There are numerous ways we might gauge the development of civilisation in
general. The increase of human population, the rise and fall of empires, and
the advancement of technology.
Calculating the energy consumption of people at any particular moment is a
straightforward measurement, though. Our capacity to harness energy has
become one of humanity's most advantageous abilities as it has spread and
developed.
The energy consumption of a species is a good indicator of its technical
proficiency, assuming other civilizations on other worlds could have similar
abilities. The
Kardashev Scale
is based on this principle.
Nikolai Kardashev, a Russian scientist, proposed the scale in 1964. He
divided civilizations into three groups: stellar, galactic, and
planetary.
A Type I species has energy-harvesting capabilities on a par with the
stellar energy that reaches its home planet. Both Type II and Type III
species have the ability to harness energy on a scale comparable to their
parent star or galaxy.
Carl Sagan, who recommended a continuous scale of measurement rather than
only three categories, contributed to the idea's wider popularization.
What kind of society do we have then? Despite the fact that we spend a lot
of energy, it turns out that we aren't even Type I.
The average amount of solar energy that reaches Earth is 1016 watts, but
the amount that people consume now is 1013 watts. That places us at a Sagan
sliding scale value of around 0.73 at the moment.
Not too shabby for a group of highly evolved primates, but it poses an
intriguing query. Could we possibly achieve Type I? After all, we can't
completely shield the Earth from the sun's rays and maintain its
habitability.
In a work that was just published on the arXiv, this subject is examined.
The article examines the three main energy sources—fossil fuels, nuclear
power, and renewable energy—and forecasts their probable future
expansion.
On the surface, getting to Type I would appear to be rather simple. You'll
succeed if you make the creation of energy your primary goal. But every kind
of energy source has its own drawbacks.
If we burn every last bit of fossil fuel, for example, it may result in a
degree of climatic change that would put us all in the dreaded
Great Filter. If you go extinct, you can't develop into a Type I civilisation.
The team therefore adopts a more sophisticated strategy, weighing the need
to restrict climate change and pollution levels as specified by the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the International Energy
Agency against the physical constraints of each type of energy source.
They discovered that mankind can still advance to a Type I level despite
practical constraints. The drawback is that it will be at least 2371 before
we achieve that level.
That need not be a negative thing. The Kardashev Scale is a crude technique
for estimating the extent of human technological development.
We've seen how improvements in low-power computing and greater efficiency
enable us to reduce or flatten our energy usage while still making technical
progress. Advanced civilizations demand a lot of energy.
It is possible that we will be fully sophisticated when we discover we
don't need to become a Type I civilization, even if this study demonstrates
how we may do so.
This article was originally published by
Universe Today. Read
the original article.
