RAR: Welcome to GreenPunk

[Simon_Jester]

The tricky bit about sustainable forestry is that it takes a century or so to get trees up to the size where you can use them for certain applications (such as the masts of ships). The temptation to cut them down early is very hard to resist, especially in a 19th century economic milieu.

@Simon-Jester. It's a RAR, guessing is allowed

My objection mostly is that there isn't enough framework to make guessing very practical. The "first man on the moon" target is... pretty remote from the questions we have a good chance of answering.

I went and had a look at Clippers, becuase I recalled them falling out of use not because of steam, but because only steamships could use the Suez. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper#Decline
Given they started building clippers with auxiliary steam engines, I guess the scheduling and reliability was worth the investment and lost cargo space. Still, that quoted paragraph is very interesting for our purposes. It suggests
1) sailing ships will continue to dominate long distance shipping

Yes. Coincidentally, this means that the great canals will not happen or not matter much, which means that everything takes much longer to be shipped "'round the Horn..." which in turn means the entire international commercial economy is less significant. The Pacific and Atlantic 'worlds' never become as tightly integrated.

2) charcoal boilers will be limited to shortish trips and high value goods

Also, a charcoal-burning steamship may never be as fast as a coal or oil-fired one...

3) The increase in fuel/cargo efficiency will drive the construction of larger ships as fast or faster then real world.

Ah, but iron is in shorter supply, and you really need iron hulls to build ships that can handle more than a few thousand tons of cargo. Especially with prime timber for shipbuilding getting chopped down left and right because of massively increased fuel demands.

There are few applications for which cheap access to mass-produced metal makes more of a difference than shipbuilding.

[madd0ct0r]

Hmm.
I've just had a look at the Cape Horn wiki page, and one of the last routes that were important for it was Australia -> Europe.
Given that will now be one of the most efficient routes, I guess Australia will be an important trading country.

It's fun setting the table here to rank by date - ironclads and full steel ships only start to completely replace new build wood ships by 1878, which is relatively late in the revolution I think. With steel being so much more expensive to produce, you might see wooden ships for longer yet. I suppose it depends on the relative costs of wood, peat, iron, steel and profit available in shipping.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la ... ng_vessels

Pity, because who wouldn't want a world full of these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preussen_(ship)

[Purple]

Steam power was never much used on most canals in the UK, or most of the rest of Europe until very late in the industrial revolution though. The average canal was too small and fragile to withstand the prop wash of powered vessels. On the other hand horsefeed was incredibly cheap even if the movement was slow, and it was plenty reliable. Later on people began enlarging canals, and also adapted trolley canal systems, but this took a long time to take root and saw many smaller canals simply abandon or greatly reduced in importance.

Yes, but in this setting steam power has been removed thus removing railroads as a viable alternative. And so the slow and steady version of canal shipping does not have a fast and steady counterpart and must perform both roles. Which it obviously can't. That's why I mentioned the horse drawn alternative but dismissed it. Ultimately it gets A job done, but it's not THE job that needs doing in this alternative setting.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmm.
I've just had a look at the Cape Horn wiki page, and one of the last routes that were important for it was Australia -> Europe.
Given that will now be one of the most efficient routes, I guess Australia will be an important trading country.

Already was to a considerable extent. But I should have said "round the Cape," not "round the Horn;" the Cape of Good Hope is if anything more of an issue.

It's fun setting the table here to rank by date - ironclads and full steel ships only start to completely replace new build wood ships by 1878, which is relatively late in the revolution I think.

One important point is that iron and "composite" (wood with iron reinforcement) hulls begin to replace wood earlier than that- and that the second wave of the Industrial Revolution was heavily dependent on the availability of fast, reliable global shipping. So delays here contribute to delays elsewhere.

Note that it's the largest and most efficient of the new ships that are being removed from the picture by making iron construction uneconomical, too...

With steel being so much more expensive to produce, you might see wooden ships for longer yet. I suppose it depends on the relative costs of wood, peat, iron, steel and profit available in shipping.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la ... ng_vessels

Pity, because who wouldn't want a world full of these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preussen_(ship)

Do remember that wood gets a lot more expensive, fast, if everyone in Europe is burning wood to heat their homes.

[Guardsman Bass]

You could eventually use electric motors and generators powered by your water/wind/peat-burning power supplies to duplicate some of the benefits of steam-powered industrialization . . . maybe. Technology was slowly accumulating before Industrialization IRL, but I don't know how path-dependent electricity-as-technology was upon any industrial technology that came before. Electric Motors first showed up in the 1820s, but that was after a two-century period of using coal for power.

I think what you would actually get is a lot more emigration out of Europe to the Americas and elsewhere in the 16th and 17th centuries.

[madd0ct0r]

hmmm, didn't consider that.

I think wood resources compared to coal will be the key thing to get a handle on

I've also done some digging and peat has potential as coal replacement. Not as energy dense, but smokeless. It's also quite common, if you don't mind raping the enviroment.

[Simon_Jester]

You could eventually use electric motors and generators powered by your water/wind/peat-burning power supplies to duplicate some of the benefits of steam-powered industrialization . . . maybe. Technology was slowly accumulating before Industrialization IRL, but I don't know how path-dependent electricity-as-technology was upon any industrial technology that came before. Electric Motors first showed up in the 1820s, but that was after a two-century period of using coal for power.

I think what you would actually get is a lot more emigration out of Europe to the Americas and elsewhere in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Emigration in that era wasn't going to proceed fast enough to overcome population growth- again, small, slow sailing ships make it harder to do things we would take for granted today.

On the other hand, you'd also have more death due to illness and malnutrition in Europe, because it would be harder to heat homes and cook during the winter months.

[Purple]

Speaking of america, without the cheap and convenient transportation provided by railroads much of it would probably not be so heavily colonized at the time.

[Simon_Jester]

Railroads start to matter in the US in the 1830s and are playing a huge economic role by the 1860s.

[Elheru Aran]

The US does have a very decent and vital central waterway in the Missouri/Mississippi River network, though. In New England also, there's some decent canals, of which the Erie is the best known.

I suspect though that in this setting, you'd see a LOT more cities on coasts and rivers. Inland cities might become less common unless some form of railroad is economically practical; they do still have the steam engine in this setting.

One thing I'm thinking is that the personal automobile might be a lot less common, unless they can come up with a version of the Stanley Steamer that can use alternative fuels (the original used kerosene, I think?).

[cadbrowser]

Please forgive my overactive imagination, but I would venture to wonder why hasn't the plausibility of sugarcane been mentioned as an alternative source of fuel. Surely an alternate timeline could include the use of ethanol as a fuel source for either steam power or internal combustion itself, yes?

In India, between the sixth and fourth centuries BC, the Persians, followed by the Greeks, discovered the famous "reeds that produce honey without bees". They adopted and then spread sugar and sugarcane agriculture. A few merchants began to trade in sugar—a luxury and an expensive spice until the 18th century. Before the 18th century, cultivation of sugar cane was largely confined to India. Sugarcane plantations, like cotton farms, were a major driver of large human migrations in the 19th and early 20th century, influencing the ethnic mix, political conflicts and cultural evolution of various Caribbean, South American, Indian Ocean and Pacific island nations.

Could there be a potential then for this history to alternate so that India ends up becoming a vast early pre-modern superpower for the production of sugarcane ethanol...or possibly earlier conquest/colonization once it has been determined that this source could be utilized?

Or am I missing the mark completely since it may not be economically efficient to do it that way?

[madd0ct0r]

Seems you are bang on the mark:

Ethanol’s first use was to power an engine in 1826, and in 1876, Nicolaus Otto, the inventor of the modern four-cycle internal combustion engine, used ethanol to power an early engine. Ethanol also was used as a lighting fuel in the 1850s, but its use curtailed when it was taxed as liquor to help pay for the Civil War. Ethanol use as a fuel continued after the tax was repealed, and fueled Henry Ford’s Model T in 1908. The first ethanol blended with gasoline for use as an octane booster occurred in the 1920s and 1930s, and was in high demand during World War II because of fuel shortages.

http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/energy/biofuels/ ... and-policy

If I get my desk cleared today I'll write a spreadsheet comparing various feedstocks: wood, residual biomass, sugar cane, beet, jatropha, rubber seed, algae ect and various output forms: fuelwood, charcoal, biogas, bioethanol, biodiseal by climate and solar pontetial energy

[cadbrowser]

So, quite possibly then, in the alternate history where there is no coal/oil, the idea might be that alcohol never gets taxed as a liquor due to the increased need/demand to keep the Industrial Revolution marching forward.

[LaCroix]

And huge fuel producing slave plantations would exist all over the sub/actual tropics, slavery never abolished because growing sugar for fuel would be such an essential good.

[cadbrowser]

I wondered about that, however; cotton/sugar and other slavery driven commodities didn't stop the abolishment in the current timeline. With the advent of the industrial revolution (which could still happen in this alternate timeline albeit at a potentially reduced pace) large machines could do the work of hordes of slaves in a much more cost effective way.

That almost makes you wonder if, in time, slavery would've just eventually become too expensive anyway and inevitably fell out of favor without a U.S. Civil War.

[Simon_Jester]

Please forgive my overactive imagination, but I would venture to wonder why hasn't the plausibility of sugarcane been mentioned as an alternative source of fuel. Surely an alternate timeline could include the use of ethanol as a fuel source for either steam power or internal combustion itself, yes?

The main problem there is cultivating sugarcane intensively- without petrochemical fertilizers. And without a large scale industrial transportation network to move the fuel you've produced. The resulting fuel will be very pricey and may not compete with, for example, natural gas-burning cars that run off a gasifier that in turn runs on a diet of wood chips.

Honestly, gasifier-driven cars and trucks are one of the few kinds of automobile likely to be viable with petrochemical fuel out of the picture. Moreover, the technology to build them and make them practical is pretty much available for a nation with an early 20th century technical base, which cannot be said of, say, electric cars.

Could there be a potential then for this history to alternate so that India ends up becoming a vast early pre-modern superpower for the production of sugarcane ethanol...or possibly earlier conquest/colonization once it has been determined that this source could be utilized?

India was already pretty much reduced to dependency by the British by the time 1800 rolls around. And the idea of mass-scale distillation of sugarcane (or sugar beets or other crops) into ethanol is only going to come about after agricultural productivity hits something at least vaguely resembling modern levels.

So, quite possibly then, in the alternate history where there is no coal/oil, the idea might be that alcohol never gets taxed as a liquor due to the increased need/demand to keep the Industrial Revolution marching forward.

The interesting question is whether ethanol can come close to filling gasoline's role as a cheap fuel. Remember, if you want to see the benefits of widespread use of motor vehicles, it's not just enough to have "this thing you can put in a car and make it go." You need the new fuel source to be at least roughly as cheap and cost-effective as the thing it replaces.

It's hard to do that when the fuel you're replacing is (in the context of 1900) this stuff that literally spurts out of the ground when you dig a hole in the right place, and specifically a fraction of the stuff that nobody else wants for anything.

[LaCroix]

I wondered about that, however; cotton/sugar and other slavery driven commodities didn't stop the abolishment in the current timeline. With the advent of the industrial revolution (which could still happen in this alternate timeline albeit at a potentially reduced pace) large machines could do the work of hordes of slaves in a much more cost effective way.

That almost makes you wonder if, in time, slavery would've just eventually become too expensive anyway and inevitably fell out of favor without a U.S. Civil War.

The problem is that the main cause of abolishment was that it was simple to replace manual work by machines due to lots of cheap coal/oil. Since this isn't around, fuel is an expensive commodity. Cotton and sugar weren't really produced in an industrialized way back then, India's cotton industry struggled in the late 19th century because they still harvested manually - it was simply the fact that labor in india was so cheap it did't register in comparison to the cost of slaves (food/housing, care, procurement, and also guarding) or shipping cost of cotton to Britain, making slavery a money sink.

Even though, up to the american civil war, the US were the main vendor of cotton, India only contributed to about 30% of Britains imports pre-war, (but tripled it's production during war years.)

And that is cotton, which isn't bold letter important as coal and oil. If you consider that sugar/ethanol production has to produce the world's usage of coal/oil of that time, as well (and cotton/tobacco, as a secondary pillars of income on top), I think the term "necessary evil" will be used quite liberally.

[cadbrowser]

The main problem there is cultivating sugarcane intensively- without petrochemical fertilizers. And without a large scale industrial transportation network to move the fuel you've produced. The resulting fuel will be very pricey and may not compete with, for example, natural gas-burning cars that run off a gasifier that in turn runs on a diet of wood chips.

Ah, I hadn't thought about that...the petrochemical fertilizers that is. This makes sense. Would you then argue that it would be nigh improbable to acquire "modern" levels of cultivation without petrochemical fertilizers? I mean, aren't there other ways to get fertilizers without oil? Why not do what they do in Iowa? Spread liquefied cow dung before planting.

I would've thought though that if there is an alternate fuel source, then the natural consequence would involved the development of a large scale industrial transportation network (ITN) eventually. Take for instance the coal/oil sources in our real timeline. I may be wrong, but the ITN for it [petro] wasn't pre-developed before its discovery. Sure we had ships and etc, but it had to evolve to accommodate its desired global needs.

In the context of this exercise, I am under the assumption that if, for whatever source there was found, priority would be given to it for its development as a robust and cheap commodity. It seems there are ways, potentially, around some of the problems.

Honestly, gasifier-driven cars and trucks are one of the few kinds of automobile likely to be viable with petrochemical fuel out of the picture. Moreover, the technology to build them and make them practical is pretty much available for a nation with an early 20th century technical base, which cannot be said of, say, electric cars.

Could this technology then be a plausible step at establishing an ITN and then upgrading it? Think about it, if priority was given to the development of sugarcane ethanol, the leftover bagasse could be used in lieu of the wood chips...eventually that is. With the absence of oil/coal, something would have to take its place. I'm not saying sugarcane is definitely it, just exploring the possibilities.

India was already pretty much reduced to dependency by the British by the time 1800 rolls around. And the idea of mass-scale distillation of sugarcane (or sugar beets or other crops) into ethanol is only going to come about after agricultural productivity hits something at least vaguely resembling modern levels.

Well, but in context for this thread we need to not consider what did happen, but what could happen...right? I am arguing that if suitable natural alternative fertilizers could be found, then the agricultural explosion would potentially come about as (for argument's sake) ethanol became a required necessity for the Industrial Revolution...as did the infrastructure eventually did (quite rapidly I might add) for oil/coal.

The interesting question is whether ethanol can come close to filling gasoline's role as a cheap fuel. Remember, if you want to see the benefits of widespread use of motor vehicles, it's not just enough to have "this thing you can put in a car and make it go." You need the new fuel source to be at least roughly as cheap and cost-effective as the thing it replaces.

Oh right, yes...I totally agree with you here. However, I would put forth that cheap would be a relative term, in this exercise. No longer do we have the coal/oil commodities as a base for cost comparison; It has been eliminated from the equation. Research would have to show that any alternative fuel source chosen would be done because it was the cheapest during that time frame.

It's hard to do that when the fuel you're replacing is (in the context of 1900) this stuff that literally spurts out of the ground when you dig a hole in the right place, and specifically a fraction of the stuff that nobody else wants for anything.

Fair point. Which is why this thread is very appealing. I think humans like a good challenge.

[LaCroix]

You'll probably see huge plantations of Black Locust trees everywhere, too (like in Hungary - it's everywhere and mostly used for heating and construction) - it's premium firewood, grows extremely fast and straight (instead of huge twiggy masses like other trees), and without any special needs or care.

Its charcoal ist one of the most energetic ones, very close to soft/brown coal, in fact. (Only Osage wood is better suited for coal, but grows slower, as far as I know.)

It's that suitable for those purposes that there are plans to introduce it to poor nations in order to enable energy independency of some degree.

[cadbrowser]

The problem is that the main cause of abolishment was that it was simple to replace manual work by machines due to lots of cheap coal/oil. Since this isn't around, fuel is an expensive commodity. Cotton and sugar weren't really produced in an industrialized way back then, India's cotton industry struggled in the late 19th century because they still harvested manually - it was simply the fact that labor in india was so cheap it did't register in comparison to the cost of slaves (food/housing, care, procurement, and also guarding) or shipping cost of cotton to Britain, making slavery a money sink.

Even though, up to the american civil war, the US were the main vendor of cotton, India only contributed to about 30% of Britains imports pre-war, (but tripled it's production during war years.)

And that is cotton, which isn't bold letter important as coal and oil. If you consider that sugar/ethanol production has to produce the world's usage of coal/oil of that time, as well (and cotton/tobacco, as a secondary pillars of income on top), I think the term "necessary evil" will be used quite liberally.

I understand what you are trying to say here however, I guess I was trying to say that sugar would've been given priority (in the same vain that oil/coal was back then) in order to produce said fuel source. So the machines would've possibly came about in much the same way to make it cheaper to replace slaves.

I think the "necessary evil" aspect would've been utilized during the time, from an alternate history perspective, prior to the "new" Industrial Revolution. Heck, I would even venture to think that slavery would've hit an even larger apex as a lot more bodies would be required to meet the ensuing global demands.

Again, just entertaining the ideas from the perspective of the original post is all.

[cadbrowser]

You'll probably see huge plantations of Black Locust trees everywhere, too (like in Hungary - it's everywhere and mostly used for heating and construction) - it's premium firewood, grows extremely fast and straight (instead of huge twiggy masses like other trees), and without any special needs or care.

Its charcoal ist one of the most energetic ones, very close to soft/brown coal, in fact. (Only Osage wood is better suited for coal, but grows slower, as far as I know.)

It's that suitable for those purposes that there are plans to introduce it to poor nations in order to enable energy independency of some degree.

That puts an even crazier view of the alternate history in my mind. For some reason I see vast military bases constructed to guard these forest plantations. This almost sounds like a fun idea for a RPG or MMORPG. Wars for Wood...think about it.

[LaCroix]

Would there be United States as we know them? I mean, railroad made a huge difference in expansion, as well in the Mexican-American war, and the Civil war, on top.

We'd also have the American South producing fuel, fuel the North would massively depend on for its military industry. So instead of industrial North steamrolling the south, we would see huge problems in keeping the North running without southern alcohol. Also, while "Cotton dipolmacy" was a complete failure, "Alcohol diplomacy" would see France and Britain running to support the south, not unlike we see the US running towards any middle-east oilfield in peril these days...

For similar reasons, I see Russia having troubles holding its territory together. The British, though, were quite able to keep their empire running by sail, so I don't see much difference for them.

Come to think of it, sail would probably stay competetive forever - I can't see the word being able to fuel the shipping industry we do have now. Which also means in military context, we'd probably still have Man-o-wars slugging it out in 19xx, as turrets don't mix too well with sails.

[madd0ct0r]

just googled 'turret and sails' - well, that's one idea that sank, repeatedly

Torpedos would still be good, and once capable they'd be devastating against wooden ships. With the improvements in machining and calibre fit I think we can expect over the revolution guns would be getting both lighter and more powerful. (see the carronade aka Smasher).
I wonder if a hull mounted artillery piece would be possible?

[Purple]

Honestly I don't think that's how it would work out. With large ships fuel efficiency would only cut into range. Thus navies around the world would end up experimenting with alternative-to-steam ships until they end up with what happened in real life. The only difference is that nations without huge empires to dot with plenty of refueling posts would be even more screwed than they were historically.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yes, but in this setting steam power has been removed thus removing railroads as a viable alternative. And so the slow and steady version of canal shipping does not have a fast and steady counterpart and must perform both roles. Which it obviously can't. That's why I mentioned the horse drawn alternative but dismissed it. Ultimately it gets A job done, but it's not THE job that needs doing in this alternative setting.

Horse drawn railroads are entirely viable though, at least in a country the size of England and some afterall did exist, if becoming rapidly undercut by locomotives. Its much better then a horse drawn vehicle on a road if nothing else. Much cheaper to build too because they are so slow you can just use strap rail and not care, and because you are slow also build very tight radius curves, reducing the amount of heavy engineering involved. It wont work too well in say America, but over shorter European distances such railways are likely to be prolific in places canals simply cannot be built. Gravity and cable driven railways will also be more prolific in suitable areas as they can use hydro power in some instances, and if wood or peat burning, well, it just works out better to have stationary engines for lower energy fuels. Then you can have a very large grate area for the boiler without any design problems. This may also cause what steam driven railroads do exist to adapt a larger 'standard' gauge in the end.

Belgium also had a very silly dog railway, but it only moved mail. Unmanned too making it the first AUTOMATIC railway! By automatic I mean the dogs chased a dead rabbit on a stick attached to the railway carriage.

I'm going to go out on a big limb and say pneumatic propulsion will fail as bad as ever because of the sealing issue prior to the 20th century. Though pneumatic mail tubes might connect some cities, and could get fairly large in the absence of high speed rail mail.

All and all I think lack of power for factories will matter a lot more then the shortage of steam motive power for railroads.