Re: How fast could fusion have been discovered?

On 2009-03-23, cryptoguy <treifamily@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Try doing the math - cannibalism just isn't worth the effort, from a
nutritional standpoint. You'd only get about 1% of lifetime meat
consumption back from each person.

Yes, reprocessing sewage is the big winner in closing nutrient cycles.
Though really, a few tens of billions of people is fairly minor from a
planetary nutrient cycle point of view, and even in terms of food
energy use. A human being consumes about 120 W in food energy,
averaged over their lifetime. In modern societies energy consumption
in other forms is about 5000 to 10000 W, so that food accounts for
about 1-2%.

The few hundred grams of biologically rare elements per century from
directly reprocessing bodies is probably only worthwhile if you've
already closed the nutrient loops very tight in every other respect
and still in danger of running short. Burial and cremation both lead
to elements re-entering the ecosystem and our food chain, just taking
somewhat longer.

If the Earth had enough people that those cycles were insufficiently
short, then there would probably be few living things on Earth other
than humanity and food microorganisms. It would also mean that we had
exhausted Earth's crust of practical alternative sources. That's
about as far as it is possible to get from environmental preservation.


- Tim
.

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