Timeline for What energy sources would a species use if they didn't have access to fossil fuels?
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32 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 3, 2019 at 4:05 | comment | added | Mazura | Six square miles of trees (none of which you can cut down anyway) ain't gonna do it. | |
| Jan 2, 2019 at 22:53 | answer | added | AskerOfQuestions | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jan 2, 2019 at 3:56 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Mazura: IDK about forests, but there are certainly estates like Windsor Great Park that have trees that are 500-1000 years old. | |
| Jan 1, 2019 at 11:48 | answer | added | Pelinore | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jan 1, 2019 at 11:00 | comment | added | Mazura | @jamesqf - It's a little bit of a joke (I hope, IDK I've never been there ;) but there's a Connections episode that talks about how they were on the brink of cutting down all their trees (to make steel iirc) until they did find a fossil fuel source; coal. That was probably pre-WWII but... are there forests in the UK with all their +300yo tress where they still should be? | |
| Jan 1, 2019 at 4:48 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Mazura: Why do you think England has no trees? I admit it's been a few years since I last was there, but it had plenty back then. | |
| Jan 1, 2019 at 1:30 | answer | added | doneal24 | timeline score: 0 | |
| Dec 31, 2018 at 23:41 | history | edited | Brythan | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 31, 2018 at 19:42 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Ross Millikan: No, lack of fossil fuels won't "upset" these people's economy, since it will have developed differently ab initio. You are perhaps making the mistake of thinking the current western economy is the only workable possibility, instead of the result of choices among a multitude of options. | |
| Dec 31, 2018 at 9:51 | comment | added | NofP | Are you saying that in this alien world there is no alien animal that excretes high-grade solid cherosene? | |
| Dec 31, 2018 at 5:11 | comment | added | Ross Millikan | The answers are very good, but the whole exchange is missing the point that concentrated energy will be much more expensive than in our world. That will upset the economy in many ways because energy is a major cost for some products. Plastics will also be hard to come by without fossil fuels (feedstocks). | |
| Dec 31, 2018 at 0:39 | answer | added | Georg | timeline score: 3 | |
| Dec 31, 2018 at 0:03 | comment | added | pojo-guy | The Renaissance was launched in part because wood and water energy had been tapped out in Europe in the middle ages. Quality of life was becoming poorer in each generation, and new energy sources were required. The discovery of fossil fuels and early use of the same pretty much mark the end of the middle ages. | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 23:12 | answer | added | Harper - Reinstate Monica | timeline score: 6 | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 23:07 | answer | added | 0something0 | timeline score: 5 | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 21:50 | comment | added | Mazura | aka: WWII and why England has no trees. | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 20:52 | comment | added | The Square-Cube Law | Whale oil is a good candidate. | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 20:52 | history | edited | The Square-Cube Law | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 30, 2018 at 20:12 | comment | added | Dan | Do they have fire, and just prefer not to burn plants? Can they not get what they need from wood and charcoal made from dead vegetation? | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 20:08 | comment | added | Dan | @Willk Depending which part of the world you're dealing with, the Early Modern Period is roughly the Renaissance to the French Revolution, give or take a few decades. (Personally, I usually just round it off to 1450 through 1800 for simplicity's sake.) So, yes, you're correct. Many places had public lamp lighting from candles. | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 20:02 | comment | added | AlexP | @Willk: Early modern starts in 1648, by definition (Peace of Westphalia). Or at least it did when I was school... Before that was the Renaissance, before that was the Middle Ages and so on. | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 19:32 | comment | added | Willk | @AlexP - Paris? They count as civilized. But when does early modern start? | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 19:20 | comment | added | AlexP | Light their cities? Light their cities? What human civilization had public illumination in pre-modern or early-modern times? | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 19:06 | comment | added | jamesqf | An obvious reason for them not having fossil fuels is that a precursor race used them all. And then went extinct due to the effects of global warming, leaving the new race to evolve intelligence in less time than it takes to form fossil fuel deposits. Think current humans, and the new intelligence evolving from rats :-) | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 18:57 | answer | added | LSerni | timeline score: 3 | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 18:50 | history | edited | Cyn | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 30, 2018 at 18:47 | answer | added | Cyn | timeline score: 14 | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 18:38 | answer | added | Soan | timeline score: 0 | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 18:34 | comment | added | AlexP | Human civilization did not use fossil fuels until the second industrial revolution, in the 18th century. The ancient civilizations, the medieval civilizations, the early modern civilizations did not use fossil fuels. (All right, they used a very little coal, in some places and for limited purposes.) Hint: wood, wind, rivers, oxen, horses. | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 18:33 | answer | added | Ender Look | timeline score: 30 | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 18:33 | comment | added | nzaman | Burning wood and plant and animal oils seems obvious. Any reason why they can't use those? | |
| Dec 30, 2018 at 18:05 | history | asked | ΓΙΑΝΝΗΣ ΜΙΧΑΗΛΙΔΗΣ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |