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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)

#141

Post by mikewarot »

rebuilder wrote: post #97
mikewarot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Knowledge steadily accumulates over time. No, it doesn't. Only knowledge that people consider to have value will be retained over time. Many things are lost to history, for example.. nobody knows how to make cobblestone. (Or so I'm told)

>nobody knows how to make cobblestone. Can you expand on that? I didn't think cobblestones were made? Don't you just pick suitable stones?

In the United States, cobblestones were manufactured large blocks that were impermeable and very durable. Streets were paved with them.

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

#142

Post by mistrial9 »

mikewarot wrote: post #50
lawrenceyan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really an issue. Knowledge steadily accumulates over time. The key foundations of human intelligence and ingenuity will always remains regardless of whether or not fossil fuels exist for us to exploit. Non-renewable resources only served to speed up our industrialization.

> Knowledge steadily accumulates over time. No, it doesn't. Only knowledge that people consider to have value will be retained over time. Many things are lost to history, for example.. nobody knows how to make cobblestone. (Or so I'm told)

I was told that gold and silver smithing, for jewelry, has lost techniques since the 1700s. There are well-known pieces of jewelry from that era that are not reproducible now.

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

#143

Post by yellowapple »

anotherman554 wrote: post #129
tastyfreeze wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can get off the planet we should at least try. This is how our species has advanced and spread across the planet. If something is in grasp we try. Many fail, some succeed. Most of Magellan's crew died or abandoned the expedition. That doesn't mean it wasn't a worthwhile endeavor for our species.

Our species hasn't particularly proven itself worthy of preservation if the Earth were to die. Given how poorly we continue to treat each other and the other local species I think we can chill out here on Earth and not worry about it.

Well, you're welcome to chill out here on Earth. Those of us with any degree of sanity are gonna do what we can to get the heck out of dodge :)

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

#144

Post by njarboe »

wcarss wrote: post #29

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 fai…

One interesting thing to contemplate along these lines is that the U235 to U238 ratio of naturally occurring uranium changes through time on Earth. They had about the same abundance when the Solar System was created but they have different half lives. U235 is about 0.70 billion years and U238 at about 4.47 billion years.

Currently U235 is only 0.7% of natural uranium, but one can make a nuclear reactor with natural water as a regulator with ratios of about 3%. So for most of Earth's history an intelligent race could probably develop nuclear power at the wood burning level of energy production. If nuclear and coal were developed in tandem, I can't imagine coal winning out. It is so much less safe and dirty.

There is even geologic formations where natural nuclear reactors existed in the past[1].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...

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

#145

Post by bilbo0s »

egberts1 wrote: post #71
bluGill wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You run out of biomass before you can bootstrap yourself enough to build wind turbines. Sure the dutch built windmills, but they didn't have refined metals in to make a generator.

Hydroelectric, slow but effective to establish an electric kiln that works with titanium.

You need to know the location of the minerals. Or you better hope the war didn't kill all the people who do know the location of, say rutile and ilmenite deposits.

Then there's the matter of getting enough people down into the mines to get enough out. Historically this was done via slavery, but those ancient civilizations first needed to acquire giant, mean, ugly armies in order to get the slaves. Where do you find a few hundred thousand unarmed people to enslave after a nuclear war?

Actually, first you would have to find a few hundred thousand armed people and convince them to join your army to enslave all the other people. And you would have to have quite a bit of luck. If you didn't, one, or maybe even a group, of the few hundred thousand soldiers you found to be in your army might figure out that they can just kill you and it will be their army.

The ancient way was hard. The entire process would not be as easy as many believe.

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

#146

Post by varjag »

egberts1 wrote: post #71
bluGill wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You run out of biomass before you can bootstrap yourself enough to build wind turbines. Sure the dutch built windmills, but they didn't have refined metals in to make a generator.

Hydroelectric, slow but effective to establish an electric kiln that works with titanium.

You still need that generator.

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

#147

Post by bobthepanda »

OJFord wrote: post #105
function_seven wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, what a blind spot I have. Of course. When I imagine a Briton saying it, I hear that pronunciation. I'm en-US, obviously :)

Ah, well, I neglected to think/realise AmE was generally 'nooze' too... So I might have to retract 'most dialects' (at least in the way I meant it which was counting speakers rather than distinct dialects). The other form you often see this in is long 'u's being 'oo' rather than (as I would say) roughly 'ew'. (Duplicate, repudiate, muse, etc.)

Are you from the Northeast US? I pronounce news rhyming with pews that way.

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

#148

Post by bobthepanda »

carapace wrote: post #139

What is the essences of civilization anyway? I mean most of the things we need aren't energy intensive.

A lot of it is precision and scale.

Without coke (the coal product) how would you bootstrap large steel production? Electric furnaces exist but use a lot of energy.

Without steel and the loss of knowledge on mass producing precision equipment, we lose most of modern medicine's advancements.

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

#149

Post by silicon2401 »

function_seven wrote: post #62
robin_reala wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Default en-GB pronunciation is njuːz.

Wow, what a blind spot I have. Of course. When I imagine a Briton saying it, I hear that pronunciation. I'm en-US, obviously :)

How do you pronounce 'news'? As an american I've only ever heard it as 'nyooz'. Do you say 'nooz'?

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

#150

Post by function_seven »

silicon2401 wrote: post #149
function_seven wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, what a blind spot I have. Of course. When I imagine a Briton saying it, I hear that pronunciation. I'm en-US, obviously :)

How do you pronounce 'news'? As an american I've only ever heard it as 'nyooz'. Do you say 'nooz'?

Yup. Rhymes with "booze", "snooze", "ooze", and "screws".

... and "lose" to bring this full circle.

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