this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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What's everyone's thoughts on using space-based solar power to help solve the climate crisis?

Now that we're hitting the 1.5 degree mark, I notice a lot of news articles coming out in favor of such things, but I want to know how you think of it.

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[โ€“] greengnu@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

well if it was a 1:1 replacement with zero growth it will be fine;

The problem is the goal economy is structured around a 10% per year (compounding) growth rate in energy use; which means we have a rather short doubling time. And it only takes 120 doubling before we exceed the total energy of the sun and long before that the Earth would be hotter than the surface of the Sun. (Even if we removed 100% of all green house gases and blocked out the Sun entirely and distributed pure electricity only)

That being said if we build a Dyson Sphere and do some Star lifting to convert it to a white dwarf star https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzuHxL5FD5U

and cut our growth rate significantly, we might be able to have a civilization of growth for about a billion years.

[โ€“] darthfabulous42069@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I would imagine the population will stabilize itself and/or we will begin human expansion into space before that becomes an issue, but that is a thing I read about. There is a hard maximum number of people that could live on this planet in modernity. ๐Ÿค” I'm not sure how having space solar power now would make that an issue though. The heat issue is something we'll have to think about down the line.

[โ€“] greengnu@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 years ago

Well yes there is a hard limit, we just don't know what the exact carrying capacity is (there may be multiple different values).

https://bsidneysmith.com/writings/essays/all-the-bunnies-in-the-meadow-die

[โ€“] BobApril@lemmy.one 1 points 2 years ago

Short- and medium-term, anything that leads away from fossil fuel is a good thing. Long-term, though, it seems like taking energy that would normally have bypassed the Earth, capturing it, and then adding it into our ecosystem is probably a bad idea. I'm a total layman, here, though, mostly going off of what I've read in science fiction.

Also, yeah, the weapons potential is a problem, though I sort of feel like we've already got all the weapons we need to intentionally eliminate human life, so further refinements don't matter much. It's the accidental extermination we're worried about, and this might help with that for awhile.

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