Ancient and ArchaeologyÌý permalink
Human Advancement Without Fossil Fuel?
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by jinks-cider-stash (U7847019) on Thursday, 28th August 2008
While on holiday I wondering how advanced human technology would have come with out coal, gas and oil. It would seem a mass of eras, inventions, appliances and plain old stuff would be wiped out due to their reliance on fossil fuel at some stage of their conception.
Would we be able to reach temperatures high enough to produce steel without coal? Would all the lands be bereft of forests, cut down for fire? Which societies would benefit most from this? -
Message 2
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Thursday, 28th August 2008
Hi j-c-s,
I tend to avoid 'what if..?' questions since real history seems quite difficult and puzzling enough. But on the rather narrow issue of steel production you could certainly produce it without coal, or more strictly coke. Wrought iron was produced in this way until the 17th C and you could fuel a small blast furnace with charcoal to produce cast iron. There are several techniques available to produce steel from these forms of iron.
By coppicing woodland you could have sustainable charcoal or whitecoal production. I agree that producing steel in the quantities that actually occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries would have been difficult.
Presumably in your world Michael Faraday would still have had his first insights into electric motors and generators and the industrial revolution would have been powered by stream and hydroelectric generators. We should have gone straight into electric light and power, missing out on gas.
Aluminium is produced by electrolysis and aluminium alloys might have proved an alternative for steel, as they have in modern aircraft construction.
TP -
Message 3
Posted by Jim Reuss (U10298645) on Friday, 29th August 2008
I believe asphalt/tars were commonly used to water-proof boats, containers etc. Seafaring would have been untenable and long distance trade less common by far. It's an interesting speculation.
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Message 4
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 29th August 2008
A world without decomposing carbon-based life is a world without carbon-based life, which sort of takes care of the "human advancement" speculation, I think.
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Message 5
Posted by englishvote (U5473482) on Saturday, 30th August 2008
Would we be able to reach temperatures high enough to produce steel without coal?
Ìý
Yes most certainly, charcoal was used extensively for iron production and small scale steel production before the adaptation of coal into coke made its use in iron smelting possible. Steel making only became economically viable on a large scale with the invention of the Bessemer converter.
Would all the lands be bereft of forests, cut down for fire? Which societies would benefit most from this?
Ìý
Forest were not cleared primarily to provide wood for fires, most deforestation is due to agriculture, and from what I have learnt on these message boards is that most deforestation happened before the Iron age.
In fact the use of charcoal for iron smelting preserved many forests as essential areas of wood resources for the production of charcoal.
In fact the use of fossil fuels has not so far had any great effect on our environment compared to the devastation caused by agriculture and the impact of the invention of the plough.
It is currently trendy to condemn fossil fuel and an entire green industry is happily making billions out of hysteria and rumour mongering, but if we now reduce our CO2 emission then the historical damaged caused by burning fossil fuels will soon dissipate.
Fossil fuels are not a limiting factor for progress now or historically, agriculture is and overpopulation certainly is but they do not seem to have the impact politically that the green movement has managed to instil over fossil fuels.
Thankfully we have now progressed to the point where we can replace almost all fossil fuels with alternatives such as nuclear and solar, so the short period of high emissions and environmental damage will soon be behind us and our progress will continue. As long as we do not let agriculture and overpopulation spoil all the good work. -
Message 6
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Saturday, 30th August 2008
Re: Message 5.
Englishvote,
that's an interesting point of view.
PS: Yes a balance between renewable woods and population in this fictive scenario.
Warm regards,
Paul. -
Message 7
Posted by Ratswiskers (U7323852) on Monday, 1st September 2008
One things for certain in a world which didn't exploit mineral oil, there be very few Whales.
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Message 8
Posted by jinks-cider-stash (U7847019) on Thursday, 4th September 2008
I also believe some sort of gas collecting device would have been invented and attached to the backside of every cow.
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Message 9
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Sunday, 14th September 2008
I agree that a world with carbon-based life on it without fossil fuels seems an illogical proposition. But it could be imagined that these fuels could have been much more difficult and expensive to access. Which would probably have been a good thing; I think it is defensible to say that tomorrow's massive environmental problems will have been caused, not by the use of fossil fuel, but by the gratuitous waste of it. Sadly, when something is cheap and apparently plentiful, people will certainly find ways to waste it.
But anyway, as far as I know the main sources of energy before coal-fired steam machines became available were watermills and windmills, depending on the region. They were of course used in very ancient times, but the technology made great progress during the middle ages. For example, land reclamation using windmill-driven pumps began in the early 15th century in the Netherlands. Not that long ago, entire industries were primarily powered by water and wind, and windmills were prominent in the landscape.
Mills continued to be very important until the late 18th century, and of course various types of water or wind driven turbine still are a major source of electricity in many regions and gradually increasing in importance. It seems very likely that in absence of plentiful fossil fuel, they would have remained a major energy source. Difficult as it is for us to imagine, it could very well be that in some distant future the historians, taking the long-term view, will regard mankind's dependence on fossil fuels as a short and unnecessary interlude -- a bit of a waste of time, really.
As others have pointed out, steel can be made using charcoal. It seems likely that without the availability of coal and oil, we would have much larger forests today, to ensure a steady supply of firewood. However, it should be added that these would have been huge wood-generating plantations rather than natural woods, and from an environmental perspective, pretty much the same as desert wasteland. The potential winners in that situation would have been countries in the possession of humid tropical regions, because this is where plants grow fastest.
Alcohols and organic oils are of course potential fuels too, and have been produced for thousands of years, so it is imaginable that today's biofuel craze would just have started a lot earlier. Organic fuels and oils were used quite frequently by early inventors. If fossil fuels would not have been available, they would probably have setted on ethanol and vegetable oils.
A field which could have known problems is the production of polymers. A lot of today's plastics are petroleum-derived. There must be a potential to make plastics directly from organic matter, such as various natural resins and saps (including, of course, rubber). Also, one could have engineered bacteria to produce and process more useful polymers, a technology that also seems to be growing in importance.
Overall I think there would not have been that much difference. From an engineering perspective, the biggest headache might be that the quality of a field-grown product is not stable but varies with complex seasonal factors, which might mean that one would have to assemble e.g. a lubricant oil as carefully as a wine. -
Message 10
Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Sunday, 14th September 2008
I don't know if seafaring would have been impossible without tars and/or asphalt. Clinker-built ships didn't require such sealants and the Norse managed pretty well.
As Nordmann says, all earthly life is carbon-based, hence there was bound to be fossilized carbonaceous materials available. I think a more reasonable question is what are we going to do when all these fossilized fuels have been used? There amount is, after all, finite, and once gone there won't be anymore.
Then what?
Back to the drawing boards?
Fortunately for most of us, we won't be here when that happens. -
Message 11
Posted by Erik Lindsay (U231970) on Sunday, 14th September 2008
erratum: should read ''The amount is, after....''
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Message 12
Posted by englishvote (U5473482) on Sunday, 14th September 2008
Mutatis
Of course the consequences of not using fossil fuels and continuing with wind and water mills would have meant that the industrial revolution could not have taken place.
Some may say that that would have been a great thing, but along with the down side of pollution, social deprivation and exploitation came some good things as well such as electricity, pharmaceuticals, social freedoms and advancement.
The inherent inefficiencies of wind and waterpower would have meant that energy would have been scarce enough to prevent any large scale population growth, so we would not have the 6 billion humans that are here now. There certainly would not be an Internet, so we would not be discussing this thread!
Basically without the exploitation of fossil fuels human society would still be in the Middle Ages with all the good and bad points that it entails. -
Message 13
Posted by englishvote (U5473482) on Sunday, 14th September 2008
Erik
I think a more reasonable question is what are we going to do when all these fossilized fuels have been used
Ìý
This is obviously not historical but the future generation of energy will not be effected by the depletion of fossil fuels.
Nuclear and solar power can easily replace fossil fuel power production and if Britain had continued with its nuclear power plant construction during the 1980’s and 90’s then our current cost of electricity would be considerably lower than the ridiculous prices it is today. -
Message 14
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Monday, 15th September 2008
englishvote,
I think the industrial evolution would still have happened anyway. It was not materials driven; most of the raw materials used by it had been around for a long time and even known for centuries, often neglected because there was no way to use them.
The industrial revolution was knowledge driven. It marks the point where scientific knowledge became strong enough to have predictive power instead of being only an explanatory framework. Thus an engineer could calculate the strength of a new type of bridge or ship without ever building one. Medical science could proceed by testing new drugs on bacteria, mice or even proteins in a laboratory, instead of by endless trial-and-error on patients. Complicated electrical circuitry could be designed on paper and its workings calculated, before it was turned into reality.
This ability to predict a few steps ahead, instead of always looking back over our shoulder, allowed a much faster rate of progress. It had a self-catalysing effect because scientific and technological progress reinforced each other, and in some ways it permitted a real leap in the unknown. The inner working's of modern computers rely on quantum theory and mathematical frameworks which, to most people, are highly arcane, and they would have been impossible to design by simple trial and error.
Of course, that so many scientific and engineering problems were solved by resorting to the use of petroleum, in itself suggests that petroleum was usually the best solution. But that doesn't imply that there were no valid alternatives. At least on the short term, these are likely to have been less efficient, because short-term benefit tends to determine people's decisions. On the longer term they might have been equally efficient or superior -- there is no way to know.
I think it is doubtful that wind and water power, expanded and engineered properly, could not have met energy requirements. With fossil fuels being plentiful and cheap, there was a lack of drive to do so, so the current state of these energy sources is not a good benchmark. Nevertheless, hydro-power never really went away, because it is so convenient in many locations and usually a reliable source of electricity. The real gap would have been in energy sources that were compact enough to be carried around. It seems dubious that Jacky Fisher would have ordered the construction of HMS Dreadnought if he had had to power her with vegetable oil. -
Message 15
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Monday, 15th September 2008
Current Norwegian thinking supports your view Mutatis_Mutandis.
Norway was effectively bypassed in the 19th century by the industrial revolution through dint of its relative poverty and political circumstances. But this same isolation led also to its small domestic market tending to self-sufficiency of a sort and innovative "solutions" implemented to maintain economic buoyancy which needed only to be profitable domestically and without reference to what the rest of the world was up to.
A prime example of this was the timber industry. By European standards this was not as big as one would be led to expect from the abundance of natural resources which Norway could avail of to run the industry. Exports of timber existed, but at no level of profitability which could help haul the country out of its lowly economic stature at the time. The processing of timber requires expenditure of huge amounts of energy and Norway solved this demand through use of water-driven mills. In the late 19th century the river Aker in Oslo boasted over a hundred such foundries, each with several turbines driven by the fast flowing waters.
As the rest of Europe was switching from this form of energy to steam, Norway could not afford to keep pace and instead sank resources into refining and improving its water-driven machinery. The purchase of coal was out of the question. The result of this was that Norway essentially "skipped over" coal/steam, at least when it came to timber processing, and entered the "industrial age" with the introduction of diesel and electricity turbines.
Cue the late 20th century and the growing awareness that alternatives to diesel and electricity needed to be sourced, not just in Norway but globally. Norwegians, as much to their own surprise as everyone else's, suddenly find that the refinements which they made a century before and abandoned are now being considered "cutting edge" technology as a long neglected energy source for small turbines comes back into fashion. Ironically, given Norway's self-sufficiency in oil, it now proceeds to establish itself as a world leader in the development of hydro-powered technology.
As one engineer remarked recently, Norway still holds the lead in this technology, adding ironically that since the process of development had been interrupted effectively for eighty years we are now up to about 1930s standards. The rest of the world however is still congratulating itself on having reached 1922. -
Message 16
Posted by englishvote (U5473482) on Monday, 15th September 2008
Mutatis
Without the Darby’s developments and the advancements made at Coalbrookdale during the 18th century with the use of Coke to manufacture low cost iron there could not have been an industrial revolution, as we know it.
Undoubtedly the production of iron and steel is possible using charcoal but the costs are enormous.
Without cheap iron there could have been no railways, the engines alone would have been too expensive in iron let alone the rails themselves.
Without cheap iron it would not have been possible to build the large number of steam engines that powered the industrial revolution, most of which were powered by coal. If wood was used as a fuel for the steam engines then the quantities needed would have seriously effected charcoal production.
Wind and waterpower have serious limitation even today with complex turbines and cheap metal manufacture, but in a world without fossil fuels they could not even supply our basic needs.
Contrary to the environmentalist and green propaganda it is not possible to run an industrial society on wind and wave power alone.
Hydro power depends on geographical requirements and also needs cheap metal production to make the energy affordable.
As for HMS Dreadnought, the costs of 18,000 tons iron and steel produced by charcoal burning would have amounted to more than the entire wealth of the British Empire in 1906.
Without the use of fossil fuels we would still live within agrarian societies with small industrial capacity, there would be very few large cities with practically no working classes.
Our knowledge may well be the same level, but I doubt we could have learnt as much without the innovations of the industrial revolution. -
Message 17
Posted by englishvote (U5473482) on Monday, 15th September 2008
Nordmann
Norway is certainly blessed with geological feature that meet the requirements of hydroelectric and water power production.
If northern England had not been the main area of development during the early industrial revolution due to fossil fuels then maybe another revolution may have taken place in more mountainous regions using water.
But I cannot see the world being transformed by water power, the production of iron and steel would have been too expensive.
Would Norway’s wood production been a viable export to a non-industrial Europe? I think the wealth and the need for resources within the industrialised world made Norwegian wood profitable. The industrial revolution in Europe made the development of the Norwegian hydro technology possible, without the market place, cheap metals and the resulting technological advancements there would have been no possibility of developing the infrastructure.
But it is certainly possible for a modern society to by-pass fossil fuels now that we have the technology, an emerging industrial nation could well jump from an agrarian society to an industrialised manufacturing society without any need to use fossil fuels. The fact that China and India have instead followed the same route as other before is more down to potential profits than any lack of historical knowledge.
Fossil fuels were essential to the industrial revolution and without them we could not have developed the technology to replace them, it would have been impossible to jump from water mills to nuclear power. -
Message 18
Posted by Ratswiskers (U7323852) on Tuesday, 23rd September 2008
Though its interesting to contemplate the idlic Arcadian life before the industrial revolution. It clear that industry has long existed in these isles and its also plain that the clearance of the forests began long before the industrial revolution. It strikes me that the great changing force of our history is trade.
It was the wool trade that saw the death of the great forests, the removal of this wood resource that forced the use of peat and coal as alternative heating sources.
Wind and water may run machinery the do not heat the home or cook the diner.
Its only a natural progression from this simple necessity to the exploitation of such abundant fuel supplies to supply the needs of industry. -
Message 19
Posted by jinks-cider-stash (U7847019) on Tuesday, 30th September 2008
'A world without decomposing carbon-based life is a world without carbon-based life, which sort of takes care of the "human advancement" speculation, I think.'
I've asked around some science forums about this and if it is plausable that fossil fuel never materialised. It would seem that ‘if tectonic movement was faster then you could have it so that the decomposing Carbon-based life doesn't have time to turn into oil/coal/gas before it reaches a subduction zone’. -
Message 20
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 30th September 2008
The tectonic movement would have to be pretty nifty then, which would mean that the carbon-based life forms living on top of the plates would have to be pretty nifty too. In fact, way too busy dodging lava flows and asphyxiation to worry too much about developing alternatives to oil, coal and gas, I would have thought.
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