by Laromi » Sun 25 Nov 2012, 06:54:53
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'b')y Beery1 » Fri Nov 23, 2012 3:09 pm
How on Earth do you think we can fuel technological advances without plentiful cheap energy?
Technological advances don't come to a society whose people are starving. The RHS of the bell curve will involve us desperately trying to feed the 5 billion people who cannot exist without cheap and plentiful oil. If there is to be a technological answer to peak oil, we needed to find it 20 years ago.
The likelihood of us finding a technological solution to peak oil now or in the future is about the same as expecting Leonardo da Vinci to invent and produce a working television in the year 1492.
Beery1, since the beginning of recorded history some folk have lived in abject poverty, others in obscene grossness and until c.1860 (Belgian engineer Étienne Lenoir) there were reputedly no reliable gasoline motors. The point here is, people "did" exist without cheap and plentiful oil and conducted scientific research to boot.
As to Leonardo da Vinci, his foresightedness into flight encouraged the scientific community to experiment, particularly at a time when getting "burned a the stake" was pretty popular. The fancy of flight overcame all obstacles put in the pathway of success by the nay-sayers.
Fossil fuels were available in Leonardo da Vinci's times coal was utilized for cooking etc, light oils and pitch for lighting but that was their only practicable use at the time. Petrol was basically a by-product of kerosene manufacture until petrol/diesel motors were improved to a point of reliability and had a few wheel added.
Thales of Miletus (c. 620 - c. 546 B.C.) - abstract geometry, Pythagoras of Samos astronomy/geometry, to realize the Morning Star and Evening Star were the same, Euclid of Alexandria, (c. 325-265 B.C.), who deduced light traveled in straight lines or rays, and wrote a textbook on algebra, number theory, and geometry that is still relevant. And meanwhile, you claim "It was not human brainpower that ignited the inventions".
"What powered the industrial revolution was cheap and abundant energy" may be so, but how, initially,to deliver that power was the trick, and utilizing steam deduced through the scientific process was not an overnight invention, much like the push for new and radical energy sources now occurring in our own time, but it was that utilization and unforeseen applications of steam that drove the Industrial Reveloution, e.g. Jenner and his cotton mills.
"And you think we'll go on inventing new utopian stuff in a post peak world?" Yes, I most certainly do, written - albeit anecdotal history, has proven that people don't stop thinking to advance their take on life, no matter what. For instance, what did the person who invented the flame thrower have in mind for such an insidious device?