Liamj wrote:Are you saying the earth isn't cooling?
The centre of the Earth is cooling, but what happens to the surface (and that is what we really care about, by the way) depends on what happens to the sun. According to astronomers, there will be a day, millions of years in the future, when the surface of Earth will be too hot for life. Like I said, Earth isn't going towards thermodinamic equilibrium because of the sun.
Liamj wrote:This presumes that there is some magical positive balance between the quanta & forms of energy earth is receiving & emitting: is there any evidence for that? Why is the cooling of our rock not mentioned in your neat reality?
The Earth does receive more energy than it emits. It just happens to be so in this planet. Jupiter, on the other hand, emits more than it receives. It has to do with the distance to the sun.
Liamj wrote:Obviously, but nature doesn't require setting fire to quite so much stuff to maintain itself as technology does - thats the point.
Nature doesn't set fire to anything in the way we do. The combustions in living beings are done without fire, and they are called "breathing". They amount of carbon dioxide emmited by animals in their breathing used to be in equilibrium by the amout absorbed by plants. Then we started setting fire to fuels and broke that balance. We're not generating more carbon dioxide with our technology than animals, though. We are just generating too much to keep the current balance.
That doesn't mean that a different balance can't be achieved - the composition of the atmosphere of the Earth has changed quite a lot since its origins. Of course, a different balance might be a world that we would find quite uncomfortable. So it's much better to try to keep the current one.
Liamj wrote:So are you admitting tech is an energy sink?.
Energy can't be destroyed, only transformed. Technology does generate a certain amount of energy in the form of heat that can't be reutilised. That's a consequence of the 2nd Law of Thermodinamics, and it doesn't apply only to technology. It applies to anything that uses energy, like for example, living beings.
Liamj wrote:Nuclear fusion renewable & nonpollluting? excuse me, i must have wandered into a discussion from another planet...
I said nuclear fusion, not fission. Nuclear fusion isn't developed yet. It would be renewable, and it could be nonpolluting. (Of course, as it isn't developed yet, it may turn out that some part of the process is polluting).
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.
Liamj wrote:sorry, wrong planet again...
Do you care to explain why you think that electronics uses as much energy as transport, steel making, or any other of our main technologies? Because the data I have says the opposite.
MonteQuest wrote:
How was what you just quoted by me confusing? People confuse the terminology and it creates endless debate. Let me clarify once more:
Isolated system: No exchange of matter or energy. The universe is the only isolated system we know of. In this type of system, entropy always increases. 2nd Law.
Closed system: Energy is exchanged but not matter. The Earth is a closed system. It exchanges solar energy with the universe, but not matter, save the occasional meteorite. Entropy can be reduced and reversed, but only with an even greater increase of entropy somewhere else.
Open system: Both energy and matter are exchanged. Living organisms are open systems. Entropy can be reduced and reversed, but only with an even greater increase of entropy somewhere else--same as in the closed system.
Well, the terminology I learned had only closed and open systems, with "closed" meaning "isolated" in your terminology, and "open" meaning either "open" or "closed" in your terminology. Confusing, I know.
Anyway, we agree on the main point, which is that, thermodinamically speaking, the entropy on Earth doesn't have to increase.
MonteQuest wrote:It requires a huge expenditure of energy to maintain our society, our machinery, roads, infrastructure, peeling paint, and messy children’s rooms. This expenditure of energy holds entropy at bay; otherwise everything just falls apart, rots, deteriorates, and dies. So, if you find yourself running out of the energy base upon which all of this unfolds, does it make sense to accelerate your consumption of energy in an effort to keep it going?
Yes, our current technology is based on cheap energy and therefore wastes a lot of energy. But a technology based on conserving energy could be a lot more complex than our current one, and still be much more efficient, energy-wise.
MonteQuest wrote:
Technology is an energy transformer. It accelerates the consumption of energy due to it’s inherent complex nature. Each transformation results in the loss of useable energy to waste heat. Now, remember, forget the waste heat—that is not the issue that concerns me— the issue is that using technology will hasten the emptying of the treasure chest and create more environmental entropy watersheds and global warming as a result.
If your "environmental entropy watersheds" aren't waste heat, what exactly are they? Pollution? Nonpolluting energy sources exist.
MonteQuest wrote:
We will use up the remaining fossil fuels even faster using the same process that got us here, and create an even bigger environmental legacy to leave to future generations. Why? 2nd law, you cannot convert energy from one form to another without a loss of useable energy and an increase in disorder in the environment, not just waste heat as disorder, but physical disorder in the environment as pollution, loss of species and habitat, etc. This is what concerns me.
Again, the physical meaning of disorder isn't exactly the same as the intuitive meaning of disorder. Increasing entropy in the environment doesn't mean creating pollution or killing species. The only thing it means for certain is waste heat. Other consequences are avoidable.
The chemical reactions where entropy is increased are those where high-energy molecules (usually complex ones) convert into low-energy ones. For example, burning hydrocarbons. But also, burning hydrogen. Burning hydrogen gives water, which is nonpolluting.
MonteQuest wrote:
This technological world we live in that is based upon infinite growth in a finite world is unsustainable, always has been, and always will be.
The world is finite, I agree, and there are clear limits to what we can do without getting in trouble. "Infinite growth" is a fuzzy concept. If it means that we can't grow infinite amounts of food, I agree. If it means that the Earth can't sustain infinite amounts of people, I agree. But I don't see that it means that technology can't advance to infinity, which is what you seem to be saying.
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