[trendal]

Can there still be growth with less energy? I believe so, maximizing efficiency.

Of course there can be, and this is exactly what Life does - maximize efficiency.

Not in any one single organism, but in the whole of the biosphere. If there is energy to be used, no matter how little there is, Life will have found a way to use that energy. Even energy that is merely "waste" to one organism can and is still used by another organism for an energy source. I can take a shit in the forest and while that shit is essentially useless to me as a living organism...you can be damn sure that a whole multitude of other organisms will jump on my waste and use it as the energy source it still is.

Left to itself, I think, Life would evolve to use up EVERY available source of energy in any given system.

[EnergySpin]

I was perusing this list of scientists discussing their favorite "dangerous ideas," depressed that not one of them mentions oil peak, when I came across this:

The dangerous idea is this: the purpose of life is to disperse energy.

Many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the second law of thermodynamics, the unwavering propensity of energy to disperse and, in doing so, transition from high quality to low quality forms. More generally, as stated by ecologist Eric Schneider, "nature abhors a gradient," where a gradient is simply a difference over a distance — for example, in temperature or pressure. Open physical systems — including those of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere — all embody this law, being driven by the dispersal of energy, particularly the flow of heat, continually attempting to achieve equilibrium.
[snip]
Virtually all organisms, including humans, are, in a real sense, sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy. Ecological succession, viewed from a thermodynamic perspective, is a process that maximizes the capture and degradation of energy.
[snip]
Ecology has been summarized by the pithy statement, "energy flows, matter cycles. " Yet this maxim applies equally to complex systems in the non-living world; indeed it literally unites the biosphere with the physical realm. More and more, it appears that complex, cycling, swirling systems of matter have a natural tendency to emerge in the face of energy gradients. This recurrent phenomenon may even have been the driving force behind life's origins.
[snip]
The concept of life as energy flow, once fully digested, is profound. Just as Darwin fundamentally connected humans to the non-human world, a thermodynamic perspective connects life inextricably to the non-living world. This dangerous idea, once broadly distributed and understood, is likely to provoke reaction from many sectors, including religion and science. The wondrous diversity and complexity of life through time, far from being the product of intelligent design, is a natural phenomenon intimately linked to the physical realm of energy flow.

Read the whole thing.

So it would seem our tendency to chew our way through energy reserves is natural behaviour, the way things should be. And then we die.

Well this has been suspected/known for a while. There are naturally occuring crystals whose thermodynamic behaviour matches that of living system (and they can even self-replicate!). In fact one of the origin-of-life-from-the-inorganic/premordial-soup proposed that the first life forms originated from the concerted action of such crystals->RNA molecules (RNA world)--> mumbo/jambo --> Life.
And with the exception of the fundies and reductionist-haters this is not really a dangerous idea (i.e. thermodynamic commonalities between living and non-living systems). BUT the statement The dangerous idea is this: the purpose of life is to disperse energy. is just stupid. In a system with 10^80+ atoms (that's our universe), one cannot possibly speak about purpose. In essence the author is making the preposterous claim that a certain pretty nasty looking integral (one concerning the distribution of velocities of the 10^80+ atoms) has been evolving according to a plan (purpose) for the last 13 billion years (age of the universe).

Thanks for posting the list KJ ...
PS : What I do find "dangerous" ideas is the re-emergence of genetic determinism in neuroscience and human genetics. It started with Pinker's "Blank Slate" and it keeps going. When are these guys gonna learn that epigenetic factors are as important as genetic ones? At least they seem to be in the second "IT" organ system in our bodies (the immune one).

[actionreplay]

Well, sometimes when I need to go to the loo I tell my husband, "Sorry love, just need to go increase the amount of entrpoy in the universe"

[merecat]

As far as i see it, the purpose of life is to survive and evolve, the survival part does not necessarily require energy, some spores and seeds can survive many thousands of years without using energy, panspermia can supposedly keep genetic information intact indefinitely, even in the vacuum of space.

It would be detrimental to life for it to evolve as a more voracious energy consumer. Life tends to be as energy efficient as it can be because the wasteful mutations are outperformed by the more energy efficient variety, and come harder times of famine, the energy efficient mutations outperform and outlive the less efficient ones.

It is not in our (humans) genes to consume so much, rather it is in our memes, and unfortunately >90% of memes today are not the golden nuggets of information they once were, in times gone by the memes in our craniums helped us to survive, to forage, to hunt, to mate, to play, to better see us and our children through life, but the memes of today are illogical decadent destructive junk spread by capitalism.

We are encouraged to consume because it is good for economic growth, these ideas of consumption and endless resources are very seductive and that is how they spread like fire through our minds. To quench these fires is nigh on impossible and this accounts for the hard headedness that you will encounter when trying to convince a cornucopian that peak oil is a big problem.

[rockdoc123]

well it has been awhile since I fiddled with basic physics but as I remember the laws of thermodynamics actually say everything tends to move to a state of low free energy. This gentleman more or less says this but in such a way that almost everyone (including me) will think he is a massive asshole (OK....do we really need to read your meanderings about how intellectual you are?).
Of course he is right...as I well know. When I get up in the morning I am full of free energy.....by the time I get home at night I have very little free energy. Of course I can alter the entropy of the system by inputing energy (read: add cast strength single malt to the system)...but eventually I am doomed to return to a state of low free energy.
When you really think about it at a high level everything that happens in the universe is easily explained by our basic scientific laws (newtonian physics, thermodynamics)....until of course you dig deeper .....now why in hell would you want to do that?

[Dezakin]

Talking about entropy on scales of less than huge superexponential number of years is essentially unimportant in terms of energy. We'll have a heat sink until our basic heat sources are less than 10^-29 K, where unrah radiation dominates. What we are conserned about today is the first law rather than the second.

[Falconoffury]

The problem I have with the laws of thermodynamics is that they tell us that energy just moves in one direction, greater dispersal. Life shows us feedback loops. Some organisms consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Other organisms consume oxygen and release carbon dioxide. I think that thermodynamics is a great way to explain chemical reactions that create heat (such as fire), I don't think it's the answer to everything. The heisenberg uncertainty principle tells us that an uncertain amount of energy exists in any quantum system at any given time. Energy is everywhere in the universe on some level.

[Doly]

I think that thermodynamics is a great way to explain chemical reactions that create heat (such as fire), I don't think it's the answer to everything.

Before you say that, find an example where thermodinamics doesn't work. You won't find it.

Of course, I'm assuming here that you talk about what the physicists call thermodinamics, not what Monte calls thermodinamics, which has little to do with science.

[killJOY]

PS : What I do find "dangerous" ideas is the re-emergence of genetic determinism in neuroscience and human genetics. It started with Pinker's "Blank Slate" and it keeps going. When are these guys gonna learn that epigenetic factors are as important as genetic ones?

I'm a great fan of Pinker. I saw him lecture at UNE in Maine. I've also seen Dan Dennett. I don't at all view the evolutionary psychology movement as "genetic determinism." These guys' books, along with Tooby & Cosmides, Wright, et al., are thrillingly cynical and profound!

What's that quote that keeps floating around PO sites, about being willing to take a good look at the worst?

[JustinFrankl]

It is not in our (humans) genes to consume so much, rather it is in our memes, and unfortunately >90% of memes today are not the golden nuggets of information they once were, in times gone by the memes in our craniums helped us to survive, to forage, to hunt, to mate, to play, to better see us and our children through life, but the memes of today are illogical decadent destructive junk spread by capitalism.

These memes are still supportable in our environment. People in their day to day existence are profoundly disconnected from the ultimate effects they have on the world. It virtually never crosses most people's minds that the flick of this light switch increases the drain on our oil fields, our natural gas reserves, the nuclear waste we must dispose of. This disconnection reinforces the idea that "the planet is ours and we can do whatever we want with it". And, given that these memes are cultural and written on the tabula rasa at a young age, they become rigid foundations for navigating the world. For some, only with great difficulty, they will be given up as the environmental support for these memes vanishes.

We are encouraged to consume because it is good for economic growth, these ideas of consumption and endless resources are very seductive and that is how they spread like fire through our minds. To quench these fires is nigh on impossible and this accounts for the hard headedness that you will encounter when trying to convince a cornucopian that peak oil is a big problem.

For the fire to burn, fuel must be fed into it. The cultural fuel that supports these memes will be peaking not long after oil and natural gas do.

[Antimatter]

Life does not increase the rate of increase of entropy vs. a dead planet unless fossil, nuclear etc energy are being tapped so this theory is a little simplistic. Not that it matters anyway as dezakin pointed out.

[aldente]

I oftentimes refer to "art" as work of instinct. When things become unclear, as they do particularly on a forum like this (heck how much more extreme can one go in the approach to understand near future events) then it is a clear relief when the right piece of artwork has been found.

I do post a lot of graphics, oftentimes seemingly out of context but that is superficially misleading.

[Dezakin]

And they don't apply in isolated and open systems? You are saying that in space( an isolated system) and in living systems(open) you can create and destroy energy and transfer energy without a loss? Care to explain yourself.

They aren't really as important in open systems. Sure according to classical theory the first law still holds, but the second law is meaningless since theres allways a heat sink with lower temperature that heat is trying to migrate to, and for the third law theres an infinite number of steps you take in an open system to get closer to zero. Then factor in quantum effects of very large systems and you do get strange behavior, such as negative pressure from vacuum energy.

Technically you never get heat death in a flat spacetime thats expanding. However if you have a nonzero cosmological constant (which seems to be the case now) then eventually you do get heat death do to unrah radiation effects that turn your open system into behaving like a closed system.

Closed, an exchange of energy but not matter. The earth is a closed system.

This is irrelevant for discussions about thermodynamics. As long as you have a heat sink you dont run into heat death and the game goes on.

[whereagles]

Isolated! The Earth is NOT an isolated system.

No, it is a closed system: exchanges energy but not matter. Still subject to the Laws.
Monte

Actually, it's open. Some molecules from the atmosphere escape the gravitational field, while others get trapped in it. Not that this makes much of a difference in practical terms.

Still, I don't see what the problem with the laws of thermodynamics. Any textbook on statistical mechanics does a good job explaining it. But I'll agree it's not that straightforward to understand (as most students can tell you, lol ).

[grabby]

The fourth law of thermodynamics says:
If your wife is cold, you had better get her a nice fluffy blanket or you could sleep in the doghouse.

[grabby]

"SOMEBODY"

... then eventually you do get heat death do to unrah radiation effects that turn your open system into behaving like a closed system...

what is unrah radiation? .
closest I can find...

[Dezakin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_effect

Basically in an expanding universe with a cosmological constant you have unruh radiation as a global background due to uniform acceleration. At todays estimates it would be at around 10^-29 K or so. Small, but nonzero so you run out of heat sink unless you manage to get a black hole bigger than the current size of the universe.

[Aaron]

...we don't talk about Thermodynamics.

The second rule of Thermodynamics is, we don't talk about Thermodynamics.

I look around the forum & I see allot of new members.

That means allot of you have been breaking the first two rules of Thermodynamics.

<|sweet|>

Lou...

You don't know where I've been Lou!

You don't know where I've been.

-------------------------

I'd like to hear some explainations of thermodynamics for laymen.

Sort of a cliff-notes version...

[rwwff]

Go to Rice.
Take Thermo your sophmore year.
Scream the primal scream.

Try to forget the experience as quickly as absolutely possible.

[rogerhb]

I'd like to hear some explainations of thermodynamics for laymen.

Law 1. If you put coffee in a thermos it keeps it hot.

Law 2. If you put chilled orange in it keeps it cool.

Law 3. If you drop it, it breaks.

That's all the thermos-dynamics you need to know.