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About the Author

Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of forty books, including Energy and Civilization, published by the MIT Press. In 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers.

Inclui os nomes: Smil Vaclav, Vaclav Smial

Obras por Vaclav Smil

Why America Is Not a New Rome (2010) 68 exemplares
Size: How It Explains the World (2023) 56 exemplares

Associated Works

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Nome canónico
Smil, Vaclav
Data de nascimento
1943
Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
Czechoslovakia (birth)
Ocupações
professor
Organizações
University of Manitoba (professor)

Membros

Discussions

Críticas

Indeholder "Introduction", "People : The Inhabitants of Our World", " What happens when we have fewer children?", " The best indicator of quality of life? : Try infant mortality", " The best return on investment : vaccination", " Why it's difficult to predict how bad a pandemic will be while it is happening", " Growing taller", " Is life expectancy finally topping out?", " How sweating improved hunting", " How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?", " Why unemployment figures do not tell the whole story", " What makes people happy?", " The rise of megacities", "Countries : Nations in the Age of Globalization", " The First World War's extended tragedies", " Is the US really exceptional?", " Why Europe should be more pleased with itself", " Brexit : realities that matter most will not change", " Concerns about Japan's future", " How far can China go?", " India vs. China", " Why manufacturing remains important", " Russia and the USA : how things never change", " Receding empires : nothing new under the sun", "Machines, Designs, Devices : Inventions That Made Our Modern World", " How the 1880s created our modern world", " How electric motors power modern civilization", " Transformers - the unsung silent, passive devices", " Why you shouldn't write diesel off just yet", " Capturing motion - from horses to electrons", " From the phonograph to streaming", " Inventing integrated circuits", " Moore's Curse : why technical progress takes longer than you think", " The rise of data : too much too fast", " Being realistic about innovation", "Fuels and Electricity : Energizing Our Societies", " Why gas turbines are the best choice", " Nuclear electricity - an unfulfilled promise", " Why you need fossil fuels to get electricity from wind", " How big can a wind turbine be?", " The slow rise of photovoltaics", " Why sunlight is still best", " Why we need bigger batteries", " Why electric container ships are a hard sail", " The real cost of electricity", " The inevitably slow pace of energy transitions", "Transport : How We Get Around", " Shrinking the journey across the Atlantic", " Engines are older than bicycles!", " The surprising story of inflatable tires", " When did the age of the car begin?", " Modern cars have a terrible weight-to-payload ratio", " Why electric cars aren't as great as we think (yet)", " When did the jet age begin?", " Why kerosene is king", " How safe is flying?", " Which is more energy efficient - planes, trains, or automobiles?", "Food : Energizing Ourselves", " The world without synthetic ammonia", " Multiplying wheat yields", " The inexcusable magnitude of global food waste", " The slow addio to the Mediterranean diet", " Bluefin tuna : on the way to etinction", " Why chicken rules", " (Not) drinking wine", " Rational meat-eating", " The Japanese diet", " Dairy products - the counter-trends", "Environment : damaging and protecting our world", " Animals vs. artifacts - which are more diverse?", " Planet of the cows", " The deaths of elephants", " Why calls for the Anthropocene era may be premature", " Concrete facts", " What's worse for the environment - your car or your phone?", " Who has better insulation?", " Triple-glazed windows : a see-through energy solution", " Improving the efficiency of household heating", " Running into carbon", "Epilogue", "Further Reading", "Acknowledgments", "Index".

Et emne ad gangen bliver taget op og regnet lidt på. Fx regner han på vindmøller og gætter på at det er svært at få lavet 100 MW vindmøller, der kan konkurrere kommercielt. Men hvorfor grænsen lige går der?
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
bnielsen | 12 outras críticas | Feb 18, 2024 |
Indeholder "Introduction: Why Do We Need This Book?", "1. Understanding Energy: Fuels and Electricity", "2. Understanding Food Production: Eating Fossil Fuels", "3. Understanding Our Material World: The Four Pillars of Modern Civilization", "4. Understanding Globalization: Engines, Microchips, and Beyond", "5. Understanding Risks: From Viruses to Diets to Solar Flares", "6. Understanding the Environment: The Only Biosphere We Have", "7. Understanding the Future: Between Apocalypse and Singularity", "Appendix: Understanding Numbers: Orders of Magnitude", "References and Notes", "Acknowledgments", "Index".

Hmm, han har klart tænkt og regnet på en masse. Jeg ved bare ikke om jeg er helt enig i konklusionerne.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
bnielsen | 14 outras críticas | Feb 12, 2024 |
This is my first dip into the much lauded social critique by Prof. Smil on the affairs of our civilization and its dependence on converting energy to useful purposes.

In this volume he focuses on four pillars of our civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia. Without huge dependence on fossil fuels, he maintains, we would never be able to produce the volumes of these substances to drive our civilization forward.

He provides a convincing case, for example, that without manufactured fertilizers we would not be able to feed one-half of the world’s population.

Decarbonization of our food system, he believes, is an unobtainable delusion without significant changes the diet of people in developed nations, significant reductions in food waste, and allowances to African nations where malnourishment is still a significant social ill.

While his facts are compelling, the disorganization of his thoughts I find distract from the tale.

Smil is a realist at heart and doesn’t see the point in charging ahead with the empty promises of government intervention on climate change without social commitment at the grassroots.

He doesn’t accept prima facie some of the doomsday scenarios environmentalists foist on the narrative, scenarios his cases seem to support.
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Assinalado
MylesKesten | 14 outras críticas | Jan 23, 2024 |
В списке пяти лучших книг 2017 года Билла Гейтса эта самая любопытная. Гейтс — фанат автора и прочел все 36 его предыдущих книг! 74-летний канадский профессор удивительно плодовит, только в 2013-м вышло сразу четыре его работы. Эта же, судя по всему, итоговый труд.

Вацлав Смил представил захватывающий рассказ о цивилизации с точки зрения джоулей и калорий. «Все природные процессы и вся человеческая деятельность в наиболее фундаментальном физическом смысле являются преобразованием энергии», — уверен он. Надев очки Смила и взглянув на окружающий мир, вы, как в «Матрице», за изображением увидите ползущие цифры кода: свеча преобразует в свет лишь 0,01% химической энергии, лошадь спит стоя благодаря анатомическому читингу, все остальные млекопитающие лежа потребляют на 10% энергии меньше, взмахи руками при ходьбе снижают расход калорий на 3%... Книга при этом не превращается в таблицу, цифры приводятся лишь в качестве доказательства. Например, вы со школы в восторге от архимедова винта, а вам доходчиво рассказывают (и табличкой иллюстрируют), насколько он малоэффективен и, более того, уступает целой плеяде бедуинских приспособлений для подъема воды.

Удивительно, но на протяжении всего повествования от каменного века до «кремниевого» автор умудряется не терять ни темпа, ни читательского интереса. Темы, грозящие увести нарратив в сторону, аккуратно упаковываются в лейденские банки виньеток и обвешиваются гирляндами ссылок для самостоятельного изучения на досуге. С энергетической точки зрения изобретения и находки не возникают как из воздуха, а обретают довольно стройную причинно-следственную связь. За технологическими пробуксовками случались и весьма своевременные открытия. Так, начало добычи нефти в США связано с возросшими потребностями в освещении, которые ранее обеспечивались за счет китового жира. Увы, использование электричества этот вариант применения нефтепродуктов сделало малоэффективным, но, к счастью для нефтяников, тут же подоспел двигатель внутреннего сгорания и автомобили.

Питание, оружие, урбанистика, транспорт, производство, сельское хозяйство — все в книге охвачено и переплетено проводами. Смил не согласился бы с Фрейдом: вовсе не cекс основной мотиватор человечества. Двигатель прогресса — это желание поменьше работать, более известное нам как лень.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
Den85 | 2 outras críticas | Jan 3, 2024 |

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Tetyana Pavlovna Cover artist

Estatísticas

Obras
49
Also by
1
Membros
3,531
Popularidade
#7,194
Avaliação
3.8
Críticas
50
ISBN
236
Línguas
12
Marcado como favorito
5

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