4 ms·
and modern society owes to dinosaur juice
by honkler 4y ago
and modern society owes to dinosaur juice
- efields 4y agoMore than anything else. If you took oil out of the meta, it’s not like humanity would die off. It’d just be very different. We’d still be thriving. We’d still likely have scientific breakthroughs that increase quality of life. It’d just be so very different.
- Waterluvian 4y agoI don’t think it would be that different. I think the growth curve of our technology and population would have had a longer flat section. Obviously this is a ridiculously complex thing to project, but the reason I’m skeptical is that without fossil fuels, there’s still far more energy available than we need. Perhaps an argument could be made that fossil fuels are a distraction and we would have been naturally forced towards more sustainable options. …or we just get super good at burning trees.
- pjc50 4y agoOvernight? We'd lose a lot of people during the transition war. If you took out natural gas overnight, half of Europe would start freezing to death. I don't think people appreciate how much the 20th century was the oil century.
- cyber_kinetist 4y agoBy the way, most of the petroleum we use doesn't really come from dinosaurs. The consensus among researchers seem to be that it mainly comes from dead planton and algae that sunk to the bottom, although there are also some heterodox theories of abiotic oil formation as well. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Formation)