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Predicting the Timeline for Humanity to Reach Kardashev Type I Civilization

arxiv.org

13 pointstakiwatanga8 comments

The Kardashev classification is "not even wrong".

No civilization harvests 100% of the sunlight that falls on a planet because you'd kill the planet. (Type I)

Nobody is going to build a Dyson sphere around the Sun (Type II) because there is not enough mass even if you cut up the inner planets.

(That's not to say you can't build something really big... Like a habitat with more land area than the Earth.)

It is similarly unthinkable that you'd build a shell around a galaxy. (Type III)

Because people are thinking about this they aren't thinking about more interesting (if impractical) ideas like "Could a civilization smooth out the energy output of a quasar and live off it somehow?"

Why would it kill the planet? The same amount of sunlight energy is already falling on it, so imo it’s just utilizing this energy more effectively to benefit life

If it is sunlight you are depriving the ecosystem of it.

It's not unthinkable that a fission or fusion economy could produce enough energy that the waste heat cooks us.

Not only would you be depriving the ecosystem of that energy, but also, you would make the planet unliveable. A lot of the energy of the sun that falls on the earth is reflected back into space. If all that energy is capture and used, eventually it will turn into heat.

What does it mean to harvest 100% of the sunlight? How much are we re-distributing to all the other living things that rely on sunlight?

Right: any culture so unsophisticated as to be unable to bang two nuclei together and get a ballistic alpha particle out will also fail to build any of that stuff. Any that is able will have no interest that stuff.

The next stage of human evolution will be conducted out in the Kuiper belt, where the thermodynamically irreducible well of cold, the solidified gases, and the wide-open spaces beckon alluringly.

Abstract:

The level of technological development of any civilization can be gaged in large part by the amount of energy they produce for their use, but also encompasses that civilization's stewardship of their home world.

Following the Kardashev definition, a Type I civilization is able to store and use all the energy available on its planet.

In this study, we develop a model based on Carl Sagan's K formula and use this model to analyze the consumption and energy supply of the three most important energy sources: fossil fuels (e.g., coal, oil, natural gas, crude, NGL and feedstocks), nuclear energy and renewable energy. We also consider environmental limitations suggested by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, and those specific to our calculations to predict when humanity will reach the level of a Kardashev scale Type I civilization.

Our findings suggest that the best estimate for this day will not come until year 2371.

If you've never heard of this topic of Kardashev type civilizations, I found a good introductory video which helped me get a gist of it back in the day if anyone is interested:

Michio Kaku 3 types of Civilizations [2008] via https://youtu.be/6GooNhOIMY0

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