Comment by eugenekay
19 hours ago
We would probably be dramatically farther behind in the Materials Research conducted by the chemical companies underlying the fossil fuels industry, which has itself been necessary to the improvements in battery & semiconductor technologies we are now enjoying. Polyimides don’t invent themselves!
“What If?” history is fun, but there are always Tradeoffs.
So, Material Science research progress wouldnt have been possible without burning all the stuff for decades in all types of combustion engines? :-D
Where do you think the fancy metallurgy for a modern combustion engine came from?
Is the oil industry the secret benefactor of more breakthroughs? That’s some steelmanning.
You have it entirely backwards: Oil is refined to create feedstock chemicals for everything from beauty creams to jet engine ceramics to lithography intermediates to hydrogenated oils and decaffeinated coffee. It is these new and inventive uses which have continuously increased demand for the raw resources and driven research.
Since WWII where Germans mastered production of fuel from coal oil is not necessary for feedstock. China is ramping up using coal to produce methanol and other precursors for its chemistry industry. Then Teraform startup managed to produce methanol via CO2 capture from atmosphere using solar batteries.
So in alternative world where oil would not be available coal will serve its role. The only big difference would be less geopolitical tensions as coal is much more evenly distributed.
And in yet another alternative where even coal is not available something like modern civilization will still be possible but the path to it will be entirely different.
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Hard to imagine being farther behind than a static page with no services.