Actually, the bots will be better at capturing carbon than any plant, other than possibly well-tended algie (30%)
How?
MonteQuest wrote:Since technology is an energy transformer, and the more complex the technology, the more energy transformations
tmazanec1 wrote: raising it through such means as wireless communication freeing up copper .
tmazanec1 wrote: I am not as pessimistic as MonteQuest.
tmazanec1 wrote: That still means that some 650 million people are destitute, most but not all in Africa.
MonteQuest wrote:I am constantly met with the statement "that the 2nd law only applies to isolated systems and the earth is not an isolated system." Most people say closed sytem, and in some places it is written that way, but correctly stated, it is islolated, meaning no exchange of matter or energy. In this type of system, entropy always increases. Sometimes, it seems they mean that the 2nd law doesn't apply to earth, which is a closed system, exchanging only energy and not matter with the Universe.
MonteQuest wrote:So, are the only two thermodynamic systems in existence to which the laws applies, the Universe(which is the only true isolated system we know of) and the earth?
MonteQuest wrote:Energy transformations produce waste heat as the result of 2nd law, but they also produce physical changes, deterioration, decay. Peeling paint is entropy at work.
MonteQuest wrote:Nature maintains itself, but man-made objects require constant maintenance to combat the ravages of entropy.
MonteQuest wrote:The more complex the object or technology, the more maintenance (thus energy) required to keep entropy at bay.
MonteQuest wrote:Since the natural biosphere is powered by solar energy, the ordering and maintenance of the material creation of human activity on the Earth’s surface can continue far into the future by the export of entropy into space. But any economy based on energy sources other than the direct solar flow impinging on the Earth’s surface (i.e., fossil fuels, as well as nuclear and geothermal energy) must inevitably alter the heat budget by the emission of heat radiation over and above the natural flow from the surface and exceed the carrying capacity of the enironment.
MonteQuest wrote:Tapping solar energy directly merely utilizes a small part of the immense flow to do work which ultimately would be simply converted into waste heat and radiated into space anyway. In this case, there is a sustainable balance, given we respect the other environmental constraints set by nature...at least until the sun goes nova.
MonteQuest wrote:This means we are seriously altering the heat budget of the earth, producing the "heat island" effect in cities and industrial centers, as well as the well-known global warming.
MonteQuest wrote:Using more technology in an attempt to solve this is unsustainable, as is our present attempt. Until our population and our economy energy base are reflective of the limits of our environment, and based upon the solar flow of energy from the sun, creating more complex technology to go around these limits will just make it farther for us to fall.
These are hundreds of millions in poverty, not destitution. You can live in poverty in the Third World on these kinds of incomes (although I sure as **** would not want to). Destitution is different.
Doly wrote:Monte, I've seen your argument about entropy many times in posts, and I'd like to say that it's a mixture of right concepts and wrong ones. I'll try to sort them out here.
Are you saying the earth isn't cooling?Doly wrote: Thermal death means that every point in the system is at the same temperature. Quite clearly, the Earth isn't in that situation, nor tending to it.
Doly wrote: For open systems, what it says is that the reduction of entropy in the open system is possible, but only at the cost of increasing entropy somewhere else. In the case of Earth, it means that we can have relatively low entropy here, as long as we orbit round the sun, which provides us nicely with extra energy all the time.
Doly wrote: Monte, do you honestly believe that laws of physics apply in a different way to man-made objects and natural ones? I'm afraid not. Nature also sufferes deterioration and decay. In the case of living beings, it's called "growing old" and "dying".
So are you admitting tech is an energy sink?Doly wrote: There is a lot of energy saving measures that could be taken and would make a significant difference.
Doly wrote: But as I explained before, using other energy sources, in principle, shouldn't be a problem if they are renewable and non-polluting. Maybe at some point in the future we might be using, say, nuclear fusion to a point that the extra heat gets worrying, but we aren't anywhere near that.
Doly wrote: Think also that our most complex technology, which is electronics, is actually a technology that uses very small amounts of energy compared with other industries.
No, i don't see. There is no coherent argument here.Doly wrote: So your argument that we should stay low tech because of entropy is, quite plainly, invalid.
Doly wrote:Monte, I've seen your argument about entropy many times in posts, and I'd like to say that it's a mixture of right concepts and wrong ones. I'll try to sort them out here.
MonteQuest wrote:
I am constantly met with the statement "that the 2nd law only applies to isolated systems and the earth is not an isolated system." Most people say closed sytem, and in some places it is written that way, but correctly stated, it is isolated, meaning no exchange of matter or energy. In this type of system, entropy always increases. Sometimes, it seems they mean that the 2nd law doesn't apply to earth, which is a closed system, exchanging only energy and not matter with the Universe.
Doly wrote:
The Earth is not a closed system, since it exchanges energy with the Universe. That's it. The inevitable increase of entropy that the 2nd Law predicts for closed systems doesn't apply. You can notice it because we aren't approaching what's called "thermal death", which happens in systems where entropy tends to increase all the time. Thermal death means that every point in the system is at the same temperature. Quite clearly, the Earth isn't in that situation, nor tending to it.
Anonymous wrote:
Solar, wind, and hydro power are essentially tapping natural energy flows into Earth's biosphere from the sun and Earth's inner heat. So tapping these sources of energy does not increase the overall entropy in the biosphere it merely redirects it for our purposes.
Anonymous wrote:What has been different of course with the use of fossil fuels is that the biosphere has received an increased state of entropy as you point out, and to go further and consume faster with their use would increase the entropy more. But the only new alternative energy source beyond fossil fuels that would increase the entropy of the biosphere like fossil fuels is nuclear fission/fusion. Which is essentially dispersing the enormous energy bound up in the nuclei and spreading it out to the biosphere through heat, and electrical machinery, etc.
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