11 ms·

I enjoy seeing land use comparisons. I think there was one a while ago that showed how much land the US would require to house everyone at Tokyo-level density (

• na85 6y ago
  >Another showed how much land we would need to dedicate to solar panels to power the country (also not much). Indeed. I seem to recall seeing that you could power the entire western hemisphere with just a Texas-sized solar farm.
  • Allower 6y ago
    When did Texas become small?
  • willis936 6y ago
    And if power demand increases another order of magnitude? I don’t think anyone seriously argues that 100% of power should come from solar; it’s just a demonstration of relative quantities.
    • ben_w 6y ago
      We’re only four of those away from having to choose between a Dyson swarm or ending growth.
      • willis936 6y ago
        I think after two we would probably be able to make our own fusion reactors of whatever size desired. This would avoid having to waste precious terrestrial area or deal with space power transmission.
        • ben_w 6y ago
          The origin of the power isn’t the only thing that forces you to make this choice. If fusion (or anything else) adds four orders of magnitude (~200 PW) of new power at ground level, the new global average blackbody equilibrium temperature would increase from about +15 C to about +70 C.
  • huehehue 6y ago
    > _just_ a Texas-sized solar farm Have you seen Texas? Boy howdy. That's 23,155 Noor Power Stations[0]. Scaling costs linearly, that's $58 trillion[1]. [0] 268597 (tx) / 11.6 (noor) square miles [1] $2.5b * 23,155
    • na85 6y ago
      In the context of powering an entire continent, it's still small.
    • WJW 6y ago
      That's big, but so is the western hemisphere. 58 trillion USD to power the entire western hemisphere seems... Pretty reasonable? Assuming it depreciates over 30 years that's about 2 trillion per year, or "only" about double what the USA spends yearly on its military.
      • sbierwagen 6y ago
        Spending 58 trillion on solar panels would probably induce some pretty good economies of scale, too. What kind of volume discounts do you get on a 15 digit purchase order?
        • mywittyname 6y ago
          I assume at that point you just buy the factories.
          • stickfigure 6y ago
            At that scale you have to buy the factories that make the factories.
        • dumbfounder 6y ago
          @mywittyname Nay, you MAKE the factories.
        • wolco5 6y ago
  • pedrocr 6y ago
    Back of the envelope tells me you can power the whole world's current energy needs, not just electricity, with an area that's 3/4 of Texas: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B3Vtm-bk8NIntYc8mZRwcpikF-U2VkBDOLt8PaDjR1c/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B3Vtm-bk8NIntYc8mZRw... Getting 10x our total energy would only require half the Sahara. We have plenty of deserted place for this if that's what we wanted to do. Transporting and storing that energy is more the issue, which is why hydro/wind/solar mixes aided by batteries/nuclear are probably what we'll be focusing on for the next few decades.
    • azinman2 6y ago
      You’re missing the fact that that area you’re trying to put panels on is not perfectly flat, and existing animals/plants/rivers live there.
      • vagrantJin 6y ago
        Please, feel free to use the deserts in Africa. I can assure you, there are hardly any animals and rivers there. Plenty of man power to do maintenance work too and the sun shines bright like a diamond.
  • fastball 6y ago
    Or we could do nuclear instead for a vastly smaller footprint.
    • na85 6y ago
      Of course we could, but it's a thought exercise.
      • fastball 6y ago
        Yes, and my comment is an extension of the thought exercise...
    • jodrellblank 6y ago
      For some values of "could". If your country hasn't built a working public nuclear power plant in several decades, at what point should we switch from "could" to "couldn't"? The UK built several in the 1960s, now we have one in progress built by France, which is 10x more expensive, overbudget, delayed, and I wouldn't be certain of it ever being finished until I see it. Last time I looked, the USA was in a similar position. Hasn't started building one in at least 40 years[1] and the one I saw on that list finishing in 1990 (Seabrook) I thought might be more recent, says it was permitted in 1976, took 14 years to get Unit 1 working and Unit 2 was cancelled due to delays, and cost overruns. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. The current 92 of them provided 20% of the USA's electricity generation. So you'd need another 368 to do the other 80%. How long will they take to build, 15 years each? 55 years to go all nuclear, assuming you build ten at a time. How do you get from "we haven't built a nuclear power plant in 40 years" to "we could build 10 at a time continuously for the next half-century" in a convincing way? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States#Nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...
      • exclusiv 6y ago
        > "we haven't built a nuclear power plant in 40 years" to "we could build 10 at a time continuously for the next half-century" in a convincing way? The same way we were like let's go to the moon, build the transcontinental railroad or some nuclear bombs. Everything is a hell of a lot easier and possible if you have alignment. As with most technical projects, the technical problem is usually not the barrier to achievement.
  • s1dev 6y ago
    Of course you wouldn't actually put them in Texas, but since this seems to be missed a lot: It hails reasonably frequently in the Midwest (incl. Texas)
    • freeone3000 6y ago
      Right, you'd put them in the desert. New Mexico and Arizona.
  • AngryData 6y ago
    The problem with such a figure is people assume that means we would become energy sustainable, but there are tons of non-electrical energy usages that also need to be replaced with electrical processes. And unfortunately those processes that aren't electrical already are that way usually because it is way less efficient, and thus requires significantly more electricity generation to make up for the loss in efficiency. Fertilizer production for example uses lots of natural gas, replacing that natural gas with an electro-chemical process is possible and we know how to do it, but it also means the energy requirements rise nearly 10x as much, thus requiring significantly more panels to make up for it. And that is the same for the majority of chemical reagent production and material processing methods. So while im all for solar and hope we build tons of it, I don't see it becoming the primary energy generation source of the world any time soon. The solar farms that we would need will be the biggest man made wonders in the world, which I don't see as all that feasible in our economic and political environment.
    • triceratops 6y ago
      Could we continue using fossil fuels for processes like that and use excess solar and wind for carbon capture to offset emissions from those processes?
• sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  One today also suggested how we could give every home in America a sea view!
  • caturopath 6y ago
    Would be interesting to see the map, I couldn't find it with a quick search. There is ~4ft of shoreline in the US per household, which gives me some notion of what the packing would look like.
    • sammorrowdrums 6y ago
      Sorry, not an actual map. Just a back-of-the-envelope calculation. I'll try to find it.
    • gberger 6y ago
      You can stack households on top of each other.
    • leetcrew 6y ago
      if we cover all the shoreline with 10 story apartment buildings, it could be 40 ft per household! the larger problem would be having an acceptable amount of green space on the other side I think.
    • bluGill 6y ago
      We can build up though. I might be worth 4 feet of shoreline, but my 40 foot sea view apartment is in a 50 floor apartment building, which leaves a lot of the shoreline unpopulated. That assumes everyone wants shore view. With young kids I prefer my house to be far away from places weak/non swimmers can drawn. I know many other reasons why someone would choose to not live somewhere far from the sea if they get a choice.
      • caturopath 6y ago
        Sorry, I wasn't trying to say "so it doesn't work". Obviously multi-story houses and houses not right on the shore have sea views.
• ucm_edge 6y ago
  I also saw numbers saying a 50 mile by 50 mile piece of land could handle all of America's trash for 100 years if used as a landfill. Always struck me as interesting in that you could easily section off a chunk of desert, properly sort and encapsulate the trash. At the same time fund research into ways to do recycling that is more cost efficient and more environmental friendly with regard to chemicals used, etc. Then once you have better tech for a certain class of garbage, go process it in bulk. Of course humans being humans, we'd probably not bother to fund the research, not do upkeep on the encapsulation material and mess up the ground water, etc. Still interesting to think about just having one or two national trash dumps.
  • jacquesm 6y ago
    At some point in time that would become the most valuable property: it would contain all of the resources that society needs.
    • beamatronic 6y ago
      You can be sure that once all the fossil fuels are gone, and society has collapsed beyond the point of return, the remaining humans will be mining our dumps for useful items. Wars will be fought over these scraps.
      • aardvarkr 6y ago
        We’re already mining landfills actually. Pretty interesting concept if you ask me. The concentration of valuable elements is far higher than what you’d find in the wild. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_mining https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_mining
      • leviathant 6y ago
        I like to think that a long time from now, people will marvel that we overlooked the (as of yet undiscovered) utility of used scoopable cat litter, and just threw it out with the trash
• yboris 6y ago
  There's a fun book Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition which includes a small section about possible upper limit for density of human population on earth. I think it was over 1 trillion. Fun book!
• joejerryronnie 6y ago
  I saw a density map for the Tokyo area compared to California. Tokyo is equivalent to taking the entire population of CA and packing them into the city of Los Angeles.
• csomar 6y ago
  Regarding solar, you don't really need much land. Most residential homes can install it on their roof and this also applies to flat industrial building which do not consume a lot of energy. This also makes your solar production decentralized.
  • Taylor_OD 6y ago
    >> decentralized Much easier to actually use
  • adolph 6y ago
    As I understand it, the challenge is syncing when changing from standalone to integrated modes. The challenge is such that most home PV can’t operate standalone. https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/synchronizing-small-scale-pv-systems-with-the-grid https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/synchronizing-small-scal...
    • danans 6y ago
      > As I understand it, the challenge is syncing when changing from standalone to integrated modes. It's not challenge to switch from grid-connected to off-grid mode. The reason that solar PV systems today shut down during grid outages today is to protect line workers from current feeding back to to the grid from the PV - which is to say the automatic shutoff is there by design. Home battery storage systems, however, have transfer switches that automatically "island" the PV system from the grid in the event of an outage so that it can continue to produce power. > The challenge is such that most home PV can’t operate standalone. Decentralized != Off-grid
  • dzhiurgis 6y ago
    My guess installation on residential roof is probably 10x more expensive vs just dropping bunch of panels en masse in a dessert.
    • CRConrad 6y ago
      I'd guess it's the other way around. A roof is a flat and stable surface, close to infrastructure (roads, power lines). In the desert, you have to (literally) lay the groundwork first.
• maxerickson 6y ago
  A timber company here owns 500,000+ acres spanning parts of 2 states. Doesn't hold much of a candle to Weyerhaeuser which owns more than 12 million acres.
  • greyhair 6y ago
    Do they actually own it or do they hold leases? I know it is a subtle thing, but I am just curious. If you know which it is I would like to hear. Thanks.
    • maxerickson 6y ago
      Directly owned.
  • KirillPanov 6y ago
    Weyerhaeuser got that land by inducing the railroads to commit Timber and Stone Act fraud, and then buying the fraudulently obtained property from them.
• dzhiurgis 6y ago
  I've recently discovered that my country (Lithuania) offers solar park shares for residential customer (who mostly live in apartments). Coupled with some p2p lending that could easily convert millions of people to solar power with little of difference in monthly cost (well quick math says +50% for first 10 years, then -90% till panels decay). Retrofitting roofs with panels seems wildly inefficient compared with using robots to plant thousands of panels few hundred miles away. n.b. you do get slightly dicked by 'maintenance fees', but those probably gonna go down with time.