How would a Type I civilization habitable planet be any different to a Type II civilization habitable planet?

This question is a different version of other questions that I have found here discussing a similar but different problem.

The problem I'm facing here is about the excess or waste heat that an advanced civilization will have to find a solution for. To illustrate, the Earth receives $10^{17}$ Watts from the Sun (ignoring the Earth albedo), and since we capture almost none of this energy, the Earth atmosphere heats to its current habitable temperature. Now, whenever we get to the Type I level, we will be using all those $10^{17}$ Watts from the Sun and since energy can't be created nor destroyed, all this energy will in one way or another end up as heat, but this is not a problem for a Type I since it's what we have always been heating the Earth with in the first place. It starts to make the Earth uninhabitable if we use any more energy than this.

The problem with Type II now is that we will have $10^{26}$ Watts available to us. That is $10^{9}$ times more available energy than before. Now let's imagine a solar system of 10 rocky planets that we want to colonize. Keeping in mind that we are limited by $10^{17}$ W for every planet or else it becomes too hot to live on, how would any of these 10 Type II planets be any different to the previous Type I planet if they are using the exact same $10^{17}$ W?

Also note that in this Type II scenario we only used $10^{18}$ W of the available $10^{26}$ W. So are there any possible ways to dissipate the heat at a faster rate so can use more energy while still making the planets habitable?

posted almost 5 years ago

Abanob Ebrahim‭

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