Current Status of Human Civilization
Further information: World energy resources and consumptionMichio Kaku suggested that humans may attain Type I status in about 100–200 years, Type II status in a few thousand years, and Type III status in about 100,000 to a million years.
Carl Sagan suggested defining intermediate values (not considered in Kardashev's original scale) by interpolating and extrapolating the values given above for types 1, 2 and 3, using the formula
- ,
where value K is a civilization's Kardashev rating and MW is the power it uses, in megawatts. He calculated humanity's civilization type (in 1973) to be about 0.7, with respect to this extrapolation (apparently using 10 terawatt (TW) as the value for 1970s humanity).
In 2008, total world energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh), equivalent to an average power consumption of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W or 0.7 on the Kardashev scale).
The total photosynthetic productivity of earth is between ~1500–2250 TW, or 47,300–71,000 exajoules per year, making nature a 0.9 Kardashev scale civilization.
Read more about this topic: Kardashev Scale
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