Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2014 February 7

= February 7 =

Industrial Revolution and Fossil Fuels
The Industrial Revolution used and began our use of fossil fuels. But won't fossil fuels be used up? What is the answer of the people who originally began, invented and developed the Industrial Revolution?

Great Time (talk) 03:38, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * They are all dead. How do you expect them to answer questions? AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:46, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, in De re metallica, Georgius Agricola was already aware that ores did not grow back inside the earth over time, but the idea was still current enough that he made a point to refute it. Wnt (talk) 04:09, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Except in Red Alert and the like... 67.169.83.209 (talk) 10:50, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Not everybody believes the lies!
 * "What If Crude Oil Is Likely NOT Fossil Fuel! Not Created From Dead Dinosaurs and Plant Life? Likely Is Available Continuously And In Almost Limitless Supply? What if crude oil is non-biological and the Earth creates new supplies constantly? What if scientific teaching for the past 120 years is dead wrong? The ramifications are HUGE! N.A.S.A. (National Aeronautics and Space Administration made the initial discovery! The New World Order is coming! Are you ready? Once you understand what this New World Order really is, and how it is being gradually implemented, you will be able to see it progressing in your daily news!! Learn how to protect yourself, your loved ones! Stand by for insights so startling you will never look at the news the same way again. YOU ARE NOW ON THE CUTTING EDGE"
 * Disclaimer: I just repost this stuff, I don't believe it. Gzuckier (talk) 04:22, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * It seems to my memory that some people did express such concerns about 100 years ago, but I do not know where to find a supporting reference at this time. You might wish to search in Category:Peak oil.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 04:20, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I think an educated guess can be made. Those who began the industrial revolution and began to exploit fossil fuels could not imagine their depletion. They could not imagine the society that would eventually be borne from fossil fuels and the industrial revolution. The rate at which fossil fuels were being used at the beginning of the industrial revolution is minuscule to the rate they are being used now. Did they lack foresight or imagination? I doubt it. They assumed that the way of life then would be the way of life into the future. They could not foresee how technological innovation would change society. — TimL &bull; talk 08:42, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * In 1897, Svante Arrhenius was the first to recognize that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. In the paper where he reported this discovery, he explicitly noted that the carbon dioxide created by industrial activities could eventually change the climate.  However, he estimated that it would take thousands of years for humans to burn enough fossil fuels in order to have a noticeable impact.  People who lived during the industrial revolution couldn't imagine that we would burn fossil fuels so quickly that depletion would be a worry until the distant future.  Dragons flight (talk) 09:20, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Both Henry Ford and Rudolph Diesel at first planned to have their cars run on vegetable oils or ethanol, both of which are renewable resources. See e.g. here, . I don't know if they were motivated by sustainability, or perhaps it had more to do with relative costs at the time. Biofuels are currently a large topic of research, with billions of government and private investment money being spent around the world. Experts expect "break points" in the cost of biofuel production in the next decade, but fossil fuel prices were much higher back when Ford and Diesel were developing their industry. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:51, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Going back a bit earlier, Richard Arkwright's Cromford Mill, one of the earliest examples of a factory in the modern sense, was water powered. Alansplodge (talk) 16:37, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Fuel depletion was well-known by 1940s but consider PR slants: For the ageing industrialists, the PR slant was about endless energy and the future was to be nuclear power, to reduce power grid coal/oil consumption or recharge electric cars. Even before the deaths of Henry Ford (1863–1947) and son Edsel Ford (1893–1943), the problems of fossil-fuel depletion were known, from prior boom/bust periods, such as with whale oil peaking in the 1850s (see File:US Whale Oil and Sperm Oil Imports (1805-1905).jpg). Robert Malthus had written his infamous An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, predicting "the end" due to mass starvation (etc.), and so Malthusian catastrophes were an undercurrent eroding hopes for technological progress. The gusher at Spindletop occurred on 10 January 1901, as the start of the Texas Oil Boom and the rise of U.S. leadership in oil production. However, many leaders of the Industrial Revolution, as showmen or salesmen, had incomes which depended on illusions of endless resources, and so expect deathbed confessions rather than the "corporate stance" to bemoan a resource crisis. Mid-20th century predictions had forecast the end of fossil fuels by 2000/2010, to be overcome by the rise of nuclear power helped by hydro-electric dams, but the new fossil-fuel revolution has come with increased processing of shale oil plus horizontal drilling or offshore drilling and reduction of natural-gas flaring, coupled with high-efficiency engines/automobiles and solar/wind farms, etc. Look for revelations in memoirs written by children of the early industrialists, who were perhaps teenage workers among their family factories. -Wikid77 18:17, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree with the comments on the usage rate being so much lower initially that it looked like we had thousands of years worth. As far as when people get concerned, if a fossil fuel is likely to become scarce in your lifetime, then that might justify different behavior, like building a house to maximize solar heating in winter and minimize it in summer.  Unfortunately, many CEOs of companies only have a 5 year career once they make CEO, so may not be concerned with the long-term health of the company, including transitioning from fossil fuels. StuRat (talk) 23:48, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * And the obsessive daily reporting of share prices tells us that most big investors couldn't give a damn about the long term situation either. Buy today, sell tomorrow. HiLo48 (talk) 00:07, 8 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, we should eliminate long-term capital gains taxes and charge much higher short-term capital gains, to encourage investors to invest for the long term, and thus pressure the companies they invest in to also do so. StuRat (talk) 19:50, 8 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Someone once said, "In the long term, we're all dead," which is why humans tend to focus on the short term. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:58, 8 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, and it's hard to get people motivated to care about people 1000 years in the future, no matter what we do. But many of our environmental problems are likely to have serious consequences in our lifetimes, or at least those of children and grandchildren, so it should be possible to motivate people to do something about them, as long as our incentives are not all set to much shorter terms than that. StuRat (talk) 16:25, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
 * It would be interesting to see a survey that compares the level of concern across different age groups. A reasonable bet would be that the ones least concerned are the oldest. But that's based on anecdotal evidence. A more rigorous study would be interesting. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:18, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Even if the "fathers of the industrial revolution" (whoever you imagine them to be) had been utterly foresightful and responsible, had recognized the nonrenewability of fossil fuels and advocated, say, conservation, once the various genii were out of the bottles, someone was going to use them for all they were worth. The Tragedy of the commons, and all that. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:05, 9 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, in many ways this is a temporal version of the tragedy of the commons. However, it's worse, because with the traditional case, a democracy or enlightened despot can proclaim that whatever resources are being used up by a few should be preserved, and take actions to preserve them.  However, in the temporal version, the people being deprived of the resource are future generations, which have no vote in a democracy, and are also probably a lower priority to an enlightened despot. StuRat (talk) 16:32, 10 February 2014 (UTC)