Reply To: Proliferation?

[zapkitty]

KeithPickering wrote: Got it. A Zap is 1 megawatt-person, for an assumed population of 14 billion. Or, 1 Zap = 14 billion megawatts = 14 million gigawatts = 14000 terawatts. Current worldwide energy usage = 16 terawatts.

… for a thousand years.

A measurement of the energy reserves of a given source that should be somewhat more relevant to a discussion of whether it’s a source worth switching to than, say, measurements with vague parameters that give results in time frames longer than life has existed on Earth.

vansig wrote: 1 MW per person would have some impact on heat dissipation.

to maintain temperature below about 50 C, users would have to dissipate
around 620 W/m^2, which implies a spherical surface 23 meters diameter… for each person, for a radiator.

We’ve already got a big spherical radiator that handles inputs in the 122 petawatt range… the Earth. Even if we were actually using 14 petawatts additional (the zap is a measure of energy reserves, not a mandate for use) we’d just have to paint the roofs white.

The current heating problem is due to the pcrats insisting on painting everything black 🙂