between efficiency and abundance so maddening. Why not both??
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      Does he say Edison was a horrible inventor because the electric light bulb was so much more efficient than the oil lamp?
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        He doesn't say that, but it's a claim that would be consistent with his argument in the second half of the piece. Despite being obviously ridiculous.
jnsaff2 3y ago
I can recommend Smil's books quite easily. There are a lot of renewable/green energy advocates that don't like him and try to paint him in a bad light. The reason mainly is that Smil takes a look at energy transitions and tells you: it's hard. He just analyzes in a very methodical way and paints the picture that is just grim because of the numbers and momentous challenge. Smil himself is very much pro green energy, pro rational energy use and all the jazz. He just is not that optimistic that this is going to be easy or even see how the global warming problem is solvable. It's a bit sad that some green energy advocates are missing the whole point of Smil and attack him personally even tho he is in fact one of the most useful allies. If you want to have his views/analysis in an hour long youtube video instead of the (well worthy of a read) stack of books he has written then there is this lecture [0]. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szikg74kgnM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szikg74kgnM Edit: I have really crappy internet so I believe I actually meant this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJxmlNyu4sE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJxmlNyu4sE
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  Smil is effectively a degrowther because he doesn't believe renewables, EVs etc. will work well enough. Quote: > Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’ Which is at least logically consistent, but bad timing as most of his boosters are currently trying to pivot from "climate change isn't real" to "bloody hippies are holding back rapid rollout of renewables with their environmental regulations" and hoping no one notices the contradiction and their history of fossil fuel apologism.
  - ido 3y ago
    I don’t care if they want to improve their PR retroactively if the result is rapid deployment of renewable. “Who was right all along” doesn’t matter as what actually gets done.
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  I can't. Smil's claims are just poorly informed, characterized by a limited understanding of fundamentals, and with a clear bias towards existing systems. Might as well be a kerosene lamp enthusiast in the era of electricity and incandescent bulbs. It's entirely possible to run human civilization at its current level of complexity without fossil fuels or uranium, entirely using the sun's energy output and the planet's energy output in the form of solar, wind, geothermal and storage. Smil is entirely opposed to this notion, likely because the people who've promoted him don't want to see the value of their fossil fuel and uranium investments drop to zero. Wanna buy a kerosene lamp, anyone?
arkwin 3y ago
It's a dense book, but I enjoyed it a lot. His newest book How the World Really Works: A Scientist's Guide to Our Past, Present and Future is also really good! https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56587388 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56587388
- senko 3y ago
  I was so frustrated by that book (bought it on recommendation here) that I couldn't finish it. He has one premise I agree with, that we can't decarbonize as quickly or easily as some hope. He then bludgeons the reader to death with it. I get it, okay! Worse, much worse, he is incredibly myopic. For someone professing love and faith in science, he strangely seems to firmly believe we'll be stuck at our current technological level forever, the "end of history" fallacy on a whole other level. Have some faith in scientists, would you? Factually, I don't doubt he's correct. But his assumptions and innuendo come off so strongly it completely ruined the book for me.
gumballindie 3y ago
Star generates virtually unlimited energy. Emits said energy. Earth receives said energy. Capture it. Easy.
- spurgu 3y ago
  Yeah let's just keep growing. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    > If we’re dreaming big, let’s forget the wimpy solar energy constraints and adopt fusion. The abundance of deuterium in ordinary water would allow us to have a seemingly inexhaustible source of energy right here on Earth. We won’t go into a detailed analysis of this path, because we don’t have to. The merciless growth illustrated above means that in 1400 years from now, any source of energy we harness would have to outshine the sun. Let’s worry about that in 1400 years. _If_ we make it that far. As things stand we may not have to worry about it at all because we wont.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      The artificial fusion of deuterium in our solar system (or in our galaxy) is utterly dwarfed by the fusion of ordinary protium (hydrogen-1) because there's so much more of the latter. Of course, the latter is fused in stars, not in reactors. So if we're taking the very long view solar (or stellar) power > artificial fusion. It's possible dropping mass in black holes will eventually beat either.
  - progrus 3y ago
    Some people believe they have inherited the stars, that God is behind all things, and that we’re not going to just grow too fast like a cancer and then kill the planet. I’m one of those people, so this argument doesn’t work for me. There indeed appears to be a slowing of global population growth and an abundance of headroom to grow further.
Barrin92 3y ago
The piece funnily enough mirrors its own criticism of Smil's book in that the actual review of the book and early history energy balance is good and then the entire essay spirals into some sort of religious rant about the alleged negatives of pursuing efficiency. It's a bizarre narrative in my opinion because one of the most fundamental modern technologies, the semiconductor and micro-technologies in general are the result of relentless pursuit of efficiency, doing more on the same space, consuming less energy. Far from a symptom of stagnation it's a significant driver of civilization advancement. Dematerializion and digitalization drastically reduce energy consumption but do not reduce rate of information processing. And that should be the yardstick for where a civilization is going.
jmyeet 3y ago
> Think Karl Marx, not Edward Gibbon. This is one of the more important sentences in this piece and I'm surprised they didn't expound on it. marx is obviously linked to socialism (for good reason) but Marx was hardly unique in this leaning at that point in history. For example, Abraham Lincoln sounds an awful lot like Marx here [1] eg: > Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Sounds an awful lot like the Labor Theory of Value [2] doesn't it? Anyway, what the authors are referring to here is Dialectical materialism [3], which is the more important output of Das Kapital. Why? Because it frames economics, politics and history in terms of material outcomes, which is a far better predictor and explainer of such events than principles, philosophy or other "superficial" factors. Put another way: you can analyze events through the lens of capital and wealth. War and revolution can be viewed as the ultimate means of wealth redistribution and an inevitable outcome of extreme wealth inequality. So that's the similarity the authors alluded to when this reference to marx. Marx referred to material conditions. This piece used energy as the basis for analysis. [1]: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-message-9 https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-messa... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism
natmaka 3y ago
> For Smil, the history of human civilization is nothing more and nothing less than the history of attempts to balance a single equation: joules of energy input, in the form of food and fuel, versus joules of energy output, in the form of metabolic demands, muscle power to perform labor, and heating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_slave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_slave
CoraGibson1 3y ago
[dead]

71 points by tim_sw 3y ago

Skimmed, and I can tell I’m going to like this one a lot.

Inadvertantly makes a good argument for renewables, but then links to an article on geothermal that disses wind and solar, despite them fitting neatly into his theory.

philipkglass 3y ago
I upvoted this review because I thought that Smil's book was quite good as a history and I was only half way through reading the review. The second half of the review takes a surprising turn toward "WTF Happened in 1971" and excoriating energy efficiency.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Yeah the second half is really weird. It seems to suddenly take the proposition "more energy is good" and conclude that "energy inefficiency is good" follows. Both energy abundance and efficiency are good; efficiency is a multiplier of the positive effects of increased abundance. The detachment of energy use per capita from gdp per capita after the 70s is a good thing. That gap is pure upside, where each unit increase of energy is strictly more valuable than it would otherwise have been. In general, I find this false dichotomy between efficiency and abundance so maddening. Why not both??
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Does he say Edison was a horrible inventor because the electric light bulb was so much more efficient than the oil lamp?
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      He doesn't say that, but it's a claim that would be consistent with his argument in the second half of the piece. Despite being obviously ridiculous.

jnsaff2 3y ago

I can recommend Smil's books quite easily. There are a lot of renewable/green energy advocates that don't like him and try to paint him in a bad light. The reason mainly is that Smil takes a look at energy transitions and tells you: it's hard. He just analyzes in a very methodical way and paints the picture that is just grim because of the numbers and momentous challenge. Smil himself is very much pro green energy, pro rational energy use and all the jazz. He just is not that optimistic that this is going to be easy or even see how the global warming problem is solvable. It's a bit sad that some green energy advocates are missing the whole point of Smil and attack him personally even tho he is in fact one of the most useful allies. If you want to have his views/analysis in an hour long youtube video instead of the (well worthy of a read) stack of books he has written then there is this lecture [0]. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szikg74kgnM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szikg74kgnM Edit: I have really crappy internet so I believe I actually meant this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJxmlNyu4sE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJxmlNyu4sE

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
Smil is effectively a degrowther because he doesn't believe renewables, EVs etc. will work well enough. Quote: > Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’ Which is at least logically consistent, but bad timing as most of his boosters are currently trying to pivot from "climate change isn't real" to "bloody hippies are holding back rapid rollout of renewables with their environmental regulations" and hoping no one notices the contradiction and their history of fossil fuel apologism.
- ido 3y ago
  I don’t care if they want to improve their PR retroactively if the result is rapid deployment of renewable. “Who was right all along” doesn’t matter as what actually gets done.
photochemsyn 3y ago
I can't. Smil's claims are just poorly informed, characterized by a limited understanding of fundamentals, and with a clear bias towards existing systems. Might as well be a kerosene lamp enthusiast in the era of electricity and incandescent bulbs. It's entirely possible to run human civilization at its current level of complexity without fossil fuels or uranium, entirely using the sun's energy output and the planet's energy output in the form of solar, wind, geothermal and storage. Smil is entirely opposed to this notion, likely because the people who've promoted him don't want to see the value of their fossil fuel and uranium investments drop to zero. Wanna buy a kerosene lamp, anyone?

arkwin 3y ago

It's a dense book, but I enjoyed it a lot. His newest book How the World Really Works: A Scientist's Guide to Our Past, Present and Future is also really good! https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56587388 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56587388

senko 3y ago
I was so frustrated by that book (bought it on recommendation here) that I couldn't finish it. He has one premise I agree with, that we can't decarbonize as quickly or easily as some hope. He then bludgeons the reader to death with it. I get it, okay! Worse, much worse, he is incredibly myopic. For someone professing love and faith in science, he strangely seems to firmly believe we'll be stuck at our current technological level forever, the "end of history" fallacy on a whole other level. Have some faith in scientists, would you? Factually, I don't doubt he's correct. But his assumptions and innuendo come off so strongly it completely ruined the book for me.

gumballindie 3y ago

Star generates virtually unlimited energy. Emits said energy. Earth receives said energy. Capture it. Easy.

spurgu 3y ago
Yeah let's just keep growing. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
- gumballindie 3y ago
  > If we’re dreaming big, let’s forget the wimpy solar energy constraints and adopt fusion. The abundance of deuterium in ordinary water would allow us to have a seemingly inexhaustible source of energy right here on Earth. We won’t go into a detailed analysis of this path, because we don’t have to. The merciless growth illustrated above means that in 1400 years from now, any source of energy we harness would have to outshine the sun. Let’s worry about that in 1400 years. _If_ we make it that far. As things stand we may not have to worry about it at all because we wont.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    The artificial fusion of deuterium in our solar system (or in our galaxy) is utterly dwarfed by the fusion of ordinary protium (hydrogen-1) because there's so much more of the latter. Of course, the latter is fused in stars, not in reactors. So if we're taking the very long view solar (or stellar) power > artificial fusion. It's possible dropping mass in black holes will eventually beat either.
- progrus 3y ago
  Some people believe they have inherited the stars, that God is behind all things, and that we’re not going to just grow too fast like a cancer and then kill the planet. I’m one of those people, so this argument doesn’t work for me. There indeed appears to be a slowing of global population growth and an abundance of headroom to grow further.

Barrin92 3y ago

The piece funnily enough mirrors its own criticism of Smil's book in that the actual review of the book and early history energy balance is good and then the entire essay spirals into some sort of religious rant about the alleged negatives of pursuing efficiency. It's a bizarre narrative in my opinion because one of the most fundamental modern technologies, the semiconductor and micro-technologies in general are the result of relentless pursuit of efficiency, doing more on the same space, consuming less energy. Far from a symptom of stagnation it's a significant driver of civilization advancement. Dematerializion and digitalization drastically reduce energy consumption but do not reduce rate of information processing. And that should be the yardstick for where a civilization is going.

jmyeet 3y ago

> Think Karl Marx, not Edward Gibbon. This is one of the more important sentences in this piece and I'm surprised they didn't expound on it. marx is obviously linked to socialism (for good reason) but Marx was hardly unique in this leaning at that point in history. For example, Abraham Lincoln sounds an awful lot like Marx here [1] eg: > Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Sounds an awful lot like the Labor Theory of Value [2] doesn't it? Anyway, what the authors are referring to here is Dialectical materialism [3], which is the more important output of Das Kapital. Why? Because it frames economics, politics and history in terms of material outcomes, which is a far better predictor and explainer of such events than principles, philosophy or other "superficial" factors. Put another way: you can analyze events through the lens of capital and wealth. War and revolution can be viewed as the ultimate means of wealth redistribution and an inevitable outcome of extreme wealth inequality. So that's the similarity the authors alluded to when this reference to marx. Marx referred to material conditions. This piece used energy as the basis for analysis. [1]: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-message-9 https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-messa... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism

natmaka 3y ago

> For Smil, the history of human civilization is nothing more and nothing less than the history of attempts to balance a single equation: joules of energy input, in the form of food and fuel, versus joules of energy output, in the form of metabolic demands, muscle power to perform labor, and heating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_slave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_slave

CoraGibson1 3y ago

[dead]