tmazanec1 wrote:By your reasoning, all technology is hastening the end of everything, since all technology produces waste heat.
Since technology is an energy transformer, and the more complex the technology, the more energy transformations, it is 2nd Law that dictates that increasing the use of technology increases entropy by definition. My reasoning is that energy cannot be converted from one form to another without an increase in entropy. Classic 2nd Law.
tmazanec1 wrote:If the planet must show increasing disorder, either you are a Creationist, or you must explain how the planet went from a lifeless ball of steaming rock to the Pleistocene level of biodiversity (I assume you do not consider Holocene society as an improvement) without violating the second law.
This shows your ignorance of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, which is how livings things avoid heat death. Living systems can never obtain an equilibrium state while they are alive because that would entail death. They maintain this "steady state" by feeding off the available energy around them. Matter and energy must continue to flow through them or they die. Fee flow of energy, rather than entropy is the primary concern. While nonequilibrium systems are not explained in the same way as equilibrium systems, they do conform to the broad imperative of 2nd Law. The rate of entropy is just different. Splitting hairs does little to take away the import of the message does it?
tmazanec1 wrote:There is a limit on the ultimate level of population the earth can sustain at a reasonable First World standard of living before waste heat begins affecting climate significantly. It is somewhere above the present population, but not greatly above it. Drexler knows we cannot grow forever, or even for a historically long period of time. At some point, we will have to pave over a sizable area of our tropics with solar cells (more efficient with nanotechnology) to run our civilization. 10 billion will likely need a small enough percentage (depending on your value system) to do this. 100 billion likely could not.
10 billion? I’ve asked you this before and you didn’t respond: Show me one credible study that says the earth can support 10 billion people much less 2 billion. I rather doubt it exists anywhere.
tmazanec1 wrote:Rifkin thinks the area to consider is the planet. The system in which entropy increases is the UNIVERSE. The energy source is the sun, the energy sink is the black darkness of space,
Drexler wrote:Rifkin is right in saying that "it's possible to reverse the entropy process in an isolated time and place, but only by using up energy in the process and thus increasing the overall entropy of the environment." But both Rifkin and Barnet make the same mistake: when they write of the environment, they imply the Earth - but the law applies to the environment as a whole, and that whole is the universe. In effect, Rifkin and Barnet ignore both the light of the Sun and the cold black of the night sky.
According to Rifkin, his ideas destroy the notion of history as progress, transcending the modern worldview. He calls for sacrifice, stating that "no Third World nation should harbor hopes that it can ever reach the material abundance that has existed in America." He fears panic and bloodshed. Rifkin finishes by informing us that "the Entropy Law answers the central question that every culture throughout history has grappled with: How should human beings behave in the world?" His answer? "The ultimate moral imperative, then, is to waste as little energy as possible."
This would seem to mean that we must save as much energy as possible, seeking to eliminate waste. But what is the greatest nearby energy waster? Why, the Sun, of course - it wastes energy trillions of times faster than we humans do. If taken seriously, it seems that Rifkin's ultimate moral imperative therefore urges: "Put out the Sun!"
This silly consequence should have tipped Rifkin off. He and many others hold views that smack of a pre-Copernican arrogance: they presume that the Earth is the whole world and that what people do is automatically of cosmic importance.
In the context that Rifkin employs entropy here, what is being recognized is that all things tend to move from a state of "order" to a state of "disorder." Although this is neither the primary nor precise definition of entropy, it is an acceptable extrapolation of entropy's influence in nature and on our environment. It is evident that virtually everything in nature does tend to "run down"; things do tend to move from a state of order to a state of disorder. All life on Earth ages over time; the sun is slowly consuming its fuel by radiating energy; the universe disperses its finite energy as it continues to expand. To say, that just because the earth as a whole seeks equilibrium with space, that the consequences of entropy are not felt or observed here on earth is foolish. This is what I mean when I wrote that Drexler says 2nd law doesn’t apply to man’s activities vs the environment.
tmazanec1 wrote:As long as the sun burns, we can use it for energy, until we use enough to directly affect the planet's climate. And global warming is caused by greenhouse gases, not thermal pollution.
That’s like saying the gun doesn’t kill you, it’s the bullet. Global warming is caused by the greenhouse gases that accompany the thermal pollution. And for anyone to say that all the waste and disorder produced by technology just dissipates into the vacuum of space as waste heat, hasn’t looked at the environment lately. The consequences of increasing entropy in our environment here on earth are quite apparent. And from your above statement, it seems you feel that global warming and climate change have yet to be realized. Since the earth is all we have, what people do is, without question, of cosmic importance.
A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."