There must be planets with intelligent life but without petrochemicals.
What if humans had evolved before fossil fuels had had enough time to form?
Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
121–130 of 205 posts
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#122Rebooting with the current knowledge base, possibly. Booting from scratch with no fossil fuels, doubtful. I have long suspected that one of the Great Filters is the propensity of a planet to generate fossil energy. You will really only find large quantities of oil in a narrow range of circumstances, depending on specific levels of tectonic activity, duration and abundance of life, sedimentation patterns due to rainfa…
I think even with our current knowledge no. We still haven't even really figured out how to do the energy sector without fossil fuels (we're pretty darn close though). But outside of that we have a lot of problems. One of the biggest challenges in climate is that the population has been so hyper focused with energy and transportation (because they are the primary drivers, but only 60% of emissions). Modern society ne…
I think we actually could do it today. The major issue is we couldn't do it without some major costs (It wouldn't be cheap or free).
What we'd have to change is the way society consumes energy. Right now, we operate under the paradigm of "I request energy, the grid ramps up and down to fill demand".
Instead, we could to switch over to "I ask the grid if capacity is available and use energy when it is".
That would require the ability for the grid to say "no" and for industries to respond to "nos". Nothing terribly hard about that with current data connections.
Easiest way to set that up is with energy bidding. When production is high and demand is low, price goes down. When production is low and demand is high, price goes up. Some applications could even chose to just ignore it and always take (However, everyone could not do that).
What would be the consequence of such a system? That'd mean things like manufacturing would have to have some ramping capabilities. Homes might have to tolerate temps shifting higher or lower than is comfortable. Goods might need to be transported at a much slower pace (Trans oceanic shipping, in particular, would need to be completely changed). And some industries would probably die all together with current tech (such as the airline and cruise industry).
The next question is what do we consider as using fossil fuels? For example, I wouldn't call burning wood a fossil fuel (even though it releases CO2 into the atmosphere) nor would I consider turning vegetable oil into plastic as using a fossil fuel. Both could be done today to keep the same amount of products, but would significantly change the cost characteristics of such things. Plastics would suddenly become a lot more expensive, for example.
Steel production might go down, but would not be eliminated.
Concrete would be one that you'd have to define what you mean by "fossil fuel" as it would release CO2 but isn't technically a fossil fuel. The process of making concrete can be done without burning oil.
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That is an easy trope that follows history. For example, England is responsible for 63 national independence days. Colonies need support initially. But, once they get established and self sustaining it seems to be the natural progression to wonder why they still are subjects of a far away, likely exploitive, ruler.
Another thing that seems common to this theme is that the space colonies are often depicted as having a better technology base than Earth. Again, unsure if this is coincidental, or if it's just the authors' way of depicting human space colonists in lieu of the "scary alien invaders from outer space" fighting Earth.
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#124No.
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#125By 2016, we knew "Now they’re almost gone." was wrong.kinda hard to read the rest when the starting thesis is wrong.
(I had no idea the British pronounced "pews" and "poos" identically, btw. Presidente for Life Xi must be horrified.)
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#126I think the scale of wood production and iron production is very much demonstrated by the romans. This guys series goes over medieval metal production and He has sources with entire cities (Elba) in Rome produced iron ore in the range of 10 million ton of iron ore per year. They wouldn't be mining it unless they could use it and even if they only recovered 1%of the ore into iron they are still ending up with 100,000 tons of iron a year which is significant. We should underestimate human engineering just because we picked a certain technology path.
scroll to article 1 yourself https://acoup.blog/2020/11/06/collections-iron-how-did-they-...
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not both? Luddites always whine about the resources "wasted" on space exploration, science, and now the beginnings of industry, but they don't appreciate how in so many ways the fruits of our efforts in space end up benefiting all of us here on Earth. And since those people claim to be concerned with finite resources and a fragile biosphere, why constrain ourselves to the resources of our mother planet (which res…
Much as I love Star Trek etc. It does appear that space travel is inherently bad for us planet dwellers what with the havoc it wreaks on the bodies of people who spend long periods in space. I'd love it not be so, but I do wonder if one possible future is exploration by autonomous robots establishing automated mining of asteroids and distant planets.
1. Enough armor can reduce space radiation to Earth levels, or even lower. And protect against space junk. It's just currently expensive to launch.
2. Spinning habitats create artificial gravity (though astronauts on the ISS do okay in zero g for months or more). No new tech advances necessary.
Humans are nothing if not adaptable and ingenious. Space is just next in a long line of "inhospitable" areas we've colonized.
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Why not both? Luddites always whine about the resources "wasted" on space exploration, science, and now the beginnings of industry, but they don't appreciate how in so many ways the fruits of our efforts in space end up benefiting all of us here on Earth. And since those people claim to be concerned with finite resources and a fragile biosphere, why constrain ourselves to the resources of our mother planet (which res…
You misunderstand. I'm not against space exploration or colonizing Mars at all. I'm saying that considering "Mars colony" our only hope for survival with a fucked Earth is not a reasonable idea.
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
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.
Re: Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? (2016)
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Wait, aren't dolphins an intelligent species? Would they have to make use of metals and fossil fuels to advance their intelligence?
Yes. They may already have more raw brainpower than us but they live in environment where they don't have enough tool materials for sufficiently useful tools to evolve precise manipulation skills.
They also can't use fire to command more than just energy their bodies produce.
Hence no dolphin technical civilisation. Land apes have beaten them to it.