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«My favourite author has done it again. Numbers Don't Lie is by far his most accessible book to date, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is curious about the world. I unabashedly recommend this book to anyone who loves learning» Bill Gates
Is flying dangerous? How much do the world's cows weigh? And what makes people happy?
From Earth's nations and inhabitants, through the fuels and foods that energize them, to the transportation and inventions of our modern world - and how all of this affects the planet itself - in Numbers Don't Lie, Professor Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and illuminating graphs to challenge lazy thinking. Smil is on a mission to make facts matter, because after all, numbers may not lie, but which truth do they convey?
«Smil's title says it all: to understand the world, you need to follow the trendlines, not the headlines. This is a compelling, fascinating, and most important, realistic portrait of the world and where it's going» Steven Pinker
«The best book to read to better understand our world. It should be on every bookshelf!» Linda Yueh
«There is perhaps no other academic who paints pictures with numbers like Smil» Guardian
Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of over forty books on topics including energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment and public policy. No other living scientist has had more books (on a wide variety of topics) reviewed in Nature. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, in 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. This is his first book for a more general readership.
Introduction
People: The Inhabitants of Our World
What happens when we have fewer children?
The best indicator of quality of life? Try infant mortality
The best return on investment: Vaccination
Why it’s difficult to predict how bad a pandemic will be while it is happening
Growing taller
Is life expectancy finally topping out?
How sweating improved hunting
How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?
Why unemployment figures do not tell the whole story
What makes people happy?
The rise of megacities
Countries: Nations in the Age of Globalization
The First World War’s extended tragedies
Is the US really exceptional?
Why Europe should be more pleased with itself
Brexit: Realities that matter most will not change
Concerns about Japan’s future
How far can China go?
India vs. China
Why manufacturing remains important
Russia and the USA: How things never change
Receding empires: Nothing new under the sun
Machines, designs, devices: Inventions That Made Our Modern World
How the 1880s created our modern world
How electric motors power modern civilization
Transformers—the unsung silent, passive devices
Why you shouldn’t write diesel off just yet
Capturing motion—from horses to electrons
From the phonograph to streaming
Inventing integrated circuits
Moore’s Curse: Why technical progress takes longer than you think
The rise of data: Too much too fast
Being realistic about innovation
Fuels and electricity: Energizing Our Societies
Why gas turbines are the best choice
Nuclear electricity—an unfulfilled promise
Why you need fossil fuels to get electricity from wind
How big can a wind turbine be?
The slow rise of photovoltaics
Why sunlight is still best
Why we need bigger batteries
Why electric container ships are a hard sail
The real cost of electricity
The inevitably slow pace of energy transitions
Transport: How We Get Around
Shrinking the journey across the Atlantic
Engines are older than bicycles!
The surprising story of inflatable tires
When did the age of the car begin?
Modern cars have a terrible weight-to-payload ratio
Why electric cars aren’t as great as we think (yet)
When did the jet age begin?
Why kerosene is king
How safe is flying?
Which is more energy efficient—planes, trains, or automobiles?
Food: Energizing Ourselves
The world without synthetic ammonia
Multiplying wheat yields
The inexcusable magnitude of global food waste
The slow addio to the Mediterranean diet
Bluefin tuna: On the way to extinction
Why chicken rules
(Not) drinking wine
Rational meat-eating
The Japanese diet
Dairy products—the counter-trends
Environment: Damaging and Protecting Our World
Animals vs. artifacts—which are more diverse?
Planet of the cows
The deaths of elephants
Why calls for the Anthropocene era may be premature
Concrete facts
What’s worse for the environment—your car or your phone?
Who has better insulation?
Triple-glazed windows: A see-through energy solution
Improving the efficiency of household heating
Running into carbon
Epilogue
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Index