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THE VIDEO SHELF · energy transitions

"Energy Revolution? More like a Crawl" - Dr. Vaclav Smil

Energy scholar Vaclav Smil argues that global energy transitions are slow and that renewable targets should not rest on wishful thinking. He appraises how energy dependencies are likely to change and asks for using much less.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN recommends it as a grounded, data-driven counter to hype about quick energy revolutions.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design
Topic
energy transitions
Format
lecture
Level
general
HN recommenders in dataset
3
HN mentions in dataset
4
Recommendation years in dataset
2017–2022

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • Exactly, we haven't achieved that much actually. Most of the technology we use for harvesting energy is not much further from what people could imagine in 19th century. Turbine was invented in the 19th century. I really suggest watching this talk by Smil [VIDEO] and …

    Scea91 on Hacker News · 2018-08
    In Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)

  • That is a bizarre claim to make. Energy will not be far cheaper and more abundant in 10 years. Trillions of dollars are invested in infrastructure that has lifetimes of 50+ years. It is not economically or technologically feasible to undergo an energy revolution that …

    tedsanders on Hacker News · 2017-05
    In The Future of Energy Isn't Fossil Fuels or Renewables, It's Nuclear Fusion

  • I encourage you to look at the work of Vaclav Smil [1] . There's no such thing as clean energy. [1] [VIDEO]

    lcamach84 on Hacker News · 2020-09
    In How can we, as web professionals, help to make the web more energy efficient?

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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