What if we'd never had fossil fuels?
Discussion
Apols if this has been done before or is considered to be in the wrong place, but:
If the Earth had never yielded up any fossil fuels, what would life be like now?
I was thinking about this and have quite a few of my own ideas, but I'll go to the pub now and see what anyone else comes up with.
If the Earth had never yielded up any fossil fuels, what would life be like now?
I was thinking about this and have quite a few of my own ideas, but I'll go to the pub now and see what anyone else comes up with.
If there were no fossil fuels then virtually nothing we have today in modern society would be the same.
The poster above suggesting we would be all hydro/nuclear etc. misses the point that without, in particular, oil we would not be able to manufacture very much at all.
Pretty much all modern materials, plastics, construction, medicines etc. you name it, all rely on oil and with no oil would not exist.
Yes, earlier civilizations (Rome springs to mind) had some pretty advanced techniques but nothing that can match what we can do now with modern, oil based materials.
It still beggars belief that we can harness a nuclear reaction and the best we can do with it after that is use the byproduct (heat) to make steam to generate power, basically what we were doing with steam locomotives years ago.
If we could harness the energy from the reaction itself the power available would be staggering.
In short: Our current version of modern society could not exist without oil and its byproducts.
The poster above suggesting we would be all hydro/nuclear etc. misses the point that without, in particular, oil we would not be able to manufacture very much at all.
Pretty much all modern materials, plastics, construction, medicines etc. you name it, all rely on oil and with no oil would not exist.
Yes, earlier civilizations (Rome springs to mind) had some pretty advanced techniques but nothing that can match what we can do now with modern, oil based materials.
It still beggars belief that we can harness a nuclear reaction and the best we can do with it after that is use the byproduct (heat) to make steam to generate power, basically what we were doing with steam locomotives years ago.
If we could harness the energy from the reaction itself the power available would be staggering.
In short: Our current version of modern society could not exist without oil and its byproducts.
Fubar1977 said:
In short: Our current version of modern society could not exist without oil and its byproducts.
I don't think that there's anything we can't replace (I once worked with a chap developing potato (IIRC) based plastics), but oil allowed the intellectual explosion that put us in this position. fossil fuels (coal) were essential not just for powering the industrial revolution (given enough wood, it would have been possible to use this instead i guess), but for the advent of modern chemistry. so without any fossil fuels we would have no synthetic chemistry, which means:
no drugs/medicine
no plastic
go back to the early 1800s, do not pass go, do not collect any coal, etc.
Edited by RealSquirrels on Sunday 21st July 13:46
Fubar1977 said:
It still beggars belief that we can harness a nuclear reaction and the best we can do with it after that is use the byproduct (heat) to make steam to generate power, basically what we were doing with steam locomotives years ago.
If we could harness the energy from the reaction itself the power available would be staggering.
RealSquirrels said:
Fubar1977 said:
It still beggars belief that we can harness a nuclear reaction and the best we can do with it after that is use the byproduct (heat) to make steam to generate power, basically what we were doing with steam locomotives years ago.
If we could harness the energy from the reaction itself the power available would be staggering.
RealSquirrels said:
Fubar1977 said:
It still beggars belief that we can harness a nuclear reaction and the best we can do with it after that is use the byproduct (heat) to make steam to generate power, basically what we were doing with steam locomotives years ago.
If we could harness the energy from the reaction itself the power available would be staggering.
Ill leave you to fill in the gaps .. Cheers
RealSquirrels said:
given enough wood, it would have been possible to use this instead i guess), but for the advent of modern chemistry. so without any fossil fuels we would have no synthetic chemistry, which means:
no drugs/medicine
no plastic
go back to the early 1800s, do not pass go, do not collect any coal, etc
I once did some reading up the amount of fossil fuels we burn each year is equivalent to 13,000 times the annual bio mass growth. Thats why really I think the sooner we can get to alternatives the better. It wont last forever. Im not really bothered is the alternatives are syntheitic fuels of cars with an on board fusion reactor, but they need to be fast.no drugs/medicine
no plastic
go back to the early 1800s, do not pass go, do not collect any coal, etc
CO2 doesnt really come into it. Yes its gonna make the planet hotter and screw up a lot of peoples lives, but the more pressing issue is what will the cost of fuel be in 10 years time. Climate change is an issue for the next 20-100 years, energy prices although expensive now, are not really that expensive when you consider a lite of unleaded costs the same as two 500mm bottles of coke! What will happen to the economy when (sorry.. if) a litre of fuel was £3.00 a litre. If you do the reading up.. youll wake up and realise the economic crash was caused by high oil prices. We can expect these cycles of price rises and economic unstability for quite a while... until we get to a more stable alternative. Dont ask me what.... coz the answer is anything that works, Some people will have hybrids, some pure electric, some ethanol powered (yes even V8s) maybe some more people will must catch the (CNG powered) bus as private transport just gets too expensive for some people,
If we never had discovered fossil fuel... we'd be driving round in electric powered wooden cars. And prsumably Morgan would be bigger than GM.
When people say the oil companies bury innovations... its too late for that. The car companies are the ones pushing the tech thats driving economy improvements... which in turn is driven by market demand for better economy. If no one bought Econetics or Blue motions they wouldnt be for sale.
I dont think wed miss too much wouthout oil... get yourself over to Africa. Other than big plastic tubs for doing the washing in, and carrying water, pretty much everything else is made from wood or metal. And lasts and is repairable. Wed probably make a lot of stuff from bamboo. Very fast growing, renewable, cheap and if made into engineered almost as strong as steel. With a bit more research on laminations and glues I bet it could be stronger. Personally I'm saving up to buy a big chunk of land over there. Already got 12 acres, but want something bigger for commercial scale production instead of a cottage industry.
Edited by TransverseTight on Sunday 21st July 14:07
Fubar1977 said:
If there were no fossil fuels then virtually nothing we have today in modern society would be the same.
The poster above suggesting we would be all hydro/nuclear etc. misses the point that without, in particular, oil we would not be able to manufacture very much at all.
Pretty much all modern materials, plastics, construction, medicines etc. you name it, all rely on oil and with no oil would not exist.
Yes, earlier civilizations (Rome springs to mind) had some pretty advanced techniques but nothing that can match what we can do now with modern, oil based materials.
It still beggars belief that we can harness a nuclear reaction and the best we can do with it after that is use the byproduct (heat) to make steam to generate power, basically what we were doing with steam locomotives years ago.
If we could harness the energy from the reaction itself the power available would be staggering.
In short: Our current version of modern society could not exist without oil and its byproducts.
I don't think you're right. The only reason that the non-fossil fuel versions of many things are not used is that they are currently more expensive to produce. For example, a route exists to produce pretty much any oil product using methane from a compost heap or a flatulent cow. Certainly those same hydrocarbons are available from cooking oils too - we wouldn't try to run cars on them otherwise. The poster above suggesting we would be all hydro/nuclear etc. misses the point that without, in particular, oil we would not be able to manufacture very much at all.
Pretty much all modern materials, plastics, construction, medicines etc. you name it, all rely on oil and with no oil would not exist.
Yes, earlier civilizations (Rome springs to mind) had some pretty advanced techniques but nothing that can match what we can do now with modern, oil based materials.
It still beggars belief that we can harness a nuclear reaction and the best we can do with it after that is use the byproduct (heat) to make steam to generate power, basically what we were doing with steam locomotives years ago.
If we could harness the energy from the reaction itself the power available would be staggering.
In short: Our current version of modern society could not exist without oil and its byproducts.
I'm not suggesting that we could sustain the current level of energy usage solely upon the production, processing and use of biomass, but from a level of zero at the start of the industrial revolution things would have progressed more slowly in line with that, probably until someone worked out how to make electricity from non-plant sources (wind, wave, tide, hydro would all have been easy enough for an engineer in 1900 to produce). At that point we would no longer need to use the plant sources for transport, lighting and power.
The world population would likely be lower, the pace of innovation slower, but I don't see that anything we have now could be produced without coal, oil, or natural gas.
the limiting factor for producing long-chain hydrocarbons and/or other (more complex) chemicals from simple feedstocks (e.g. CO/H2) would be the quantities of noble metals (platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, gold) that we have. and we have very small quantities of them.
the sooner oil is used just as a chemical feedstock and not a fuel, the better.
the sooner oil is used just as a chemical feedstock and not a fuel, the better.
The question of whether we could now build a society with no dependency on fossil fuels is very different to the question of whether we would have got here without them. I think that without abundant cheap energy and chemical feedstock it is likely that the industrial revolution and the accompanying industrialisation of agriculture facilitated by the Haber process and mechanisation would simply have failed to happen. We needed that cheap activation energy to light the fire.
I kind of knew this would go this way...
I have NO idea how we`d properly harness the energy from a nuclear reaction and I`m sure much more qualified people are struggling with that issue.
I simply said it would make more sense, if technically possible, than the whole "turn it into steam" thing we do now, essentially using the waste heat from the reaction rather then the reaction itself.
Again, to people saying we`d use potatoes, grass, wind, solar, trees, the bleating of baby lambs etc. for energy forget or ignore totally that harnessing energy from any of these other sources requires technology and infrastructure that simply could not exist without fossils fuels and specifically oil.
All current forms of "renewable" energy rely totally on an infrastructure that would not exist without oil and petrochemicals.
You can`t build a wind farm without oil...
Anyone who thinks the human race would be where it is now without oil/fossil fuels is deluded.
We have been using oil in a serious way for about 200 years and in that 200 years we have made more technological advances than in the previous 5000 years.
I`m no raving eco nut either, I`m pro nuclear.
Having harnessed oil and fossil fuels we now need to use what we have learned to move on from them as fast as possible as it`s not a long-term sustainable model.
I have NO idea how we`d properly harness the energy from a nuclear reaction and I`m sure much more qualified people are struggling with that issue.
I simply said it would make more sense, if technically possible, than the whole "turn it into steam" thing we do now, essentially using the waste heat from the reaction rather then the reaction itself.
Again, to people saying we`d use potatoes, grass, wind, solar, trees, the bleating of baby lambs etc. for energy forget or ignore totally that harnessing energy from any of these other sources requires technology and infrastructure that simply could not exist without fossils fuels and specifically oil.
All current forms of "renewable" energy rely totally on an infrastructure that would not exist without oil and petrochemicals.
You can`t build a wind farm without oil...
Anyone who thinks the human race would be where it is now without oil/fossil fuels is deluded.
We have been using oil in a serious way for about 200 years and in that 200 years we have made more technological advances than in the previous 5000 years.
I`m no raving eco nut either, I`m pro nuclear.
Having harnessed oil and fossil fuels we now need to use what we have learned to move on from them as fast as possible as it`s not a long-term sustainable model.
Fubar1977 said:
I kind of knew this would go this way...
I have NO idea how we`d properly harness the energy from a nuclear reaction and I`m sure much more qualified people are struggling with that issue.
I simply said it would make more sense, if technically possible, than the whole "turn it into steam" thing we do now, essentially using the waste heat from the reaction rather then the reaction itself.
It's not waste heat, heat is the eventual fate of all the energy released by the reaction. There might be more efficient ways of turning heat into electricity than steam turbines, though.I have NO idea how we`d properly harness the energy from a nuclear reaction and I`m sure much more qualified people are struggling with that issue.
I simply said it would make more sense, if technically possible, than the whole "turn it into steam" thing we do now, essentially using the waste heat from the reaction rather then the reaction itself.
Gassing Station | Science! | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff