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

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

Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design Lectures

Open on YouTube First HN thread

3 HN users recommended this lecture in 3 different months between 2017 and 2022.

2007–2026

1 strong recommendation 2 recommendations 1 citation HackerTube score 3.5

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

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.

Pull quote: “I really suggest watching this talk by Smil” (HN, 2018)

Also tagged: energy transitions, vaclav smil, energy, renewables, fossil fuels, sustainability

What Hacker News said

4 labeled comments from the HN archive; up to 20 are kept per video, favoring different commenters. Each one links back to the original thread.

Strongly recommends Scea91 August 2018 under Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)

Insightful talk on how little energy technology has changed

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 [this video] and if you are interested reading some books from him about energy and oil. Really insightful.

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Recommends tedsanders May 2017 under The Future of Energy Isn't Fossil Fuels or Renewables, It's Nuclear Fusion

Smil argues energy transitions are slow

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. [this video]

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Recommends lcamach84 September 2020 under How can we, as web professionals, help to make the web more energy efficient?

Vaclav Smil's view on clean energy

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

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Citations, criticism and jokes

Cites it seltzered_ December 2022 under Deadly, dirty, indispensable: the nitrogen industry has changed the world

Smil on Haber-Bosch feeding much of humanity

Read the full comment

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 ( [this 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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