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These statements are always fantastical. When we talk about humanity exceeding Earth's resource footprint, the issue isn't land in itself. All of our immediate
by icegreentea2 7y ago
These statements are always fantastical. When we talk about humanity exceeding Earth's resource footprint, the issue isn't land in itself. All of our immediate issues come from balancing:
a) How do we harvest energy
b) How much non-human components do we want to leave, and in what configuration, given that significant non-human components are currently required to give us a livable environment
c) How do we distribute resources
Yes ultimately all of those are constrained by land area, but we have so many other things to solve first before land area is THE problem. And hilariously, it's more or less the same problems we need to solve before we need to colonize anything. How do we efficiently (measured in materials, surface area, maintenance, capital, operating cost) collect energy. How do we create and maintain true closed systems that are reasonably conducive to non-shitty human lives. How do we spread the wealth so we don't burn it all down.
- gamegoblin 7y agoBezos brings land area into it because assuming a 3% growth in energy usage per year, as has been the historical trend, we will need to cover the earth in solar panels in 200 years. Something he doesn’t touch on is fission/fusion instead of solar, so I am curious about how that changes the calculus.
- icegreentea2 7y agoI mean, that's also fantastical. Let's plan for 100+ years of linear growth, while side stepping the 50-100 year looming crisis. Like I admire the longterm vision. I'm also a giant space nerd and think this is soooo coool. I just feel... bleh about it. I mean, I guess if we get better space launch and space fabrication, we might able to get some sun shields in place at a reasonable time.
- aetherson 7y agoExponential growth, not linear.
- aidenn0 7y ago3% energy growth is unsustainable in the long run; at that rate we are about 1000 years from using more energy per year than the sun emits in totality: 2015 energy usage 110PWh for the entire year[1] That works out to ~1.8e13 W average power. Total output for the sun is about 4e26 W[2] This works out to about 44 doublings, and 3% growth is a doubling every 24 years which means we need to surpass Kardashev II in 1000 years. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption 2: https://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/MatthewTsang.shtml https://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/MatthewTsang.shtml
- philwelch 7y ago1000 years is a long time. Might help to have more people around to help figure out interstellar travel.
- philwelch 7y agoI recognized that as well, but then I realized that "covering the earth in solar panels" is pretty much a dumbed-down description of Type I on the Kardashev scale, which we would eventually, inevitably reach regardless of how we generate power.