[extropy-chat] Nuke 'em

Dirk Bruere dirk.bruere at gmail.com
Mon Oct 24 00:32:20 UTC 2005


On 10/24/05, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Oct 24, 2005 at 12:20:50AM +0100, Dirk Bruere wrote:
>
> >
> > Depends on what that 5kW encompasses.
> > I (my house) use less than 5kW/hr per day of electricity.
> > However, you have to factor in transport energy and energy required to
> > produce food and material goods.
> > Not sure how that adds up.
>
> Nationmaster.com <http://Nationmaster.com> gives energy use per capita; I
> presume it is total. It gives
> 10 kW for Americans; Italy uses more than a third of that, 18th on the
> list.
> I suspect a lot of the lower figures is denser living and nicer climates,
> but
> hey, look at the hands. Normally I assume 10 kW in these botecs because
> I'd
> like everyone to live as well as Americans and also it's a nice round
> number.
>
>
Well, if we convert to solar and assume a daily average of 250W m/sqm over
24hrs with a conversion efficiency of 20% the average American requires 200
sqm of desert to maintain their lifestyle ie a patch of desert of about one
third of an acre. It's not much. How many people could the Sahara keep in
luxury? Given that it's about 9m sq km let's assume we only use about 10% or
1m sq km. That gives us 10^12 sqm, or enough energy to support 5,000,000,000
at US energy standards - roughly the Earth's population.

Dirk
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