{"id":43371,"date":"2019-01-31T08:20:10","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T13:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43371"},"modified":"2019-01-31T08:20:11","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T13:20:11","slug":"vaclav-smil-making-the-modern-world-materials-and-dematerialization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43371","title":{"rendered":"Vaclav Smil. Making the modern world: materials and dematerialization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/2019\/vaclav-smil-making-the-modern-world-materials-and-dematerialization\/\">Vaclav Smil. Making the modern world: materials and dematerialization<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Preface.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong>I can\u2019t believe I read this book, it is just a long litany of the&nbsp; gigantic amounts of materials we exploit, with no analysis, implications, or the meaning of what impact this will have on the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I certainly don\u2019t expect anyone to read even this shortened version of his book, but it might be worthwhile to skim for an idea of how much material we\u2019re consuming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As I point out in my review of the United Nations 2016 report Global material flows and resources productivity\u201d&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/2017\/limits-to-growth-2016-united-nations-report-provides-best-evidence-yet\/\">here<\/a>, in order to accommodate an additional 2 billion people in 2050, material consumption will need to nearly triple to 180 billion tonnes of materials, almost three times today\u2019s amount. If 180 billion tonnes grows in the future at a 5% compound rate, in 497 years the entire earth will be consumed, all 5.972 x 1021 tonnes of it, and we\u2019ll be floating in outer space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After reading this book, it\u2019s hard to believe there\u2019s anything left to exploit, though here it is 5 years later and the earth is still being pillaged.&nbsp; But from Smil\u2019s gargantuan numbers and the exponential exploitation of just about everything, clearly this will end badly.&nbsp; The issue of&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/category\/fastcrash\/peakeverything\/sand\/\">peak sand<\/a>&nbsp;has been in the news more frequently lately, which is essential for civilization to make concrete, computer chips, solar PV, and fracking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Smil covers a wide range of materials that are essential to civilization that you may not have thought much about, and all the myriad uses of silicon, plastics, nitrogen, aluminum, steel, hydrogen, ammonia, cement, and more.&nbsp; All of them made possible by oil.&nbsp; All of them essential for civilization, so if one fails\u2026.(Liebig\u2019s law of the minimum).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vaclav Smil. Making the modern world: materials and dematerialization Preface.&nbsp;&nbsp;I can\u2019t believe I read this book, it is just a long litany of the&nbsp; 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\u2019t expect anyone to read even this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[24248,11859,24249,681,5934],"class_list":["post-43371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-dematerialization","tag-energy-skeptic","tag-material-flows","tag-resources","tag-vaclav-smil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43372,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43371\/revisions\/43372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}