How might things have gone if there were no fossil fuels?

My main quibble is with the last one: electricity. If we still discovered nuclear power, it would not make sense to assume we had only a small fraction of the current per capita availability of electricity (therefore, no air conditioning). France is almost all nuclear and there is no reason the US couldn't be today as well -- nor any other developed nation. So while transportation (particularly, planes) would take a hit, anything that can run on electricity wouldn't be fundamentally different today (except insofar as scientific progress may have been slowed). Indeed, air conditioning/refrigeration is one of the great enablers of modern civilization and while it was discovered/invented during the civil war, its exploitation is very closely tied to widespread electricity.

 

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I was thinking about that too, that in the absence of food-preservation by refrigeration, food distribution would take a big hit.

But apparently it's possible to build steam-powered refrigerators, ice-makers and air-conditioners. It's even possible to directly power them with animals or wind-mills. From Googling, I get the impression that steam refrigeration isn't even all that uncommon.

http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~ihas/gorrie/fridge.htm

 

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Solar-powered electric Zeppelins (admittedly they are not literally "planes").

 

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Nope. It's about the 20th time in 40 years I have seen "new breakthrough method produces hydrogen!" Such breakthroughs are published quite regularly, and have been for decades. They are up there with announcements for new super-dense batteries, 50%+ efficient solar cells, and small windmills that produce a lot of power.

 

You'd likely make it with charcoal, which is how early blacksmiths worked metal. (Charcoal is easily made from wood.)

Initially hydro and geothermal, moving on to nuclear, wind, solar, biogas and tidal.

Well, the term "steam engine" is a bit of a misnomer; the fuel isn't steam. But nuclear-powered jets have been proposed for bombers, and you can certainly run aircraft on syngas. However, since syngas is so expensive to make, it would likely have handicapped early aviation experiments, since it is likely that only governments could have afforded to fly them. (And they would have looked very much like any other aircraft, perhaps with larger fuel tanks.)

Given the popularity of steam and electric vehicles around 1900 I don't think vehicular travel (especially shipping) would have been slowed down much. Indeed, early on electric and steam vehicles were considered superior to gas-powered vehicles; it was only the cheapness of gasoline (which was at first more of a refinery waste product than a fuel) that made them economical, and allowed them to eventually dominate the vehicular market. In 1900 steam vehicles held all the speed records and were considered the car of the wealthy. Electric vehicles had several advantages over gas and steam that salesmen touted - no long (45 minute) startup period, no gear shifting, no arm-breaking starter crank, no fire risk, no boiler explosions and no stink.

These advantages led to them being more popular than internal-combustion engines. In 1900, 40 percent of American automobiles were powered by steam, 38 percent by electricity and 22 percent by gasoline. Thus I don't think a loss of gasoline would have seriously slowed down development of vehicle technology, although without gasoline they would surely be more expensive, and that may have limited the speed at which personal cars became common. (Steam cars still need fuel, but wood pellets work fine, and the availability of electricity has already been discussed.)

 

Wrong poster cited in that quote...