I wrote: >3. Solar heat and forest fires are orders of magnitude greater than waste heat >from human sources.
Roughly 4 orders, to be more precise. Solar energy intercepted by earth: 10E17 W Total primary energy production: 12 TW = 1.2*10E13 W This shows why bioenergy systems are nonsense. They can never supply enough energy. The average year-round efficiency of photosynthesis is ~0.1%. In other words, if we collected every leaf, stick, blade of grass and gram of algae that grows on earth, we would have barely enough fuel. If cold fusion increase our total primary energy production by an order of magnitude it may start to have a serious effect on the environment. As I said, the best way to fix that problem would be to put the energy consuming applications off-earth. The other advantage to doing that is that we can use solar to do some REALLY big applications, such as building and launching 1 billion DWT class starships (starships bigger than all of the ocean-going ship presently on earth, which total ~900 million DWT). Why not? Solar energy is out there, going to waste as it were, at the rate of 4*10E23 W. Why not make use of it? We might decide to ablate 1/300th of Jupiter to assemble a new planet designed for optimum human living conditions. As long as there is no life on Jupiter I see no harm in doing that, although I suppose nature preservationists may object. I say think big. - Jed
