来源：《新科学家》
原文见刊日期：2022年11月5日
本文适合2024考生
The switch from water to coal-powered factories in 19th-century Britain may have been a result of droughts that made water power less reliable and coal more attractive. Previously, it was thought that a lack of suitable locations to build more water wheels was what spurred this industrial revolution.
19世纪的英国工厂从水动力转向煤动力可能是干旱的结果，这使得水力不那么可靠，而煤动力更有吸引力。此前，人们认为，缺乏合适的地点来建造更多的水轮机是引发这场工业革命的原因。
Historians battle over the precise timing of the transition in Britain from an agrarian economy powered by muscle, wood and water to a manufacturing economy powered by coal. They also disagree about the causes of this industrial revolution.
历史学家对英国从以人力、木材和水为动力的农业经济向以煤炭为动力的制造业经济转变的确切时间点争论不休。他们对这场工业革命的起因也存在分歧。
One proposed cause is that industrialists ran out of attractive sites along rivers to build the water wheels that powered many of their factories in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. “That implied water was scarce and expensive, and steam and coal was abundant and cheap,” says Andreas Malm at Lund University in Sweden.
一个可能的原因是，在18世纪末和19世纪初，工业家们在河边找不到有吸引力的地方来建造水车，为他们的许多工厂提供动力。瑞典隆德大学的安德烈亚斯•马尔姆表示：“这意味着水稀缺而昂贵，而蒸汽和煤炭丰富而廉价。”
Past analyses of the water power available to early industrialists relied on 20th-century rainfall patterns, but these are unreliable for estimating historical water power, says Tara Jonell at the University of Glasgow in the UK.
英国格拉斯哥大学的塔拉·乔内尔表示，过去对早期工业家可用的水力的分析依赖于20世纪的降雨模式，但这些数据对于估计历史上的水力是不可靠的。
Jonell and her colleagues used rainfall records starting in 1862 combined with elevation data to create a more accurate model of the flow in Britain’s rivers and streams at the time.
乔内尔和她的同事使用了1862年开始的降雨记录，结合海拔数据，建立了当时英国河流和小溪流量的更精确模型。
The researchers found that industrialists in England, Scotland and Wales had barely tapped potential water power when they made the transition to coal. Concentrated development had saturated a few places, but overall “there was still plenty of water power that existed”, says Jonell.
研究人员发现，英格兰、苏格兰和威尔士的实业家在向煤炭转型时几乎没有开发潜在的水力。乔内尔说，集中开发已经使一些地方水力饱和，但总体上“仍然存在大量的水力资源”。
This supports the argument that coal power was neither cheaper nor more abundant or more productive than water power at the time, says Brett Christophers at Uppsala University in Sweden. “It adds another nail to the coffin of the old orthodoxy.”
瑞典乌普萨拉大学的布雷特·克里斯托弗斯表示，这支持了一种观点，即当时煤动力既不便宜，也不丰富，也不比水力更高效。“这给旧正统的棺材又添了一颗钉子。”
One possibility is that a series of droughts or seasonal irregularities may have made water power less reliable than coal, says Jonell. Historical documents discuss drought in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, though Jonell says it isn’t clear whether actual droughts took place at the time or how they might have interacted with other factors.
乔内尔说，一种可能性是，一系列干旱或季节性不规则可能导致水力的可靠性不如煤炭。历史文献讨论了18世纪末和19世纪初英国的干旱，但乔内尔表示，尚不清楚当时是否发生了真正的干旱，也不清楚干旱是如何与其他因素相互作用的。
Malm has previously argued that drought played a role in this transition. He says workers’ movements in the 1830s and 40s may have prevented industrialists from relying on labour to make up production shortfalls that could have been driven by changing rainfall patterns. The mobility of coal was also a factor, he says. Relying on coal meant factories could be built near cheap labour or efficient transportation, instead of being limited to sites along rivers.
马尔姆此前曾认为，干旱在水力向煤力的转变中发挥了作用。他表示，19世纪三四十年代的工人运动可能阻止了实业家依靠劳动力来弥补可能由降雨模式变化造成的生产缺口。他说，煤炭的流动性也是一个因素。依赖煤炭意味着工厂可以建在廉价劳动力或高效交通的附近，而不是局限在河边。
“Energy transitions aren’t primarily about price or supply in the narrow sense, but about other factors,” says Malm. He says this is key to understanding today’s transition away from fossil fuels.
马尔姆说：“能源转型并不主要是狭义上的价格或供应，而是与其他因素有关。”他说，这是理解今天从化石燃料转型的关键。