How would one detail in the past affect how technology and science
evolved? This question comes up at many scales- sometimes personal
introspection on what might have been or larger scale concerning world
historical events. It offers a way to do a thought experiment concerning
the important aspects and how they are connected. However, the results might
only be insightful but not definitive because any real experiment
can never be done. Potential “What If” topics might consider access to
energy resources from a slight change in physics or biology; a slightly
different earth; and specific 20th century events during the rapid progress of
technological applications.
The last blog highlighted the unique role of fossil fuels in a
transition from one energy sustainable society to another future potential
society. I constructed the metaphor of this current transition as launching a
rocket into orbit. However, we currently are far from the stable orbit of
sustainable energy, and there are many potential ways that these transitions
(rocket and sustainability) might fail. If things were different would this
transition have stalled?
What if no oil had formed during Earth’s history? Perhaps
the industrial revolution, which was fed by fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and
natural gas, would have been delayed or never happened. There might have been
insufficient energy concentration to generate the scientific breakthroughs
necessary to create the new level of sustainable society based on renewables
and nuclear energy. The industrial revolution might have stalled with no great
improvements in transportation, communication, computing, and scientific
progress. Cities would not have become so large as the main sources
of energy would be food and wood would limit growth. Nature in reality
captured the energy, converted into an energy dense material easy to
transport (oil). This work of nature over millions of years made oil much
more convenient compared to extracting the similar energy from current crops.
An example of the early energy revolution towards fossil fuels in
England was the need to get fire hot enough to work with iron. Burning
wood would not generate the high temperature directly but it first could be
processed by burning without oxygen to form charcoal. Charcoal burning
does sustain a high temperature for ironwork, but great amounts of wood are
needed in its manufacture. As the wood supply from forests in England
diminished to support this activity, coal became a substitute that continued
the Industrial Revolution with the positive feedback of coal needed for iron,
iron needed for steam engines to pump water from mines, steam engines need to
mine coal.
Without oil, one energy source that might have been developed is
hydropower. The first electricity generating plant was based on turning
generators using the water from Niagara Falls. Perhaps an all-electric
economy could have formed but the amount of energy that can be extracted from
dams is currently at about 6%. For transportation, batteries would have
to be developed early instead of the internal combustion engine. In fact,
some early cars did run on batteries, but the infrastructure and storage were
not capable of competing against oil.
Could wind have supplied more power like the one we see today?
Wind had been used by wind mills for mechanical purposes such as grinding grain
and pumping water. Other uses of wind included the use in transportation
especially by ship. Could the transition be made from the early windmill
technology of the Turks, Dutch and Cistercians into the more modern technology
that we see today for electricity generation?
The end result is that it would be more difficult to transition
from one sustainable energy technology to another more advanced set of
technologies without the use of fossil fuel in-between while the advanced
renewable technologies are developed.
How might have oil not have formed? It does take special conditions
to form oil and other fossil fuels such as the ability for plant and plankton
material to be relatively stable against decomposition before it gets buried
and stored. The evolution of plant structures during the Carboniferous
period led the evolution organisms to decompose it. However, during this
evolution much more organic material survived until it had been buried, as
others have called it the Earth’s indigestion period. By burying the
carbon without oxidizing it (leading to coal formation), the oxygen level in
the atmosphere increased. According to the theory of a self-regulating Earth
based on changes in the atmosphere to keep certain properties like surface
temperature constant despite the increasing energy output of the sun.
About 400 million years ago carbon was removed from the atmosphere to
cool earth since the sun had become hotter. Later oil formed mostly from
plankton debris settling from shallow seas.
Fossil fuels, including oil, seem to be a gift that facilitates
the transition of society from one simpler renewable energy society
(subsistence agriculture) to another more technologically based with a higher
standard of living. Whether and how this energy resource should be used in this
transition is open to much debate.
So what do you think?
