A quintillion people in one place would be anything but cold (was Walking aroun)

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "brooksn" wrote:
> I don't understand what the purpose is of making Earth into a totally artificial space station requiring humans to manage all the processes that are done now by the planet without our 'active management'?

Security. Nature is trying to kill us, not keep us alive.

...And it isn't fascistically "making". It's liberally "allowing". The burden of proof is on you to explain why people shouldn't be allowed to create new resources.

> Why not just build an artificial space station in orbit

For one thing, you just said it would be prone to meteor strikes. Remember? Why would you worry about the infinitesimally small chance of meteor strikes on any given part of a far larger Earth (and those odds get smaller for any given part of Earth, the larger we make the Earth), when the exact same odds apply to orbital habitats.

Building an orbital habitat doesn't necessarily mean the extermination of Earth-based human society. You can have people up there *and* down on Earth at the same time. Why would you evacuate the entire population of Earth into Earth orbital habitats given that it would be more expensive than staying on Earth, and given that there are vastly more resources on Earth available at vastly lower prices?

The point was that no one *needs* to move to space for resource purposes. Remember? The burden of proof was -- and still is -- on you to show why that isn't true. Remember?

> > > and the polar and northern latitudes from getting too cold.
> I've never heard of dense housing in cold climates not still needing heat.

What would make "cold climates", buried in quadrillions of people stacked thousands of miles high, cold? Cold areas of the earth today get that way because they're cooled by radiation to space and by circulation of air and water which in turn is also cooled by radiation to space. How is the generated heat supposed to radiate to space when it's buried under thousands of miles of heat-generating people and their heat-generating machines? This is not just heat production. This is insulation. The heat can't escape. You're saying you've never heard of the greenhouse effect? This would be a far more effective greenhouse than even would be saturating the atmosphere with 99% CO2. (Today, the atmosphere is only 0.0392% CO2.)

To put the thermal power of an Earth with a quintillion people (e18 people) in perspective, the Earth presently intercepts 1.74e17 watts of solar power. Now, you should see something right away about that. There would be more people than single watts of solar power hitting the earth. If each person's body produced an average of 100 watts, that alone would be e20 watts, or 575 times as much power as today's total solar power interception.

Not only that, but that energy would have little chance to escape since the surface area would be so small in comparison to the new volume of the earth.

But we're not done yet. Each person also uses electricity. Even if the average electricity use per person were only 900 watts -- and even if that electricity were generated and distributed with 100% efficiency -- the total power would be e21 watts, or 5,750 times as much power as today's total solar power interception.

Total thermal power output would probably be at least a more-realistic 10,000 watts per person. That would make the total power e22 watts, or 57,500 times as much power as today's total solar power interception.

As William pointed out to us:

"
Long before you get to quintillions of humans, you will bump into thermodynamic limits of how many humans can exist on the Earth at once.
"

You're disagreeing with William on that point? You seem to be.

> > Humans are not net consumers, on average, but net producers. Therefore, more people = more resources per person.
> But resources are not infinite so when things run out we will have shortages.

When *energy* runs out, *everything* will run out -- because energy is the Master Resource:
http://www.masterresource.org/2009/07/energy-as-the-master-resource-where-left-right-and-center-agree

The question is: "is energy threatening to run short soon"?

We know the answer: the 200 trillion tonnes of fission fuels in the earth's crust represent a 32.4 billion year fuel supply at today's global all-fuel burn-rate of 16 terawatts. That's just the developed fuel near at hand.

> Coming in at 10 - 70 km/second they are going to pack quite a punch.

...Then tell NASA, Russia, Japan, etc. to get rid of the ISS, since you think its vulnerability to meteor strikes is creating such a problem for the rest of the world.

You don't have to live on the surface -- the only area that's vulnerable. The only reason the strike frequency would be larger than it is today is that the surface area would be larger. The odds of any individual getting hit by a meteor don't go *up* when population is increased. They go *down*. If you don't want to get hit by meteors, then you should want more people.

> Can they be mitigated? Sure, but its one more issue of many that aren't a problem if you don't turn it into a 8,000 mile high apartment complex.

Meteor strikes constitute a problem *right now*. Ask any of the many folks who've had their homes hit by meteors. An Earth society with more people would be able to make meteor strikes less of a problem. More people = more ability to solve existing problems.

> I'm sure they could, but why would anyone want to when Earth already provides

...Because of opportunity costs of restraining human action in order to remain on Earth welfare. One opportunity, which you helpfully (though seemingly unintentionally) pointed out, is the vastly smaller per-capita danger of meteor strikes that there would be on an Earth with a quintillion people.