Imagine a hypothetical alternate earth where there was no coal.
Could humans ever have invented things like current computers, the internet, and so on? Is there any alternate pathway of historical development that does not require coal, and achieves modern levels of technology?
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Burning wood? There are very few things that coal can do which wood cannot, albeit at a lower efficiency and higher cost.
the Chinese were piping and burning natural gas for energy before Jesus was born, so I'd guess it's possible to skip the coal step.
We have other fossil fuels right? Just no coal?
The US would not be the greatest country on Earth. Our success is largely because of our enormous coal deposits (there's a reason both sub periods of the Carboniferous are named after places in the US). But with other fossil fuels available we would simply rely on them more.
The question is, can you have an industrial revolution without the cheap condensed energy of coal, or an information era without the industrial revolution.
Historically, it really took off because of cheap coal deposits in the UK. Maybe that was a threshold thing, to reach a certain complexity.
Yes, but their industrial development biggybacked on the industrial revolution started by UK coal. Not sure they would have industrialized with natural gas, after all, as you say, they had it for ages.
Oh I think it's clear they wouldn't have. I think by the time the UK started burning coal the Chinese were actually moving backwards technologically.
It just seems likely that at some point someone would've put natural gas to use to drive machines. It's not like it was completely unknown, just fairly hard to get and transport. Well, unless you happened to have a lot of bamboo for drilling wells and making pipes.
>Imagine a hypothetical to coal
no, you tell me what is your alternative
to coal, since it is your hypothesis, fgt pls
I wrote alternative earth, as in a world like ours but without coal.
I am genuine uncertain whether we could ever invent, e.g. the internet in such a world.
I think the industrial revolution is possible, but not the revolution aspect of it, with the advances occurring over thousands of years rather than decades.