A World Without Oil

Moonshine mobility. Excellent.

You do see this sort of thing on the roads here on a reasonably frequent basis.

Fuel sometimes used is a cocktail of diesel, cooking oil, engine oil, fish oil and water. Only mildly emancipated from fossil fuel slavery.

Bring it on!

A world without oil would be so different.

If oil never existed then Noah's Ark may have sunk and key ancient battles may well have turned out differently.

This forum thread would not have started and our technological landscape would be very different.

Every aspect of history that involved oil in any way would be obliterated.

Really different.

Interesting 'social study'

Great link!!!

Kramarat asked:

"The list of accomplishments that never would have been achieved and the things we wouldn't have, seems endless. But what would life be like?

Would the planetary ecosystem be in perfect balance?

Would people all get along?

How would things be better?"

Despite the lenghty dialogue I did not see any attempt at answering his question.

In all likelihood the answer to all of them would be NO. We are finding evidence that from the earliest time mankind has done things to unbalance nature by over hunting , over grazing , clear cutting forest to make farm land or denude the cedar forest of Lebanon for things like temple building and ship building. What historical records we have show a constant progression of warfare. Archiologists have unearthed armies of clay figurines buried with Chinese emperors. Egyptian burial chambers depict armies and war chariots and in more recent times we have written records of mongol armies sweeping right up to European lands. So what part of this would suggest people got along better in pre oil days. So what would be better? Ask the noblity or the merchant class and they would say they always had it good. Good food to eat, fine clothes to wear and perhaps entertainment to persue; be it hunting or sports or . . . whatever. In that sense oil or the lack therof hardly made a dent in the historical record.

Rome expanded her borders of empire to pillage the natural resources of its neighbors. the gold mines of Spain, the lead and tin mines of Wales, Cornwall, and England, the corn fields of North Africa, and so on.

Now that oil is king, those countries with might are busy invading those countries who lack a strong standing army. Japan invading Malaysia in WW2, Russia invading Afganistan, The USA in the middle east. And where raw military might is deemed politically embarassing there is behind the scenes 'business' negotiations to take the natural resources of those who own it by those with the most influence or power.

You may as well speculate on what would the World be like if Zheng He had a successor

Back then, the 'resource' was pepper (or so they opine)

What is noticeable in history, is expansion is always about the 'resource of the day'. And when it's gained in volume, that 'world power' succumbs to gluttony and sloth, so fades, or falls, frequently by it's own addiction to excess.

In that context, "free oil" out of the ground is analogous to enslaving a population as "free labor".

It's all wonderful, until the real price arrives.

GA

Rereading this thread, I notice different views.

* We'd be happier without oil, living like Vikings, Amish, or Buddist monks.

* We could get along, perhaps without minor conveniences like chain saws and jet airliners. Technology would have evolved along different lines.

* Good engineers would have developed all modern conveniences, including moon rockets, by finding alternative solutions to problems which we solve today with petroleum.

For those with faith in finding substitutes, I would like to propose a challenge.

What would the world be like if all solids were opaque; there were no transparent solids?

What sort of device would you build for people who are nearsighted? (some sort of reflective optics? Pinhole lenses?) What would buildings look like with no windows or light bulbs? (We would live underground?) Could you build a reasonably fast automobile without clear glass or plastic? (Acetyline headlights?) How about a pressurized airliner? (Zeppelins won't do) What would astronomers be doing? Would TV exist?

Presumably your proposal that transparent solids did not exist is not because we've yet to find them but because they cannot exist. This is a dramatic proposal in an alteration in the laws of Physics on transparency. Remember, with the exception of collapsed matter, all solids are predominantly filled with empty space. A photon is "stopped" by an opaque object only because the orbitals of the electrons around a nucleus can be excited to precisely the same energy quanta jump of that photon. Whatever your new mechanism is that stops light, I personally doubt that you can limit this to solid objects because the difference between a solid and a liquid is not the average spacing of nuclei. So I would expect that one would also then have to have all liquids as opaque material. Now there would certainly be a point in a gas where the mean free path of a gas will permit light to travel unabated but there will also be a level where even a gas will be opaque. So I'll stop here and discuss the consequences of all solids and liquids having to be opaque.

With all liquids being opaque, eyes that can focus an image would not exist unless that image focusing came solely from reflective surfaces. It may also be impossible to obtain information of a reflection focused image because only the first layer of atoms of any liquid or solid would receive the energy. Thus I say that imaging eyes would likely never exist. We would never have developed any heuristic understanding of light. Our scientists may eventually discover the existence and importance of light. But our politicians and businessmen would instantly discredit any value in knowing about light and even the existence of light because they can neither make an immediate profit from it or any form of a useful weapon.

I also wonder if life itself could exist if light could not reach into water and the surface of the Earth. What would now be the kinematics of energy formed in or near the core of the sun for it to reach our planet?

You forget that there's a lot more to light than just the visible spectrum. If you altered the rules so that the visible spectrum resided at a different set of frequencies so that crown glass was as opaque as cardboard, we likely would have just eventually discovered a different material that did allow for our vision to see though.

"I also wonder if life itself could exist if light could not reach into water and the surface of the Earth. What would now be the kinematics of energy formed in or near the core of the sun for it to reach our planet?"

Actually, there are life forms/biological cycles that rely on other than light energy- best known, of course, are the life forms found around thermal vents in the deep ocean. Apparently, there are other forms deep below of the surface of terra firma, as well, that utilize other chemistries...

Now, having said that, I wonder if such wonderful things as mathematics, literature and religion would be possible if our only means of sensing the world were chemical signals?

Yes. If, for example, we saw in the UV, which would not be so far fetched if the sun were hotter, it would be hard to find transparent materials. Perhaps the the problem could be restated. As in Roman times, clear glass and plastic are difficult to make and are very expensive, and diamonds are scarce and expensive, also difficult to make into light bulbs.

You/us/Man, probably wouldn't be around if "all solids" included ice.

Some time last century, I read a novel called "The Death of Metal" ^{_{(or similar, or not perhaps, because I can't find it on the Nets)}}, where metals started to become 'fluid', losing all structural properties. That makes a good 'work around' conundrum.