Comment

Skip electricity. That doesn’t matter until you can make reliable turbines with copper and magnets. Go to steam power first. It can move things. Which will speed up delivery of copper and magnets. But also teach them to plant trees. Every tree removed to smelt and power a steam engine needs to have three more planted. You could start greening the Sahara before umit even starts collapsing. “he sure had this steam thing figured out. I guess we will forgive him for all these useless trees”.

source

Sort:hotnew top

EddoWagt@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
A great master plan to prevent climate change, although the industrial revolution will start 2000 years earlier, so I’m not sure it matters

source
- FauxPseudo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
  The sooner it starts the sooner I can get back. :)
  
  source
ramblechat@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
I read they knew about steam power for a long time but couldn’t make the engines / containers / doohickies strong enough to contain the pressure.

source
- Zoboomafoo@yiffit.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
  That’s true, it was cannon technology that allowed steam engines to be created
  
  source
MonkderZweite@feddit.ch ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
Yes, electricity would be magic for medieval (and prior) people. Spells trouble for you.

But no, Steam… the principle was known and seldom used by ancient greeces and egypts already, but they couldn’t really utilize it, because metallurgy wasn’t there yet.

And Sahara was almost green 1000+ years ago, lots of oases.

source
GCostanzaStepOnMe@feddit.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
What is the ‘Carnot cycle’? - I don’t know

source
jarfil@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago

Go to steam power first. It can move things

They had steam power over 2000 years ago, they used it in temples and as toys to amuse the rich. Slaves could move things, and were mich cheaper.

source
- LufyCZ@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
  They might have had it, but they didn’t use it right
  
  source
  - jarfil@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
    They had no incentive to use it any better.
    
    Without a printing press, which would increase the levels of literacy, and allow sharing knowledge orders of magnitude faster, there was no indication that a kettle could ever outperform a hundred men or a few dozen horses.
    
    source
    LufyCZ@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
    It’s a loop - they didn’t use it right, so it sucked, which is why they didn’t try to make it better = they didn’t use it right.
    
    With the right knowledge, they might’ve just made proper use of it
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
Illegal_Prime@dmv.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
The problem with this is that you assume that wood is the best fuel source for steam. Very quickly you would realize that coal is far more energy dense than just about anything except nuclear fission. Planting trees is still a good idea though, but wood as fuel is utter shite on any large application.

source
- FauxPseudo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
  When starting out you don’t need the most efficient. You need what’s available. And I’d rather not reinvent coal mining and whaling.
  
  source