I recently thought about the possibility that trees with lignin, like those on Earth, might not develop in all cases. It’s entirely possible that local tree species might use a different substance (such as silicon, chitin, etc.), making their wood non-flammable, or that they might simply not have trees.
Inventing fire shouldn’t be a problem; there are plenty of things that burn, from grass to fat.
However, what about higher temperatures? What would they do without coal (both hard and charcoal)?
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Couldn’t oil and gas still form without the need for trees?
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Yes, Petroleum comes primarily from phytoplankton and algae. Hence why where its found on land is where: shallow sea bed has been pushed inland, like the arabian peninsula moving into eurasia. Or where seas have receded, like in texas.
The only 2 preconditions for oil, are biomass, and a lack of ability to reclaim it. Oceans form this by letting photosynthesizers die and sink to the sea floor, where there remains are left in the anoxic pelagic ooze, which is then buried and insulated by sediment like pelagic clay. Thus, you get oil shales, where the clay settled into clay rock (shale) and captured a lot of dead things before they could rot, allowing them to fully metamorphize into hydrocarbons.
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Would there be any problems with a civ using oil as it’s first dense burnable heat source instead of coal on a large scale?
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In terms of attainability? No. People have been using crude oil and tar for niche uses long before the industrial revolution, even Natural gas street lamps are pre-industrial.
Though on earth, the use of coal was as replacement for firewood due to deforestation, which then kicked off the industrial revolution in britain. Which implies that you would already need a reason to burn things before using fossil fuel. So back to square 1 with no wood civs.
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Wasn’t it already mentioned you could use those instead of wood initially perhaps?
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Maybe? I don’t know how long a finite tar supply would hold out in evolutionary time though. Industrial time is hundreds of years at most. Fire use is at least hundred thousands. Even just society is still thousands.
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If they used grass or fat instead shouldn’t that be renewable?
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I spaced that lol. That doesn’t bode well for the whales of the treeless planet.
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I mean there are other fat sources other than just whales. Like some ground dwelling animals too.
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It looks like sapient organisms will cause a mass extinction no matter what they do.
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Are we sure our extinction is a mass one yet?
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The issue is the one recent paper which states we aren’t in a mass extinction seems to have cherry picked those species that are not being as affected. Is it leaning denialist because of the new attitude toward research funding on those topics like environment convservation?
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I suppose we’re in progress of an extinction but we could still prevent it from becoming one of the mass extinctions.
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You can also use other sources of fat, such as vegetable oil (which is also technically a fat). The Romans, for example, used vegetable oil for lighting.
But the real question here is whether there’s a way to use fuel other than wood to generate high temperatures? Without high temperatures (at least 1000°C), you won’t be able to create ceramics or melt even copper. Ordinary plants and fats/oils burn at low temperatures (~200°C). The only non-wood fuels that can be used to create high temperatures are oil and peat (~1000°C, which is comparable to coal)
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Would peat be renevable enough to sustain a society-stage civ’s metalworking industry?
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This is untrue. You can either use Electricity and Salt Water or Ashes of certain plants to make a caustic, then use that caustic to make pulp, and use the pulp to make Paper-Clay/Clay- Mâché, which will hold up like proper Ceramics, requiring only the temperature needed to burn the plants to ash (or to make the electricity, though that would be easier with wire). Certain Kelp Ash would work well for this.
I don’t think so. Peat forms slowly. I believe it takes 1000 years for a meter thick deposit to form. I think the modern world depletes it much faster than that, and you are talking about using much more than the modern world does.
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This is something that i also have already tought about, and I think that while wood is definitely not the only biological material that can catch on fire, a wood-like material is basically necessary for its descovery. Our ancestors came into contact with fire enough to learn what it was and how to harness it only because forests regularly catch on fire, so much so that animals instinctively learned to be scared of it. After you discover fire you can use it to burn whater you want and you discover fats and oil are great alternatives, but you first need to harness fire, and unless your planet has crude oil oceans or animals with fat reserves outside their body, a flammable plant is pretty much the only way you can learn.
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[quote=“Poodelicus, post:17, topic:8789”]
This is untrue. You can either use Electricity and Salt Water or Ashes of certain plants to make a caustic, then use that caustic to make pulp, and use the pulp to make Paper-Clay/Clay- Mâché, which will hold up like proper Ceramics, requiring only the temperature needed to burn the plants to ash (or to make the electricity, though that would be easier with wire). Certain Kelp Ash would work well for this.
[/quote]
What’s the point of papier-mâché if it requires electricity? Electricity requires smelting metal. Simply roasting clay with oil or peat is much easier.
Peat reserves, while smaller than coal or oil, are still sufficient to sustain the industrial revolution for some time. Consider the availability of oil, too.
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I would say once you have a grass or oil fire going, potash seems more doable than electricity, since the constant wattage you need for electrolysis requires a fair amount of engineering with at least copper metal.
Potash only requires that you soak the ashes, and then collect the leachate and evaporate it. Doing this would be, still difficult without pottery or wood.
Soda Ash, in particular, is used as flux to significantly lower the melting point of sand in glass manufacture, down to the 600 Cs.
Also ash glaze is a thing. That might help some of the mud pots. Though that’s still a 1000C, drat.
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