Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
1–10 of 205 posts
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#2No, how the hell do we create steel without coal.
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#3Yes, because we can create hydrocarbons from other sources, just not as readily-available and cheap so our lifestyle would be very different, much "slower" so to speak.
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#4There's a game called Seedship in which you direct a space ship that carries last remaining humans in existence to a new planet that will become their new home.
You go from one planet to the next assessing their suitability. When you decide to settle the game ends.
You can't travel indefinitely because ships systems degrade and people die.
One of the worst fates for me in this game is settling humanity of the world devoid of natural resources.
This causes them to regress to neolithic level of technology and never to progress beyond that.
You can lose a lot of people. They will recover. You can lose science and culture. They will rebuild it eventually. But if you land them on a planet without resources... there's no hope for their future.
EDIT: corrected spelling of word 'lose'
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#5Yes, because we can create hydrocarbons from other sources, just not as readily-available and cheap so our lifestyle would be very different, much "slower" so to speak.
> so our lifestyle would be very different, much "slower" so to speak
This is not just about lifestyle. When you're spending all your time hunting animals to eat or digging up hard-to-reach coal/low-energy peat so you don't freeze to death in Winter, you can't do other work like research, and you can't support a population growth that enabled our advances.
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#6Our civilization is built on cards. One of the damndest things is too much interconnectedness, which does make those beautiful numbers on graphs go up, but isn't the best outcome for a robust society. Just look at the initial shock that coronavirus-19 did to shipping. We live in a just-in-time logistical framework.
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#7Yes, because we can create hydrocarbons from other sources, just not as readily-available and cheap so our lifestyle would be very different, much "slower" so to speak.
> so our lifestyle would be very different, much "slower" so to speak This is not just about lifestyle. When you're spending all your time hunting animals to eat or digging up hard-to-reach coal/low-energy peat so you don't freeze to death in Winter, you can't do other work like research, and you can't support a population growth that enabled our advances.
It doesn't take very long to dig up enough peat to keep you warm all winter.
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#8Beasts of burden, then Water wheels and windmills, then hydro electric dams and electric wind turbines. We’d have to start with rudimentary electronics.
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#9Beasts of burden, then Water wheels and windmills, then hydro electric dams and electric wind turbines. We’d have to start with rudimentary electronics.
There’s a cool project I used to be part of called open source ecology. Another great resource is apropedia
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#10Yes, because we can create hydrocarbons from other sources, just not as readily-available and cheap so our lifestyle would be very different, much "slower" so to speak.
> so our lifestyle would be very different, much "slower" so to speak This is not just about lifestyle. When you're spending all your time hunting animals to eat or digging up hard-to-reach coal/low-energy peat so you don't freeze to death in Winter, you can't do other work like research, and you can't support a population growth that enabled our advances.
water wheels / windmills are pretty effective for reducing some forms of labor. IE grinding cereals.