Reply #96: Awesome

[Dead_Parrot]

I can't argue with the maths, because there isn't any, but I note that an extra 403TW (which based on their assumptions is where we wind up) would not equate to a solar forcing of 3W/m².

Well, unless you made all generation thermal, ran it at 0 percent efficiency, and somehow gave all powerplants the same thermal emission profile as the surface of the sun (ie, heat them up to 5500 centigrade and take a step back).

None of these assumptions seems particularly likely: It appears all they've actually done is made a wild-ass exponential projection of future energy use, converted it to watts and divided it by pi.r² to convert it into sunlight equivalent.

And it's based on the assumption that energy use grows 20-fold over the next 300 years, which requires a certain amount of magic in the resource & population departments ("It's fair to ask if we could ever produce so much power", as Jonathan Gregory puts it).

Thanks Kris, another quality paper.