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economic growth is not only dependent on a trust in the future and the willingness of people participating in a capitalist system to reinvest their profits in increasing production, economic growth also requires energy and raw materials

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we often hear that energy and raw materials as we know them today will not exist forever, and we wonder what will happen when they run out and as they begin to run out

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what has happened, however, historically, is that every time there is a threat that dwindling resources will slow down the economy, there is an increased amount of investment into scientific research to find new resources

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scientists have for the most part always found ways to exploit existing resources more efficiently or to discover completely new types of raw materials in order that the economy can continue to grow

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consider the vehicle industry

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over the last 300 years, humans have manufactured billions of vehicles: cars, wagons, trains, carts, motorcycles, airplanes, ships, and space shuttles

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one might have thought that this would have exhausted our resources by now of materials available for vehicle production and that today we would have far fewer raw materials to produce vehicles than in 1700

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yet just the opposite is the case

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in 1700 the global vehicle industry relied mainly on wood and iron

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today we have plastic, rubber, aluminum and titanium which were unknown to our ancestors in 1700

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in 18th century, cars, wagons and ships were built mainly by human muscle energy

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today machines mainly make vehicles which are powered by combustion engines and nuclear power stations which didn't exist 200 years ago

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the production of almost all other materials has patterned these changes as well

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industrial revolution

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the main change that occurred is that humans are now surrounded by almost limitless quantities of raw materials

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the main goal became to find ways to harness and control all of this energy and raw materials

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what is lacking is not energy but ways to harness it

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over the last two centuries, every few decades scientists have managed to discover new sources of energy, new raw materials, and new ways of harnessing them for our needs

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breakthroughs

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1. 1700: steam engine to extract water from deep in the coal mines

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first time coal is used not to heat something but to move something

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early 18th century

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forests cut down to fuel growing economy

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suffered from a shortage of firewood

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began to use coal

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many coal mines were located in water-logged areas, swamps, rivers, and lots of water

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when miners went deeper into the mines, they suffered from flooding

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invented steam engine

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burn some kind of fuel like coal, use the resulting heat to boil water, steam expands, as the steam expands, you use it to push a piston, steam pushes piston, and anything you connect to the piston moves along with it

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it converts heat energy into movement

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it's very easy to understand that I burn coal into order to boil soup (heat to heat)

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but the idea that I could burn coal to move something was counter-intuitive which is why it took thousands of years for people to come across this idea

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one of the first applications was to run a pump which was used to extract water from the bottom of the mines

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2. 1700s: used steam engines to weave clothing

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the beginning of the Industrial revolution

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turned England not only into the leading industrial nation in the world but the leading economic and political power

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3. 1825: used steam engine to move vehicles

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drew wagon along an iron rail

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the train connected the coal mine to the nearest harbor

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1830: first commercial railway line, moving goods and people, Liverpool and Manchester

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4. 1850: England had 10,000 kilometers of railroad tracks

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broke psychological barrier: by inventing the right machine, you can use almost any raw material in the world for any kind of energy you want

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you are not limited to heating coal to heat water, but heating coal to move vehicles

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20th century: immense about of energy holding energy together, how to release it

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forty years between e=mc2 to atomic bomb

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5. internal combustion engine and petroleum

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revolutionized human transportation

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turned petroleum into liquid political power

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petroleum had been known for thousands of years

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the ancient Syrians knew about it; e.g. waterproofed ships, lubricate axles

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the idea of fighting wars for petroleum would have sounded ludicrous to Ghengis Khan, Caesar, and Napoleon

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6. electricity

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in 1800 people knew about electricity but played no role in society

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used by magicians to surprise people

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used in scientists in various experiences

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the industrial revolution was thus a revolution of energy

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the only limit set on the amount of energy that we have is set by our ignorance

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since the 18th century, every few decades new sources of energy and ways to harness them have been found

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thus the sum total of energy available to human kind keeps growing instead of shrinking

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the world does not lack energy, what it lacks is the ability to find new sources of energy and to harness and convert existing sources of energy to our needs

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the amount of energy stored in all the fossil fuels on earth is negligible to the amount of energy that the sun releases free of charge

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up until the industrial revolution, humans got almost all their energy from plants

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eating plants

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feeding plants to work animals

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burning wood

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in the industrial revolution we realized that there is much more energy out there to harness

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raw materials

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once you know how to harness large amounts of energy cheaply, you can also largely solve the problem of the limited source of raw materials

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if you are running out of iron in mines in Sweden, you can apply more technology to mine at the north pole

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when Britain ran out of wool to make clothing in the factories, they imported it from the other side of the world, from New Zealand

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new materials

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plastic, produced in high amounts after WWI

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materials that were discovered

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silicon

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aluminum, discovered in the 19th century

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for many decades it was more expensive

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Napoleon III used aluminum cutlery for his best guests

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end of the 19th century, found ways to extract aluminum cheaply

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today, we produce 30 million tons of aluminum today

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Germany in WWI blockaded, shortest of saltpeter (used in fertilizers, rocket propellants and fireworks)

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natural deposits were e.g. in Chile

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knew they could use ammonia instead, but it was too expensive

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Jewish German chemist Fritz Haber discovered for producing ammonia from normal air