These are all good points and I don’t disagree with you. It probably is worth pointing out that ever since about 1800 our civilization has had “the pedal to the metal” in terms of accelerating our demand for energy, i.e. an exponential rise in energy demand, and that demand has been consistently met and often exceeded—this is why we can afford to fill our personal cars with this precious fuel on a regular basis.
I think that a sufficiently forward-thinking civilization probably could base its energy production around biofuels, but a gallon of gasoline-equivalent would probably cost about a thousand dollars-equivalent. Building a skyscraper would be a project akin to manned space flight. Manned space flight would be completely out of the realm of possibility.
but a gallon of gasoline-equivalent would probably cost about a thousand dollars-equivalent.
I find this doubtful, being as ethanol (25 MJ/L) is nowhere near that expensive to create, and is fairly near the energy density of gasoline (35 MJ/L).
Consider the entire economy, though. Let’s not assume that ethanol could ever replace fossil fuels at the scale needed for explosive technological growth. the reason pure ethanol is cheap in the modern world is because we have enormous economies of scale producing the necessary feedstocks which rely on trucks and trains and fertilizers, hell, even the energy used to distill the ethanol is typically from fossil fuel.
It’s about supply-demand. If, tomorrow, there were no gasoline anymore, the price of ethanol would be astronomical.
Note, though, that we are talking about much smaller population—so you could spend quite a lot of land per capita on growing both ethanol source and fuel.
Current size of humankind is clearly unsustainable in this mode, of course.
Careful. Economies of scale for quantity million parts don’t show up until probably the 20th century. Prior to that, the effect of reduced population size might just be reduced variety. Do you have any idea how many manufacturers of engine lathes there were at the end of the 19th century, for instance? (Hint: more than a couple.)
These are all good points and I don’t disagree with you. It probably is worth pointing out that ever since about 1800 our civilization has had “the pedal to the metal” in terms of accelerating our demand for energy, i.e. an exponential rise in energy demand, and that demand has been consistently met and often exceeded—this is why we can afford to fill our personal cars with this precious fuel on a regular basis.
I think that a sufficiently forward-thinking civilization probably could base its energy production around biofuels, but a gallon of gasoline-equivalent would probably cost about a thousand dollars-equivalent. Building a skyscraper would be a project akin to manned space flight. Manned space flight would be completely out of the realm of possibility.
The more important question would be how hard it would be to get nuclear energy.
I find this doubtful, being as ethanol (25 MJ/L) is nowhere near that expensive to create, and is fairly near the energy density of gasoline (35 MJ/L).
Consider the entire economy, though. Let’s not assume that ethanol could ever replace fossil fuels at the scale needed for explosive technological growth. the reason pure ethanol is cheap in the modern world is because we have enormous economies of scale producing the necessary feedstocks which rely on trucks and trains and fertilizers, hell, even the energy used to distill the ethanol is typically from fossil fuel.
It’s about supply-demand. If, tomorrow, there were no gasoline anymore, the price of ethanol would be astronomical.
Note, though, that we are talking about much smaller population—so you could spend quite a lot of land per capita on growing both ethanol source and fuel.
Current size of humankind is clearly unsustainable in this mode, of course.
With a much smaller population you start losing all sorts of other advantages, especially economies of scale and comparative advantage.
Careful. Economies of scale for quantity million parts don’t show up until probably the 20th century. Prior to that, the effect of reduced population size might just be reduced variety. Do you have any idea how many manufacturers of engine lathes there were at the end of the 19th century, for instance? (Hint: more than a couple.)