Thought Experiment: world without fossil fuels

[Belz...]

Hi,

I'm wondering something, and I need smarter and more knowledgeable people than me to answer.

Assuming our world is otherwise exactly the same, but entirely without fossil fuels, what's the level of technology we can reach ? What's possible and what's not ? Assume, of course, that our science was developed without the benefit of fossil fuels.

 

[GlennB]

Hi,

I'm wondering something, and I need smarter and more knowledgeable people than me to answer.

<giggle>. Why am I chipping in then? But it's an interesting question anyway, and I'm well into my second ouzo so who cares

Assuming our world is otherwise exactly the same, but entirely without fossil fuels, what's the level of technology we can reach ? What's possible and what's not ? Assume, of course, that our science was developed without the benefit of fossil fuels.

You mean from the outset, and developing as far as possible without fossil fuels? Hmmmm.

It strikes me that the industry that led to extensive personal transport, easy communication, remote power sources (electricity) and all the rest were totally dependent on fossil fuels and the abundance of cheap energy that allowed for easy development and high population growth. Before fossil fuels horses and sailing boats were the best. After fossil it was trains, cars, steamships and planes. Could charcoal be used to build and fuel a train? Technically perhaps, but I doubt that anybody would see that as a good use for charcoal. There are only so many trees.

My guess is we'd be stuck at a low-intensity, low-population 'Roman but more advanced' level of civilisation, but with interesting though ultimately fruitless experiments going on into higher tech as our knowledge grew.

(as I go to post this it occurs to me that hydro power with rubber as an insulator could provide a fair bit of electricity, but whether a zero fossil civilisation could summon up the sheer grunt to make it a major contributor I really don't know. It takes grunt to mine and smelt minerals in large quantities to build the dams and manufacture the generators that go beyond mere water mills hitched to a crude dynamo. And I don't know how much use olive oil or beef lard really is as a machine lubricant )

 

[Ziggurat]

You could have wood-powered steam engines, but without coal, their use would have been significantly constrained. It would be very hard to develop an internal combustion engine. It's literally possible (crop-based ethanol), but harder to start (remember: no internal combustion crop harvesters or petroleum-fueled fertilizer plants to get it rolling), and maybe not economical even if you did. You could still have electricity (hydro would probably be the dominant source), which means that eventually everything else is possible (but not guaranteed), but development would be much slower and the results far more expensive.

 

[Segnosaur]

Before fossil fuels horses and sailing boats were the best. After fossil it was trains, cars, steamships and planes. Could charcoal be used to build and fuel a train? Technically perhaps, but I doubt that anybody would see that as a good use for charcoal.

Keep in mind that there is another option for powering vehicles (at least smaller ones)... alcohol. Now, there would likely have to be some sort of positive feedback going on... alcohol used to power vehicles which improve crop yields (through mechanization) to produce more alcohol which allows more vehicles and more industry, etc. It certainly would have required more time for the technology to develop.

Lubricants would have been an issue though (as you mentioned earlier.)

 

[Belz...]

Hmmm...

Let's take an example in the telegraph or telephone. I suppose the technology itself is feasible, but how easy would it be to produce the necessary wiring for use by more than a handful of people ?

Or zeppelins. As I understand it, the helium we have is from natural gas. Can we have enough hydrogen to produce zeppelins ?

Or hot air balloons. I'm sure the burners can use something else than propane.

Hell, even computers. A working turing-equivalent model was designed in 1837, so I assume we could kinda have a few of those.

 

[CapelDodger]

I don't think there'd be a limit, but it would have taken much longer to get there (or here, for that matter). It wouldn't have prevented the Enlightenment or the early (water-driven) Industrial Revolution, but without coal Peak Wood would have put a severe brake on the latter.

Much of the effort which went into the science and technology of steam-power would, I think, have gone into electricity - batteries and solar power in particular. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention.

 

[Segnosaur]

Or zeppelins. As I understand it, the helium we have is from natural gas. Can we have enough hydrogen to produce zeppelins ?

From what I understand, the Helium is produced through radioactive decay... it just gets distilled from Natural gas in cases where the Uranium deposits are near natural gas deposits.

Not sure if there would be other ways to capture helium.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question12.htm

I don't think we'd loose that much if we never had enough He to fly zepplins; however, it might complicate research into things like superconductors

 

[Ziggurat]

Let's take an example in the telegraph or telephone. I suppose the technology itself is feasible, but how easy would it be to produce the necessary wiring for use by more than a handful of people ?

It would be very, very costly. So yes, it might not happen even if it was possible.

Or zeppelins. As I understand it, the helium we have is from natural gas. Can we have enough hydrogen to produce zeppelins ?

That's what the Germans did.

We have an essentially limitless supply of hydrogen: the ocean. The only limit is on the energy (generally in the form of electricity) needed to extract it.

Or hot air balloons. I'm sure the burners can use something else than propane.

If it's not a hydrocarbon, it's not going to have enough energy density to be practical. If you don't have fossil fuels, then the only readily available hydrocarbons are going to be stuff like vegetable oil. That's not really good for a hot air balloon (doesn't burn fast enough), but you could probably synthesize lighter hydrocarbons by cracking. But that's going to be expensive.

Hell, even computers. A working turing-equivalent model was designed in 1837, so I assume we could kinda have a few of those.

The problem is that R&D only gets performed with "leftover" economic capacity. Without fossil fuels, all our economic activity gets significantly constrained, and there's much less "leftover" to do R&D with, and the same R&D activities themselves become more expensive too. I don't see anything about a computer that makes me think, "that's not possible without fossil fuels". But it would take probably many orders of magnitude longer to develop.

 

[Belz...]

I don't think we'd loose that much if we never had enough He to fly zepplins;

I wonder how we'd fly zeppelins, however, without engines. Same thing about planes. Without today's materials, I don't see how they could fly on human power alone.

Batteries don't have any component from fossil fuels, do they ?

 

[Belz...]

That's what the Germans did.

I know. My question was poorly phrased. I mean, more than just a few zeppelins. How fast can we get hydrogen without the fossil fuel techs ?

We have an essentially limitless supply of hydrogen: the ocean. The only limit is on the energy (generally in the form of electricity) needed to extract it.

Ok, so that would function the same, then.

If it's not a hydrocarbon, it's not going to have enough energy density to be practical. If you don't have fossil fuels, then the only readily available hydrocarbons are going to be stuff like vegetable oil. That's not really good for a hot air balloon (doesn't burn fast enough)

What did the Montgolfier brothers use ? I'm having a hard time finding that information.

The problem is that R&D only gets performed with "leftover" economic capacity. Without fossil fuels, all our economic activity gets significantly constrained, and there's much less "leftover" to do R&D with, and the same R&D activities themselves become more expensive too. I don't see anything about a computer that makes me think, "that's not possible without fossil fuels". But it would take probably many orders of magnitude longer to develop.

Sounds about right.

 

[ben m]

You could have wood-powered steam engines, but without coal, their use would have been significantly constrained. It would be very hard to develop an internal combustion engine.

Not at all---you can run an internal combustion engine on wood gas. That's a mix of CH4, CO, H2 that comes from pyrolysis or incomplete combustion of wood, and you can use it more or less like a low-energy-density (and high-asphyxiation-hazard) replacement for methane. You can imagine someone like James Watt, and the early steam-engine inventors, running boilers on straight wood or charcoal; you can imagine wood-gas generation and storage being developed as part of the process of optimizing wood-fired boilers. So Karl Benz and Nikolas Otto (or their alternate-history equivalents) would have had easy access to wood gas, just as easily as we have fossil natural gas today. So, I don't see internal combustion engines as a shopstopper. Add in the Fischer-Tropsch process and you've got wood-based liquid fuels too.

What's harder, I think, are the ultra-energy-intensive Industrial Revolution materials: iron, concrete. I mean, early iron smelting WAS done with wood fuel (as charcoal), but when you think of the industrial revolution you think of *cheap* iron. I don't think you have cheap and abundant iron in a world where there's no coal.

 

[DC]

hard to imagen , im pretty sure we would be nowehere near where we are today. on the other hand we would not face the biggest problem we ever faced

 

[GlennB]

.... you can imagine wood-gas generation and storage being developed as part of the process of optimizing wood-fired boilers. So Karl Benz and Nikolas Otto (or their alternate-history equivalents) would have had easy access to wood gas, just as easily as we have fossil natural gas today. So, I don't see internal combustion engines as a shopstopper. Add in the Fischer-Tropsch process and you've got wood-based liquid fuels too.

Yes, but do you have the wherewithal to produce that equipment and to fuel the process? How do you compress wood gas? More importantly, perhaps, why would you want to even if you could? To make an experimental IC vehicle perhaps, but not in order to revolutionise society's personal transport. That would take a whole lot of wood for an indefinite time, while perfectly nice horses could haul carriages all day for the price of some grazing and a drink of water.

And looking at Fischer-Tropsch^WP I note that the viability of the process is susceptible to the cost of crude oil or the availability of 'stranded' (otherwise useless) gas. In Belz's o/p world it would be fueled by wood or vegetable oil afaics.

 

[DC]

on the other hand, had we not those cheap fossil fuels, we would have put more effort in other energy sources, nuclear would mayne have come earlier and would be more widespread and we would have similar things we have today, but with electric cars and trucks etc etc. Solar energy would have been used more , wind and water energy used more etc etc. after thinking about it, maybe it would not be so much different,

 

[Belz...]

on the other hand, had we not those cheap fossil fuels, we would have put more effort in other energy sources, nuclear would mayne have come earlier and would be more widespread and we would have similar things we have today, but with electric cars and trucks etc etc. Solar energy would have been used more , wind and water energy used more etc etc. after thinking about it, maybe it would not be so much different,

I'm not sure how we'd have ever developed nuclear technology without preexisting tech brought about by fossil-fueled industrialisation, though.

 

[DC]

I'm not sure how we'd have ever developed nuclear technology without preexisting tech brought about by fossil-fueled industrialisation, though.

it is, but then so is the idea tha Egyptians Mayas etc build those fantastic buildings without fossil fuels and modern tools but as they had no alternative they did it with the "fuel" and tools they had. and i think we would have found a way, we would mostpropably lag behind our today's standard for a few decades.

 

[Belz...]

I don't know. As Zig said, the key to industrialisation is making stuff cheap. How are you planning to enrich your uranium, or even know how to do that at all, without preeexisting tech ?

 

[DavidS]

What's harder, I think, are the ultra-energy-intensive Industrial Revolution materials: iron, concrete. I mean, early iron smelting WAS done with wood fuel (as charcoal), but when you think of the industrial revolution you think of *cheap* iron. I don't think you have cheap and abundant iron in a world where there's no coal.

That.

Nearly all the alternative technologies mentioned here essentially presume metals available for their development or application. Many of them probably could be done without metal, but it's not obvious they would be affordable, effective, or even developed without reasonably affordable metal.

At the very least it would be much, much harder to bootstrap industrial technology without fossil fuels. Technologies that might be very possible and practical without fossil fuels, once developed, may be unreasonably impractical and expensive to develop and implement without fossil fuels.

Lack of fossil fuel energy would impede production of affordable metals, which would impede production of non-fossil-fuel energy and production of metal. With both in short supply, it's harder to divert either from survival toward development. When you're up to your ass in alligators it's hard to concentrate on draining the swamp.

 

[IXP]

I think you are being a little too pessimistic. Yes, there would have been a delay, but we would have put effort into other technologies that were ignored because they were expensive compared to fossil fuels. I think nuclear would have dominated electrical generation long ago, for instance, and perhaps solar. And we would have simply wiped out half of our population so that we had the land could grow vegtable fuels.

IXP

 

[Belz...]

Again I ask: how are we supposed to develop solar and nuclear without the preceding steps in tech ? And what are the incentives to develop them if we don't already have a cheap way to produce them ?