Status Updates From Energy Myths and Realities:...

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Blinkist

"In sum, it is nothing but a grand delusion to think that in ten years the United States can achieve wind and solar generation whose equivalent in thermal power plants took nearly sixty years..."
Delusion (n.) - "a false belief or judgment about external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, occurring especially in mental conditions."

Smil often uses the words "myth" and "reality" throughout his book to distinguish proposals he considers non-arguments from legitimate claims and courses of action related to energy policy.

The production of all the ethanol needed to meet the gasoline demand of the US for transportation fuels would require "220 million hectares of arable land, or on an area roughly 20 percent larger than the country's total arable land." Ethanol is NOT a sustainable alternative for gasoline for this reason.

In Part I of his book, Smil has addressed the persistent energy myths of electric cars, ultra-cheap nuclear energy, and "soft energy" solutions to climate change by providing facts and data that disprove these myths or show them to be impractical. Now, in Part II, he addresses more recent myths and clarifies the impacts of "peak oil" and other energy crises or myths.

"But Seaborg's enthusiasm was not an idiosyncratic oddity. Other experts may have been somewhat less visionary, but they foresaw a similar course ahead" (34).

idiosyncratic: peculiar, or atypical