this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by realitista@lemmy.world to c/comicstrips@lemmy.world
 

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[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

But we self replicate and all of our systems are already in place. We’re not ideal I’d wager but we’re an available resource.

Fossil fuels are a lot less efficient than solar energy … but we started there.

[–] mriormro@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

This is a cute idea for a movie and all but it's incredibly impractical/unsustainable. If a system required that it's energy storage be self-replicating (for whatever reason) then you would design and fabricate that energy storage solution for that system. Not be reliant on a calorically inefficiently produced sub-system (i.e. humans).

You literally need to grow an entire human just to store energy in it. Realistically, you're looking at overfeeding a population with as much calorically dense, yet minimally energy intensive foodstuffs just to store energy in a material that's less performant than paraffin wax (body fat has an energy density of about 39 MJ/kg versus paraffin wax at about 42 MJ/kg). That's not to speak of the inefficiencies of the mixture of the storage medium (human muscle is about 5 times less energy dense than fat).