5 ms·

You can bootstrap without fossil fuels. It’s tough to rely on biomass with ~8 billion people, but if the population is smaller, it works fine. Also, we used to

You can bootstrap without fossil fuels. It’s tough to rely on biomass with ~8 billion people, but if the population is smaller, it works fine. Also, we used to rely on hydroelectric produced hydrogen for nitrogen fertilizer for decades before steam reforming of fossil fuels became cheaper and proven (around 1950). Trains ran on biomass in much of the US. Early European American settlers used biomass and bio-sourced iron (bog iron made of deposits from iron bacteria) for iron implements. We used a lot of hydro for industrial prime motive power, too, in the 1800s in the US, for grinding grains, etc, etc. before that, the Netherlands and others harnessed wind for industrial purposes. Wind, hydro, and biomass is enough to kickstart a hydrogen economy and bootstrap into solar, modern wind, modern batteries, nuclear, etc. Fossil fuels are just a convenient shortcut and not always as useful as they seem (see: the Resource Curse, how resource-poor Japan is still able to industrialize, etc). If the Fracking Revolution hadn’t happened, the US would still be burning a lot more coal, but we’d probably have more electrification of transport, etc. So I think if humanity used up every scrap of fossil fuel, we’d still be able to bootstrap to industrialization and modernity. But using up all fossil fuels is actually pretty hard (which is why climate change is hard to mitigate…). There’s hundreds of years of gas and oil, probably a thousand years of coal, etc. Biomass can be used up over a faster time, but if you modulate its harvesting, it can last indefinitely and even when you scour the landscape of trees and desertify the landscape, over tens of thousands of years, nature will reverse what you did (minus extinct species).

wins32767 5y ago
What I think is missing here is the ROI on each Joule. Coal accessible from the surface is effectively free, as are oil seeps. It's certainly possible to bootstrap absent fossil fuels, it takes a lot more work to generate them, thus generating less net civilizational surplus. Since the natural tendency is to use surplus is to improve quality of life, it requires a tremendous amount of concentrated surplus to be able to invest in something very expensive with a very long timeline for return on investment like space settlement. In other words, absent tons of "free" resources like fossil fuels, it will require a larger percentage of available civilizational surplus to be dedicated to space than it would today. That implies either strong wealth inequality (more than today), authoritarian central government with high taxes, or a unified population interested in long term investments. The first two seem more likely than the latter.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  I honestly don’t think it’s that bad. Wood has a pretty big ROI. It’s not even underground, you just chop it down. But it’s also not hard to accidentally cut down all your trees on your island or whatever. As long as you can maintain some fairly sustainable fuel harvesting practices, trees can provide cheap and high energy ROI, enough to bootstrap hydro and wind from which hydrogen can be made and any manner of modern energy (although nuclear and solar and batteries are even more efficient). Biomass can serve as a feedstock for chemicals via steam reforming to syngas and then Fischer-Tropsch to anything else, and biomass is abundant enough for that non-energy purpose even with 8 billion people as long as your prime energy comes elsewhere. Gotta realize that the fossil fuel energy surplus is often highly wasted on authoritarian regimes and such. Industrious nations can & do find other sources of energy, and there are many to choose from (hydro, wind, biomass, geothermal, nuclear fission, tidal, photovoltaic, solar thermal, ocean temperature gradient, even space based solar, nuclear fusion, etc). Simply wind energy and hydrogen electrolysis would work. Both are relatively simple. I think we have a kind of fatalism when it comes to energy sources which isn’t helped by the fact that advocates of one energy source often invest a lot of time in downplaying other energy sources, but we actually have a LOT of good, economic-surplus-compatible options to choose from, and fossil fuels are just one. The real key is knowledge and precision. From that, and nearly any mix of energy sources and raw materials, comes abundance.
  - wins32767 5y ago
    Thank you for these posts, I learned a lot!
Animats 5y ago
You can bootstrap without fossil fuels. No human civilization did that. Until coal and iron were found near each other, industry did not get beyond wood and brass.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Not true. In the early American colonies, the colonists used charcoal and bog iron to supply local blacksmiths. The Iron Age in particular enabled widespread metal use precisely because sources of iron ore and charcoal are very broadly distributed geographically. Ironically (heh), it was the Bronze Age which relied more heavily on trade as you needed both copper and tin (which was especially rare geographically) to make bronze, which meant you had to have fairly vast trading networks. The development of iron smelting was a pretty important invention that vastly simplified and diversified availability of weapons-quality metal. (Although to make hardenable steel—probably essential for industrialization—is harder than mere iron and requires better process control… but charcoal can still be the fuel source. And it was, for ancient steelmaking.) EDIT: in fact, even in the first Industrial Revolution, water power was more important economically for motive power in Britain than coal driven steam power. Globally, coal didn’t start to exceed traditional biomass for prime energy until around 1900.

wins32767 5y ago

What I think is missing here is the ROI on each Joule. Coal accessible from the surface is effectively free, as are oil seeps. It's certainly possible to bootstrap absent fossil fuels, it takes a lot more work to generate them, thus generating less net civilizational surplus. Since the natural tendency is to use surplus is to improve quality of life, it requires a tremendous amount of concentrated surplus to be able to invest in something very expensive with a very long timeline for return on investment like space settlement. In other words, absent tons of "free" resources like fossil fuels, it will require a larger percentage of available civilizational surplus to be dedicated to space than it would today. That implies either strong wealth inequality (more than today), authoritarian central government with high taxes, or a unified population interested in long term investments. The first two seem more likely than the latter.

Robotbeat 5y ago
I honestly don’t think it’s that bad. Wood has a pretty big ROI. It’s not even underground, you just chop it down. But it’s also not hard to accidentally cut down all your trees on your island or whatever. As long as you can maintain some fairly sustainable fuel harvesting practices, trees can provide cheap and high energy ROI, enough to bootstrap hydro and wind from which hydrogen can be made and any manner of modern energy (although nuclear and solar and batteries are even more efficient). Biomass can serve as a feedstock for chemicals via steam reforming to syngas and then Fischer-Tropsch to anything else, and biomass is abundant enough for that non-energy purpose even with 8 billion people as long as your prime energy comes elsewhere. Gotta realize that the fossil fuel energy surplus is often highly wasted on authoritarian regimes and such. Industrious nations can & do find other sources of energy, and there are many to choose from (hydro, wind, biomass, geothermal, nuclear fission, tidal, photovoltaic, solar thermal, ocean temperature gradient, even space based solar, nuclear fusion, etc). Simply wind energy and hydrogen electrolysis would work. Both are relatively simple. I think we have a kind of fatalism when it comes to energy sources which isn’t helped by the fact that advocates of one energy source often invest a lot of time in downplaying other energy sources, but we actually have a LOT of good, economic-surplus-compatible options to choose from, and fossil fuels are just one. The real key is knowledge and precision. From that, and nearly any mix of energy sources and raw materials, comes abundance.
- wins32767 5y ago
  Thank you for these posts, I learned a lot!

Animats 5y ago

You can bootstrap without fossil fuels. No human civilization did that. Until coal and iron were found near each other, industry did not get beyond wood and brass.

Robotbeat 5y ago
Not true. In the early American colonies, the colonists used charcoal and bog iron to supply local blacksmiths. The Iron Age in particular enabled widespread metal use precisely because sources of iron ore and charcoal are very broadly distributed geographically. Ironically (heh), it was the Bronze Age which relied more heavily on trade as you needed both copper and tin (which was especially rare geographically) to make bronze, which meant you had to have fairly vast trading networks. The development of iron smelting was a pretty important invention that vastly simplified and diversified availability of weapons-quality metal. (Although to make hardenable steel—probably essential for industrialization—is harder than mere iron and requires better process control… but charcoal can still be the fuel source. And it was, for ancient steelmaking.) EDIT: in fact, even in the first Industrial Revolution, water power was more important economically for motive power in Britain than coal driven steam power. Globally, coal didn’t start to exceed traditional biomass for prime energy until around 1900.