File talk:Kscaleprojections.png

Fractional Kardashev value is what?
This graph seems to suggest that our present Kardashev value is a significant fraction of 1. But elsewhere on Wikipedia, it is asserted that our total world energy usage is less than 1% of the planet's solar budget. I certainly can't see how we could have a Kardashev value of .7 or .8 unless humanity was eating/burning the vast majority of all life on earth and taking away enough solar energy to stop all weather patterns and stagnate all oceans! I'd really like to know what the source is for the information in this graph, and if the left axis should be ignored as misleading. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 00:25, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, my bad. I found elsewhere on Wikipedia that this fractional Kardashev number is a log 10 scale with an arbitrary origin point. I'd still like to know, though, how exactly we're supposed to increase total energy use by nearly a thousandfold in the time horizon of this graph. It really really looks like wishful thinking. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 00:34, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

SVG
I dunno what all the other talk here is about what this graph is... But I know that it can easily be put into SVG format. I just don't know the template command for it. Someone who knows that oughta do it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.57.174.33 (talk) 08:39, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Plot ambiguity, confusion, original research, and sloppy plotting
I wrote the long explanation of acronyms in the image mainspace, as well as the recommendations to follow. This was originally intended for the Talk page, but as the acronyms had to be devised without assistance from the original poster, it seemed relevant to have such description available as a dynamic work-in-progress.

There is only one comment by the original poster with regards to this graph, reproduced below: "The chart was a simple linear projection using several growth rate bounds. It would likely be better to provide an illustrated example of Kardashev Scale bounds. In light of comments about energy consumption and efficiency by Jared Diamond, it is likely that the technological context of the Kardashev Scale is less relevant in today's modern energy climate. What we can point to in a chart is that small changes in growth rate, due to the exponential nature of the scale, lead to big changes in when certain thresholds are crossed."

I have unfortunately seen this graph reproduced in many places online, often with the same misguided notion: "Note that one projection shows a singularity". I will again link to a nice article describing some of the projection ideas, and I think this description is pretty well-cited, though the blog itself seems rather unusable. The energy-scale wheel would be perfect for this article, though thorough image searching fails to produce an original source. In such a case, with such a widely-reproduced image, is WP allowed to use it? Regardless, it would be easy to produce something similar on our own, as it is simply a representation of common fact.

For those working on replacement images and material, I'd also point to this blog. Also, the same user uploaded previous images for the Kardashev scale page, this time with a proper NASA illustration source. The toroidal colonies can represent a kind of Dyson-sphere ring specifically described in Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne (he sources the idea from another work, though I can't remember where).

So these are all good replacements, and certainly non-extrapolated but possibly interpolated plots of IEA data or other sources (non-synthesized) would be acceptable. There is also no short supply of energy projects (like this gem). But this plot is absolutely worthless. SamuelRiv (talk) 07:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)