The site of Vaclav Smil, an energy and history scholar, hosting his book information, publications, and many papers as PDFs.
HN commenters recommend his books, especially How the World Really Works and Energy and Civilization, though one says solar growth contradicted his earlier predictions.
I am one who has decided not to have children, in part because I don't want to bring people I [would] love into this world in the state it's in.
You are right that we (at least in the First World) are standing at the pinnacle of human civilization. We have access to the knowledge of the whole world, going back throughout much of world history. We have science, medicine, technology that would dazzle our ancestors. All of the great things you talked about are true.
And yet...
I've seen the migration of the Monarch Butterfly. It's glorious, absolutely magical. Uncountable numbers of these gorgeous orange and black beauties fill the air, all fluttering together, all wobbling along in the same direction. It's impossible to describe the feeling of witnessing it, of being surrounded by an aerial sea of these soft gentle beautiful beings.
It doesn't happen anymore.
The Monarch population tanked a couple of years ago. Not enough milkweed for the caterpillars to eat. Too much land has been given over to human food production. People are planting milkweed in their gardens now, but who can say if the Monarchs will rebound?
Our food animals outweigh all other land mammals combined, by more than twenty times.[1]
All the glories of our Western civilization come from an extraordinarily wasteful system that is converting oil and natural biomass into humans and meat animals and trash. There are always trade-offs, and we may well be about to become victims of our own…
I'm not sure about the resource costs of solar in particular but the question is a very salient one. Vaclav Smil has a
great piece on this. "What I see when I see a wind turbine"
"the quest for renewable electricity generation. And yet, although they exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be, the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. • Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers.[...]
For a long time to come—until all energies used to produce wind turbines and photovoltaic cells come from renewable energy sources—modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels."
http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/15.WINDTURBINE.pdf
This is great. I think the summary understates his points regarding the burden on energy demand that will come into play over next several decades by developing regions. The numbers are astonishing.
Also underrepresented are his comments on just how unrealistic the assumptions are in the models calling for temperature reduction, specifically about the implications for reducing our dependency on fossil fuels. Reducing energy consumption (whether through bans or price hikes) has a known humanitarian impact in present terms. The idea that you can convince your poor neighbor that he doesn't really need to eat better or have access to more resources is a tricky problem.
pfdietz, I think the case is made quite plainly in his presentation that renewables cannot catch up to much less displace ("100%") fossil fuels anytime in the near future. If you don't see that in the sum of what he presents in the notes, I'd encourage you to watch the source material to hear him say it, sector by sector. It's full of real data from a guy that's been studying energy use in human civilization for many decades.
This link has some of the same info in PDF form: http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/JPM.2019.pdf
Chemical weapons, beyond their psychological effect, were not a game changer for either side in WW1. Effective countermeasures were developed rather quickly and, in any case, a breakthrough effected by poison gas could not be easily exploited.
Although not mentioned in the article, the main contribution of chemists to WW1 was almost certainly the Haber-Bosch process [1]. It allowed Germany to produce ammo and explosives even while cut off from Chilean saltpeter [2] and also sustained its agriculture in the absence of fertilizer imports. Without the Haber-Bosch process Germany could have afforded only a very short war [3]. It's still immensely important today as it produces over half of the nutrient received by the world's crops [4].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-31090757
[3] https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1920/02/03/118255924.pdf
[4] http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/smil-article-worldagriculture.pdf
I learned from Professor Vaclav Smil that while Wind and Solar are practical energy solutions in the United States population ~340mil. It is not practical in all regions in more populous countries such as China (population ~1.4 Billion).
There are large regions in the country where Solar is not a good solution due to fog. And Wind is not a good solution due to lack of wind.
We have a global climate system. As is such if the goal is to reduce carbon emissions in some areas Nuclear power is the most effective method to achieve this goal. Furthermore, moving China to non-carbon energy sources would have the largest impact globally. They use ~ 22 GigaWatts of electricity per year. Which is 3.6 times as much as the US which is the 2ed largest consumer of energy by country.
http://vaclavsmil.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption
The bit how about incredibly quickly PV has grown is a figurative slap in the face to Vaclav Smil. He had just ten years earlier said PV wasn't going to grow quickly because historically energy replacements took a long time.
https://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/scientificamerican0114-521.pdf
This retrospective on Smil's predictions four years ago is notable:
https://www.quora.com/Is-Vaclav-Smil-right-in-his-criticisms-of-solar-energy
"To get 1 PWh/year of electricity you need to install about 450 GW worth of solar panels. You need dozens of years to acomplish such task. Reality check: 3 years in current speed, in the future probably faster."
Indeed, as the thread top link shows in 2024 the world installed 595 GW of PV.
As John Kenneth Galbraith said, "If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."