# The World Without Oil **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 19, 2012, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258 "2012-03-19T21:33:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Olympus\_Mons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/b3f665/32.png) [@Olympus\_Mons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olympus_Mons)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/1 "2012-03-19T21:33:46Z")
Howdy. Just signed up here, though I’ve been reading for several years. I actually have two questions, which I figure have concrete answers, but feel free to move this thread if it’d be better somewhere else. First, suppose there had never been a time of the dinosaurs, they never existed, died, and became the thick, black stuff we pump out of the ground. The earth is just as old as it is today, but didn’t have all that life on it destroyed by a giant asteroid or other extinction level event. Then came the humans, doing what humans do. Would there be oil down there? Some? Almost none? (I’m not looking for a debate on evolution vs. creationism. Let’s assume the Flying Spaghetti Monster is in charge here.) Second, What would the world/society be like if oil didn’t exist. I’m curious about technologies, lifestyles, economies… that sort of thing. I’d imagine things like cars and probably plastics would be vastly different, but what else might be impacted? Not just Western cultures either, but Middle-Eastern or Asian (Southeast or otherwise) cultures. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/2 "2012-03-19T21:55:00Z")
Oil is not old dinosaurs. But I’ll assume you meant that figuratively, and as a result we have no coal either. But assuming there are humans for some reason, we have alternatives. Wood and alcohol can be used for fuel. The obvious change would have been in the Arabian Peninsula. It would likely be a sparsely populated region with little hope of development into the modern industrial age. The entire Industrial Revolution might have been slowed by the lack of coal and oil, but some believe we would have just found alternative means of achieving the same goals. ETA: Since this full of ‘supposes’ maybe GD is a better forum. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/3 "2012-03-19T22:18:21Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Oil is not old dinosaurs. But I’ll assume you meant that figuratively, and as a result we have no coal either. But assuming there are humans for some reason, we have alternatives. Wood and alcohol can be used for fuel. The obvious change would have been in the Arabian Peninsula. It would likely be a sparsely populated region with little hope of development into the modern industrial age. The entire Industrial Revolution might have been slowed by the lack of coal and oil, but some believe we would have just found alternative means of achieving the same goals. > > ETA: Since this full of ‘supposes’ maybe GD is a better forum. Anyway, I’d imagine that humanity would not be deterred by the lack of oil and that we would find other fuel sources - remember that the early industrial revolution was not powered by oil. Cars might run on alcohol - even in our world, the Ford Model T was/is a flex fuel vehicle and could run on ethanol. It just happened that people selected oil-based gasoline as the fuel of choice. I agree that this should go to GD. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/4 "2012-03-19T22:23:45Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > remember that the early industrial revolution was not powered by oil. It was fueled by coal though, which in my answer I supposed we also didn’t have. If oil was the only thing missing, I doubt there would be many great changes except in someplace like Saudi Arabia. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/5 "2012-03-19T22:40:35Z")
> [@Olympus\_Mons](#): > > Howdy. Just signed up here, though I’ve been reading for several years. Howdy. Once you’ve been here a bit longer, you will find that almost any conceivable question has already been asked and answered. Previous thread; [What would civilization’s path have been like without fossil fuels](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=543147) Enjoy. You have also posted this question in the wrong forum. GQ is for factual answers. Since this question is purely speculative, it belongs elsewhere. No big deal, but if you come back and your thread is gone, try looking in Great Debates. > [@TriPolar](#): > > It was fueled by coal though The early industrial revolution was powered almost entirely by wood. It was the depletion of the forests that led to industrial coal mining and the invention of coking. > [@](#): > > If oil was the only thing missing, I doubt there would be many great changes except in someplace like Saudi Arabia. Historically it would probably produce massive changes in the 20th century. Either they invent Fischer-Tropsch mush earlier or there are no internal combustion engines. Either one of those changes the course of WWII entirely. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/6 "2012-03-19T22:43:55Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Howdy. > > The early industrial revolution was powered almost entirely by wood. It was the depletion of the forests that led to industrial coal mining and the invention of coking. So you agree. > [@](#): > > Historically it would probably produce massive changes in the 20th century. > > Either they invent Fischer-Tropsch mush earlier or there are no internal combustion engines. Either one of those changes the course of WWII entirely. Ever heard of ethanol? ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/7 "2012-03-19T22:52:08Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Ever heard of ethanol? where do they get the energy to make it? Simple fermentation doesn’t result in a combustible mixture. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/8 "2012-03-19T23:06:59Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > So you agree. Only In these sense that your assertion is completely and utterly and totally wrong. The early industrial revolution simply was not fueled by coal. It was fueled by wood. > [@](#): > > Ever heard of ethanol? Ethanol isn’t a fuel, it is a storage medium. Even with modern technology, massive industrial plants and vast tropical sugar plantations, there is still no compelling evidence that we can produce energy from industrial ethanol production. There’s no chance at all that you could do so using 18th century technology in a temperate environment. Ethanol is like a battery. It stores energy from other sources in a convenient form, but you always need to put more energy in than you ever get back. Obviously you can’t power an industrial revolution using batteries. You need an initial source of fuel, and ethanol just ain’t a fuel. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/9 "2012-03-19T23:07:26Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > where do they get the energy to make it? Simple fermentation doesn’t result in a combustible mixture. Ever heard of distillation? People have been distilling liquor for centuries - it doesn’t take a genius to realize that if you can burn it, then you can somehow use it as a fuel. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/10 "2012-03-19T23:13:27Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Ever heard of distillation? You distill alcohol by heating it. Where does that heat come from? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/11 "2012-03-19T23:15:21Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Only In these sense that your assertion is completely and utterly and totally wrong. > > The early industrial revolution simply was not fueled by coal. It was fueled by wood. I did not state that the early industrial revolution was fueled by coal. I accept your apology. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/12 "2012-03-19T23:17:11Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > You distill alcohol by heating it. Where does that heat come from? It comes from burning wood. In this thread you can suppose we had no wood if you like, but you didn’t do that. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/13 "2012-03-19T23:21:35Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Ever heard of distillation? People have been distilling liquor for centuries - it doesn’t take a genius to realize that if you can burn it, then you can somehow use it as a fuel. And what are you burning for distillation? It’s turtles all the way down. You can’t burn your fermentation product. So you distill it. But that requires heat. So you burn ethanol to produce heat. But you can’t produce more ethanol from the distillation than you burned to power the distillation. On a small scale you can produce ethanol using solar stills, but to produce industrial quantities of ethanol in NW Europe you’d need millions of hectares of land just for the stills. Then of course we have the problem of where the feedstock is coming from. Starch only grows on trees, which means that you have millions of hectares of land devoted to producing feedstock for your solar distilleries rather than feeding your factory workers. So now you need to invent mechanised farming to compensate. But you if you start using ethanol to power the farm machinery, or to produce fertilisers or run irrigation pumps or to truck the produce to you solar distilleries, you are once again running at a loss and burning more ethanol than you can produce. Using the best that modern technology has to offer, Brazil hasn’t managed to unequivocally produce energy using ethanol. It’s a close-run thing, but consensus seems to be that they still use about 1.1 gallons of diesel to produce 1 gallon equivalent of ethanol. Some people suggest they might be just be running at a gain and flipping those figures. Either way, there’s no way that ethanol production is going to be energetically feasible in NW Europe using 18th century technology. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/14 "2012-03-19T23:27:23Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I did not state that the early industrial revolution was fueled by coal. :rolleyes: > [@robert\_columbia](#): > > the early industrial revolution was not powered by oil. > [@TriPolar](#): > > It was fueled by coal though Really, :rolleyes: > [@](#): > > I accept your apology. I didn’t apologise. And rather than putting words in my mouth, if you wish to retain any credibility you might wish to explain yourself. **robert\_columbia** stated that “the early industrial revolution was not powered by oil”. You quote those exact words and responded that “It was fueled by coal though”. Now you claim that you never said that the early industrial revolution was fueled by coal. So what exactly was the “it” that was “was fueled by coal”? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2012, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/15 "2012-03-19T23:32:57Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > It comes from burning wood. So you have forests to grow wood. And land dedicated to growing barley for ethanol. And you are burning wood to distill the ethanol from the fermentation of the barley. Cite! that this energetically positive. and also Cite! that NW Europe could manage to feed it’s population with vast areas dedicated to fuel forestry and fuel grain. and also Cite! that NW Europe ever had sufficient forests to supply both industrial ethanol and charcoal sufficient to maintain the industrial revolution. All those claims are ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/16 "2012-03-20T01:06:42Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > :rolleyes: Actually I have to apologize to you. I did not state that the early Industrial Revolution was fueled by coal, but I did not read the post I was responding to carefully, and I did not notice the word ‘early’. So in context my statements were incorrect. So I do apologize, and you were right. I hope that you will forgive my mistake. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/17 "2012-03-20T01:08:36Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > So you have forests to grow wood. > > … > > Cite! that NW Europe ever had sufficient forests to supply both industrial ethanol and charcoal sufficient to maintain the industrial revolution. > > All those claims are ridiculous. However in this case I did not connect all those things. Now you are putting words in my mouth. I merely contend that a lack of oil would not prevent the development of the internal combustion engine. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/18 "2012-03-20T01:39:18Z")
The only difference between oil you put in your car (typically alkanes) and alcohols is the OH group on the end. In this respect they are both energy storage mechanisms. The oil industry would be little different if when we put a hole in the ground it spewed alcohol. It is the fact that the stuff that comes out of the ground is storing energy from eons past that makes it important. The same goes for coal, which is, for all intents, overcooked oil. Up until reasonably recently it was as close to free energy as you could get. It is that part that matters. As **Blake** has been at pains to point out, any way of creating a fuel from basics requires at least as much energy to be put in as you are storing, which makes the whole question of how the development of the last century would have happened significantly different. Anything involving conversion of plant matter to fuel is essentially limited by the efficiency of the photosynthesis process, sunlight, and the amount of land and labour available. The rate of stored energy creation possible is much lower than that we recover from fossil fuels, by a very large margin. An industrial society based upon such energy remains essentially agrarian in terms of its capability to expand. Portability of fuel is the next most important aspect of its value. The difference in price per unit energy of natural gas versus petroleum is a good indicator of how much this is valued. Easy access to highly portable, essentially free energy in the form of oil is impossible to beat. Internal combustion engines can run on powder, liquid fuels and gas. What made the modern world was access to essentially free fuel in apparently limitless quantities. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/19 "2012-03-20T01:50:10Z")
We could, I suppose, take a totally different tack and define what we mean by “early” and give cites and on when timber began to be exhausted in Europe. Radical, I know. Let’s see. I found [Clean Coal Engineering Technology By Bruce G. Miller](http://books.google.com/books?id=b2W5S3Lb4fwC&pg=PA4&dq=coal+vs.+wood+industrial+revolution&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P9pnT_DyJezq0QH6tpWhCQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=coal%20vs.%20wood%20industrial%20revolution&f=false) that states on p. 4: > [@](#): > > In eighteenth-century England coal was the only available fuel because the supply of wood had become exhausted near the populated areas. He also says that steam engines were fueled by coal and implies but doesn’t state explicitly that this was true from the earliest widespread use of steam engines. Most people would associate the advent of the steam engine and the 18th century as a whole as early days in the industrial revolution. But even that may be too late a date. [Before the industrial revolution: European society and economy, 1000-1700 By Carlo M. Cipolla](http://books.google.com/books?id=Z3zCJ_sN6K0C&pg=PA180&dq=coal+vs.+wood+industrial+revolution&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P9pnT_DyJezq0QH6tpWhCQ&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false) pushes it further back. Starting on p. 180 he notes that the use of wood had literally stripped entire forest by the middle of the 16th century. The price of wood increased 500% in England between 1500 and 1650. He calls he situation at the latter time a “timber crisis.” And the existing supply of wood was already allocated for existing needs, says [Graeme Donald Snooks’s Was the Industrial Revolution necessary?](http://books.google.com/books?id=ZUBK9K5eXvIC&pg=PA37&dq=coal+vs.+wood+industrial+revolution&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P9pnT_DyJezq0QH6tpWhCQ&ved=0CGAQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=coal%20vs.%20wood%20industrial%20revolution&f=false). > [@](#): > > Given that a very substantial proportion of total timber output was needed to meet domestic fuel needs, and much more for long established industrial needs, the balance that could have been devoted to new manufactures would inevitably have been small. So it seems to me that unless you stretch your definition of “early” Industrial Revolution to the snapping point, the _entirety_ of the Industrial Revolution in England as it is usually defined, from the time of Watt’s steam engine in 1775 forward, was fueled by coal and not wood. This is also true elsewhere in northern Europe. It is not the case in the U.S. to be sure. [The party’s over: oil, war and the fate of industrial societies By Richard Heinberg](http://books.google.com/books?id=necqmudixhcC&pg=PA53&dq=coal+vs.+wood+industrial+revolution&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P9pnT_DyJezq0QH6tpWhCQ&ved=0CEIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=coal%20vs.%20wood%20industrial%20revolution&f=false) states that the shift to coal here did not take place until the mid-1880s and before that iron works were powered by charcoal. Snooks put the 50% point in the 1870s but post-civil War is the chageover in either case. Heinberg also notes how early Londoners had to switch to coal. Can we stop with the argument by assertion and go back to defining our terms and providing cites in GQ? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2012, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258/20 "2012-03-20T01:53:48Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > However in this case I did not connect all those things. Now you are putting words in my mouth. I merely contend that a lack of oil would not prevent the development of the internal combustion engine. No, that is not all that you contended. You contended that the internal combustion would be developed regardless of the presnece of oil, because ethanol would replace oil as a fuel source. And you contended that the ethanol would be distilled using wood for heating. Those are your actual contentions. And they are all nonsense for the reasons already pointed out. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-without-oil/616258.md?page=2)