Re: No way to get solar energy by then...
> I'm afraid we've already peaked
Definitely already peaked!
Besides, if you take a look at geological time scales, you can't but notice that life is rather short-lived, and that most evolutionary paths don't last more than a couple million years, at best.
By the time our sun starts acting up (5 billion years from now), the fleeting occurrence of the human species will be older than the creation of Earth is today (4.5 billion years)...
Sorry, there is absolutely no chance humanity might still exist by then. It's even extremely unlikely mammals as such might still be around, and that's assuming no big catastrophe (like a meteor, or a snowball earth, or a runaway greenhouse effect turning Earth into Venus) ever happens: Just plain, smooth sailing in an ever-hospitable environment. If there is still life on Earth by then, it will certainly be totally different to what we know today, more different than today's humans are to Trilobites, which reigned over Earth just a short 500 million years ago. Scale, always be aware of scale.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
