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Thought Experiment: world without fossil fuels

Myriad said:
Anyhow, kind of tired of answering the "The canals were used to transport coal so they wouldn't have existed without coal" argument over and over. (And the Internet wouldn't have existed without Facebook, by the same reasoning.) So, onto other things in my next posts.
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Here's a good example of a canal that wasn't built on the back of coal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_(China)

he Grand Canal, also known as the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, is the longest canal or artificial river in the world; it is a famous tourist destination.[1] Starting at Beijing, it passes through Tianjin and the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the city of Hangzhou, linking the Yellow River and Yangtze River. The oldest parts of the canal date back to the 5th century BC, although the various sections were finally combined during the Sui Dynasty (581–618 AD).
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rjh01 said:
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.
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Actually you don't need iron to make it strong. That just happens to be what we use now. There are plenty of other ways to make concrete strong, even much stronger and more durable than rebar. Epoxies and fiberglass etc.. just to name a couple.
 
Originally Posted by rjh01 View Post
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.
Actually it is strong,in compression. Not so much in tension, that's what the rebar is for. Note that in ferro-cement boats the hull is first laid out as a wire mesh and then concrete is added and fills the mesh. There are alternatives for that wire mesh. I've read of roof frames covered with burlap which is coated with cement. I gather it works rather well and might be an alternative for ship hulls. That said,part of reason Brunel et al built iron ships is that it allowed them to build larger vessels. Which allowed them to carry more fuel for longer voyages. Wooden vessels had, pretty much, reached their greatest size for the strength of the material.
 
Belz... said:
Such as ?

Because if you can't go into mass production, you won't get far in terms of post-industrial tech.
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But we are not talking about post industrial tech, we are talking about a different path to industrialization.
UK figured so prominently because it had coal. This world has none therefore regions with other resources would be more likely to dominate in advancement of tech and industry.
 
jaydeehess said:
But we are not talking about post industrial tech, we are talking about a different path to industrialization.
UK figured so prominently because it had coal. This world has none therefore regions with other resources would be more likely to dominate in advancement of tech and industry.
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Yeah but coal isn't really the issue, steel is.

Without mass quantities of steel, I don't see how a different path could be taken. I'm willing to listen if you have an idea.
 
Through the use of metals with lower melting points, through discovery of production of plastics through biologics.

I agree, it would be very problematic but my gut feeling is that characterizing it as impossible is too pessimistic.
 
marplots said:
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.
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No I was not facetious, just trying to sort out what could be done and generating more ideas to be explored further.

Red Baron Farms said:
Actually you don't need iron to make it strong. That just happens to be what we use now. There are plenty of other ways to make concrete strong, even much stronger and more durable than rebar. Epoxies and fiberglass etc.. just to name a couple.
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Never knew about using glass instead of iron. That would alter heaps of things if it could be done without using fossil fuels. People have mentioned there are limits to the size of ships made from wood. So how about the limit to ships made from this form on concrete?

Then you could start making skyscrapers from this material. Even if you go only up to six stories high that would be better than most pre 1600s. Any higher and you need lifts.

Here is a link that sings the praises of glass reinforced concrete (GFRC)
http://www.concretenetwork.com/glass-fiber-reinforced-concrete/
 
rjh01 said:
No I was not facetious, just trying to sort out what could be done and generating more ideas to be explored further.



Never knew about using glass instead of iron. That would alter heaps of things if it could be done without using fossil fuels. People have mentioned there are limits to the size of ships made from wood. So how about the limit to ships made from this form on concrete?

Then you could start making skyscrapers from this material. Even if you go only up to six stories high that would be better than most pre 1600s. Any higher and you need lifts.

Here is a link that sings the praises of glass reinforced concrete (GFRC)
http://www.concretenetwork.com/glass-fiber-reinforced-concrete/
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I actually don't know the limit. I have worked on a refit of one of the ~40 ft sailing yachts that was made with a concrete hull. It was an ocean going type of sail boat. However, I have no idea if it was anywhere near the limit with that material. All I really know is that it was very strong although "clunky" looking so the concept never really caught on.

ETA PS I did some digging and found a picture of an ocean going concrete ship. One of a fleet of concrete ships made in WW II.

The McCloskey Ships of The Second World War
 
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jaydeehess said:
Through the use of metals with lower melting points, through discovery of production of plastics through biologics.
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The problem here is that I feel that such things require foreknowledge of what we know now, and I haven't seen a convincing argument that they could reasonably get there without prior infrastructure.
 
Belz... said:
The problem here is that I feel that such things require foreknowledge of what we know now, and I haven't seen a convincing argument that they could reasonably get there without prior infrastructure.
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That's the toughest thing. What only evolves once, requiring a unique chain of causation, and what can evolve independently?

The answer is probably based on fundamental needs and leaving aside the luxury items. So we ought to find a way to feed, breed, and shelter. If transportation is tied tightly to coal, then I'd expect balkanization and strong development in areas of the world where other resources exist - so maybe the jungles of South America are harvested for their booming economy and, once the US loses it's trees, we get poor, quick.
 
Wiki's History of metallurgy in ChinaWP is interesting. It includes the rather telling (imo):

"Chinese metallurgy was widely practiced during the Middle Ages; during the 11th century, the growth of the iron industry caused vast deforestation due to the use of charcoal in the smelting process.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metallurgy_in_China#cite_note-wagner-16http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metallurgy_in_China#cite_note-ebrey_walthall_palais_158-17 To remedy the problem of deforestation, the Song Chinese discovered how to produce coke from bituminous coal as a substitute for charcoal"

And yet, afaik, they didn't produce iron bridges or any other major metal structures.
 
GlennB said:
Wiki's History of metallurgy in ChinaWP is interesting. It includes the rather telling (imo):

"Chinese metallurgy was widely practiced during the Middle Ages; during the 11th century, the growth of the iron industry caused vast deforestation due to the use of charcoal in the smelting process.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metallurgy_in_China#cite_note-wagner-16http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metallurgy_in_China#cite_note-ebrey_walthall_palais_158-17 To remedy the problem of deforestation, the Song Chinese discovered how to produce coke from bituminous coal as a substitute for charcoal"

And yet, afaik, they didn't produce iron bridges or any other major metal structures.
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And yet they did build the grand canal as I mentioned earlier, before they started to use coal.

Again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_(China)
 
Roboramma said:
And yet they did build the grand canal as I mentioned earlier, before they started to use coal.
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The Grand Canal served a political purpose, in that it tied North and South China (the Yellow River and Yangtze watersheds, basically) into a single unit. The huge economic benefit was very welcome, but not the intent (apart from moving food, troops and tax-collecters).

China's rulers never saw a need for iron bridges as far as I'm aware, and weren't keen on any sort of innovation really.
 
GlennB said:
And yet, afaik, they didn't produce iron bridges or any other major metal structures.
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They could do amazing things with bamboo, wood and plentiful labour.

Industrialisation requires certain social conditions, all of which China lacked. As a state and a civilisation it had no competition; in Europe, competition between states was a given. In China, change implied decay; in Europe it came to imply progress.
 
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marplots said:
That's the toughest thing. What only evolves once, requiring a unique chain of causation, and what can evolve independently?

The answer is probably based on fundamental needs ...
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I would say fundamental desires. That includeshigh status, security, and the pleasures of life ("the pursuit of happiness").

... and leaving aside the luxury items.
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The competition for luxuries, and the profits to be made from providing them, is what pushes things along.

So we ought to find a way to feed, breed, and shelter.
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Those who can't, perish.

If transportation is tied tightly to coal, then I'd expect balkanization and strong development in areas of the world where other resources exist - so maybe the jungles of South America are harvested for their booming economy and, once the US loses it's trees, we get poor, quick.
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I agree that we'd probably have a more evenly distributed development, based on waterways (as civilisations almost all were before steam). Peak Wood would probably bring on a crisis at some point, but crises have been weathered in the past. A smaller surviving population would take more account of sustainability (capitalism really isn't good at that) but would still be able to support innovation and scientific research.
 
Belz... said:
The problem here is that I feel that such things require foreknowledge of what we know now, and I haven't seen a convincing argument that they could reasonably get there without prior infrastructure.
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It only requires continued development of the knowledge that people had been building for ages about various organic resources such as animal & vegetable oils/fats/lard, tree sap/pitch/tar/resin, amber, beeswax, hooves, horns, marrow, compounds extracted from various other parts of plants, animals, fungi, & microbe colonies, and bog/swamp muck. By the time coal industrialization came along, the above materials or substances extracted from them had already been used as heat sources, light sources, fireproofers, waterproofers/sealants, lubricants, glues, herbicides & pesticides, treatments to improve other materials such as leather & wood, and even to make objects with entirely physical/structural functions rather than chemical, such as one of the layers of a laminated/composite bow. Rubber tires were patented in the 1840s, devastating the competition in bike races in the 1880s, and commercially manufactured in the 1890s, all before synthetic rubber (made from fossil oil instead of tree sap) came along in the 1920s.

The process of constantly developing new uses for such materials and better ways to get or make them only got interrupted because fossil oil & coal were a convenient shortcut to getting the same things more easily. Take away the shortcut, and you're left with the slower path to the same place because that's the one we were already on.
 
rjh01 said:
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.
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Oh, right ... but somehow we have concrete roads, bridges, arches, and aqueducts made from concrete and rock by the Romans something on the order of two thousand years ago.

You just have to design a road or a bridge for the load it is designed to carry and for the lifetime it will have to last, it's not difficult. Adding pre-stressed iron or steel is better but not necessary.
 
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