4 ms·

How do you handle the heat? At the rate we're going the surface of the Earth would glow like a light bulb in a handful of centuries. > we’re too close to an a

How do you handle the heat? At the rate we're going the surface of the Earth would glow like a light bulb in a handful of centuries. > we’re too close to an astounding point for me to leave it unspoken. At that 2.3% growth rate, we would be using energy at a rate corresponding to the total solar input striking Earth in a little over 400 years. We would consume something comparable to the entire sun in 1400 years from now. By 2500 years, we would use energy at the rate of the entire Milky Way galaxy—100 billion stars! I think you can see the absurdity of continued energy growth. 2500 years is not that long, from a historical perspective. We know what we were doing 2500 years ago. I think I know what we’re not going to be doing 2500 years hence. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...

Iwan-Zotow 4y ago
Kardashev, here I come...
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Seeing people talk about unlimited carbon free energy with the exact same logic as rejections of climate change from a century ago with the exact same ratio between total energy consumption and armageddon is incredibly frustrating.
nynx 4y ago
If we’re not using the equivalent of 100% of the total solar input striking earth in 400 years, we’ve gone down the wrong path
- carapace 4y ago
  That's beside the point. How do we handle the heat? From the same link (as my previous comment): > the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. [Pained expression from economist.] And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase.
  - buck4roo 4y ago
    Society is a heat engine. Full stop.
    - carapace 4y ago
      Yes, that's the problem. Society's waste heat will cook us, literally, if we try to use ever-growing amounts of energy on the surface of a sphere covered by a blanket of gasses and moisture, because there is no mechanism to discard the waste heat fast enough. In other words, society is a heat engine until it becomes a bomb.
philwelch 4y ago
Human civilization doesn’t need to stay earthbound, especially not on that timescale.
- carapace 4y ago
  Sure (and I'm into that) but it won't help, it just delays things a few more centuries. Even if we postulate a magic FTL space drive the crunch still comes.
  - philwelch 4y ago
    Free space settlements give the solar system a population capacity in the trillions or quadrillions, and once you can build free space settlements, you can build interstellar generation ships--no FTL needed.
    - carapace 4y ago
      It doesn't change the fundamental structure of the problem. Eventually the generation ships of the original core are flying shoulder-to-shoulder with the ships from the colonies founded by the earlier waves. Eventually the free space settlements are packed together like eggs in a cartoon. Dyson spheres around every star, Dyson spheres like sand, whole galaxies glowing in infrared, only in infrared, raising the background temperature of space itself, accelerating the heat death. This isn't going to take millions of years. If it take 2500 years to reach a trillion, it takes only another 2500 years to reach a trillion trillion. The point is that the OP's thinking is fundamentally unrealistic, in the sense that it's not real: it doesn't take into account basic thermodynamics and the structure of local space (Earth with it's atmosphere, etc.) It's a cartoon.
      - philwelch 4y ago
        We're centuries, if not millennia, away from running into that problem. Artificially curbing ourselves, at the expense of creating self-inflicted problems in the here and now, seems like a bad tradeoff.

Iwan-Zotow 4y ago

Kardashev, here I come...

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Seeing people talk about unlimited carbon free energy with the exact same logic as rejections of climate change from a century ago with the exact same ratio between total energy consumption and armageddon is incredibly frustrating.

nynx 4y ago

If we’re not using the equivalent of 100% of the total solar input striking earth in 400 years, we’ve gone down the wrong path

carapace 4y ago
That's beside the point. How do we handle the heat? From the same link (as my previous comment): > the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. [Pained expression from economist.] And this statement is independent of technology. Even if we don’t have a name for the energy source yet, as long as it obeys thermodynamics, we cook ourselves with perpetual energy increase.
- buck4roo 4y ago
  Society is a heat engine. Full stop.
  - carapace 4y ago
    Yes, that's the problem. Society's waste heat will cook us, literally, if we try to use ever-growing amounts of energy on the surface of a sphere covered by a blanket of gasses and moisture, because there is no mechanism to discard the waste heat fast enough. In other words, society is a heat engine until it becomes a bomb.

philwelch 4y ago

Human civilization doesn’t need to stay earthbound, especially not on that timescale.

carapace 4y ago
Sure (and I'm into that) but it won't help, it just delays things a few more centuries. Even if we postulate a magic FTL space drive the crunch still comes.
- philwelch 4y ago
  Free space settlements give the solar system a population capacity in the trillions or quadrillions, and once you can build free space settlements, you can build interstellar generation ships--no FTL needed.
  - carapace 4y ago
    It doesn't change the fundamental structure of the problem. Eventually the generation ships of the original core are flying shoulder-to-shoulder with the ships from the colonies founded by the earlier waves. Eventually the free space settlements are packed together like eggs in a cartoon. Dyson spheres around every star, Dyson spheres like sand, whole galaxies glowing in infrared, only in infrared, raising the background temperature of space itself, accelerating the heat death. This isn't going to take millions of years. If it take 2500 years to reach a trillion, it takes only another 2500 years to reach a trillion trillion. The point is that the OP's thinking is fundamentally unrealistic, in the sense that it's not real: it doesn't take into account basic thermodynamics and the structure of local space (Earth with it's atmosphere, etc.) It's a cartoon.
    - philwelch 4y ago
      We're centuries, if not millennia, away from running into that problem. Artificially curbing ourselves, at the expense of creating self-inflicted problems in the here and now, seems like a bad tradeoff.