>
> Robert Freitas also raised a concern about killing
> plants by capturing
> solar energy they are currently using. You can
> divert energy to keep
> plants alive, but it further reduces the amount
> available.
>
Seeing as a large area of plants is necessary to keep the air nice, that does take a fair hunk out of the available insolation.
> I do think we can do somewhat better than Robert B's
> 100 kW/person;
> maybe 1000, 2000 or 5000 kW, but I doubt that we can
> hit 10000-50000
> kW until we are ready to pretty much completely take
> over running the
> planet's weather and climate, and possibly
> eliminating plants and animals.
> Of course reducing the human population by a factor
> of 10 would help too.
Would it be progress to create a concrete planet? I think there just might be a few objections to this, somehow.
Mike