Thought Experiment: world without fossil fuels

[Sunstealer]

This gets at where I thought the thread was headed. It's been very good about showing what wouldn't happen (or could only happen in a limited way and at great expense), but not so good at exploring what other technologies would fill the vacuum.

My guess would be biology coming to the fore quicker and as a provider of practical solutions instead of being rather more arcane. Biological organisms have some real possibilities when it comes to self-repair and operating at very low energies.

So making steel with coal is off the table. How about growing steel from iron ore and custom bacteria? Electricity is dear? I use it very efficiently to run me.

I'm thinking along the lines of biomass to produce methane. Mad Max 2 anyone?

During the First World War Britain imported around 600,000 horses and 200,000 mules. Animal fodder was the single biggest commodity shipped to sustain the war effort. "Amateurs talk tactics, but professionals talk logistics."

We'd live in a world full of working animals so we'd have to feed them anyway. I wonder if using animals to produce fuel would be possible.

I don't know how feasible it would be to collect animal waste (that wasn't used as fertilizer), human waste and rotting vegetation and produce methane without some form of industrial technology or if simply feeding a massive population of animals is doable. Just storing the gas would require a metal container. Probably best to bury it, syphon it off and simply burn it as it's produced.

You can produce biodegradable plastic from methane but again I suspect this relies on other technologies that may not be available.

It's a really interesting topic.

 

[jaydeehess]

Many societies did produce good quality* steel, but it's very expensive and only available in very limited quantities. Limited quantities means it just isn't available to be used for anything other than very specific, niche uses. And that really is the problem - so many other technologies rely on a number of other technologies to come to fruition (Sid Meier's Civilization) that removing or really hindering a single but very important technology stops the tech tree from continuing.

This does not require that there is only one path to a specific technology, nor that this hypothetical world end up looking like the one we inhabit.

The thing about affordable iron and steel is that all of a sudden you've got a material that can be used in numerous applications - that availability and affordability drives innovation and hence technology.

But is steel required to advance all tech, is it required to advance civilization? If one wishes to have the end result look exactly as what we have now then probably yes.

Approximately 45% of all electricity generation in the UK is based on burning coal as I type. There really isn't any other fuel that I can think of that can produce the heat required in such quantity so easily without advanced technology to a) mine/extract it b) use it.

Is it required that industrialization involve the UK?

the difference between discovery and use; science and engineering. It's fine to discover something, but it requires a whole load of other factors to be present for a new discovery to produce any benefit and hence; the modern world.

The modern world we know. However, if necessity drives invention along different paths perhaps Sweden , with fast flowing rivers, becomes a nexus of industry rather than the UK.
Towers could be replaced perhaps by burial of cables. At any rate, the electrical grid did not jump to what we have now. It began much smaller.

You simply cannot extract enough energy from wind to get anywhere near enough power to start powering electric arc furnaces for steel making without first going through the industrial revolution and 20th century advances that provide the infrastructure for wind power to be distributed to such facilities in the first place.

But hydro could, and again that would see more mountainous countries taking a lead in this.

Hydro-elecric power in Canada is one of the reasons why Aluminium and it's many alloys is so prevalent today. Cheap electricity close to the source of ore is a massive bonus. However, you need sufficient technological advancement to be able to take advantage of a natural resource.

Yes, my point, that and time, remember I did say it would all take more time, and the different drive,impetus, necessities than what our reality had.

How do you use hydro when there aren't any sufficiently good sites?

You don't. It would create a much different world, wouldn't it.

A world limited to wind and water power without a resource that provides cheap energy would stagnate. There is just no way that such a world can make the leap to advanced technology using wind and water power alone. It's energy starved.

I'd love it all to be milk and honey, but the truth is, without fossil fuels we'd never be typing our posts.

You will note my tongue in cheek last line in my above post.

Perhaps I am simply less pessimistic than you are.
The world did not stagnate through the Renaissance, it certainly did not stagnate through the rise of Rome.
A rise through to what we consider advanced technology could, in my optimistic opinion, take place even, if it took 2, 3, 10, times as long as it took in reality.

 

[Myriad]

I'm thinking along the lines of biomass to produce methane. Mad Max 2 anyone?

Unfortunately, Auntie Entity's pigs have basically the same problem as the Matrix machines' human batteries. Sure they produce methane but you have to feed them a greater amount of energy.

However, that doesn't invalidate your idea. If you only need relatively small amounts of methane for some particular use and you have plenty of fodder (which Bartertown obviously did not), that's not a problem. (It just means you have an animal-fodder-based energy economy like you said, not really a methane-based one.)

Methods of collecting and processing methane as an accidental side discovery of the lamp oil quest I mentioned before seems pretty plausible. Bottling it under pressure would represent difficulties. Metal tubing was available (metal trumpets, for instance, being manufactured since at least Roman times), and the existence of cannons proves that basic pressure vessels could be made, but the necessary valves and fittings might require more advanced metallurgy.

I recall a re-enactment of the history of anesthetics in which an inventor carried around about a cubic meter of nitrous oxide at 1 atmosphere pressure, in a big bag of some kind of leather or coated fabric, perhaps "goldbeater's skin" which was later used for Zeppelin gas bags. That would work for handling small amounts of gases for short periods of time, and as the Zeppelins show, could be scaled up if necessary. Bagged methane (or other plant distillates) and bagged oxygen would make a high temperature flame that could be used for small-scale workings.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[CapelDodger]

I don't know if you ever played Black & White, but it was (in)famous for this song and the constant moaning of villagers for more wood.

Thanks for that . I've played a similar game, and it's always timber that's the critical constraint.

We'd live in a world full of working animals so we'd have to feed them anyway. I wonder if using animals to produce fuel would be possible.

We haven't really touched on working animals, which I suppose is a sign of our times. Fodder would be another call on available land.

I don't know how feasible it would be to collect animal waste (that wasn't used as fertilizer), human waste and rotting vegetation and produce methane without some form of industrial technology or if simply feeding a massive population of animals is doable.

By the late 18thCE a major problem for cities such as New York and London was the sheer volume of horse-droppings being, um, dropped every day. Powered mass-transit systems were a lifesaver - and a godsend for developers. Cue suburban living and the dreaded commute.

I'm sure other solutions would have been found, or cities might simply have had a size limit. Bio-gas would no doubt have been exploited, with sewage being regarded as an asset rather than something to be washed out to sea as quickly as possible. Nutrients would be conserved for use as fertiliser. Where there's muck there's brass, as the saying goes .

 

[CapelDodger]

Is it required that industrialization involve the UK?

Damn' straight.

However, if necessity drives invention along different paths perhaps Sweden , with fast flowing rivers, becomes a nexus of industry rather than the UK.

Britain led the way in water-powered industry, so probably not. Sweden developed a major steel industry, having plentiful iron ore and fuel.

Britain (and the Netherlands) had peculiar advantages - Parliamentary government, the capitalist mindset, and sophisticated financial institutions. That's why the French were put in the shade when it came to empire-building - we let them splash about in the Med while we grown-ups swam the oceans. New England took in all that, of course; the Southern Colonies not nearly so much.

I doubt the UK would have featured so strongly without the raft of coal it sat on, but it still would have featured.

 

[CapelDodger]

This seems somehow appropriate :

War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/41/16384

How did human societies evolve from small groups, integrated by face-to-face cooperation, to huge anonymous societies of today, typically organized as states? Why is there so much variation in the ability of different human populations to construct viable states? Existing theories are usually formulated as verbal models and, as a result, do not yield sharply defined, quantitative predictions that could be unambiguously tested with data. Here we develop a cultural evolutionary model that predicts where and when the largest-scale complex societies arose in human history. The central premise of the model, which we test, is that costly institutions that enabled large human groups to function without splitting up evolved as a result of intense competition between societies—primarily warfare. Warfare intensity, in turn, depended on the spread of historically attested military technologies (e.g., chariots and cavalry) and on geographic factors (e.g., rugged landscape). The model was simulated within a realistic landscape of the Afroeurasian landmass and its predictions were tested against a large dataset documenting the spatiotemporal distribution of historical large-scale societies in Afroeurasia between 1,500 BCE and 1,500 CE. The model-predicted pattern of spread of large-scale societies was very similar to the observed one. Overall, the model explained 65% of variance in the data. An alternative model, omitting the effect of diffusing military technologies, explained only 16% of variance. Our results support theories that emphasize the role of institutions in state-building and suggest a possible explanation why a long history of statehood is positively correlated with political stability, institutional quality, and income per capita.

The military imperative. The rewards of getting ahead are enormous (wealth, power and desirable mates); the consequences of falling behind are disastrous (exploitation if not extinction). That pushes both technological and organisational sophistication.

 

[Myriad]

Could solar furnaces be used on a larger scale or in ways we don't?

Absolutely. Especially on a small scale; solar cookers are popular today among sustainability lifestylers and the neo appropriate technology movement. They can also be used to pasteurize drinking water, or as the heating portion of a water distiller.

But, you do need shiny surfaces, which aren't so easy with pre-industrial metallurgy. Modern ones use foil, sheet aluminum, mylar, etc. Sheet bronze or copper wouldn't work as well, although they could be silver plated, and would require constant polishing. That would be pretty expensive in a pre- or wood-industrial setting. I don't know if chrome plating could be developed in wood-world; it might be possible because chromium can be isolated from mineral ores by a chemical leaching process (instead of high-temperature smelting).

This has become highly speculative at this point, but if the manufacture of thin chromed pot-metal sheets got the same kind of priority that, say, steel rails got in the real world, so as to make them less than ruinously expensive, then solar furnaces would have been used for higher temperatures. (Earlier I speculated about low-pressure saturated solar steam, but I've changed my mind about that. Wind and solar are both intermittent, so for motive power where intermittent operation is acceptable, such as pumping water into a reservoir, wind would have been the choice, while solar would be used for intermittent high-temperature operations in small- to medium-scale materials processing.

With industry remaining much more labor-intensive in wood-world, no one would think twice about hiring workers to perform manual tracking of a moderate-sized reflector array for a solar furnace. Imagine one or more employees walking circuits of the array, adjusting each panel by hand every few minutes by turning cranks attached to threaded wooden shafts (aiming by positioning a shadow on a time- and date-dependent position on a target, or something like that) for the duration of a sunny day.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[CapelDodger]

This has become highly speculative at this point ...

That's the spirit!

... but if the manufacture of thin chromed pot-metal sheets got the same kind of priority that, say, steel rails got in the real world, so as to make them less than ruinously expensive, then solar furnaces would have been used for higher temperatures.

Chrome can be found in South Africa, where the natives were a push-over for 18thCE Europeans, so this is workable. CSP can power steam-turbine generators, and with electricity you can do all sorts of things.

Can't see CSP working in Britain or New England, but we could build the plants elsewhere. Anywhere sunny where the natives are a pushover, really. Australia, the Americas, North Africa, Spain. Australia also has plenty of bauxite. After the Iron Age the Aluminium Age perhaps?

 

[Belz...]

So making steel with coal is off the table. How about growing steel from iron ore and custom bacteria? Electricity is dear? I use it very efficiently to run me.

Yeah but this comes right back to the question of : would we hae been in a position to discover those techs without coal-driven revolution ?

 

[Belz...]

But is steel required to advance all tech, is it required to advance civilization?

I would say yes. Steel's the deal, here. Anything you need to build in large quantities and sizes is going to require huge amounts of it, and nothing except coal will give it to you. I could be wrong, but that's what I've taken away from the thread so far. You can have hydro power, but this doesn't give you more steel, etc.

 

[GlennB]

Aluminium is an interesting case in this respect. It seems it was isolated pre-IR by what (I think) is known as metal displacement, where a more reactive metal grabs non metallic ions from the salts of less reactive metals. But this made Al a novelty metal, as it took Na or K to displace it and those were already very expensive to produce and a bit of a novelty themselves I imagine. Once again, it took abundant electricity to make Al a commercial prospect.

 

[marplots]

Yeah but this comes right back to the question of : would we hae been in a position to discover those techs without coal-driven revolution ?

I like to think so, although in the spirit of the thread it's just speculation. Here's my thinking on it: the people who did all the things that won't get done should be, ought to be, doing something. My inner optimist says they'd find other useful things to discover and do.

I'm also wondering what "precious" steel would be like. Houses made preferentially of stone and cement? I don't see why not. The emergence of other materials to dominate the landscape? Sure.

I'll also throw in steel as a recyclable material much earlier on and the ability to refine metals using an electric arc furnace instead of coal-fueled.

 

[Belz...]

I'm also wondering what "precious" steel would be like. Houses made preferentially of stone and cement? I don't see why not. The emergence of other materials to dominate the landscape? Sure.

Yeah but a lot of things can only be done with metal, and a lot of it.

 

[marplots]

Yeah but a lot of things can only be done with metal, and a lot of it.

Yes, like huge ships. But I'm thinking that without cheap steel (and lots of it) as an option, other options would be exploited. So, I guess I'm thinking about what might fill the "cheap metals" vacuum. Surely something would?

 

[Belz...]

Such as ?

Because if you can't go into mass production, you won't get far in terms of post-industrial tech.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Yes, like huge ships. But I'm thinking that without cheap steel (and lots of it) as an option, other options would be exploited. So, I guess I'm thinking about what might fill the "cheap metals" vacuum. Surely something would?

Actually believe it or not, you can make ships out of concrete. The idea never really caught on, but there were a few made and I even have worked on refitting a couple. That would lead me to believe that creative use of concrete and/or ceramics might be a line of advancement that wouldn't be so affected by lack of FF or scarcity of steel.

 

[ben m]

Here are two numbers that matter. (From Wikipedia)

Energy density, wood: 15 MJ/kg
Embodied energy, steel: 20 MJ/kg

If you have the ability to collect tons of structural wood, i.e. to build wooden ships and buildings, then you clearly have the ability to collect furnace fuel for producing a nearly-equivalent mass of steel.

If you gave me 100 tons of wood, and the choice between sawing it up to make a 100-ton wooden bridge, or burning it to smelt steel for a 75-ton steel bridge, I'd go with the steel.

 

[GlennB]

Here are two numbers that matter. (From Wikipedia)

Energy density, wood: 15 MJ/kg
Embodied energy, steel: 20 MJ/kg

If you have the ability to collect tons of structural wood, i.e. to build wooden ships and buildings, then you clearly have the ability to collect furnace fuel for producing a nearly-equivalent mass of steel.

If you gave me 100 tons of wood, and the choice between sawing it up to make a 100-ton wooden bridge, or burning it to smelt steel for a 75-ton steel bridge, I'd go with the steel.

The energy usefully delivered from wood is nothing like that high, especially with charcoal production required along the way for smelting purposes. Also I dare say that that steel 'embodied energy' figure reflects efficient modern bulk processes.

(the firewood we buy here, producing ~4 kwh/kg, would beat the cost of electric heating by a factor of 2. In practice wood burning is pretty inefficient and the cost benefit - at our local prices - is small and might even be negative but for the free wood we get from our own sources)

 

[rjh01]

Actually believe it or not, you can make ships out of concrete. The idea never really caught on, but there were a few made and I even have worked on refitting a couple. That would lead me to believe that creative use of concrete and/or ceramics might be a line of advancement that wouldn't be so affected by lack of FF or scarcity of steel.

Problem is concret is not very strong. You need iron to make it strong. But then maybe you could build one of giant bricks instead? Join the bricks with rivets Or maybe glue.

 

[marplots]

Problem is concret is not very strong. You need iron to make it strong. But then maybe you could build one of giant bricks instead? Join the bricks with rivets Or maybe glue.

I'm guessing that was a little bit facetious? This is, after all, a thought experiment. How about ceramics and glass? I always thought the silicates were under-utilized. Then, on the biological front, we have loads of cool proteins to work with and the really neat stuff, like spider silk, "stronger than steel" (TM).

Rebar too expensive? Hey, try this bone matrix tube instead. We got lots of calcium carbonate laying around.