Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate First Edition

This book gets to the point about what works and does not. I personally hold dreams of grandeur as they pertain toalternative energy, and I am in constant need of a rational and reasoned approach to the needs humanity has for future energy production. This book had a grounding effect on me.

Yet another book, Energy Myths & Realities, by Vaclav Smil, I now read all of them, he is like an international resource, explaining what we take for granted. We ride so comfortably we don't notice the wheels others have made so that we roll on.Smil is skeptical of new developments, often they are fads. He explains the wonders of today's world why gasoline, diesel oil and coal are wonderful why we are unlikely to replace them anytime soon. We already voted for all this with our money so lets grow up and be happy with our accomplishments.Smil subtitles his book "bringing science to the energy policy debate' but he also quotes at the start the Roman playwright terence "Men believe what they want to"Things just don't make sense. Watch Smil dive in to smite idiocy after idiocy. But there is an idiocy that he never touches which I will try to explain. Solar energy is held out as a great hope by some but measured and counted all wrong.Men are so enchanted by their fuels and the machines that burn them that they ignore uses of the sun which do not closely imitate the machines. Even Smil fails to add the energy from men eating food that power their foot travel, constructions, procreation and thinking. This habit of ignoring the obvious he extends to ignoring windows, skylights, clotheslines, indeed all of daylight which most of us use to our advantage. To add to the list consider travel where we generally follow the lead of birds flying from the too cold to the temperate.There is a vast puzzle to explore here, puny man a tiny electrically obsessed dwarf set in an immense solar powered backdrop.Steve Baer

...and, for all the starry-eyed "greenies" and their "climate denier" counter-parts. Debunks the myths, and topples more than a few self-styled icons, while letting the data form the facts. Wishful thinking should have no part in the energy discussions, and policies which will emerge from those dialogues. Smil is the consummate "myth buster" and is not friends with either camp in the contentious arguments.

I chose this book because it is in Bill Gates 's list n had a good review therefore I had a relatively high expectation.The first part about the end of fossil fuel is rather boring as it is full of other scientists previous forecast n prediction. As with all forecasts there is always margins of errors. Smil dismissed them as incorrect with the benefit of hind sight. It is not all too convincing.The part about corn n cane ethanol starts to get interesting n my pace was much faster. However, he should have discuss the distorted economics of corn as fuel and corn as food to arrive at the conclusion that corn should be used as food rather than fuel. The part on wind energy was also good. He mentioned that wind can only work with good transmission network.Smil seems to support nuclear energy but he did not have the benefit of the knowledge of the Japanese nuclear plant failure at the time of writing the book.In sum, the good part n bad part even out each other. I give it a 3 star.

I would recommend this book, in fact it should be required reading in high school along with critical thinking. Can we for once deal with the facts.

I used the this book as a "textbook" in an undergraduate seminar on renewable energy and global sustainability. Yes, it is "contrarian" and somewhat gloomy, but it is an excellent discussion starter and a good counterpart to the other textbook I used. The students very much appreciated this book: sometimes they agreed with the author, sometimes they disagreed or came to different conclusions, but that is what you want in a seminar. The reason this book does not get five points is that sometimes I feel the author discards a certain solution because it is not *the* solution, i.e., the main reason against a certain technology is that it cannot solve all problems (as opposed to what proponents proclaim). But it does not have to be *the* solution, it just needs to be good piece of the puzzle. I wish the author would have emphasized that point, but it turns out the students discovered it themselves.

I've got hundreds of insights from this book. What I like the most about Vaclav Smil's style of writing is that it's data driven. The numbers are what really matter when talking about energy.

For the data enthusiast, Smil is an excellent read. Incredibly thorough (to a fault) in his analysis, Smil pulls no punches when discussing energy issues. He is a realist and pragmatist and anyone involved or interested in the alternative energy or electric car field would do well from his study to understand the real debates. What Smil does not do though is discuss the potential impact of increased demand for fossil fuel alternatives on the rate of technological change to accomplish this (he has underestimated the trajectory of this rate) and the politics of fossil fuel supply or impact on the politics of the major fossil fuel producers such as Saudi Arabia's more recent commitment to designing a $2 trillion 'post fossil fuel' future. Pair this book with Smil's 'Power Density' for perhaps the most technical analyses on the topic.