What would the world be like without fossil fuels?

[frenat]

I saw this question while slumming at GLP but I found it interesting. If we never had fossil fuels at all, what would the world be like? Sure we have alternative power sources now but we used power from fossil fuels to develop them. It can also be argued that the industrial revolution may never have happened without fossil fuels. What do you think?

[Ginnie]

Hmmm... we'd be out of trees? (Assuming that wood is not a fossil fuel)

Maybe we'd be relying more on slave labour...

[frenat]

I guess more what I'm getting at is, would we ever have gotten nuclear power? Would we have any mass transportation? Is it possible to get to a technological state like we have now without ever having used fossil fuels? I don't personally think so. No I wouldn't consider trees to be considered a fossil fuel.

[Ginnie]

Jun 24, 2009 22:58:16 GMT -4 frenat said:

I guess more what I'm getting at is, would we ever have gotten nuclear power? Would we have any mass transportation? Is it possible to get to a technological state like we have now without ever having used fossil fuels? I don't personally think so. No I wouldn't consider trees to be considered a fossil fuel.

Well, maybe we would have gone a different route and developed solar energy early in our history.
First maybe to heat up water >steam power> machinery...
Today we'd be powering up our homes with very efficient solar cells the size of a postage stamp.
Possible?

[frenat]

But is early solar energy efficient enough to power the industrial revolution?

[gillianren]

The Industrial Revolution started with waterwheels.

[PhantomWolf]

I think you would find that we had a lot of steam powered machinery, and that the main heating mechanisms would be solar and geothermal.

[drewid]

I'd guess mostly steam powered by wood/charcoal, and very probably, given the 19th century leaning towards exploitation, no rain forests.

Ships could possibly be a mix of wind and steam

Perhaps we would have got solar earlier, but it needs some big steps even now to become really efficient. the Last convbersion rates I saw (which was a while ago admittedly) weren't very good.


I DO like to think Babbage might have got his act together, or more likely that someone else would have got on and finished the damn thing rather than constantly dithering and redesigning. Properly programmable computers 100 ahead of time would have been very interesting, and given Ada Lovelaces involvment, might have been an early foot-in-the-door for female equality.

[echnaton]

Think of it this way. The industrial revolution blossomed because of coal, then exploded because of oil. The use of these fuels created the vast majority of the wealth we have today. If they had not been present, we likely would not have made scientific progress at anywhere near the same pace.

Wood is simply not abundant enough to have powered the industrial revolution. The short supply would have driven local prices up, but the high cost of importing over great distance would have never been economical for powering the manufacturing of most goods. Science would certainly have advanced our knowledge, but the direction of technology research would have been differently focused because the problems would have been different. There would have been far fewer scientists doing research because there would have been so little surplus to support them.

I think we would still be living in an era that looked much like the early industrial revolution. There would be very no large scale manufacturing because fuel would simply be too expensive. The wood that was available would be used for in the areas for which there were the fewest substitutes and lower waste, such as buildings, where its properties add significant value. Manufacturing would likely be mostly local craftsman. Things would be built as needed, and as close to the demand as possible to avoid transportation expense.

Land would still be the most valued capital, because it would have remained the primary source of basic goods. Petroleum based fertilizers would be non-existent, so farm productivity would be very low by today’s standards. The much smaller population of the earth would still be living in an era in which food was enormously expensive and most people worked to produce food and lived a subsistence life. Sanitation would have improved somewhat, but without modern industry, the cost of building the infrastructure would have been to high and we would still rely on aqueducts and open sewers. Agriculture would likely rely on animals for labor.

Without fossil fuels, the wealth to support the ever growing abundance we have today would simply not exist.

[Jason]

Life would considerably more boring and we would all be very much poorer.

[frenat]

Jun 25, 2009 10:18:01 GMT -4 echnaton said:

Think of it this way. The industrial revolution blossomed because of coal, then exploded because of oil. The use of these fuels created the vast majority of the wealth we have today. If they had not been present, we likely would not have made scientific progress at anywhere near the same pace.

Wood is simply not abundant enough to have powered the industrial revolution. The short supply would have driven local prices up, but the high cost of importing over great distance would have never been economical for powering the manufacturing of most goods. Science would certainly have advanced our knowledge, but the direction of technology research would have been differently focused because the problems would have been different. There would have been far fewer scientists doing research because there would have been so little surplus to support them.

I think we would still be living in an era that looked much like the early industrial revolution. There would be very no large scale manufacturing because fuel would simply be too expensive. The wood that was available would be used for in the areas for which there were the fewest substitutes and lower waste, such as buildings, where its properties add significant value. Manufacturing would likely be mostly local craftsman. Things would be built as needed, and as close to the demand as possible to avoid transportation expense.

Land would still be the most valued capital, because it would have remained the primary source of basic goods. Petroleum based fertilizers would be non-existent, so farm productivity would be very low by today’s standards. The much smaller population of the earth would still be living in an era in which food was enormously expensive and most people worked to produce food and lived a subsistence life. Sanitation would have improved somewhat, but without modern industry, the cost of building the infrastructure would have been to high and we would still rely on aqueducts and open sewers. Agriculture would likely rely on animals for labor.

Without fossil fuels, the wealth to support the ever growing abundance we have today would simply not exist.

I agree completely. You stated it far better than I was able to though. Taking it further, in a world like that, is it possible to get to the technological state we have now?

[echnaton]

Taking it further, in a world like that, is it possible to get to the technological state we have now?

No way. We would undoubtedly have improved our knowledge and made some scientific progress but most of modern life is the result of transforming fossil fuels into energy or useful products. Fossil fuel is a substitute for animal and human labor.

Abundant energy allows us the surpluses to educate our children rather than put them to work on a farm. Farm labor is more efficient when done by a few adults operating machinery. Education is only a good investment if there are sufficient opportunities for employment. If your are a subsistence farmer, need labor to work your farm, and see no opportunity for your children to be anything else, then you will teach them to farm.

I can't predict how civilization would have evolved without fossil fuels, but it seems likely that changes would have developed much more slowly and moved in different directions to make more efficient use of the resources available. We would likely have much more efficient steam engines that could run on otherwise unusable biomass. Our current technological state requires the use of energy for very low value applications, such as transportation and travel. With out oil energy would be very expensive and only available for the highest value added applications.

[Ginnie]

Jun 24, 2009 23:11:05 GMT -4 frenat said:

But is early solar energy efficient enough to power the industrial revolution?

...maybe if its history was longer.

[Ian Pearse]

We also wouldn't have the plastics industry, a fair proportion of the drugs and chemicals industries, sophisticated lubricating oils and the like... a very different world indeed.

[vq]

So no one here thinks nuclear power would have been discovered w/o the technological advances spurred by fossil fuels? I think it might have been delayed but the discovery of radiation and eventually nuclear fission would have happened eventually.

Internal combustion engines would never have advanced, so probably no or very limited heavier than air flight (lots of dirigibles, perhaps)?

I also think the use of wood as fuel is underestimated in this thread. The the IR progressed, hydro power would have been maxed out. Tree farming would have taken off, competing with farmland for food production and reducing the rate of population increase. The same general trends would have occurred that actually happened, just at a slower and smaller pace.