Pseudo green

[Mary Fisher]

Only round the edges.

Before then. But yes, spin it was.

Mary

[Frank Lee Speke-King]

For anyone interested, there is a long thread on the uk.legal group entitled "What Is the Evidence For Climate Change?", currently 169 posts and rising, that discusses these issues. Doubtless it's not the only one.

[Ian Stirling]

I happened to do some numbers some time ago.

However, the fundamentals have not changes.

If you put down lots of biosphere II's - at the same population loading, you can get around a hundred billion, using about half the land area. Use all the global area and you hit about half a trillion.

This is with pretty much conventional optimised farming, genetically engineered, massive irrigation projects, personal fossil energy use to the bare bones. (nuclear is still fine - the heating at this level of population is not that large)

My 'high end' number was 150 trillion.

A building spanning a large fraction (1/2?) of the world, 20 stories high. Everyone gets 200m^2 or so, plus communal space, plus nature reserves, plus 'park' levels.

Food is grown with either genetically engineered algae, under optimised lighting, or direct synthesis.

The sunlight that hits the surface is a fraction of its current level, able to make most plants grow, but with all IR and other wavelengths filtered out to remove excess heat.

There is no problem with the planet getting cool, shedding heat is a major problem - the huge electric greenhouse levels shed a lot of heat, as do the humans.

As to raw materials, the earth is a wonderful resource. If you smash it up into little bits, you get the raw materials for about a human in 150 tons of crust (the shortfall is nitrogen first). Or the equivalent population of the UK, for every person alive on earth now.

10^24 people is a pretty hard upper limit for the solar system, after we've dissasembled all of the large rocky bodies, and mined out the gas giants, and done a little nuclear synthesis to get Chlorine and Phosphorous. (this is the number for humans living and growing food 'naturally' - plants, animals, ...)

To get significantly more, you need to mine the sun, or get really heavily into nuclear synthesis - Sulphur is a big bottleneck, or redefine what a human is.

[Huge]

Have you read TJ Bass's SF books? (Half Past Human (1971) and The Godwhale (1974))

You should.

[Ian Stirling]

Well. For many people, this would not change their lives much.

You get a few weeks of holiday a year in a nice place. Some parks near home.

Of course - the above number can be 'only' 2000m^2, for 1.5 trillion, and include a 1000m^2 private garden, and extensive parkland levels