Re:60 years later, is it time to update the Drake equation?
by ben_w on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @06:15PM
(#27201980)
PV can give us about 10,000 times our current power even without building a Dyson swarm. Ten billion humans each regularly using a thousand times the power of the average current American could happen, but it’s ten times greater a change to how people live than was reaching modern day American power use relative to the day before the invention of fire (or domestication, whichever came first).
Re:60 years later, is it time to update the Drake equation?
by m_mueller on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @09:48PM
(#27203647)
Consider that a lot of materials we take for granted today (and throw in the trash when we're done) aren't renewable either and would take more energy to produce if replaced with renewable equivalents.
Consider also that in order to grow human population at some point you start to need large amounts of energy to colonize new space, be it planetary, on asteroids or spade stations.
If more energy becomes available, demand for it will scale accordingly because of new possibilities.
Re:60 years later, is it time to update the Drake equation?
by shard on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @11:57PM
(#27204358)
Considering the plummeting birth rate, I don't think it will be necessary to colonize new space to find space for more people, unless we start cloning people en mass.
Re:60 years later, is it time to update the Drake equation?
by m_mueller on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @02:55AM
(#27205437)
According to Hans Rosling, if birthrates develop everywhere similarly, population will max out at around 10Bn within the next decades, and should then stay stable for a while. 10Bn to reach a somewhat comfortable living standard seems quite a stretch for the home planet based on current (mostly non-renewable) technologies. And a high enough standard is also necessary for the birth rates to stabilize, so it's not like keeping whole continents in poverty would help anyone.
You don't. You only think you do because you are living on borrowed energy, massive amounts of energy stored in carbon over the last billion years. Unleashing this stored energy is going to burn down our planet.
So yes, we need way more energy that is not tied to digging up dead dinosaurs. Even more energy if we want to put them back in the ground. And even more if everyone wants clean water. Everyone else that is not a westerner wants lights and water and food too.