Can Civilization Reboot Without Fossil Fuels?

An anonymous reader writes: We often talk about our dependence on fossil fuels, and vigorously debate whether and how we should reduce that dependence. This article at Aeon sidesteps the political bickering and asks an interesting technological question: if we had to rebuild society, could we do it without all the fossil fuels we used to do it the first time? When people write about post-apocalyptic scenarios, the focus is usually on preserving information long enough for humanity to rebuild. But actually rebuilding turns out to be quite a challenge when all the easy oil has been bled from the planet.

It's not that we're running out, it's that the best spots for oil now require high tech machinery. This would create a sort of chicken-and-egg problem for a rebuilding society. Technological progress could still happen using other energy production methods. But it would be very slow — we'd never see the dramatic accelerations that marked the industrial age, and then the information age. "A slow-burn progression through the stages of mechanization, supported by a combination of renewable electricity and sustainably grown biomass, might be possible after all. Then again, it might not. We'd better hope we can secure the future of our own civilization, because we might have scuppered the chances of any society to follow in our wake."

Comments

We have already figured most of this out.

[The Other White Meat]

We already know how to create biodiesel and other fuels from non fossil sources. If we limited their use to critical needs, and had everything else using renewable electric sources, then we probably could do without oil. The biggest challenge appears to be the lack of tar and asphalt for road construction; we'd have to find a workable substitute. For everything else, suitable engineered substitutes exist.

Re:We have already figured most of this out.

[dwywit]

We've already got a lot of roads - where would we need to build new ones, if there's a collapse?

There are existing roads connecting our major centres - granted, they'll need maintenance, but that's mostly patching, as opposed to kilometres of new roads - so why would we need more than maintenance-level stocks of tar and asphalt?

Re:We have already figured most of this out.

[judoguy]

Roads go to crap surprising quickly. I was in a workshop shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed. The presenter took a little time off topic to talk about a book and newsletter he was publishing in Russia. Entire city's were becoming accessible only by poor train service because the roads were simply going away. It made delivering a monthly newsletter quite problematic.

Re:We have already figured most of this out.

[plopez]

Diesel engines were originally designed to run on vegetable oil and the Model T was originally designed to run on alcohol fermented from agricultural waste. So two prime movers could exist without fossil fuels. Burning oil and alcohol can also run steam engines. As could chemical batteries. Evidence suggests the Greeks and even Egyptians used available metals to build batteries. So we could have electricity, cars, trains, and ships. Perhaps even airplanes. At that point you can boot strap up. Most of the Science used in Engineering these days is hundreds of years old. So while it may be slower it is plausible.

Diesel died under mysterious circumstances, some people suspect assassination by oil interests. The Model T's ability to burn alcohol was killed by US Prohibition. Some people say Prohibition was at least some what driven by the oil interests trying to kill off alternative fuels.

Re:We have already figured most of this out.

[bored_engineer]

Probably not*. The "old asphalt roads" are 90-96% aggregate (rocks). The asphalt is really just a flexible binder for the harder stuff. Also, the lighter volatiles have long since evaporated from the asphalt cement, so it won't readily light. Come to think about it, the asphalt cement is, cut with water, emulsifiers and other additives to improve application and durability.

*I did some calculation to determine the heat content of asphalt concrete roads as compared to wood, and I've decided that both may be useful, depending on context:

1. 1. Decent hardwood (think birch, not hickory) has a comparable Btu content as asphalt concrete:
2. 1. --Seasoned Birch: 6.95 kBtu/lb, 162.5 kBtu/ft^3 (these are based on cord density, not wood density);
   2. --Old Asphalt Road: 8.82 kBtu/lb, 64.9 kBtu/ft^3 (based on in-place density, 5% cement content & 30% additive content).
3. 2. I will guess that wood will release the heat more quickly, while the aggregate in asphalt concrete will store heat and release it slowly over time.
4. 3. Wood and "old roads" will require approximately the same handling. The wood needs to be cut, split and stored while the asphalt needs to be broken up, then the (potentially useful) aggregate will need to be (re)moved.
5. 4. The asphalt cement will need an existing hot fire to start. The ignition temperature of asphalt is ~900F, so the entire mass including the aggregate will will absorb a great deal of heat before it starts contributing anything.
6. 5. profit?

I set out to demonstrate that your comment wasn't very useful, but it looks like old asphalt roads may, in fact, be useful for keeping warm, with the caveat that some other material will be needed to start (and maintain) an asphalt concrete fire.

Humans are Human

[Mr D from 63]

The idea that human society would operate in a fundamentally different manner after an apocalyptic event is probably not very realistic. We would have little reason to worry about anything but erecting energy production facilities as quickly and easily as possible. Fighting for survival trumps all.

The idea that an apocalyptic event would provide an opportunity for a big do-over is also probably not very realistic. The science fiction scenario is mass death, few people left, little knowledge retained, but is it much more likely large numbers of people would survive or nobody would survive.

Re:Humans are Human

[oodaloop]

There have been many many collapses of civilizations since man started making them. Egypt, Rome, Easter Island, Greenland, Incas, Anasazi, Khmer, etc. In fact, most large civilizations have collapsed, and for very similar reasons: over consumption of resources. We're doing the same thing, but on a global scale and consuming food, wood, land, oil, etc at ever increasing rates. A global collapse of civilization seems quite likely to me, and it won't be pretty.

Re:Humans are Human

[khallow]

In fact, most large civilizations have collapsed, and for very similar reasons: over consumption of resources.

Parasitism. There's a common thread in the end of most empires, large or small. The build up of incompetent bureaucracies and the elevation of power struggles and who gets what over survival of the empire.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't. Without that much free energy it's not possible to sustain our current technology level. Renewables just aren't enough and never will. They will help to sustain what little technology we'll able to afford in the ecotechnic (agrarian) future that lies ahead but that's all. No more Information Age, no more industry. The Amish had it right.

Re:No

[thaylin]

What a defeatest attitude you got there... Without knowing the limits of the tech you think the tech cannot get us to the point we need. Who cares that solar panels only can convert about 10-15% of the power it receives now, screw it we cannot get what we need out of it.../s

Olde-timey carbon fuel

[nojayuk]

The classic multipurpose "biodeiesel" of old was charcoal, a renewable source of fuel for high-temperature furnaces suitable for making iron and high-quality steel. Its use today is pretty much limited to barbeques and re-enactment smithing but a post-apocalyptic world could easily return to it for such purposes.

Trees don't grow quickly and the production of charcoal was never enough to sustain the demands for process heat for a society even a tenth as large as it is today but assuming a massive post-apocalyptic die-back and natural reforestation it would probably work. It doesn't require any process plant or chemicals to produce after all.

Lower-temperature needs such as locomotive and boiler steam could be met with simple logging of reforested areas without the extra step of turning wood into charcoal.

Re:Olde-timey carbon fuel

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Yes. Things that are woody (like bamboo) work better than say things like grass clippings as you get more charcoal but any plant matter would work. Even things like oil can be made from them using various thermal depolymerization processes like the Fischer-Tropsch process. There are other processes as well that produce liquid fuels from similar feed stocks. Also from what I can tell a lot of waste from the initial process is carbon compounds like may be useful as a soil amendment

not a new topic

[Zobeid]

As an old-timer (or at least a mid-timer), I can remember this very issue being raised and discussed as far back as the late 1970s by people in the SF community, such as Jerry Pournelle, for one example. Of course, then we had the prospects of global thermonuclear war hanging over our heads as well, so the idea of the world having to rebuild everything didn't seem far-fetched at all.

The other issue was whether we could even keep modern technological-industrial civilization running. There was a very serious fear that "resource depletion" would cause everything to collapse without any need to invoke armageddon. Those fears have, thus far, proven mostly unfounded for reasons alluded in TFA: because we have developed high-tech machinery that can recover even low-grade deposits of ores and fossil fuels. That still doesn't mean the question won't crop up again at some time in the future, though, and we still have periodic scares over commodities such as: copper, gold, rare earths, and of course, "Peak Oil". The solution that Pournelle advocated back in the 1970s, exploiting the resources of outer space, is still out on the fringe somewhere.

The problem is SUPPLY CHAIN!!!

[calexontheroad66]

The current state of complexity of our civilization is given by a web of supply chains that make it possible to produce very specialized and sophisticated products.
Liquid fuel production requires more than extracting oil from the ground, you have to distill the fractions, filter unwanted contaminants, crack heavy fractions to produce lighter compounds, and do pyrolysis to get gasoline from what is essentially tar.
This all requires a supply chain of materials to be able to construct the tools and equipments to produce what you'll pump into your car.

Then there are fertilizers, you needs sources of fossilized guano that are located around the world, and others like Ammonia based fertilizers that are mostly produced using fossil fuel sources.
Then you have catalyzer metals for reactors, the list is enormous...
And if you think that since the trade barriers have mostly gone, that has meant that most countries have shed duplicate capacity and have specialized and concentrated on only some parts of the supply chain.
That means if things go downhill you pretty much have no way to get some resources, tool or equipment spares and no knowledge how to remake those.

Re:No

[itzly]

Related. Here's a fun presentation from a guy trying to build a simple toaster from scratch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:No

[jafac]

Your air conditioning and clothes dryer are modern conveniences.

Solar can power modern technology. But a future, speculated civilization will have a much less convenient, and lower standard of living. Just because life is inconvenient, doesn't mean society can't advance. We discovered how to split the atom before we had antibiotics. (antibiotics are not really a necessary component of an advanced, modern civilization. They are a convenience. Yes, it is inconvenient when people die young from preventible diseases. But we can still get to the point where we could - in the future, transition from solar to nuclear; for cases where that scale of electrical power generation is necessary to continue to advance).

The problem with our current civilization is that people have placed convenience (and profitable enterprise enabling hoarding of personal wealth) beyond basic common-sense principles of long-term survival (sustainability). There are really two routes here. We can either choose sustainability over convenience. Or Nature will choose, for us (and we lose both). We may never get convenience back. But I think it's very doable to get sustainability back. Even without ready access to petroleum.

Another huge benefit we've had from petroleum is the advances to agriculture from the Haber-Bosch process. Basically; this converts energy into food (through synthesis of atmospheric Nitrogen into fertilizer). This is what revolutionized agriculture in the early 20th century, and allowed our population to explode like a test-tube full of hearty yeast and grape-juice. Economists argue that that population explosion was necessary for our modern, advanced civilization. I believe that thinking to be biased by short-term thinking. This path has absolutely devastated our options, as far as a sustainable future goes. Eventually, the yeast drown in their own waste (CO2 and alcohol - so fitting). That's what will happen to us. I am thankful that whatever civilization comes after us, will not be permitted by readily-available fossil fuels, to repeat this horrible mistake, because they will need to struggle to peak-out at a global population of 1 Billion. Yes - life will be inconvenient, nasty, brutish, and short. But civilization will remain sustainable.