The Value of Petroleum Fuels (Comparing 1840 to 2015 )

wattsupwiththat.com ^ | December 26, 2015 | Guest essay by Andy May

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[thackney]

In 1840 crude oil and natural gas production and use were rare. Coal was used in manufacturing, but steam engines were still in their infancy. So the world in 1840 was fossil fuel free for the most part.

Rail roads?

http://www.american-rails.com/1840s.html

By 1840 the states east of the Mississippi River boasted over 2,800 miles of track and this number quickly rose as the decade wore on.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Bottom link not working.

[thackney]

http://www.american-rails.com/1840s.html

[Dr. Sivana]

Windmills would not appear until 1854.

Off the coast of Philadelphia, theer was a windmill dating to the mid-eightenth century

Windmill Island was named for a windmill built in 1746 by John Harding and his son. Legendary pirate stories evolved from the execution of three men who were hanged on the island for looting a ship. http://ilovebricks.blogspot.com/2010/11/windmill-island.html

I doubt that was the only one.

[thackney]

The first English settlers in North America were aware of windmills and their laborsaving benefits. But no one built one in the first colony, Virginia, for fourteen years. That was in 1621, when Governor George Yeardley erected a windmill on his James River plantation, Flowerdieu Hundred, where a replica stands today. The Massachusetts settlers constructed their first windmill in 1631.

http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/autumn02/windmill.cfm

[stocksthatgoup]

I am sure I heard fossil fuels were all used up 15 years ago.

[Alas Babylon!]

I really liked the article and the point it made (technology = good, better) but...

Hydropower was not in common use until after 1849.

Just not so!

Hydropower was first! Most all of the industrial revolution mills started at the Fall Line of the various riverine systems, first in the Northeast and then spreading down the East Coast, where the swiftly flowing water could turn wheels and gears used to weave cloth, mill things, and provide industrial power.

The article the writer linked to (1849) covers only hydro-electrical power--not hydropower. Two separate things.

[notdownwidems]

I am sure I heard fossil fuels were all used up 15 years ago.

Yeah! peak oil...what happened to that?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Sorry...I was referring to the bottom link in the article,.

Not the one you posted.

From the comments at WUWT regarding the article....

Some interesting comments started by this comment :

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zemlik says:

December 26, 2015 at 3:50 pm

hello,

you are saying something like the burning of fossil fuels is a good thing because it makes it possible for there to be more people ?

[Buttons12]

Windmills would not appear until 1854.

Good news, Don Quixote!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From the comments at WUWT:

**********************************************EXCERPT******************************************

jmarshs says:

December 26, 2015 at 4:16 pm

I had a client involved in rail roads. Like many, I thought that rail roads were a thing of the past. But moving freight by rail is incredibly efficient.

https://www.aar.org/BackgroundPapers/Environmental%20Benefits%20of%20Moving%20Freight%20by%20Rail.pdf

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Ernest.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Hydropower was not in common use until after 1849. Solar power had not been invented yet.

Oh yes it was. I have it on good authority that the Sun has been in existence for a huge number of millenia.

Solar power collectors had not been invented yet.

[Vince Ferrer]

At that time railroads used wood. So much so that they projected that America would have no trees left by 1900, which caused them to switch to coal.

[Vince Ferrer]

Hydropower was not in common use until after 1849. Solar power had not been invented yet.

They probably had a bit of hydro power with water wheel mills. They actually used a lot of solar power. They stored it in grass, which powered the oxen.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

I read a book on the history of light which I can’t remember the name of now but it was amazing what awful choices we had for lighting even up to the early nineteen hundreds. Lighting was expensive as was travel. We take a lot for granted now. Everybody rags on Big Oil and Big utilities but they have made our lives so much better than our ancestors. Thank you Exon, Thank you PG&E.

[CPT Clay]

Bump

[CPT Clay]

Really cool article!!!