Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

aeon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 205 posts

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

#191

Post by redis_mlc »

carapace wrote: post #138
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)

One of the scariest things I ever read was the true story of how the British Navy discovered and then lost the knowledge of how to cure scurvy. IIRC, they found that limes (or lemons) would prevent scurvy on long voyages; then the ships got faster AND the switched to a citrus fruit lemons (or limes) that didn't have enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy, but they didn't realize it because the faster voyages didn't allow…

Military officers are very hard-headed.

Admirals resisted submarines and carriers until catastrophe forced their hands.

Most people don't realize that scurvy had actual fatalities on most British ships that went on long voyages.

Similarly, in Japan in the late 1800's, deckhands had a ration of free rice (mainly carbohydrates), so that's all they ate. As a result, there were ships half full of sailors laying ill from almost no vitamins, mainly B1, resulting in beriberi.

That continued with the army into the early 1900's:

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/eating-too-much-rice-almost...

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

#192

Post by rini17 »

cogman10 wrote: post #140
Animats wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require the ability for the grid to say "no" and for industries to respond to "nos". That's available now, if you buy power in large enough amounts. It's not popular.[1] [1] https://seuc.senate.ca.gov/interruptibleservicecontractissue...

Yeah, there's just a bunch of issues today with how grids are operated. In order for this to really work well, we need national standards for both grid operators and grid users. The reason for all of this being both unpopular and requiring big purchases is because it's pretty much a 1 off deal between the grid operator and the purchaser. It requires that they both both come into the room to make a deal. Instead, we n…

In the EU there's combination of spot market and strict grid management that involves all wholesale electricity customers. There are also attempts to manage households but no approach has clearly won. For example it's very inconvenient to move your cooking time according to grid conditions. It likely has to wait for proliferation of batteries.

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

#193

Post by rini17 »

godelski wrote: post #104
canniballectern wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As land creatures, we haven't explored the underwater tech tree in much detail. If there are fishpeople with mega brains out there somewhere, they might have figured out some stuff that we haven't.

There are certain limitations we know about though. Like that making a spaceship would be more difficult. Not only getting out of the water and then into space, but just that you have to have your capsule at a higher pressure. Though landing might be a bit easier because you don't have to use boats to get people out. But then landing and exploring another planet will be much harder, and don't get me started on what t…

I think spaceship construction may be actually less difficult. No risk of fire. No pressure hull required (only little pressure needed to stop water from boiling, and depressurization isn't explosive).

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

#194

Post by buckminster »

MauranKilom wrote: post #163
buckminster wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are shown with different pronunciations. Do you mean the recordings? They sound different to my British ear.

I meant "the sound of the vocal" (the o vs oo), not "the spoken sound" when I said "the vocal sound".

The vowel! Yes, they are the same.

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

#195

Post by whatshisface »

njarboe wrote: post #185
whatshisface wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is so much less safe and dirty. When people say "nuclear reactors are safe," they mean advanced modern designs with computers everywhere and precise engineering, not a Bronze-age clay kiln filled to the brim with enriched material.

You would be amazed how dangerous smoke is for human health. Even today burning coal is estimated to kill a few million people per year.

I know how bad particulate matter is, but I'm not sure if you've thought through the implications of running a nuclear reactor in biodegradable containment and without any way to safely access the inside. I guess it might make a nice dystopian novel, perhaps the bronze age nuclear power company sends in war captives or something like that.

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

#196

Post by demosito666 »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #181
8bitsrule wrote: post #179

Depends on what that means, but fossils have only been in widespread use for a couple of centuries, yet a lot of important discoveries were made before them. The energies from wind, water, animals and burning plants were widely in use before coal took off in Europe about 3 centuries ago. Without (only a century of) oil, even without coal, the discovery of EM fields still would have led to (slower) development of hydr…

> the sun pours FAR more power onto the surface than needed to get 'modern'. One of the agruments economists make for not switching away from fossil fuels is that we'd be consigning worlds poor to endless poverty. Invariable followed by the accusation that you don't care about poor people. But if you look at the supply of oil and gas it's obvious there never was would be enough to lift the worlds poor out of poverty.…

And another thing that is missed in this discussion: the article assumes that there will be much fewer people left than we have today. It's very hard to support something as huge and as cold as Moscow on renewables. But if there are few people, they live in compact villages in warm climate, there is no existential pressure to burn fossils for heating and heavy industries. You have a breathing room.

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

#197

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #171
el_nahual wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one strikes painfully close to home! I grew up on an old colonial street in a major Latin American city. Beautiful street "paved" with cobblestones. Somehow the cobblestones managed to look both randomly placed and have some "lines" that gave it a very orderly look. The cobblestones were placed in some substrate that allowed moss to grow between them. At some point about 10 years ago, the city decided to tear up…

> apparently nobody knows how to lay cobblestones anymore This is regional. I went to a talk on cobblestone streets in New York. There are entire books dedicated to the craft, and new scholarship on it ongoing. (It pertains closely to the question of prefabricated infrastructure.)

[deleted]

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

#198

Post by mikewarot »

AngusH wrote: post #168
mikewarot wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think it sounds like a Sett: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sett_(paving) (which is often called a cobblestone) Edit: Still being laid in Edinburgh...

Here in the Midwest, far away from the granite blocks imported by ships there were companies that made additively "cobblestones", with their names on them, in my walkway there are such stones made in Attica, Indiana. The knowledge of how those were made, is apparently lost. Those things are tough like you wouldn't believe.

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

#199

Post by njarboe »

whatshisface wrote: post #195
njarboe wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be amazed how dangerous smoke is for human health. Even today burning coal is estimated to kill a few million people per year.

I know how bad particulate matter is, but I'm not sure if you've thought through the implications of running a nuclear reactor in biodegradable containment and without any way to safely access the inside. I guess it might make a nice dystopian novel, perhaps the bronze age nuclear power company sends in war captives or something like that.

Yes, it would be very harmful to humans, but so were most industrial processes. We have now eliminated almost all of them in the West (some exported to other countries). I guess my main point is that if nuclear power had been around for as long as steam power then society would have grown up around it. It would be familiar, like fire (fossil fuels) is, and the human race could judge its merits much more rationally in comparison to other power sources.

There are many a history book of war captives (slaves) being sent into gold/silver mines for a quick death.

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

#200

Post by whatshisface »

njarboe wrote: post #199
whatshisface wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know how bad particulate matter is, but I'm not sure if you've thought through the implications of running a nuclear reactor in biodegradable containment and without any way to safely access the inside. I guess it might make a nice dystopian novel, perhaps the bronze age nuclear power company sends in war captives or something like that.

Yes, it would be very harmful to humans, but so were most industrial processes. We have now eliminated almost all of them in the West (some exported to other countries). I guess my main point is that if nuclear power had been around for as long as steam power then society would have grown up around it. It would be familiar, like fire (fossil fuels) is, and the human race could judge its merits much more rationally in…

A nuclear power plant running on the surface shielded by nothing more than some bricks would be way worse than any other ancient industrial technology. Water would get in and leach away any soluble isotopes, poisoning the surrounding area for millennia. Anything you tried to heat using the nuclear pile would become radioactive, because ancient societies don't have a way to transport heat. (In the modern world we use high pressure pipes and heat exchangers. Then, if anything more than household heating is desired, you need generators to convert the energy into an industrially useful form.) They would have to put whatever they wanted to warm up directly inside the reactor. So, you would quickly end up with uninhabitable cities, and everything made in the "cursed furnaces," would slowly kill the owner. The only reason nuclear power is safe is because engineers have figured out how to contain it.
Post reply on HN