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

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

#21

Post by xaedes »

grugagag wrote: post #16
Schiendelman wrote: post #12

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…

My mnemonic for lose vs loose: A "loser" is someone who loses, i.e. does not win/gain. I think this is easier to remember, because we are exposed to this word "loser" quite a lot. So "lose" is the word for "not winning" (or similar worded).

"Looser" on the other hand we don't see very often. The meaning is "more loose".

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

#22

Post by hesdeadjim »

It's easy for me to end up existentially depressed if I go too far down this line of thinking.

But, frankly, we are fucked here on Earth. We're consuming resources at an exponential rate with a population way, way outside what the planet can support sustainably. And we won't fix it before it's too late, because our base human nature wants more, bigger, better at the expense of all else.

I'm with Musk on this, the only way we survive is to get the hell off Earth. But the reasons why are more than just to have a "backup plan" for humanity.

One of humanity's best traits is our adaptability. Put us under stressors and we inevitably adapt to any situation, no matter how dire. Now stick a group of humans in space (or Mars, no difference), task them with creating a self-sustaining technological society, give them a lot of time, and when you come back what you find will be a radically different culture than anything we could relate to on Earth.

That group of humans will have been forced, for generations, to be ruthlessly efficient with their sustainability and use of resources. We are social creatures, and with that comes the social pressure to conform for the survival of the group. Because of these pressures, the base nature of individual greed we witness here on Earth won't have the space to thrive. Given even more time, we may even be lucky enough to see that trait bred out of us. If that were to happen, we may just have a shot at long-term survival as a species.

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

#23

Post by bilbo0s »

swiley wrote: post #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.

How do you do the metallurgy, manufacture the concrete, or synthesize the petrochemicals in the absence of fossil fuel energy?

Examples given in the article were on the scale of post nuclear conflict societal collapse. No ports, no highways, no railways, no dual use infrastructure at all. No more fossil fuel deliveries happening. No deliveries of anything.

Rebuilding in that environment would be challenging in the extreme. I'm not sure that any rebuilding happens in the vast majority of places.

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

#24

Post by MauranKilom »

vcxy wrote: post #19
grugagag wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To add to this (because the difference was really not clear to me from your suggested rhymes):

The difference is in the sound of the final s. "loose" ends with "s" from "set", whereas "lose" ends with the z from "zoo".

And while the vocal sound is the same according to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lose and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/loose, I feel that there is (or can be) some difference there. Just like in "jews" vs "juice".

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

#25

Post by grugagag »

vcxy wrote: post #19
grugagag wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know, I personally understood the comment without any problem and wasn't even aware that loose was used instead of lose until it was pointed out. I got the meaning perfectly well from the context. To me these kind of comments pointing out to misspelled words are pedantic at best. And I take back that they're pronounced the same, I ran it through my head a few sentences and there's a difference at the end but it still does not make any sense and these rules are quite arbitrary and sometimes even contradictory.

Why does lose pronounce the way it does when nose doesn't pronounce as noose, pose doesn't pronounce as poose, lol.. It's even funny if you ask me.

Let the grammar police whip me down with downvotes but I still stand up by my opinion, English is a frigging weird language full of quirks. I speak 4 languages and 2 of them are Latin based and almost never run into the same kind of issues as English. French does not pronounce the way it is written but at least is consistent about it.

And nobody bothered to respond to the original comment other than making pedantic remarks. You've got too much free time on your hands.

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

#26

Post by decafninja »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #22

It's easy for me to end up existentially depressed if I go too far down this line of thinking. But, frankly, we are fucked here on Earth. We're consuming resources at an exponential rate with a population way, way outside what the planet can support sustainably. And we won't fix it before it's too late, because our base human nature wants more, bigger, better at the expense of all else. I'm with Musk on this, the onl…

Reminds me of The Expanse. Or countless other science fiction stories involving Earth vs. the colonies (whether they be on Mars, the Moon, or orbitals). Not sure if it's a coincidence that such stories often involve Earth and her colonies ending up in war.

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

#27

Post by kaybe »

grugagag wrote: post #18
scotty79 wrote: 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.

Won't other species need resources too at some point?

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

#28

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #22

It's easy for me to end up existentially depressed if I go too far down this line of thinking. But, frankly, we are fucked here on Earth. We're consuming resources at an exponential rate with a population way, way outside what the planet can support sustainably. And we won't fix it before it's too late, because our base human nature wants more, bigger, better at the expense of all else. I'm with Musk on this, the onl…

> I'm with Musk on this, the only way we survive is to get the hell off Earth

And as a plan, I think that's basically completely stupid. Even our worst case climate change projections give us an Earth that is incredibly more habitable than any extraterrestrial environment. The worst conditions you can find on this entire planet today are more habitable than the best you can find elsewhere in our star system.

Think of what it would take to have a self-sustaining Mars colony, for instance. If we have the ability to do that, then surely it would be a lot easier to do that same thing here on Earth at a fraction of the cost and risk. Why not just do that instead?

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

#29

Post by wcarss »

Ringworld goes into this topic quite a bit, so it was interesting to me to see that the author is an astrobiologist who wrote "The Knowledge", about restarting civilization from scratch. Niven (who wrote Ringworld) also co-wrote "Lucifer's Hammer" with Jerry Pournelle, which was like a fun book version of a big-cast disaster movie, about a comet colliding with the earth in the mid-1970s.

Lucifer's Hammer had some fairly realistic assessments of life in the following 5-10 years after the event, centred around restarting production. One big point was about some books very similar in concept to "The Knowledge" being used to preserve necessary information, and another was about recapturing some existing nuclear facilities to try to sustain life at all, given the big energy requirements for agriculture and basic personal heat after the event (because of e.g. huge amounts of atmospheric dust)

Reading this article also made me realize, with surprise, that I've never thought about this aspect of Fermi's paradox! One of the many variables that led to our civilization's rise may be the simple fact that we had hundreds of millions of years of abundant life before us that failed to industrialize. Imagine if human-like life had evolved a billion years ago, when the reservoirs of petrochemicals were a billion years less developed?

If it turns out that both life and sentient life are actually surprisingly common, it might be the case that most civilizations are borne unto planets not yet ready to support their technological advancement, and all they can do is burn out the wick before they reach a powderkeg moment. The great filter could work the other way -- we could be the rare success merely by dint of having shown up 'late'.

Fun article!

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

#30

Post by scotty79 »

grugagag wrote: post #18
scotty79 wrote: 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.

You can do only so much with intelligence if there are no metals or fossil fuels on your planet.

With all the ingenuity you can't make reasonable amount of chemical elements that don't occur in your environment.

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