What are the odds that future Scadrial - 1980's, Cyberpunk, or Era 4, is going to be covered in smog?

[Ixthos]

What are the odds that, despite Scadrial being cleansed at the end of Era 1, that future Eras will involve the sky once more covered in ash, this time manufactured by humans? Despite Harmony trying to Preserve, the humans can still choose to Ruin, and those who were given clear skies made them dark.

[StanLemon]

I could see that happening 

[AonEne]

I'd love the poetic symmetry in that, though it would also be really depressing. Having a side plot of "let's find clean energy!" would be a really cool side effect of this.

[Frustration]

38 minutes ago, AonEne said:

Having a side plot of "let's find clean energy!" would be a really cool side effect of this.

not sure I'd agree, that seems kind of... off? Irregular? Out of Place, there Out of place

[StanLemon]

I would find it very interesting, particularly for the era 3 setting. Plausible even. Though I doubt Scadrial would generate as much smog as we have given their potential for clean energy with mechanical Investiture. 

[AonEne]

25 minutes ago, Frustration said:

not sure I'd agree, that seems kind of... off? Irregular? Out of Place, there Out of place

I mean, we know practically nothing about Era 4, so I wouldn't say we exactly have a place to be out of

[Honorless]

The odds are pretty high, I'd say. It seems far too thematically appropriate for Scadrial to always be covered in a grey haze.

[Quantus]

This might be overly naïve and hopeful, but given their relatively recent cultural memory of the Ashmounts, I think they will be more conscientious about Air Quality than we were on earth.  And as far as we've been able to tell they do not have any significant fossil fuel use (so far) which will impose some practical limits on their potential damage. 

 

5 hours ago, Honorless said:

The odds are pretty high, I'd say. It seems far too thematically appropriate for Scadrial to always be covered in a grey haze.

I entirely agree, but I think it will be an evolved Mist that has gained more Ruin.

[+Oltux72]

On 28.1.2021 at 2:07 PM, Quantus said:

This might be overly naïve and hopeful, but given their relatively recent cultural memory of the Ashmounts, I think they will be more conscientious about Air Quality than we were on earth.  And as far as we've been able to tell they do not have any significant fossil fuel use (so far) which will impose some practical limits on their potential damage.

They almost exclusively run on coal. Even the Final Empire already had coal mines. All those highrises in Elendel mean a lot of steel.

They may, however, convert to electrical power sooner than our Earth. Southern technology opens up the possibility.

[Quantus]

38 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

They almost exclusively run on coal. Even the Final Empire already had coal mines. All those highrises in Elendel mean a lot of steel.

They may, however, convert to electrical power sooner than our Earth. Southern technology opens up the possibility.

It's admittedly not the firmest of WOB's, but he says the use biodiesel etc instead and that finding alternative sources is going to be a plot/culture point in the future.  

 

Quote

 

Cadmium (paraphrased)

You're in Houston, questions of Oil & Gas and energy sources will be naturally be bandied about.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Naturally.

Cadmium (paraphrased)

Is the gasoline on Scadrial a fossil fuel or biodiesel?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Oh. Hmm. Well It's fossil fue... No. What they're using now is mostly biodiesel, I think. It's not something we really talked out.

Cadmium (paraphrased)

Ok, we had a whole thread on 17th Shard and even discussed how scientifically fossil fuels could have been put into place during the Catacendre.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Well, fossil fuels are possible, and I don't want to seem like I'm clearly giving credence to those that believe in a Young Earth, but Scadrial is a relatively young planet. Relatively.

Cadmium (paraphrased)

Young Earth doesn't bother me, though I know I'm not the majority.

Cadmium (paraphrased)

Where on Scadrial is it being produced? No mention of refineries in Elendel or the Roughs.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Where on Scadrial... Well it's... I'm going to have to RAFO that for now. It starts to touch on questions of the future as they will need more fuels for travel and they'll need to look for different sources.

Calamity Houston signing (Feb. 24, 2016)

 

 

[+Oltux72]

23 minutes ago, Quantus said:

It's admittedly not the firmest of WOB's, but he says the use biodiesel etc instead and that finding alternative sources is going to be a plot/culture point in the future. 

Spook met coal miners in Urteau. The trains of the Elendel Basin run on coal, not liquid fuel. Wax is fighting on fuel tenders.

Now, the motor cars may be operating on liquid fuels, but they are a minimal share of the energy usage on current Scadrial. Most likely they use most of their energy on heating and hot water. And that is done with coal (or gas made from coal). That is how things are done at such tech levels. The advantage of being pumpable that liquid fuels have is much lower, while manual labor is still cheap and also apply to gas for stationary applications. And the Northern Scadrians seem to have an ideological issue with burning food, which is what biofuel is directly or indirectly doing.

[Quantus]

37 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Spook met coal miners in Urteau. The trains of the Elendel Basin run on coal, not liquid fuel. Wax is fighting on fuel tenders.

Now, the motor cars may be operating on liquid fuels, but they are a minimal share of the energy usage on current Scadrial. Most likely they use most of their energy on heating and hot water. And that is done with coal (or gas made from coal). That is how things are done at such tech levels. The advantage of being pumpable that liquid fuels have is much lower, while manual labor is still cheap and also apply to gas for stationary applications.

I wasnt trying to say they were running on liquid fuel, just on non-fossil fuels from biomass, presumably that were being processed into charcoal. 

But if you have a quote showing actual Coal Minors removing fossil fuels from the ground, that's all kinds of interesting to me, Im just surprised it didnt come up in the bod debate the WOB is referencing (presumably that happened here). 

37 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

And the Northern Scadrians seem to have an ideological issue with burning food, which is what biofuel is directly or indirectly doing.

what?

[+Oltux72]

2 minutes ago, Quantus said:

I wasnt trying to say they were running on liquid fuel, just on non-fossil fuels from biomass, presumably that were being processed into charcoal. 

But if you have a quote showing actual Coal Minors removing fossil fuels from the ground, that's all kinds of interesting to me,

Hero of Ages, chapter 26

Quote

Another conversation spoke of work in the mines. Spook felt a chill and a flicker of rememberance. The men spoke of a coal mine, not a gold mine, but the grumbles were the same. Cave-ins. Dangerous gas. Stuffy air and uncaring taskmasters.

 

2 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Im just surprised it didnt come up in the bod debate the WOB is referencing (presumably that happened here). 

People are looking only at the books of the era they are discussing. I am not surprised.

2 minutes ago, Quantus said:

what?

Spook has forbidden planting anything but fruit trees in Elendel. Can you square that with using a field that could grow food for growing fuel?

[Quantus]

34 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Hero of Ages, chapter 26

That settles that as far as Im concerned, the shards must have created the planet with fossil fuels baked in to the recipe.

34 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Spook has forbidden planting anything but fruit trees in Elendel. Can you square that with using a field that could grow food for growing fuel?

Offhand, anything from peat to some version of the seaweed that Roshar uses iirc.  

[ScadrianTank]

On 27.01.2021 at 10:39 PM, Ixthos said:

What are the odds that, despite Scadrial being cleansed at the end of Era 1, that future Eras will involve the sky once more covered in ash, this time manufactured by humans?

Elendel factories are doing that already. 

Shadows of Self Chapter 3: 

Quote

“If they did care,” bowl-head said, “they’d do something about all those factories and power plants, dumping ash on us. We ain’t supposed to live in ash anymore. Harmony said it, he did.”
Wayne nodded. Good point, that. These building walls, they were ashen. Did people care about that, on the outside? No. Not as long as they didn’t have to live in here. He didn’t miss the glares Wax and Marasi drew, pointed at them by people who passed behind, or who pulled windows closed up above.

 

[Ixthos]

8 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

Elendel factories are doing that already. 

Shadows of Self Chapter 3: 

 

I meant more in a "the sky was the colour of a TV tuned to a dead channel" kind of way, but fair enough  what I'm referring to is the idea of Scadrial once again being a planet of ash and smoke.

Edited July 7, 2021 by Ixthos
tuned, not turned

[ScadrianTank]

Just now, Ixthos said:

I meant more in a "the sky was the colour of a TV turned to a dead channel" kind of way, but fair enough  what I'm referring to is the idea of Scadrial once again being a planet of ash and smoke.

Ash and smoke are exactly what you get in an early industrial revolution - there's just not enough people in the Basin for it to really show. Not really Neuromancery, yes, but I doubt that a bunch of regular old humans could pollute so badly that the sky will change color. 

[Ixthos]

4 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

Ash and smoke are exactly what you get in an early industrial revolution - there's just not enough people in the Basin for it to really show. Not really Neuromancery, yes, but I doubt that a bunch of regular old humans could pollute so badly that the sky will change color. 

Not enough to change the sky yet - that's why I said the 1980's or Cyberpunk, after there is enough industry going on for the sky to be clouded as though there were Ashmounts active again.

[+Oltux72]

11 hours ago, Ixthos said:

I meant more in a "the sky was the colour of a TV tuned to a dead channel" kind of way, but fair enough  what I'm referring to is the idea of Scadrial once again being a planet of ash and smoke.

They are gaining the technological base for mechanical allomancy and feruchemy. Iron feruchemy gives you a perpetuum mobile. There is just no way around that. You do not build your houses with chimneys and other facilities for using coal, oil or gas, while you have essentially free electricity. That is a question of cost. We do not know how this scales to smaller plants, so the cars may still run on fuel. And some metalurgic and chemical uses still need coal. You may see pollution, but not on a level of comparable times on Earth. And it will be concentrated in industrial areas. Think Ruhr Valley rather than Los Angeles smog or London killer fog.

[Ixthos]

2 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

They are gaining the technological base for mechanical allomancy and feruchemy. Iron feruchemy gives you a perpetuum mobile. There is just no way around that. You do not build your houses with chimneys and other facilities for using coal, oil or gas, while you have essentially free electricity. That is a question of cost. We do not know how this scales to smaller plants, so the cars may still run on fuel. And some metalurgic and chemical uses still need coal. You may see pollution, but not on a level of comparable times on Earth. And it will be concentrated in industrial areas. Think Ruhr Valley rather than Los Angeles smog or London killer fog.

Fair point. Still, that is based on two assumptions:

1. that using the Metallic arts to produce power is economically viable and easily accessible to everyone who wants to use it - i.e. that power stations using that method are
   1. cheap - as you say probably not for cars, etc., but still cheap enough to be viable in building a power station,
   2. produce enough energy,
   3. and can be mass produced,
   4. and doesn't have its own negative side effects, such as consuming metals
2. that pollution mainly comes from power generation, rather than from waste products used in manufacturing - i.e. that even if you had unlimited energy the chemical processes used to produce various goods doesn't itself produce waste. As I recall making aluminium takes a lot of energy, and produces waste - even if you had free energy, the industry to extract aluminium and refine it would still produce smoke.

From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium

Quote

Aluminium production possesses its own challenges to the environment on each step of the production process. The major challenge is the greenhouse gas emissions.^[190] These gases result from electrical consumption of the smelters and the byproducts of processing. The most potent of these gases are perfluorocarbons from the smelting process.^[190] Released sulfur dioxide is one of the primary precursors of acid rain.^[190]

 

I don't doubt there will be local pollution in some areas, but the main thrust of this argument is the irony of Scadrial being covered in ash again after all the effort to cleans the planet. Perhaps it will only be local to some cities, but I like to think Kelsier will look on the planet, after seeing it cleansed, and think of all the humans on the planet working together redid the damage Rashek inflicted. Perhaps it will be confined to industrial cities, but for both the irony of the return to ash, and the cyberpunk aesthetic, I wonder if Brandon will do this. 

[+Oltux72]

25 minutes ago, Ixthos said:

Fair point. Still, that is based on two assumptions:

1. that using the Metallic arts to produce power is economically viable and easily accessible to everyone who wants to use it - i.e. that power stations using that method are
   1. cheap - as you say probably not for cars, etc., but still cheap enough to be viable in building a power station,
   2. produce enough energy,
   3. and can be mass produced,
   4. and doesn't have its own negative side effects, such as consuming metals

The Southerners use it to power huge airships. It seems to be feasible with little doubt.

Quote

1. that pollution mainly comes from power generation, rather than from waste products used in manufacturing - i.e. that even if you had unlimited energy the chemical processes used to produce various goods doesn't itself produce waste. As I recall making aluminium takes a lot of energy, and produces waste - even if you had free energy, the industry to extract aluminium and refine it would still produce smoke.

From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium

It did on our Earth at those technological levels. Los Angeles and London being the primary examples.

Quote

 

I don't doubt there will be local pollution in some areas, but the main thrust of this argument is the irony of Scadrial being covered in ash again after all the effort to cleans the planet. Perhaps it will only be local to some cities, but I like to think Kelsier will look on the planet, after seeing it cleansed, and think of all the humans on the planet working together redid the damage Rashek inflicted. Perhaps it will be confined to industrial cities, but for both the irony of the return to ash, and the cyberpunk aesthetic, I wonder if Brandon will do this. 

Brandon subverting tropes is not exactly rare.

17 hours ago, Quantus said:

That settles that as far as Im concerned, the shards must have created the planet with fossil fuels baked in to the recipe.

That is certainly the most straightforward explanation, but it is still possible that Scadrial has coal, but no oil and gas.

Or Harmony put the oil outside the Basin, but did not forsee that those lazy slugs would run their cars on vegetable oils.

Edited July 8, 2021 by Oltux72
typo

[Ixthos]

5 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

The Southerners use it to power huge airships. It seems to be feasible with little doubt.

With respect, powering an airship, and ships which require the crew to decrease their weight, is very different from powering a city or even a building. This isn't to say it couldn't, but we also don't know how many airships they have, whether or not it consumes the life of an allomancer or feruchemist to make, and how much fuel it consumes - ettmetal is likely a finite resource. The key issues of cost, efficiency, power, resource consumption, haven't been addressed.

 

20 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

It did on our Earth at those technological levels. Los Angeles and London being the primary examples.

While Scadrial is an Earth analogue, it doesn't follow that they won't deviate in some ways while mirroring in others. Metal production is likely to be even more significant on Scadrial than on Earth, especially aluminium.

 

21 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Brandon subverting tropes is not exactly rare.

True, and I don't doubt Brandon will still do so. Still, Brandon may subvert the space opera utopian civilisation cliche by having an ash-covered future Scadrial. Brandon could make the Lost Metal end with a dance-off, though I think that would fit better in a Nalthian story. The things is Brandon doesn't subvert cliches because he can - if he did that he could have had Rashek choose to jump off Kredik Shaw at the end of Mistborn after Vin found his diary. Brandon does things which makes sense AND subvert cliches. Scadrial returning to being a broken planet, this time due to human hubris, would be poetic and fit the stories bookending. Of course Brandon may also choose not to do so, and it certainly would be hopeful if he kept the planet clean. Brandon could go either way, and he could indeed use the idea you suggested about using the Metallic arts to sustain the planet's industry. But he also could add any number of issues with why something wouldn't work when scaled up, or powerful groups actively working to keep the clean Metallic arts power generation and manufacturing - or any imported magic - out of general circulation. It could go any way, there are any number of reasons, the reason I suggest the planet will be covered in smoke later is for both in setting practical and ironic reasons.

[+Oltux72]

2 minutes ago, Ixthos said:

With respect, powering an airship, and ships which require the crew to decrease their weight, is very different from powering a city or even a building. This isn't to say it couldn't, but we also don't know how many airships they have, whether or not it consumes the life of an allomancer or feruchemist to make, and how much fuel it consumes - ettmetal is likely a finite resource. The key issues of cost, efficiency, power, resource consumption, haven't been addressed.

Sorry, this is a fundamental misunderstanding. The perpetuum mobile effect does not come from the propellers. That is peanuts. It comes from the ability to float at all. In short, put an airship on a spring and switch the lift thing on and off. Unlimited electrical power. That being based on feruchemy does not need fuel.

[Ixthos]

17 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Sorry, this is a fundamental misunderstanding. The perpetuum mobile effect does not come from the propellers. That is peanuts. It comes from the ability to float at all. In short, put an airship on a spring and switch the lift thing on and off. Unlimited electrical power. That being based on feruchemy does not need fuel.

It still uses ettmetal. To produce perpetual motion it also requires constant tapping and storing into the metal, and it isn't clear if this does or doesn't cause wear on the metalmind. Also, I don't remember the airship floating being due to feruchemy, though I could be wrong. Either way, we still haven't explored the dynamics required - lets assume the airship's own mass can be stored. That would still require making metalminds which can do so, assuming mechanical feruchemy doesn't consume ettmetal each time it taps and stores, so assuming the metalminds don't start to lose efficiency or degrade over time and lose storage capacity, and that to even make that system doesn't require the excisors to kill a feruchemist.

[Edit] It also assumes the power produced justifies the expense - if a hand whisk could turn indefinitely, the type with the crank and gears, how many of them would it take to power a single house?

Edited July 8, 2021 by Ixthos
Spelling, sentence structure, and adding another paragraph

[Quantus]

2 hours ago, Ixthos said:

It still uses ettmetal. To produce perpetual motion it also requires constant tapping and storing into the metal, and it isn't clear if this does or doesn't cause wear on the metalmind. Also, I don't remember the airship floating being due to feruchemy, though I could be wrong. Either way, we still haven't explored the dynamics required - lets assume the airship's own mass can be stored. That would still require making metalminds which can do so, assuming mechanical feruchemy doesn't consume ettmetal each time it taps and stores, so assuming the metalminds don't start to lose efficiency or degrade over time and lose storage capacity, and that to even make that system doesn't require the excisors to kill a feruchemist.

[Edit] It also assumes the power produced justifies the expense - if a hand whisk could turn indefinitely, the type with the crank and gears, how many of them would it take to power a single house?

If Im not mistaken, the ettmetal is only consumed/Burned when it is emitting Allomancy, but for feruchemy it just runs on the stored feruchemical charge.  Realmically I think this implies that the Ettmetal doesn't open a Connection to Preservation/Harmony and so is providing the Investiture directly (like Atium).  

While all kinds of Investiture engines are certainly coming, I strongly suspect there are going to be fundamental conservation issues with literal perpetual motion, for a couple reasons. 1) If an Awakening Command cannot do it, I suspect nothing would, and WOB implies such a command would slowly consume the Breaths used in the Awakening.  2) If it IS possible in the Cosmere, I dont think any magic with Ruin's influence involved will be able to pull it off, including Ettmetal.  Both Feruchemy and Hemalurgy have diminishing returns on stored Investiture that I think would likely prevent Perpetual motion once you dig into the in-world math/science of it all.  

 

Separately, it has been a while since I read it myself, but the Coppermind says the airships are run on Steelpushing, not weight reduction.  I dont have m books with me, anyone recall the specifics offhand?  Was it perhaps both?