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recman
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PostPosted: 22:21 - 12 Jan 2020    Post subject: What would the world be like today... Reply with quote

... if humans hadn't drilled for oil or mined for coal or used any other of its natural resources on any kind of industrial scale.
I'm not making an eco warrior statement, I'm just interested to hear what you think the physical appearance of the planet would be like and which direction would the human race have taken without using natural resources.
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chickenstrip
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PostPosted: 22:29 - 12 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think it would have looked something like this:

https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Earth-Pacific-Ocean.jpg

But instead, it looks like this:

https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Earth-Pacific-Ocean.jpg

Oh, what have we done?! Crying or Very sad
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Shaft
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PostPosted: 22:44 - 12 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Without using any natural resources on a large scale, we wouldn't have left the cave.

At the very least, you need something to sustain fire, so that's vegetation or natural mineral deposits (assuming we'd bothered to work out you can burn coal).

Without fire, you don't cook, you don't make usable pottery and you don't make metal tools on any kind of scale, so you have no reason to expand your population, or explore beyond the immediate area needed to sustain a limited settlement.

That means you don't often need to be in contact with other settlements, so you don't develop universal language.

At best, we might have just about got to the bronze age and stopped, we might even have gone extinct, we certainly wouldn't have the population we have now, not even close.
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Howling Terror
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PostPosted: 23:17 - 12 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Our big brains allow us to ….I forget but it was a salient point.
[edit] Oh yeah. Coal doesn't need mining and oil doesn't require drilling.
Large scale use of natural resources were used over 4 thousand years ago.

With our big brains some bright spark (geddit) would work out that tar is useful for waterproofing and keeping the night at bay, and predators.

Somebody would learn that chewing a plant would alleviate an illness and also learn some had antiseptic properties thus extending life.
Even without natural hallucinogens our brains are adept at lateral thinking. We can't help but explore in mind and in action.

There is always somebody in the tribe willing to find/make new paths.

Even with pandemics humans would expand in number and geographically.

I don't think we could have stayed at a point where we didn't 'advance' towards the industrial revolution.

We will continue to consume our own tail up until the end.

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Last edited by Howling Terror on 00:02 - 13 Jan 2020; edited 1 time in total
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Polarbear
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PostPosted: 23:19 - 12 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shaft wrote:


At best, we might have just about got to the bronze age and stopped, we might even have gone extinct, we certainly wouldn't have the population we have now, not even close.


And 83% of the worlds animal life wish we had.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study
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Shaft
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PostPosted: 23:40 - 12 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Howling Terror wrote:
Our big brains allow us to ….I forget but it was a salient point.


Think of new ways of using natural resources?

Except in this scenario, we can't, not on an industrial scale.

OP needs to look at the few populations of untouched natives who live in various places around the world.

They don't travel anywhere they can't get to and from in more than a few days, because extensive exploration means gambling that you can find recognisable food and water sources in places you don't know and, even then, you need to have figured out a way of taking enough food to sustain you on at least part of your trip.

But it's much easier to stay more or less where you are, while your ability to expand a population is controlled by the resources you have available - if you can't get enough food for everybody, the weak die.

Hence we have isolated pockets of people who have had no contact with the wider world, because they have neither the ability or desire (assuming they know there is a wider world) to do so.
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Riejufixing
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PostPosted: 23:42 - 12 Jan 2020    Post subject: Re: What would the world be like today... Reply with quote

recman wrote:
... if humans hadn't drilled for oil or mined for coal or used any other of its natural resources on any kind of industrial scale.
I'm not making an eco warrior statement, I'm just interested to hear what you think the physical appearance of the planet would be like and which direction would the human race have taken without using natural resources.

Without industry? Without scientific advance, then.

The world would probably have looked much as it did before the Chalcolithic period, i.e. in the Neolithic, but with a large number of advances in the general scale of things, housing, transport, farming, art. Whatever can be made or done without metal. Don't forget theat the Stone Age lasted a very, very long time, and we've only had about 10,000 years since.

What about humans? Would there be significant difference? Hm. What, say 500 generations would have passed. Perhaps we'd be resistant or immune to a lot of the old diseases like smallpox, but be susceprible to something newish such as ebola. I doubt we;d look much different or be less intelligent.
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Sister Sledge
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PostPosted: 08:57 - 13 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

A question I've asked myself many times that.
I can imagine that the seas would be teeming with life - overfishing and pollution has decimated numbers of sea creatures. Some shores of the UK do have protected status and it's very obvious when you visit one.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 10:48 - 13 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not exploiting natural resources? Then basically you're asking what the planet would have been like without humans at all!

Big hate on oil and fossil resources but hey, let's skip all the environmental damage done pre-bronze age: chopping down forests, cutting peat, draining bogs, setting aside farm land, stone quarries...
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WreckTangle
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PostPosted: 10:59 - 13 Jan 2020    Post subject: Re: What would the world be like today... Reply with quote

Riejufixing wrote:

The world would probably have looked much as it did before the Chalcolithic period, i.e. in the Neolithic, but with a large number of advances in the general scale of things, housing, transport, farming, art. Whatever can be made or done without metal. Don't forget theat the Stone Age lasted a very, very long time, and we've only had about 10,000 years since.



makes you wonder, the original poster says natural resources, does this include wood/stone? most of these advances need some kind of wood to build stuff with, so it makes you think if any of these things would be at all possible? Thinking

I would suspect if this was the case that we cannot use this, I suspect that the world will still be the green and lush garden it should have always been, and humans would still be swinging from tree to tree or still keeping to small hunter gatherer communities, hunting stuff with spears, oh wait, spears are made with wood..........hmmmm
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Skudd
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PostPosted: 11:03 - 13 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

There wouldn't be a society collective, you would be able to kill and eat anyone who looked or sounded different to you. You could kill and eat anyone who looked the same. There would be no such thing as rape, just something to hold your seed. Law would be set by the fittest, strongest or can sucker punch the next guy. The population would be minute too. Time would be measured in seasons.
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Triton Thrasher
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PostPosted: 12:11 - 13 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Skudd wrote:
There wouldn't be a society collective, you would be able to kill and eat anyone who looked or sounded different to you. You could kill and eat anyone who looked the same. There would be no such thing as rape, just something to hold your seed. Law would be set by the fittest, strongest or can sucker punch the next guy. The population would be minute too. Time would be measured in seasons.


Bikers.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 14:02 - 13 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Industrial Revolution is a thing that everyone points to but the most dramatic impact (on the planet) has to be Henry Ford's [refinement of] mass production and the Haber–Bosch process. Without either of these things we probably wouldn't be worrying about such things as climate change.

Consider world population:

It took around 2000 years for it to grow from 100 million to a billion.

It took around 200 years for it to grow from a billion to almost 8 billion Shocked

Take a moment to let that sink in.
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The Shaggy D.A.
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PostPosted: 14:05 - 13 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you take it that using "natural resources on any kind of industrial scale" refers to the Industrial Revolution onwards, then...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-industrial_society

Quote:
Attributes

Limited production
Extreme agricultural economy
Limited division of labor. In pre-industrial societies, production was relatively simple and the number of specialized crafts was limited.
Limited variation of social classes
Parochialism—Communications were limited between communities in pre-industrial societies. Few had the opportunity to see or hear beyond their own village. Industrial societies grew with the help of faster means of communication, having more information at hand about the world, allowing knowledge transfer and cultural diffusion between them.
Populations grew at substantial rates
Social classes: peasants and lords
Subsistence level of living
Population dependent on peasants for food
People were located in villages rather than in cities

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McJamweasel
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PostPosted: 18:52 - 13 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Howling Terror wrote:
I don't think we could have stayed at a point where we didn't 'advance' towards the AI singularity.


FTFY
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Sister Sledge
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PostPosted: 22:41 - 13 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

All this talk of the Industrial revolution but the Agricultural Revolution had a massive impact too.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 12:07 - 14 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sister Sledge wrote:
All this talk of the Industrial revolution but the Agricultural Revolution had a massive impact too.


Only to the extent that it enabled the most important lynch pin that gave birth to civilisation as we know it:

Brewing beer.
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Kawasaki Jimbo
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PostPosted: 20:07 - 16 Jan 2020    Post subject: Re: What would the world be like today... Reply with quote

recman wrote:
... if humans hadn't drilled for oil or mined for coal or used any other of its natural resources on any kind of industrial scale.
I'm not making an eco warrior statement, I'm just interested to hear what you think the physical appearance of the planet would be like and which direction would the human race have taken without using natural resources.

You don't miss what you've never had. I'm more interested to know what eco-warriors think the world will look like when they've put a stop to fossil fuel use without offering any immediate and practical fuel and chemical-feedstock alternatives. It's all very well David Attenborough saying governments already know what needs to be done, but how's society (including the eco-warriors) going to react if our leaders send us back to the Dark Age tomorrow before science and technology can come up with alternatives?
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RhynoCZ
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PostPosted: 21:24 - 16 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jimbo is right, you don't miss what you've never had. Look at all the tribes all over the world that have never, or very rarely, came into contact with the ''white man''. They live just like their ancestors did hundreds and maybe thousands of years before. Only using the resources that are available around them.

Also, nutrition (diet) is linked with intelligence. Meaning, children having enough food means their brains develop further (higher IQ) than those children who starved while growing up. That's why the nations who managed to farm the land thrived while those who were pure hunters stagnated.
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RhynoCZ
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PostPosted: 21:50 - 16 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sister Sledge wrote:
All this talk of the Industrial revolution but the Agricultural Revolution had a massive impact too.


The agricultural revolution made the industrial revolution possible.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 22:45 - 16 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

"We must do something now! Not in the next 10 years!!!"

Translation:

"We must execute at least *5 billion* people now!!!"
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mentalboy
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PostPosted: 23:10 - 16 Jan 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Easy-X wrote:
"We must do something now! Not in the next 10 years!!!"

Translation:

"We must execute at least *5 billion* people now!!!"


Preferably in the same manner as the French revolution... he says grabbing his rucksack and slinking off the grid! Laughing
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