| >>> Also, putting your first number in scientific notation helps put this in perspective: 2.2 x 10^12 . Seven orders of magnitude. Close to 15 000 0000 times as much. <<< Hm, I made a big mistake in that comment. I should have added that we have access to this much, but the real catch is energy and how we are currently limited to tapping into it and the total resource we can access is X. Thank you so much for pointing this out. >>> it mostly just requires more energy <<< Yeah as I argued in another comment, that really is the unmentioned catch over here. I should have elaborated upon that in the parent. Sorry. Even if most of humanity doesn't reach that level of consumption, we will need to start unlocking some of this resource sooner or later. What really worries me is the amount of energy we need to unlock all of this water locked away in glaciers, ice caps and so on and then actually manage to process and distribute it for final use. That's a really interesting but hard engineering problem. >>> Technology which is clearly within our reach would allow the earth to support trillions of humans -- admittedly at a more crowded level than I would prefer. :) <<< Can you please elaborate more? |