Vaclav Smil. How the World Works. 2022.
Contents
- Introduction: Why do we need this book?
- Understanding Energy: fuels and electricity
- Fundamental shifts
- Modern energy uses
- What is energy?
- Crude oil's rise and relative retreat
- The many advantages of electricity
- Before you flip a switch
- Decarbonization: pace and scale
- Understanding Food Production: eating fossil fuels
- Three valleys, two centuries apart
- What goes in
- The energy costs of bread, chicken, and tomatoes
- Diesel oil behind seafood
- Fuel and food
- Can we go back?
- Doing with less -- and doing without
- Understanding Our Material World: the four pillars of modern civilization
- Ammonia: the gas that feeds the world
- Plastics: diverse, useful, troublesome
- Steel: ubiquitous and recyclable
- Concrete: a world created by cement
- Material outlook: old and new inputs
- Understanding Globalization: engines, microchips, and beyond
- Globalization's distant origins
- Wind-driven globalization
- Steam engines and telegraph
- The first diesel engines, flight, and radio
- Large diesels, turbines, containers, and microchips
- Enter China, Russia, India
- Globalization's multiples
- The long reach of Moore's law
- Inevitability, setbacks, and overreach
- Understanding Risks: from viruses to diets to solar flares
- Eating as in Kyoto-or as in Barcelona
- Risk perceptions and tolerances
- Quantifying the risks of everyday life
- Voluntary and involuntary risks
- Natural hazards: less risky than they look on TV
- Ending our civilization
- Some lasting attitudes
- Understanding the Environment: the only biosphere we have
- Oxygen is in no danger
- Will we have enough water and food?
- Why the Earth is not permanently frozen
- Who discovered global warming?
- Oxygen, water, and food in a warmer world
- Understanding, promises, and realities
- Wishful thinking
- Models, doubts, and realities
- Understanding the Future: between apocalypse and singularity
- Failed predictions
- Inertia, scale, and mass
- Ignorance, persistence, and humility
- Unprecedented commitments, delayed rewards
- Appendix: Understanding Numbers: orders of magnitude
- References and Notes
- Acknowledgements
- Index