9. This calculation isn’t presented straightforwardly in the post. The key lines are “No matter what the technology, a sustained 2.3% energy growth rate would require us to produce as much energy as the entire sun within 1400 years” and “The Milky Way galaxy hosts about 100 billion stars. Lots of energy just spewing into space, there for the taking. Recall that each factor of ten takes us 100 years down the road. One-hundred billion is eleven factors of ten, so 1100 additional years.” 1400 + 1100 = 2500, the figure I cite. This relies on the assumption that the average star in our galaxy offers about as much energy as the sun; I don’t know whether that’s the case.
9. This calculation isn’t presented straightforwardly in the post. The key lines are “No matter what the technology, a sustained 2.3% energy growth rate would require us to produce as much energy as the entire sun within 1400 years” and “The Milky Way galaxy hosts about 100 billion stars. Lots of energy just spewing into space, there for the taking. Recall that each factor of ten takes us 100 years down the road. One-hundred billion is eleven factors of ten, so 1100 additional years.” 1400 + 1100 = 2500, the figure I cite. This relies on the assumption that the average star in our galaxy offers about as much energy as the sun; I don’t know whether that’s the case.
Hey… the post links to tenth footnote instead of this one. (Also, no, the Sun seems at the somewhat low end of brightness?)