Thought Experiment: world without fossil fuels

[CapelDodger]

Let's also look at the issue of wood power. Wood has something like 75% the energy density of coal, which is great---we're not talking about a world powered by potato batteries, we're talking about "the fuel hopper needs to be a little bigger and the fireman to shovel a little harder". Steamships, railroads would work just fine.

Not for oceanic travel.

Wood was indeed harvested, on coal-like industrial scales, as a power source. For example, the 19th century glass industry of Upstate New York (Corning, etc.) were entirely wood-fired (there was no coal in the area), and harvested this renewable fuel on an industrial scale (although they simply mined it out and didn't renew). In late medieval England, woodlands were coppiced and harvested sustainably for charcoal production for centuries.

With the rise of machinery the demand for iron increased, and sustainability went out the window. Wood for charcoal became a strategic issue because we had to get it from the Baltic or North America. Also pitch.

Charcoal could be used sustainably, but there'd have had to be a crisis first. It's a feature of past Malthusian crises that prices of food and fuel become increasingly volatile in the run-up - but with an increasing trend. At some point a couple of bad harvests is enough to trigger the crisis.

 

[jaydeehess]

Ok but would we have managed to developed nuke power ?



And that's knowledge we have now (alternate fuels), but did that knowledge depend on industrialisation ?

Nuke power does not depend on having developed fossil fuel tech.
Neither does electricity.

So, both could be developed as a result of scientific discovery independent of fossil fuel dependant tech.

 

[jaydeehess]

Malthusian crises don't kill everybody, they re-establish an equilibrium with some overshoot (which makes life pretty cosy for the survivors). The next one will be no different, you'll see.

People would not have got into the habit of travelling so much. Bicycles would probably have been it.

The focus would have been more on mass transit than personal. Mass transit could be accomplished with alcohol or electricity and would be more efficient.

Greatest impact would be on the energy inefficiencies we take for granted such as air conditioning.

 

[Loss Leader]

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.

Haven't read the thread. Sorry if this has been stated: I think the factor most affected would be population growth. That, in turn, would have an effect on our need for new technologies.

 

[ben m]

Not for oceanic travel.

Why not? Wood has 60-75% of the energy density of coal. The Titanic carried 6,600 tons of coal, a tiny fraction of its 50,000 ton displacement. It could have run the same distance on under 10,000 tons of wood, also a tiny fraction of its 50,000 ton displacement. Wood charcoal, if you're willing to eat the cost of producing it, is just as energy-dense as coal.

Am I missing something?

 

[Myriad]

Why not? Wood has 60-75% of the energy density of coal. The Titanic carried 6,600 tons of coal, a tiny fraction of its 50,000 ton displacement. It could have run the same distance on under 10,000 tons of wood, also a tiny fraction of its 50,000 ton displacement. Wood charcoal, if you're willing to eat the cost of producing it, is just as energy-dense as coal.

Am I missing something?

Energy density is per unit mass. You have to factor for dry seasoned wood's lower density (less mass per volume). This doesn't make a huge difference and depends on the species, but if the 10,000 tons of wood takes up the space that 18,000 tons of coal would, it's no longer a tiny fraction of the hull space. It gets worse if the wood is not either stacked carefully piece by piece or chipped.

It's still possible, but at some point, for a typical cargo ship, the cost of the wood fuel and the cargo space taken up (including the space taken up by the engines, and the needed fresh water supply) would no longer be worth the increased average speed relative to sail.

 

[rjh01]

One question that has not been asked is under what conditions would no fossil fuel society be true? My answer is that if humans (or maybe a reptile equivalent) had developed as soon as large animals had evolved then there would have been very little fossil fuels.

Great thread.

 

[GlennB]

Why not? Wood has 60-75% of the energy density of coal. The Titanic carried 6,600 tons of coal, a tiny fraction of its 50,000 ton displacement. It could have run the same distance on under 10,000 tons of wood, also a tiny fraction of its 50,000 ton displacement. Wood charcoal, if you're willing to eat the cost of producing it, is just as energy-dense as coal.

Am I missing something?

Possibly. The first being the ability to source that much wood, bearing in mind it's also fueling the construction of the roads, railways and their vehicles that are fetching the wood from the forests and then fueling the act of transport. The second being the motivation of a much smaller human population to even conceive of the need for ocean-going, steel-constructed, wood powered ships let alone aircraft. I'm unable to see why these woody people might even want to mimic the kind of development that fossil fuels have allowed us to evolve via, pretty often, pure curiosity.

As a matter of interest, can suitable lubricant oils be synthesised from wood derivatives? Perhaps they can (we get some interesting bituminous material in our wood stove flue) but such oils would be required for an IC engine as animal and vegetable oils would burn at those temperatures.

 

[Belz...]

Nuke power does not depend on having developed fossil fuel tech.

Are you quite sure ? I mean, you probably mean that you can eventually understand and use the technology, but my question is, would you, if you didn't have the higher level of tech provided by the industrial revolution ? If you don't have mass production and cheap steel and commodities, you just don't get to that point. Nuclear is pretty hard to produce, so it would be very expensive, no ?

Also, I wager that there's quite a bit of what goes into a nuke plant that requires fossil-based materials such as insulation, etc.

Feel free to correct me, I don't know much about the actual technology.

 

[Belz...]

One question that has not been asked is under what conditions would no fossil fuel society be true?

Well it's not really important for my purposes. I just want to know the effects.

Great thread.

Thanks.

 

[Cuddles]

Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention.

This is actually part of the problem. Steam power has been known in theory for at least a couple of millennia, but it was never any more than an ideal curiosity until there was an actual need for it. And that need was initially water pumps in mines. Coal mines. Metal mines as well, but the increase in metal usage was entirely dependent on the availability of coal. Steam powered railways and shipping only came later when people realised the existing invention could be used in other ways. And even those other ways were initially transporting the end products that began with the mining.

So sure, necessity is the mother of invention. But without coal, the necessity that kicked off the industrial revolution simply didn't exist. Sure, there are various ways approximations to various bits of technology are possible, but that's all with the benefit of hindsight. Most of them would have been possible well before the industrial revolution as well, just as coal-powered steam power was. But none of them developed in that way because the need for them all rests on a pile of interconnected needs all leading back to the availability of coal.

I won't say something approaching the modern world couldn't have happened, because I can't see anything that makes it actually impossible. But I think it unlikely it actually would have, even given much more time. It reminds me rather of a recent claim by a crackpot here. In essence, he claims that faster than light travel is possible, and if we just thought about it a bit harder we'd discover it in no time. The thing is, even if FTL travel actually is possible, we certainly can't do it right now with current technology. It will take a series of incremental discoveries and improvements to get there. Or it may just not be possible at all and the whole exercise would be a complete waste of time.

Now, imagine going back in time to some pre-industrial revolution scientist and telling them to think really hard about inventing a nuclear reactor. We know it's possible, but not only does he not know that, he simply has no way of making one with his level of knowledge and technology. Leonardo da Vinci didn't fail to make a flying machine because flying is impossible, but because the jump in technology he was trying to make was just too big. It's the same whether it's Leonardo trying to fly, Newton trying to build a nuclear power plant, or us trying to invent a warp drive - if you take away the first few steps, you can never get high enough up the ladder.

 

[marplots]

But what about different ladders altogether? That's what interested me about the question, how things might have turned out very differently, even unrecognizably so.

If we crank back the clock to the ancient Greeks or the Romans, we can still have a civilization that's worthwhile, just different.

 

[Cuddles]

But what about different ladders altogether? That's what interested me about the question, how things might have turned out very differently, even unrecognizably so.

If we crank back the clock to the ancient Greeks or the Romans, we can still have a civilization that's worthwhile, just different.

Sure, which is why I specifically said I wasn't saying anything was impossible. I was merely addressing the point made explicitly in the post I replied to, and implied in many others, that human ingenuity would find a way as long as there was a need to be met, by noting that the need is exactly what is missing in this case.

Incidentally, if you're interested in this sort of speculation Pavane might be worth a read. Possibly also the Pern books, since a lack of natural resources (both fossil fuels and metals) is one of the fundamental parts of the setting, although they're much more fantasy than alt-history.

 

[DC]

Not a chance in hell. EVERYTHING we've developed post-1800 (and probably earlier too) would have come slower, MUCH slower, without fossil fuels. Nuclear energy would probably be pushed back by centuries, at a minimum. There's just much less scientific research you can do when everyone is poorer and when the cost of research itself is higher. Hydro is the only electricity generation technology that might not have been pushed back too much (without light-weight composites and rare-earth magnets, wind isn't really very good, and solar? Ha!), but radically higher construction costs would mean we'd be using less of it than we do now, not more. It would probably make up a higher fraction, but not more in absolute amounts.

i disagree, Wind and water have been used as energy source for a very very long time. i agree that nuclear energy would not have come earlier maybe, but im pretty sure we would use it sooner or later.

 

[Ziggurat]

i disagree, Wind and water have been used as energy source for a very very long time.

I'm not talking about using them as an energy source, I'm talking about using them as a source of electricity. The fact that windmills have been used for milling (hence the name) doesn't mean it would be immediately adapted for electricity generation without any delay. Hydro is easier to adapt, wind is harder.

i agree that nuclear energy would not have come earlier maybe, but im pretty sure we would use it sooner or later.

"Later" being the key here.

 

[DC]

I'm not talking about using them as an energy source, I'm talking about using them as a source of electricity. The fact that windmills have been used for milling (hence the name) doesn't mean it would be immediately adapted for electricity generation without any delay. Hydro is easier to adapt, wind is harder.



"Later" being the key here.

but i was

 

[kleinjahr]

Interesting thread. My take on it is that we would, most likely, have an industrial society but with different foci. Probably more organic/biological sources and materials for the things we use petrochemicals for. After all, without fossil fuels you don't have a petrochemical industry.Which means no plastics other than those derived from organic sources. So none of these,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrochemical#List_of_significant_petrochemicals_and_their_derivatives. Unless, of course, something with similar or equivalent properties could be derived from organics.

 

[icebear]

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 ?...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz6IpmmYSXA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbkPzGxwVXs

 

[Myriad]

But what about different ladders altogether? That's what interested me about the question, how things might have turned out very differently, even unrecognizably so.

If we crank back the clock to the ancient Greeks or the Romans, we can still have a civilization that's worthwhile, just different.

That suggests focusing on some specific questions of interest, instead of trying to generate an entire alternate world history all at once. For instance: what, instead of water pumping for coal mining, would the first major use of stationary steam engines have been?

One easy answer is other kinds of mining, but I could make a case for a different use: water pumping for canals for transport. Gravity-powered canal locks work fine, but only if there's a fed reservoir on the high side. For a canal to cross higher land you can use locks at each end but you need to keep adding water in the middle. (Or you can dig the canal much deeper, which has other challenges.)

Canal hardware (lock hinges, sluice gates, etc.), like water-powered mills and seagoing ships, was one of the earlier industrial markets for metal mechanical components like rack-and-pinion gears. (A square-rigger from 1750 and one from 1850 would look similar from a distance, but the latter would have had many more metal fittings.) Without the coal/steel/railroad complex emerging at its original point in history, it might have been the canal engineers, meeting a demand for new canal routes, who first employed steam engines to pump water.

And what a technological wonder it would seem, to the crews passing by in their mule-drawn barges.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

That suggests focusing on some specific questions of interest, instead of trying to generate an entire alternate world history all at once. For instance: what, instead of water pumping for coal mining, would the first major use of stationary steam engines have been?

One easy answer is other kinds of mining, but I could make a case for a different use: water pumping for canals for transport. Gravity-powered canal locks work fine, but only if there's a fed reservoir on the high side. For a canal to cross higher land you can use locks at each end but you need to keep adding water in the middle. (Or you can dig the canal much deeper, which has other challenges.)

Canal hardware (lock hinges, sluice gates, etc.), like water-powered mills and seagoing ships, was one of the earlier industrial markets for metal mechanical components like rack-and-pinion gears. (A square-rigger from 1750 and one from 1850 would look similar from a distance, but the latter would have had many more metal fittings.) Without the coal/steel/railroad complex emerging at its original point in history, it might have been the canal engineers, meeting a demand for new canal routes, who first employed steam engines to pump water.

And what a technological wonder it would seem, to the crews passing by in their mule-drawn barges.

An old song:
I've got a mule. Her name is Sal.
15 miles on the Erie canal.
She's a good ol worker and a good ol pal.
15 miles on the Erie canal.
We've hauled some barges in our day. Filled with lumber coal and hay.......

oops. No coal in this imaginary uni and we already discussed the deforestation that was nearly complete and only halted just barely by the switch to fossil fuels. Would we really have gone to all that trouble for hay? I doubt it. Sure there would be some canals. But a huge network of them for transportation? Unlikely. Far more likely is a few for irrigation purposes. Transportation not so much. Remember the majority of people would still live on the land spread out. Not all concentrated in the cities. The old 40 acres and a mule model. The transportation requirements far less to supply them.