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Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)

aeon.co

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Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)

#12
post #4

There'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 d…

In both of your uses of “loose” the correct word is “lose”!

Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)

#14

Yes, 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.

To give an extreme example, Hunter-Gatherers generally didn't spend all their time hunting. There's every indication they spent only as much as early farmers at most. In some cases it was a few tens of hours per week per person. Population growth is a separate, rather more complicated topic.

Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)

#15
Who cares about fuel, you can get a lot of energy from renewable resources and nuclear just fine, the later mostly requiring metallurgy and concrete.

Much more interesting are petrochemicals, many are possible to synthesize without petroleum but it's way less economical.

Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)

#16
post #4

There'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 d…

In both of your uses of “loose” the correct word is “lose”!

English is werid, for example loose and lose make no sense pronunciation-wise, they're pronounced the same. I've seen plenty of people use loose instead of lose for this reason. I learned English as a second language and the emphasis was on written first so quite a lot of times my spelling was better than that of native speakers. And that makes no sense, one shouldn't learn English that way, write it first then speak it. Personally I don't care if people make these kind of mistakes as long as their communication doesn't lose the meaning.

Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)

#17

The article says an industrial revolution would be difficult at best. Industrial Revolution would be relative to the unique scenario. People will always innovate

We spent several hundred thousand years without an Industrial Revolution. Don't take it for granted.

Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)

#18
post #4

There'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 d…

It makes a lot of sense to for people to stop progressing once the resources they need are depleted but that is not true for other species which may thrive when humans are out. And I think other species could obtain the spark intelligence we got too and evolve from there.

Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In both of your uses of “loose” the correct word is “lose”!

English is werid, for example loose and lose make no sense pronunciation-wise, they're pronounced the same. I've seen plenty of people use loose instead of lose for this reason. I learned English as a second language and the emphasis was on written first so quite a lot of times my spelling was better than that of native speakers. And that makes no sense, one shouldn't learn English that way, write it first then speak…

In fact they are not pronounced the same. English is weird, sure, but I think if you have that kind of misconception then it's going to seem far stranger.

"Loose" rhymes with "juice", "lose" rhymes with "news", if that helps.

Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In both of your uses of “loose” the correct word is “lose”!

English is werid, for example loose and lose make no sense pronunciation-wise, they're pronounced the same. I've seen plenty of people use loose instead of lose for this reason. I learned English as a second language and the emphasis was on written first so quite a lot of times my spelling was better than that of native speakers. And that makes no sense, one shouldn't learn English that way, write it first then speak…

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