“Numbers Don’t Lie” by Vaclav Smil

My notes and highlights from the book

Available at: Amazon

Part 1: People

• Preventing depopulation: opening the gates for immigration — but that looks unlikely to happen.
• Life: Infant mortality is a more discerning indicator of the quality of life than the income average or the Human Development Index.
• Health: new infection risks will arise. Vaccines remain the best way to control them.
• Metrics: you may know the exact numerator, but unless you know the denominator with a comparable certainty, you cannot calculate the precise rate.
• Growth: the easiest way to improve a child’s chances of growing taller is for them to drink more milk.
• Age: plan ahead — though perhaps not as far ahead as the 22nd century.
• Persistence: we humans are neither the fastest nor the most efficient. But thanks to our sweating capability, we are certainly the most persistent.
• Pyramid-building became just another set of construction projects for the Old Kingdom’s designers, managers, and workers.
• Complex realities of (un)employment can never be caught by an aggregate number. Numbers may not lie, but individual perceptions of them differ.
• Happiness: if you cannot fit into the top 10 (not being Nordic, Dutch, Swiss, Kiwi, or Canadian), convert to Catholicism and start learning Spanish.

Part 2: Countries

• World War 1: paved the way to even greater carnage.
• Trajectories of rise and retreat: prolonged plateau followed by a steady decline (Eg. British empire, the 20th-century United States); others had a swift rise to a brief peak then rapid decline.
• In the United States, babies are more likely to die and high schoolers are less likely to learn than their counterparts in other affluent countries.
• EU (> USA): 27 in the top 30 countries in terms of quality of life. Problems: the excessive bureaucratic control exercised by Brussels; the reassertion of national sovereignty; poor economic and political choices, adoption of a common currency without common fiscal responsibility.
• UK: doing comparatively well for now. Once the unrivaled inventor and pioneer of modern science-based manufacturing — now deindustrialized. An aging nation; per capita GDP is now just over half of the Irish mean. Another has-been power.
• Japan: from misery (WW2) to an admired economic superpower (in the 1980s), then on to stagnation (due to inflated stock and real estate prices) and retreat of an aging society.
• China: 1978 - economic modernization. Air, water pollution, low gas resources, Aging. Similar to Japan in 1990.
• India: Corruption, but has more freedom for people, need to further lower its fertility rate for basic food self-sufficiency. Hindus and Muslims. On a path to replicate China’s manufacturing success?
• Manufacturing: Top four economies — China, USA, Japan, Germany — remain the top four manufacturing powers. Highest per capita manufacturing value: Ireland (multinationals), Germany. United States — manufacturing trade surpluses until 1982. China — chronic deficits until 1989.
• Russia vs the USA: Sputnik, Moon landing, Prague Spring (Czechs).
• Empires: mean duration was 220 years (skewed), Longest: Mesopotamian Elam (10 centuries); and Egypt’s Old (5) and New Kingdoms (5). Modern imperial longevity is too less.

Part 3: Machines, Designs, Devices

• The 1880s: electricity and internal combustion engines, antiperspirants, inexpensive lights, reliable elevators, the theory of electromagnetism, first power plants, durable lightbulbs, and transformers.
• Electric motor: DC — 1830. AC — 1888: small electrical appliance (a fan).
• Transformers: 1830s — discovery of electromagnetic induction by Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry, enable electricity supply. Latest: electronic transformers — wind and solar.
• Diesel engines: 1897 — the fuel of a higher energy density, burn lower-quality, and hence cheaper. 1911 — oceangoing freighter. 1936 — Mercedes-Benz 260 D.
• Capturing motion: 1872 — Muybridge’s galloping horse. Now — observing flitting electrons.
• Streaming: 1878 — phonograph: hear the recorded sound.
• Integrated circuits: 1960s → transistors.
• Moore’s law: the complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year. Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Innovations nowadays are much slower though.
• Data: there are fundamental differences between accumulated data, useful information, and insightful knowledge.
• Innovation: 1) ignore those big, fundamental quests that have failed after spending huge sums on research. 2) failed innovations — things we keep on doing even though we know we shouldn’t.

Part 4: Fuels and Electricity

• Gas turbines: 1939 — began to generate electricity, ideal suppliers of peak power and the best backups for intermittent wind and solar generation.
• Nuclear electricity (1956): Capacity factor = 90%. France (72%), Hungary (50%), Swiss (38%), South Korea (24%) and US (20%). The project stalled during the 1980s. Important: Use better reactor designs and act resolutely on waste storage.
• Wind: Capacity factor = 35%, 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.
• Photovoltaics: 2.2% of global electricity.
• High-efficacy LEDs are already delivering significant electricity savings worldwide, and replicating sunlight indoors remains beyond our reach.
• Bigger batteries: pumped storage. megacity completely dependent on solar and wind generation. Need batteries with high energy density — more than 10 times as high as today’s best Li-ion units.
• With its increasing share of new renewables, electricity prices have been rising.
• World’s continued fundamental dependence on fossil carbon — Either a collapse of the global economy or the adoption of new energy sources at a fast pace. Need to increase the pace of decarbonizing the electricity supply.

Part 5: Transport

• Steam (1838): more than halved the transatlantic travel time, and new records kept coming.
• Engines are older than bicycles!
• 1908 — first Ford Model T. The Ford Motor Company produced 15% of all US cars in 1908, 48% in 1914, and 57% in 1923.
• Modern cars have a terrible weight-to-payload ratio — which limits energy efficiency, smart — but not wise.
• Electricity for EVs from fossil fuels is > 60%, based on a vehicle life of 20 years — the manufacture of an EV creates three times as much toxicity as that of a conventional vehicle — heavy metals.
• Jet age (1958) — Boeing 707. 1969: 747.
• We need a fuel equivalent to kerosene that is derived from plant matter or organic waste — biojet fuel.
• Flying has never been safer.
• Energy intensity is the key, Jet airliners are surprisingly efficient, intercity high-speed trains (>public-transit trains) are far superior, and the US, Canada, and Australia are laggards in rapid train transportation.

Part 6: Food

• Nitrogen is the most important macronutrient for crops, next are phosphorus and potassium. Synthetic ammonia: solid urea. Nitrogen losses: Nitrates contaminate fresh waters and coastal seas, nitrogen utilization efficiency has declined since the 1960s. Improve the efficiency of fertilization, reduce food waste, and adopt moderate meat consumption.
• Short-stalked wheat (1935) — An east Asian plant — game-changer. From 1965, the average global wheat yield almost tripled. Still, there are yield gaps in India, China, and Pak due to restrictions on nitrogenous fertilizers, and water shortages.
• Globally, at least one-third of all harvested food is wasted, The USA is a leading offender: 40% (it was 15% in the 1970s) ~ in 2020, food enough for ~230 million people was wasted, among adults, 74% of males and 64% of females have an excessively high weight. 70% of wasted food could have been eaten. Reasons: ~ 30% due to not being used in time, 33% due to best before dates, ~ 15% cooked/served too much. UK’s WRAP: a dollar invested in food waste prevention has a 14-fold return in associated benefits.
• Mediterranean diet: carbohydrates + pulses and nuts, dairy products (mostly cheese and yogurt), fruits and vegetables, seafood. Higher incomes allow higher meat, fat, and sugar intake. Reason: single-person households — ready-to-eat meals, snacking, convenience food.
• Bluefin tuna: On the way to extinction. More than half of all tuna served in restaurants and sushi shops are mislabeled.
• Chicken’s ascendance — its lower price, best feed-to-meat ratios.
• Wine: introduced by Greeks before Romans came, France’s national identity, per capita alcohol consumption declining — gender and generational divides.
• Meat: undesirable habits — deleterious health effects, high land use, and a large water footprint. In North America and Europe, ~60% of the total crop harvest is for feeding cattle. Rational meat consumption based on moderate intakes of meat produced with greatly reduced environmental impact. Pork: Chicken: Beef output = 40:37:23 should be 40:50:10 (moderate), Eg.: Japan (longevity), France (smarter): 80gm meat per day.
• Japan: High life expectancy — Ancestry ~ Korea, Han Chinese, and Southeast Asian? Soy sauce, Tofu, green tea? Animal food supply is only 20% energy (France 35%, USA 27%)? Diet: remarkably moderate average per capita food supply/consumption — 25% less than US/France. A Chinese precept:

Hara hachi bun me (Belly eight parts [in ten] full)

• Dairy products: declines of average per capita milk consumption — (due to higher consumption of meat and fish). Milk is an excellent food for anybody.

Part 7: Environment

• In 250+ years, we have classified around 1.25 million Species: about 75% animals, 17% plants, and the remainder fungi and microbes.
• Bacteria: ~90% of the human body’s living cells = ~3% of its total weight. Cattle zoo-mass is now more than 50% larger than the anthropo-mass.
• Elephants: 20 million in Africa in the 19th century, now <1 million. China’s continuing demand for ivory. South Africa: a surfeit of elephants.
• Anthropocene: a new epoch characterized by human control of the biosphere? Our mark on the planet is nothing more than a modest microlayer in the geologic record.
• Concrete deteriorates in all climates. Environmental impact is another worry. Production of cement now accounts for ~5% of global CO2 emissions.
• Mobile phones: annual production of mobile/laptop/tablet = total annual energy use in New Zealand/Hungary. Cars = 7x ~ Italy’s annual energy use. Phones leave quite an aggregate footprint in the energy budget and the environment (network, operating energy costs, ~2 years life).
• Insulation: The thermal resistance of North American wooden hollow wall=2.5, European brick and stone wall=1.0.
• The quest for untested technical fixes is the curse of energy policy. Why not start with what is proven? Triple-glazed windows: cost 15% more than double panes but have longer payback — reducing energy use.
• House heating: reducing the carbon burden of heating: limiting the size of houses.
• Carbon: From 2000 to 2017, emissions declined by ~15% in the EU (slower economic growth and aging population) and also in the US (increasing use of natural gas instead of coal). However, all these gains were outbalanced by Chinese carbon emissions. While slowing down in China now, it is speeding up in India and Africa. To avoid a 1.5-degree increase in the global average temperature, put emissions almost immediately into a decline steep enough to bring them to zero by 2050 (very unlikely). The four pillars of modern civilization — ammonia, steel, cement, and plastics.

An informed judging of absolute values requires some relative, comparative perspectives.

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