Effects of no fossil fuels in industrialization (and society).

[Rakhasa]

I was rememebing some sci-fi fic (whose title cannot remembr) dealing with terraformating planest, and it made me think on the possible effects of a civilization on such a place.

This is more related to the future (or even ASB) forums, but I dediced to extrapolate to Earth. Lets claim, for the sake of argument, our planet was terraformed, say 40,000 years ago. Space faring humans from the true home planet, Roswell Greys, Vorlons, Preservers, ASBs, whatever.

Even with our current understanding of science, it is not impossible to guess at a full planetary terraformation: Water from the Oort cloud would give the seas and oxigen atmosphere, and then it's just some centuries of seeding, first algae, lichen and insects, then up to the to full biological chain. Add one or several human groups (either abducted slaves or luddite volunteers) abandoned in the wilderness; a handful of generations and the origins would be completely lost, at best tales of creator gods from the heavens. Human history goes on in schedule: Stone age, Bronce age, China, Roman empire, et all. Until we get to the industrial age.

A terraformation, no matter how good, has several important lacks. The most important one being, the biosphere is a few millenia old. No fossils. No coal, petrol, or natural gas. Would such a planet be able to industrialice? Peat, vegetal coal and plain old wood would cover the lack at the beggining, but they have limits.

Cars (and later planes) would be all but imposible in that planet, not for decades. Trains -first burning wood, then electricity from windmills and dams- would rule the land. Warfare woudl be completely different: No tanks, certainly, and in sea they would have to wait for the discovery of atomic energy to have anything even remoltely equivalent to our modern carriers (useless without planes), or even a WWII dreadnought.


P.D. Another concern, religious/cultural now, who would not be minor. 40,000 years of biosphere. No evolution worth mentioning, no fossil record, in fact any geologic record able to be interpreted will say the planet's life was literally created from nothing 40 millenia ago. The effects this would have on religion are rather evident.

 

[Valdemar II]

Good question, first of we won't see a Induastrial Revolution which look anything like OTL.

But I think we could get up to the 17th century before we see any real differencies, through the 18th centuries the changes begin, without coal we won't see practical stream engines for a long time, beside that we have problem with steal production, UK, and North West Europe won't see a massive steel industry, so with increase in steel prices we see timber rich areas with iron ores, become the main producer of steel, so we see a growing iron and steel industry in northen Sweden. This make Sweden a much stronger player this late, we also see a large Danish production in Norway but much more limited than Swedens. But with the growing steel prices other solution atre sought. Both Sweden and Norway have a great potential water mills, so electricity production from water mills replace charcoal, what effect do that have. Suddenly the steel production can be moved from Sweden and Norway to along the Rhine and northen UK where great dams begins to produce the electricy needed for steel production.

Of course this is only one effect, this are going to hundreds of effects, but I doubt the world by 2000 will look anything like OTL. It will be cleaner, poorer and quite alien.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

When Henry Ford's business was up and running, he bought large amounts of farm land near Windsor Ontario to grow soy beans. Among other things, he wanted to be able to fuel his cars with soy oil. As it happened, the petroleum industry massively increased production, and everyone forgets that.

Ethanol from e.g. sugar cane or even grain would be possible, to some extent.

Electricity from from windmills and thermal solar power plants (the kind with mirrors) might replace SOME of the coal fired plants of OTL. Careful siviculture might produce enough wood for a sizeable amount of power generation (less than coal, of course).

 

[carlton_bach]

Do you mean industrialise as in build up an industry based on an understanding what one looks like, or industrialise as in have its own historical industrial revolution?

The first undoubtedly yes, and not even with great difficulty. The industry would be dependent heavily on alternative power sources and cluster in areas where those are accessible, and the amount of technology available to the average person is likely to be lower, but it can be done.

The second, probably not. Industry can grow to significant proportions with waterpower, charcoal and wood, but at some point the absence of cheap fuels available in large quantities will stifle your transport network and limit available motive power. A much slower growth is likwely,. leading to a high-equilibrium society that goes from waterpower to electric for some applications, but in which travel, metal items, imported goods and anything whose production requires large amounts of energy stay comparative luxury goods. If you don't know what having this amount of energy available can do for you, it's unlikely you can envision a society that has it, or work to build one.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Do you mean industrialise as in build up an industry based on an understanding what one looks like, or industrialise as in have its own historical industrial revolution?

The first undoubtedly yes, and not even with great difficulty. The industry would be dependent heavily on alternative power sources and cluster in areas where those are accessible, and the amount of technology available to the average person is likely to be lower, but it can be done.

The second, probably not. Industry can grow to significant proportions with waterpower, charcoal and wood, but at some point the absence of cheap fuels available in large quantities will stifle your transport network and limit available motive power. A much slower growth is likwely,. leading to a high-equilibrium society that goes from waterpower to electric for some applications, but in which travel, metal items, imported goods and anything whose production requires large amounts of energy stay comparative luxury goods. If you don't know what having this amount of energy available can do for you, it's unlikely you can envision a society that has it, or work to build one.

Good point actually. England had it easy with iron ore and coal right close together. Failing that, you almost need a 'New World' with virgin forest to make charcoal from....

 

[Advernt]

Could we , however still get to Bio Fuels without any fossil fuel source? Perhaps even algae based Fuels? And from there to Hydrogen ? Irregardless though , I agree that the world's technological progress will proceed slower.

 

[Polish Eagle]

Perhaps we could develop some sort of fission power sooner? Nuclear power plants are actually fundamentally simple (Uranium/Plutonium here, some graphite or charcoal control rods, run water over it to heat the water, turn a generator), but get complicated only when you start caring about human life. You can use slave laborers or convicts to move the uranium around, so we might have some scattered nuclear piles in some parts of the world.

Hydroelectricity will be the dominant electricity producer in most of the world, though. Wind and solar would be more common.

Aircraft could exist, but they'd have to be either rocket powered (hydrogen oxygen, since there's no Kerosene to make RP-1. Perhaps it can use hypergollics, like Nitrogen Tetroxide, or monopropellants) or hydrogen powered jets (unlikely). Either way, aircraft will have to wait until aluminum is widespread to function. And they might not be as capable as OTL aircraft.

There is, however, the prospect of geothermal energy. The Mediterranean region and the Ring of Fire in the Pacific have potential for this.

Perhaps some form of electricity we're not as familiar with emerges. Thermoionic conversions turn heat directly into electricity, so maybe people will cram thermoionic converters onto the sides of locomotives or onto the steam pipes from their geothermal vents or into their nuclear reactors, to extract every amp and watt.

 

[Bill Cameron]

Gents,

If I can wrench your collective gaze away from fossil fuels use as fuel stocks and direct it towards the computers you're using?

See all that plastic? See your eyeglasses which have no glass in them? See the dyes in your clothing? See the packaging your snacks come in? The fenders on your car? The buttons on the radio? The case of your MP3 player? The foam on it's ear buds? See all the substances strewn across your entire life? Want to guess just provides the feed stock for those materials?

Remove coal, oil, and other fossil fuels from the picture and you're looking at far more than a retarded or slowed Industrial Revolution. You're looking at a world changed so profoundly we would be hard pressed to envision it.


Bill

 

[carlton_bach]

Gents,

If I can wrench your collective gaze away from fossil fuels use as fuel stocks and direct it towards the computers you're using?

See all that plastic? See your eyeglasses which have no glass in them? See the dyes in your clothing? See the packaging your snacks come in? The fenders on your car? The buttons on the radio? The case of your MP3 player? The foam on it's ear buds? See all the substances strewn across your entire life? Want to guess just provides the feed stock for those materials?

Remove coal, oil, and other fossil fuels from the picture and you're looking at far more than a retarded or slowed Industrial Revolution. You're looking at a world changed so profoundly we would be hard pressed to envision it.

Plastics are wonderful, but they *can* be made from other materials. The first ones were. Of course, like almost everything in a world without fossil fuels, they'd be significantly more expensive, in direct competition with food production, and it's quite possible that without the cheap metals available due to the use of coal to drive mining, refining and transport, the basic equipment for a chemical industry never comes into being.

The issue really is scale - you have a nascent industrialisation in the eighteenth century, and whiule it uses coal, it is still to a large degree independent of it. Then coal comes onstream as an energy source and the world changes - transport, iron refining, machine production all become cheaper and cheaper. Without that, the scale of industrialisation would be totally different. Scientists would still fool around with chemicals, of course, and they might find many useful applications for things. Even organic plastics. But it all stays small-scale.