What if we'd never had fossil fuels?
Discussion
TwigtheWonderkid said:
mybrainhurts said:
In the absence of fossil fuels, we would have eaten more beans and captured farts...
Without modern farming methods, there would be precious few beans to eat. And given that beans of that type come from the USA, how are you going to get them here?otolith said:
Water power is somewhat limiting.
Only because we have a better option, otherwise it'd be 'liberating and empowering'.Just like if we were all zooming around in our flying cars powered by giant Tesla towers broadcasting electricity - we'd be saying 'Remember those when you had to put gas in every few hundred miles, and stick to roads? How did we cope!'
We really should get our act together with this whole fusion thing, looks jolly good I say
You're all forgetting coal, the power for the industrial revolution. So there'd be no major fuel supply between when the trees ran out and when we had the technology to make hydroelectricity - essentially the two centuries between 1700 and 1900. So no industrial revolution and no trains or cars as a result I think.
I did a few random dips for 'coal' but evidently not enough!
As Eric says man has used fossil fuels for a very long time, but not in anything like the scale of the last 2-300 years so their omission would have had less effect on things (and could probably have been offset by using more wood or even farming it as we do today).
It's a good topic.
As Eric says man has used fossil fuels for a very long time, but not in anything like the scale of the last 2-300 years so their omission would have had less effect on things (and could probably have been offset by using more wood or even farming it as we do today).
It's a good topic.
The "developed" world of the 17th century was beginning to run out of available wood sources - so there was an increase in demand for coal - which was already in widespread use. That led to an interest in developing better ways of extracting it - which led to steam driven pumps etc.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I don't think we would have a history if fossil fuels didn't exist.
But then, as I said before, fossilised carbon is a byproduct of the very nature of this planet. If it was any other way - it would mean life never existed.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I don't think we would have a history if fossil fuels didn't exist.
But then, as I said before, fossilised carbon is a byproduct of the very nature of this planet. If it was any other way - it would mean life never existed.
We might as well discuss what might or might not have happened if a clump of dust in the outer section of the spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy hadn't started to coalesce about 5 billion years ago.
Once life got going on earth, it was bound to lead to large deposits of fossilised dead things - and a lot of that would be in forms that could be extracted and burned.
Once life got going on earth, it was bound to lead to large deposits of fossilised dead things - and a lot of that would be in forms that could be extracted and burned.
There’s a misconception fossil fuels are required as a precursor to an industrial revolution and a booming economy. It’s not true.
IF fossil fuels hadn’t been discovered the following might have happened…
[edited to remove nonsense cut and paste!] Around 1775 Africans would have discovered casting a sheet iron of into a parabola and polishing it could be used to heat water in a glass tube and therefore make steam. Triggering the start of an industrial revolution. Glass and iron both existed well before the industrial revolution. (Ancient Rome as an example).
The water sourced from the sea could, after being condensed, be used to irrigate crops offering a more stable food source than nomadic herding.
Then sometime around 1850 most of Europe would have been colonised by Africans, who would come in and steal all our natural resources being as they have access to 6 times the annual sunlight we do in Europe and could therefore manufacture weapons much more quickly.
The motor car would still have been invented, but would be powered by molten salt heated to around 600 degrees the day before and dumped into the refill chute of the saltmobile. There would be molten salt refills available all over Africa. But in Europe we’d still be dragging around hand karts, admittedly updated from wooden wheels and using spare parts from the rubbser tyres and steel wheels of Africans discarded salt mobiles.
Europeans (once slaves but now free to do low paid menial jobs) would be employed to go round scooping up discarded salt that had cooled, back to the reheating plants. A few more Europeans would sneak into Africa for better weather and to get access to better education and healthcare. The Africans would be up in arms about it, but have a small residual guilt about colonialisation. Many of them would come to Europe to escape the heat and set up business, much to the disdain of the incumbent population.
The discovery of electricity by Frenjamin Baklin, a well known African Scholar who’d gone to set up a colony in the new Americas, meant further research into converting sunlight to electricity lead to the development of the PV cell circa 1825. This would have lead to a huge increase in energy production centred around the equator, leading to mass immigration. Most of Europe was left to return the wilderness and for scenic holidays to see wildlife where elephants and lions had established themselves after almost being hunted to death in Africa.
Not that farfetched given these technologies are coming on stream – and aren’t really that high tech. Lets face it – who’d stay in Europe if Africa was a civilised place with plentiful access to food and energy. (I better not tell you it is actually like that in many places or you’ll all want to move there pushing up house prices).
Some simple facts :
We currently burn the fossil fuel equivalent of 13,000 years worth of total worldwide annual biomass growth every year (coal, oil and gas combined). So all that millions of years of stored energy is going up in smoke in the blink of an eye in the earth’s terms.
There’s enough energy in the form of sunlight falling in 6 hours on a small desert about size of morocco to power the whole world for a year. (See link below)
Which do you think will leads to sustainable energy prices and the long term success of human civilization?
In 200 years history lessons will talk about about our quick flirt with fossil fuels, which nearly damaged the environment – until everything went solar. Scrub that - 50 years.
I’ve been watching solar energy prices for about 10 years – and we are about 5 years away from the turning point. When it gets cheaper over a 25 year period to buy your own solar PV system than buying electric from the grid. However it won’t work all year – but at least when it’s bright (not necesarily sunny) – you’ll be saving. This is without government intervention like FITs. The backup will be from the likes of http://www.desertec.org/organization/
In years to come we'll woner why we had to stop and refuel every 300 miles, when you could just recharge your vechicle at home and hot swap the batteries only on longer journeys. http://www.betterplace.com/
IF fossil fuels hadn’t been discovered the following might have happened…
[edited to remove nonsense cut and paste!] Around 1775 Africans would have discovered casting a sheet iron of into a parabola and polishing it could be used to heat water in a glass tube and therefore make steam. Triggering the start of an industrial revolution. Glass and iron both existed well before the industrial revolution. (Ancient Rome as an example).
The water sourced from the sea could, after being condensed, be used to irrigate crops offering a more stable food source than nomadic herding.
Then sometime around 1850 most of Europe would have been colonised by Africans, who would come in and steal all our natural resources being as they have access to 6 times the annual sunlight we do in Europe and could therefore manufacture weapons much more quickly.
The motor car would still have been invented, but would be powered by molten salt heated to around 600 degrees the day before and dumped into the refill chute of the saltmobile. There would be molten salt refills available all over Africa. But in Europe we’d still be dragging around hand karts, admittedly updated from wooden wheels and using spare parts from the rubbser tyres and steel wheels of Africans discarded salt mobiles.
Europeans (once slaves but now free to do low paid menial jobs) would be employed to go round scooping up discarded salt that had cooled, back to the reheating plants. A few more Europeans would sneak into Africa for better weather and to get access to better education and healthcare. The Africans would be up in arms about it, but have a small residual guilt about colonialisation. Many of them would come to Europe to escape the heat and set up business, much to the disdain of the incumbent population.
The discovery of electricity by Frenjamin Baklin, a well known African Scholar who’d gone to set up a colony in the new Americas, meant further research into converting sunlight to electricity lead to the development of the PV cell circa 1825. This would have lead to a huge increase in energy production centred around the equator, leading to mass immigration. Most of Europe was left to return the wilderness and for scenic holidays to see wildlife where elephants and lions had established themselves after almost being hunted to death in Africa.
Not that farfetched given these technologies are coming on stream – and aren’t really that high tech. Lets face it – who’d stay in Europe if Africa was a civilised place with plentiful access to food and energy. (I better not tell you it is actually like that in many places or you’ll all want to move there pushing up house prices).
Some simple facts :
We currently burn the fossil fuel equivalent of 13,000 years worth of total worldwide annual biomass growth every year (coal, oil and gas combined). So all that millions of years of stored energy is going up in smoke in the blink of an eye in the earth’s terms.
There’s enough energy in the form of sunlight falling in 6 hours on a small desert about size of morocco to power the whole world for a year. (See link below)
Which do you think will leads to sustainable energy prices and the long term success of human civilization?
In 200 years history lessons will talk about about our quick flirt with fossil fuels, which nearly damaged the environment – until everything went solar. Scrub that - 50 years.
I’ve been watching solar energy prices for about 10 years – and we are about 5 years away from the turning point. When it gets cheaper over a 25 year period to buy your own solar PV system than buying electric from the grid. However it won’t work all year – but at least when it’s bright (not necesarily sunny) – you’ll be saving. This is without government intervention like FITs. The backup will be from the likes of http://www.desertec.org/organization/
In years to come we'll woner why we had to stop and refuel every 300 miles, when you could just recharge your vechicle at home and hot swap the batteries only on longer journeys. http://www.betterplace.com/
Edited by TransverseTight on Monday 22 July 18:59
Simpo Two said:
Yebbut but the reserves might have been under the oceans or Antarctica and therefore undiscovered or impossible to retrieve.
Highly unlikely they will be under the deep ocean due to the way plate tectonics work. The ocean floors are essentially new crust upwelling from the mantle. The old rocks are those on the continental shelves and it is in those old rocks that the ancient fossils that give us oil, gas and coal reside. And we are now coming to the conclusion that one of the engines of plate tectonics is not only the convection currents in the crust but minerals and chemicals put into the rocks by life itself.There was a very good documentary on Radio 4 a few weeks ago about this very fact.
It really is looking like the geology of earth and how it works as a planet has been driven by the fact that life evolved here very early on in its history.
TransverseTight said:
Around 1775 Africans would have discovered bending casting a sheet of into a parabola polishing it could be used to heat water in a glass tube... Then sometime around 1850 most of Europe would have been colonised by Africans...
You forgot the bit about the 1948 African moonshot, using a big tower of old tyres with a mirror on the top.The most popular power source will generally be the one that is cheapest. But there are two different needs here. One is for something central that you plug your house in to, the other is for a compact portable source for vehicles.
A few PV cells aside - and people are already complaining about solar farms and how much land they use - the real, practical answer that can actually keep the country working is nuclear for the house and petrol/diesel for the car.
Crossflow Kid said:
What if TSR2 hadn't been cancelled Eric?
king amen. There are a few rather arrogant and blinkered views being put forward about oil. IMHO
So I am going to state this as arrogant fact.
Only a very small amount of oil is dino juice.
The vast majority is produced naturally deep inside the Earth's crust.
The processes involved have been put forward by eminent Russian Scientists.
The huge pressure and heat "reforms" the abundant feedstock elements into Hydrocarbons.
There you go, it is totally natural and is replenishing itself all the time.
So without FOSSIL FUELS, we would still have Hydrocarbon Liquids and Natural Gas.
So I am going to state this as arrogant fact.
Only a very small amount of oil is dino juice.
The vast majority is produced naturally deep inside the Earth's crust.
The processes involved have been put forward by eminent Russian Scientists.
The huge pressure and heat "reforms" the abundant feedstock elements into Hydrocarbons.
There you go, it is totally natural and is replenishing itself all the time.
So without FOSSIL FUELS, we would still have Hydrocarbon Liquids and Natural Gas.
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