Timeline for Does the Kardashev scale have points below zero?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Jun 16, 2020 at 11:03 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Nov 12, 2017 at 10:16 | comment | added | cowlinator | Celtschk brings up a good question. Does the power used by a human's cells for biochemistry count toward the world power consumption (P)? If not, then the Kardashev value for a pre-fire society would approach zero, making the minimum value much less than -0.6 (it would approach negative infinity). | |
| Jan 26, 2017 at 16:09 | comment | added | SarahofGaia | I wasn't sure. A lot of formulae are derived from more complex formulae, and thus something that seems kind of arbitrary may merely be a by-product of said simplification. Thanks for letting me know, though. :) | |
| Jan 12, 2017 at 12:44 | comment | added | BenRW | @SarahofGaia (log₁₀(P))-6, it doesn't make much sense to subtract constant 6 watts from how much power a civilisation utilises before counting how many base-ten digits that number is. | |
| Aug 7, 2016 at 2:00 | comment | added | SarahofGaia |
Here's something kind of important: Is the formula numerator log₁₀(P-6) or log₁₀(P)-6?
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| Dec 14, 2015 at 21:00 | comment | added | celtschk | Assuming that a civilization must consist of at least one human, and a human has a minimum power consumption of about 100 Watt ($P=100$) just for living, I conclude that a civilization cannot go beyond $-0.4$. If one assumes that it needs at least 10000 people before the term "civilization" can be applied, the scale cannot be negative (actually it needs even less people to not be negative, as those people will spend energy to get their food, which they will additionally need to consume). | |
| Oct 23, 2015 at 18:18 | comment | added | Cort Ammon | @Dronz Actually, when you start looking at societies pushing their way towards Type I and Type II, "sustainable" takes on a very very different meaning. Every star dies. Solar power just takes a little longer to deplete. | |
| Oct 3, 2014 at 20:50 | comment | added | Dronz | Well yes. Circa 1800, the graph shows practically all energy as "bio fuels", and it might be interesting to see someone try to express statistical estimates for wood-burning, beeswax, lamp oil, animal power, human musclepower (slave vs. freeman), wind harnessed for sailing, windmills, waterwheels... except that would seem a bit more academic than practical, as few were considering shifting energy sources for the same sort of device, and there was no electrical grid to allocate electrical power to different devices. | |
| Oct 2, 2014 at 14:02 | comment | added | Garoal | However, the op is explicitly asking about the Kardashev's scale. About the graph, the use of that power sources you mention were almost nonexistent in the period that we are concerned about (year ~1800) | |
| Oct 1, 2014 at 19:54 | comment | added | Dronz | Interesting that that graph does not show sustainable power sources such as solar, wind or ocean. Also interesting that one would think to rate civilization by how much energy it uses - sounds like an entrenched capitalist mindset, which imagines ever-increasing consumption as a desirable, rather than a thermodynamically impossible and probably disastrous, endeavor. | |
| Sep 19, 2014 at 10:08 | history | answered | Garoal | CC BY-SA 3.0 |