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A review by davidpomerenke
How the World Really Works: A Scientist's Guide to Our Past, Present and Future by Vaclav Smil
3.0
A mindblowing introduction to how important fossil fuels have been and still are, especially as fertilizers in agriculture (ammonium), and also for the production of plastics, cement, and steel.
I would only recommend chapters 1 & 2, which focus on these fossil energy issues, and where the author is actually an expert; and perhaps chapter 3 on the other materials. The other chapters on the biosphere, globalization, risk, and our longterm outlook are superficial and uninteresting. (The remarks on nutrition seem overly arrogant and anti-scientific, the author's focus on blue zones does not make methodical sense to me, and recent research has thoroughly debunked that approach [1].)
Due to the dependence on ammonium and the other materials (and their expected growth in Asia and especially Africa), the author argues that it will be impossible for decades to become carbon-neutral. This is actually in line with the IPCC, whose carbon neutrality scenarios are based on negative emissions technologies, many of which do not (yet) exist.
While the book is really informative about ammonium, it leaves open many questions about the other materials: Are there alternative ways for producing plastics? Does steel production chemically rely on fossils, or only energy-wise? How realistic is it to capture and store the emissions from cement production? And: Could nuclear power still play a significant role in the otherwise very difficult energiewende?
[1]: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v2.full
I would only recommend chapters 1 & 2, which focus on these fossil energy issues, and where the author is actually an expert; and perhaps chapter 3 on the other materials. The other chapters on the biosphere, globalization, risk, and our longterm outlook are superficial and uninteresting. (The remarks on nutrition seem overly arrogant and anti-scientific, the author's focus on blue zones does not make methodical sense to me, and recent research has thoroughly debunked that approach [1].)
Due to the dependence on ammonium and the other materials (and their expected growth in Asia and especially Africa), the author argues that it will be impossible for decades to become carbon-neutral. This is actually in line with the IPCC, whose carbon neutrality scenarios are based on negative emissions technologies, many of which do not (yet) exist.
While the book is really informative about ammonium, it leaves open many questions about the other materials: Are there alternative ways for producing plastics? Does steel production chemically rely on fossils, or only energy-wise? How realistic is it to capture and store the emissions from cement production? And: Could nuclear power still play a significant role in the otherwise very difficult energiewende?
[1]: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v2.full