Smil begins in the right place: The Comprehension Deficit. This concept alone is worth its own 450 page book or 8 hour documentary. Smil’s “How the World Really Works” provides an intense study into how our world runs, using not only current processes that enable you to scroll through Fakebook incessantly, your daughter to doomscroll all day on TikTok, but also for you to fly to Punta Cana to the all inclusive resort and get sowsed while peeing in the pool.
So how do things ‘really work’?
Reading “How the World Really Works” sent me back to 9th grade Materials Science class at Brooklyn Tech. - a class that has been discontinued … but that is another topic.
There are four things that Smil recognizes immediately that are necessary for running the modern society we all use and enjoy:
Ammonia
Steel
Concrete
Plastics
Without these four, your world goes back to life the way it was in the early 1800’s. There are NO readily available deployable commercial scale alternatives for energizing / creating the production of the above four materials. None. Not only that, but the most CO2 intense processes in the world are the making of concrete and steel.
Smil goes into great detail throughout about the ways in which the modern world works. He looks at energy for most of the beginning. For example, it turns out electricity is only 18% of global energy consumption. When you think of energy, you naturally think of electricity, but it’s only a small part of our modern world. “Electrify Everything” is a big part of this modern misunderstanding. This is where we get to the Comprehension Deficits:
Comprehension Deficit #1:
Electric Vehicles (EV’s), the most common examples of Green Energy and electrification, aren’t ‘green’ at all. A typical lithium car batter weights 900 pounds. It contains:
31 lbs Cobalt.
60 lbs Nickel
88 lbs Copper
110 lbs Graphite
400 lbs steel, aluminum and plastics.
Comprehension Deficit #2:
Supplying these materials requires 40 tons (80,000 pounds) of ores mined from the earth’s crust.
Comprehension Deficit #3:
To get all of that ore, you must extract and process 225 tons (450,000 pounds) of raw materials.
Comprehension Deficit #4:
To replace all of the Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) - in order to ‘Go Green’, you have to multiply the above numbers by around 90 million. That’s the number of ICE vehicles produced per year. 450,000 pounds of raw earth times 90 million. You do the math.
Smil goes on to talk about windmills.
Apparently, windmills are ‘green’ as well. One has to wonder why. They’re made of steel, cement, and plastics. The foundation is made of reinforced concrete. The towers, casings and rotors are all made out of steel - 200 TONS for every megawatt of installed generating capacity. The blades are energy intensive and difficult (basically impossible) to recycle. In essence, no one recycles windmill blades because it’s too expensive to do. A midsize turbine uses 15 tons of plastic resin.
The numbers above are staggering. Each windmill must be brought to the installation site by extra large trucks, built using steel cranes, and the gearboxes must be constantly lubricated with oil. Multiply all of the above by the millions of turbines needed to “just stop oil” - eliminating any energy / electricity generated by using fossil fuels) - and you see how misguided and ignorant any ‘green economics’ talk sounds. Unmentioned here, but discussed by Smil, is the amount of copper necessary to connect these windmills to the grid. Think about the distances for the offshore wind farms. Now consider the latest politician / actor / activist prattling on about global warming and the need for green energy. It’s an entirely silly concept, if you understand how the world actually works.
Think global. China permits a new coal fired power plant every month. Each one has enough power to light up San Diego. India is ramping up its coal and nuclear generation to provide electricity to its citizens. They are on the record explaining to the world that they’re going to solve poverty, potable water, and malnutrition before they begin to even think about a few degrees of global warming. They’ve got bigger things to worry about. Smil talks about what it takes to provide basic electricity to a population, and when you consider the size of China and India, all the talk we have here in the west seems ill informed at best.
Interestingly, Smil is concerned about warming. He is, however, based in reality, and he succinctly shows that if governments are going to do what the politicians say we’re going to do … well, it just isn’t going to happen that way. It can’t, so it won’t.
But what about technology? Isn’t that the panacea for all of these old world issues? Can’t we simply use our phones, software, and IT / AI to make all that messy and dirty mining energy burning disappear?
Smil explodes this concept perfectly. I’ll let him explain:
Gullible minds, susceptible to to cult like visions are only possible when an once proud school system has completely imploded. Smil’s book is not only rip-the-scab-off the skin look at our energy systems, it’s a look at the world as whole. He goes through the history of globalism, risk taking, diet and food production, as well as various scientific fields. For someone who enjoys engineering, industrial processes, and environmental science - this is a treasure trove.
For navigating and investing and living well during the next decade, Smil’s book is indispensable. I highly recommend it to any open minded individual.
China has a thorium reactor!
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-starts-up-worlds-first-fourth-generation-nuclear-reactor-2023-12-06/
It really is going to be the Chinese century. Baby Boomers you failed us!!