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"Energy Revolution? More like a Crawl" - Dr. Vaclav Smil

Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design3 HN recommenders · 2017–2022
59K views · lecture · evergreen · Uploaded 2015-09-20

Energy scholar Vaclav Smil argues that global energy transitions are slow and that renewable targets should not rest on wishful thinking. He appraises how energy dependencies are likely to change and asks for using much less.

HN recommends it as a grounded, data-driven counter to hype about quick energy revolutions.

Renewables, batteries & storageClimate policy, solutions & debateEarth & energy (other)

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4 comments from Hacker News

@tedsanders2017 · in “The Future of Energy Isn't Fossil Fuels or Renewables, It's Nuclear Fusion”

That is a bizarre claim to make. Energy will not be far cheaper and more abundant in 10 years. Trillions of dollars are invested in infrastructure that has lifetimes of 50+ years. It is not economically or technologically feasible to undergo an energy revolution that quickly. Even if we gathered the political and financial will, our production facilities and supply chains could not feasibly handle the load of rebuilding the world's energy infrastructure in a single decade. [VIDEO]

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@Scea912018 · in “Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)”

Exactly, we haven't achieved that much actually. Most of the technology we use for harvesting energy is not much further from what people could imagine in 19th century. Turbine was invented in the 19th century. I really suggest watching this talk by Smil [VIDEO] and if you are interested reading some books from him about energy and oil. Really insightful.

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@lcamach842020 · in “How can we, as web professionals, help to make the web more energy efficient?”

I encourage you to look at the work of Vaclav Smil [1] . There's no such thing as clean energy. [1] [VIDEO]

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@seltzered_2022 · in “Deadly, dirty, indispensable: the nitrogen industry has changed the world”

I get where you're coming from, folks like Vaclav Smil have talked about how the haber bosch process is arguably what's kept 2/3 of human population alive ( [VIDEO] ). The issues are also: - Thinking beyond the anthropocentric and realize we've created many ocean dead zones: e.g. [LINK] . Think about what this'll mean in terms of ocean temperature in life within our lifetimes. - Many farmsites simply use way too much nitrogen, possibly impacting human drinking water (one good person to follow in Iowa is Chris Jones ( [LINK] ) and Silvia Secchi ( [LINK] ) - Despite the above the predicament of deciding to use nitrogen inputs during adverse weather conditions (curious to hear about the alternatives here, from what I see even smallholder farmers that try to minimize nitrogen input still use a bit of it). - The haber bosch process itself, and industries seeking to find alternatives to produce ammonia gas (iirc likely used in making diesel DEF fluid urea - [LINK] ). - The article also cites norman borlaug, of which there's plenty of questions to ask around the economic and ecological narratives around that work - e.g. [LINK] and likely 'the violence of the green revolution'

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