Though technology may allow us to circumvent the need for fossil fuels in the future, could the industrial revolution have happened without them? We couldn’t have gone from burning wood to H2 fuel cells. What does this mean about the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe? An Industrialized world can not exist without all the ingredients to fossil fuels, including millions of years of previous life and plate tectonics to name a few. And does this create a standard problem for any civilization? A catch 22? You can’t become industrialized with out the use of fossil fuels, but once you start using them you have only a few hundred years before their use will possibly destroy civilization, or at the very least seriously retard it.

No fossil fuels are not a requirement.

They just help speed up the process. Communication and the spreading of ideas are more important to the rise of civilization and industrialization, than are fossil fuels.

What would have powered industry? Windmills and water wheels? There has to be a source of power. You can know exactly how to make steel, but without the power to do it, it's not industry. Technology enables technology. It's the chicken and the egg, we could not have gotten here without power.

Communication is nothing without power. Leonardo DiVinci had ideas, but no power to implement them.

In general the distribution of renewable energy is reasonable and the distribution of fossil fuel is territorial. Why would anyone favour renewable energy sources over fossil fuels?

maybe the aliens domesticated some kind of organism that can be sculpted to fit the needs and do work for the the aliens. Maybe these organisms are extremely efficient and only require a little food. Maybe the aliens themselves are able to endure extreme cold and do not need the heat provided by the burning of fossil fuels.

remember that life on another planet does not have to resemble life on Earth

Xerrex's suggestion has sparked off the idea off the idea of nanoplants. They wander about photosynthesising and when they're 'full' they march along to the furnace and either jump in or unload their little bundle of carbohydrates into the furnace and then go off and do some more photosynthesising . Simple sensors based on light intensity and the concentration of CO2 should enable them to find the best spots to lie about in and enable them to find their way home when fully charged.

Xerrex



We called them horses and oxen(camels and elephants and even goats).

Men could have developed a civilization based on the exploitation of natural forms of energy if we hadnot found fossil fuels(except coal).

Just remember the 2.9 billion year span where single celled life formed the immense stores of petroleum and natural gas is probably a prerequisite of multicellular life so any equivelent alien culture would likely have access to the same resources as man.

Grumpy

To assume that life and/or civilization has to develop the way Earth has is just plain preposterous. We are extremely limited in our perception to what we can see around us and by what has happened in the past. We do not now what life on another planet would be like, so we cannot say that they would develop the same as us. Take for instance Iceland... ran entirely off of nature. Virtually all of our technology could have been developed without the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels just allowed us to develop at a quicker pace.

I think you have to look at what things are necessary for intelligent(?) life to evolve! (go away messenger & dad1) to the point past the fossil fuel zone (whatever that may be).

With my limited knowledge, I would out forth this list of requirements for an intelligent life form to evolve: Okay... so define intelligence at the same time...

1) Long time for the process of evolution to produce intelligence, 2-5 billion years say?
a] Is a reptilian intelligent life form possible?
b] What about a plant?
c] Is a water born intelligence equivalent to ours possible? (I know we are questionable in our intelligence:)

2) opposable thumb or other mechanism to fashion tools.
a] multiple hands on one arm?
b] tentacle?

3) some means to communicate across small distance (voice in our case).
a] sign language
b] chemical

4) curiosity!
a] Large brain

5) Stable planet in orbital green belt!
a] Liquid water

this list is not complete (obviously) but I hope to spur some discussion on the minimum requirements for intelligent life.

Krreagan

I would think that there is a minimum dexterity requirement. Industrialization starts with manipulating your environment. Marine mammals are very intelligent, but I doubt they could have become industrialized. They lack dexterity.

I don't discount all marine life from becoming industrialized. Though, imagine industrialization without the harnessing of fire! Wasn't that our first step that is truly unique among the animals? opposable thumb, communication, tool making, all than did not lead to industrialization. It was fire I think. The harnessing of external power sources is needed.

Most of our exothermic based industrial processes are very inefficient though.

The great advantage of fossil fuels over 'traditional' sources of energy, which allowed the spread of industrialization, is that they are very good energy storage mechanisms. You can take oil or coal from one place to another, let it sit until you want it, then release the energy. Industry, to a certain degree, has always existed... but it was limited to where and when the power was available.

Are the use of fossil fuels an essential step for technological advancment? I don't think anyone can say that with the lack of data at hand ( just us. )

What are some alternatives? I think the most promising alternate line of development would be biological. It's quite possible life elsewhere may develop a facility for biological manipulation that would allow it to use specialized life forms to fulfill many of the functions that we required fossil fuels for.

Such "bio-industry" would of course look nothing like what we use. It would be both superior in some ways and limited in others. So you have the question: by "industrialized" do you mean "industrailized like us?"

If we one day find a TV broadcast from some other world, and they where exactly like us I would be very disappointed. I mostly wanted to get some ideas as to what an industrialized civilization without fossil fuels would look like. In 100 years fossil fuels will be too prohibitively expensive for much large scale use. We will have industry without fossil fuels, but only after using them to get a jump-start on science and industry.

I think that there could be industrialization without fossil fuels, but an intelligent species would be seriously inhibited. The existence of fossil fuels would increase the chances of industrialization (in regard to Carl Sagan's equation for possible extraterrestrial life). According to his rough guess-tamate equation there should be enough industrialized life in our Galaxy to have picked up a radio signal by now. Maybe we are the first, definitely the first within 100 light years.

For life to exist at all it requires energy. Not necessarily solar (deep sea vents) but energy none the less. Life needs to be able to store that energy. Once stored it is going to be available to be released by other means.

What came first - FIRE.

A natural phenomenon - caused by lightening etc and flammable material. Any living creatures that stored energy become flammable given the right circumstances - they are dry and the atmosphere contains oxygen. The necessity of "fossil" fuel is debatable - but fuel itself is not.

The interesting question is can you get "civilisation" in a reducing atmosphere? First life on earth was anaerobic. The oxygen in our atmosphere today is the accumulated excretia of photosynthetic bacteria over billions of years.

Take a deep breath - enjoy that ancient bacterial p*ss and sh*t!!!