Everything is made out of energy. Entropy is a measure of energy that is no longer capable of conversion into work. It is lost for our use. For example, water going over a dam can be used to generate electricity. However, once the water reaches the bottom then it is no longer in a state to perform work. Water on a flat plane cannot be used to turn even the smallest turbine. Work means when energy moves from a higher level of concentration to a lower level. An increase in entropy means a decrease in “available energy”. Every time something occurs in the natural world, some amount of energy ends up being unavailable for future work. Part of the unavailable energy is pollution. Pollution is dissipated energy that accumulates in the environment and poses a grave threat to the ecosystem and to public health.
The amount of energy in the universe has been fixed since the beginning of time and will remain fixed till the end of time. It is impossible to either create or destroy energy.
Entropy is part of the natural law of thermodynamics. It is the second law. Both laws of thermodynamics can be stated in one sentence:
The total energy content of the universe is constant and the total entropy is continually increasing.
The first law is the conservation law. It says that while energy can never be created or destroyed it can be transformed from one form to another. For example, if we burn a piece of wood, the energy remains but it is transformed into carbon dioxide and other gases that then spread out into space.
Energy flows to an equilibrium state, where entropy has reached a maximum, and there is no longer free energy available to perform additional work.
On the earth there are two sources of available energy: terrestrial (land) stock and solar flow from the sun. Terrestrial stock consists of two kinds – renewable on a human time scale (energy and renewable) and those renewable only over geologic time and which are treated as non-renewable.
What about recycling? Although efficient recycling is an important concept, it requires the expenditure of additional energy in the collecting, transporting, and processing of used materials. This just increases the overall entropy of the environment. Things can only be recycled by the expenditure of new sources of available energy and at the expense of increasing the entropy of the overall environment.
Material entropy is continually increasing and will ultimately reach a maximum. The earth is a closed system. Although the sun‘s energy flow to the earth it cannot create matter by itself. Terrestrial matter is still needed. Mountains are wearing down and topsoil is being blown away with ach passing second. Even renewable resources are really non-renewable over the long run. “While organisms reproduce, the life and death of them increase the entropy of the earth, meaning that less available matter exists for the unfolding of life in the future.
This may be a difficult concept to accept because we know that matter recycles itself. However, the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, is continually happening. Unavailable energy is called “heat death” and unavailable matter is called “matter chaos”. This is entropy.
What does this mean for human life on the planet?
The entropy law answers the central question that every culture throughout history has had to grapple with: How should human beings behave in the world? While it has been generally agreed that people should act in a way that preserves and enhances life, there have been countless prescriptions for exactly how to go about achieving such ends.
Finally, the entropy law provides an answer that is all-embracing. Preserving and enhancing life, in all of its forms, requires available energy. The more energy available, the greater the prospects for extending the possibilities of life into the future. But the second law also tells us that the available store of energy in the world is csontinually being depleted by every occurrence. The more energy each of us uses up, the less is avalaible for all life that comes after us. The ultimate moral imperative, then, is to waste as little energy as possible. By so doing, we are expressing our love of life and our loving commitment to the continued unfolding of all of life. Therefore, when we speak of life in the universal sense, we are speaking of that deep spirit of oneness that acknowledges that we are each an inseparable part of the total flow that is the becoming process of life itself.
Paraphrased and quoted from Jeremy Rifkin, Entropy, into the greenhouse world.
No comments:
Post a Comment