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Vaclav Smil On The Two Cultures And Our “Fully Post-Factual World”
Vaclav Smil On The Two Cultures And Our “Fully Post-Factual World” My emails with Smil on C.P. Snow’s 1959 essay, scientific illiteracy and innumeracy. Plus: Kotkin, Gurri, and Teixeira on the elites vs. the “normies” C.P. Snow in 1977. Photo: Bern Schwartz, National Portrait Gallery. In 1959, British novelist and physical chemist C.P. Snow gave a […]
#Future Talks: Global Energy in 2022 with Vaclav Smil
#Future Talks: Global Energy in 2022 with Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil: We Must Leave Growth Behind
Vaclav Smil: We Must Leave Growth Behind Illustration: Stevie Remsberg/Intelligencer. Photo: Andreas Laszlo Konrath On September 23, the United Nations opened its Climate Action Summit here in New York, three days after the Global Climate Strike, led by Greta Thunberg, swept through thousands of cities worldwide. To mark the occasion, Intelligencer will be publishing “State of the […]
Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’
Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’ The scientist and author on his latest book – an epic, multidisciplinary analysis of growth – and why humanity’s endless expansion must stop. Vaclav Smil is a distinguished professor emeritus in the faculty of environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. […]
GROWTH: From Microorganisms to Megacities
GROWTH: From Microorganisms to Megacities Vaclav Smil’s latest book explores growth in nature and society. It examines the rules and patterns of growth in four key domains, those of the living world; human energy consumption; human artifacts; and human populations, societies and economies. The author is a passionate advocate of quantitative analysis, and thus Growth is filled […]
Replacing diesel tractors with horses or oxen – what will that be like?
Replacing diesel tractors with horses or oxen – what will that be like? Preface. Since fossil fuels are clearly finite, at some point increasing numbers of farmers with diesel vehicles and equipment will want to replace them with horses, which can do the work of six people. Here’s what energy expert Vaclav Smil has to […]
Vaclav Smil. Making the modern world: materials and dematerialization
Vaclav Smil. Making the modern world: materials and dematerialization Preface. I can’t believe I read this book, it is just a long litany of the gigantic amounts of materials we exploit, with no analysis, implications, or the meaning of what impact this will have on the planet. I certainly don’t expect anyone to read even this […]
Energy prospects: little to Smil about?
Energy prospects: little to Smil about? Last week saw much of Britain in the grip of uncharacteristic snowstorms and freezing temperatures. The picture shows the woods near my holding in their snowy raiment. I thought it would be crowded when I went walking there, because it’s usually a popular spot. But with the roads impassable, […]
Revolution? More like a crawl
Revolution? More like a crawl The energy visionary Vaclav Smil — Bill Gates’s favorite author — says that when our leaders promise quick energy transformations, they’re getting it very wrong. America in 2015 finds itself almost in a new energy reality. It recently became the world’s second–largest extractor of crude oil, and since 2010 has been the leading producer of natural gas, whose abundant and inexpensive […]
The energy revolution will not be televised
The energy revolution will not be televised Three recent news items remind us that energy transitions take time, a lot of time–far too much time to be shrunk down into a television special, a few talking points, or the next big energy idea. For example, the complex management task of putting together the international fusion […]
