5 February 2022 | New Scientist | 35Don’t miss
Read
Strange Bedfellows
accompany many of
us through our lives, yet
most of us know next to
nothing about common
sexually transmitted
infections. Ina Park
aims to change all that
in this upbeat look at
the science of STIs.Visit
Audubon’s Birds of
America is a chance to
see this rare, hand-
coloured natural history
book and to learn more
about its controversial
creator, John James
Audubon. It is on show
at the National Museum
of Scotland in Edinburgh
from 12 February.Watch
Death by Shakespeare
sees chemist Kathryn
Harkup reveal the
science behind some
of the grisly methods
used by the Bard to kill
characters in his plays.
Online talk by the
Royal Institution on 10
February at 7pm GMT.
NATIONAL^ MUSEU
MSSCOTLA
ND;^ SHUTTE
RS
TOCK
/TRIFFHow stuff works
To know our future, we need to focus on understanding
the world we live in now, finds Simon IngsBook
How the World Really
Works: A scientist’s guide to
our past, present and future
Vaclav Smil
VikingIN SUCH a complex world, no one
can be expected to understand
everything. But for energy expert
Vaclav Smil, there are limits. In his
view, it is inexcusable that most of
us don’t know the first thing about
the basic workings of modern life
and the technologies that keep us
all alive. It’s not all rocket science,
he says. “Appreciating how wheat
is grown or steel is made... are not
the same as asking... somebody
to comprehend femtochemistry.”
Smil deplores the way that
Western culture disproportionately
rewards work that is removed from
the material realities of life on Earth.
Most of all, he is concerned that
the general public is abandoning
its grip on reality. How the World
Really Works is Smil’s attempt to
redress the balance, showing thefundamentals of how food is
grown, how the built environment
is made and maintained, and how
all of this is powered.
Smil believes it is worth
understanding what might seem
like outdated technologies given
that the building blocks of our lives
won’t change significantly over
the next 20 to 30 years. Most of
our electricity is still gener ated by
steam turbines, invented by Charles
Parsons in 1884, or by gas turbines,
first commercially deployed in the
late 1930s, he writes. And many
of the trappings of the industrial
world still hinge on the production
of ammonia, steel, concrete and
plastics, all of which currently
require fossil fuels for their
production. Even the newest
technologies – AI, electric cars, 5G
and space tourism – get most of
their energy from fossil fuel-based
turbines, says Smil.
Alternative methods are on their
way, of course, but they will take
decades to fully establish. Coal
displaced wood relatively easily
in the early 20th century, but it
will probably take longer to bring
in renewables because global
energy demand is now an order
of magnitude higher.
Given the irrefutable evidenceof climate change, does this
mean that Western civilisation,
so hopelessly dependent on fossil
fuels, is doomed?
Perhaps, but Smil would prefer
that we concentrate on practical
solutions, rather than wasting
our energies on complex socio-
economic forecasts. In his view,
such forecasts will get less accurate
over time because “more complex
models combining the interactions
of economic, social, technical, and
environmental factors require more
assumptions and open the way for
greater errors”.
How the World Really Works
neither laments the possibly
imminent end of the world, nor
bloviates about the potentially
transformative powers of the AI
Singularity. Indeed, it gives no
quarter to such dramatic thinking,
be it apocalyptic or techno-utopian.
Instead, in an era where
specialisation is seen as the
pinnacle of knowledge, Smil is an
unapologetic generalist. “Drilling
the deepest possible hole and being
an unsurpassed master of a tiny
sliver of the sky visible from its
bottom has never appealed to me,”
he writes. “I have always preferred
to scan as far and as wide as my
limited capabilities have allowed
me to do.”
He chooses to explain the
workings of the world as it is today,
from energy to food, materials,
the biosphere, globalisation and
the perception of risk. He covers
sizeable ground that other
commentators ignore. It is a
grumpy, pugnacious account that,
I would argue, is intellectually
indispensable in the run up to this
year’s COP27 climate conference
in Egypt. In short, How the World
Really Works fully delivers on the
promise of its title. It is hard to
formulate any higher praise. ❚Simon Ings is a writer based in LondonWhether we like it or not, the
industrialised world in still heavily
dependent on fossil fuelsDE
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