Joule and Carnot are either laughing or turning in their graves

>I am trying to understand why certain political forms work and others do
>not.  I am trying to understand why all human societies reject any
>scientific discovery that threatens social constructions of reality.  I am
>trying to understand why only a handful of people even know that immutable
>energy laws indicate our society will end forever in less than ten years.

Dear All,

I joined this discussion group very recently. I am a physicist (PhD in
nuclear physics, I currently work in a research nuclear reactor), with an
interest in world system theory (finishing a paralell MA in European Studies).

It seems to me that none of you, Jay Hanson included, understand the first
two laws of thermodynamics. They could be stated as (there are many
alernative, equivalent, ways):

1. In a closed system, energy is conserved.
(you can't eat your cake and keep it)
2. In a closed system, entropy increases.
(if you cook a cake, your kitchen will be dirty and there will be some
washing up to do; if you do not have a sink to get rid of the dirt, it will
stay at your place forever. Each cake you cook is hence a step towards an
impossibly dirty kitchen)

Law 2. is equivalent to saying that, in a closed system, the quality of
energy decreases. Quality here means the ability to produce work. Example:
if you release a stone in your hand, it will fall. Gravitic potential
energy is transformed into kinetic energy. When it reaches the ground, this
energy is transformed into heat energy (the ground heats up a fraction of a
degree due to friction with the rock). Energy was conserved in the process.
Energy would also be conserved in the opposite process: the ground could
suddenly become colder where a rock stood, that thermal energy could be
given to the rock in the form of kinetic energy, and the rock would - by
moto proprio - jump into the air. This does not happen, due to law 2: the
thermal energy in the ground is of low quality. It cannot be used to
produce work. The gravitic energy of the rock in the air is of high
quality: one can use it to e.g. lift a bucket in a well.

The first crucial point is that neither law 1 nor law 2 or thermodynamics
apply to Earth.

The reason is that Earth is not a closed system. The Sun provides Earth
with high-quality, low-entropy energy all the time. All life on Earth
ultimately depends on that.

That is, depletion of coal and oil reserves is ultimately irrelevant. The
solar energy we are now wasting is, given imaginable technological
progress, more than enough (not to mention nuclear reactors of the fast
breeder type - they actually produce more nuclear fuel than they spend -
but what they produce is weapons-grade plutonium, so their extended usage
is not on the political agenda; also not to mention controlled fusion, that
uses the virtually unexhaustable hydrogen - more than 99% of the universe
is made of it). If it is not exploited to the full, it is simply because,
given current world prices of oil etc and current tech, it is by and large
uneconomical. Changes in oil etc prices and in tech will change this
situation.

The second crucial point is that neither law 1 nor law 2 apply to any given
region of Earth.

The reason is that regions of the Earth are not closed systems. When we
cook a cake, we get rid of the mess by sending it elsewhere. We also used
power from the mains, and gas from the bottle or from the tube. That is, we
imported low-entropy energy into our home, and exported high-entropy energy
to the outside environment.

A whole geographical region can do the same: inport high-quality,
low-entropy energy (e.g. raw materials) from other regions, and export
low-quality,  high-entropy energy (e.g. nuclear waste and other noxious
substances) to other regions.

That is, that the long-term carrying capacity of the planet is only some
hundreds of millions is only true if the high-quality energy were
distributed uniformly across the population. As it goes, it isn't. It is
concentrated in core regions, while the periphery gets the high entropy.

Suppose the atmosphere becomes nearly unbreathable in the short term
(Hanson's 10 years). What would happen? Air will simply become a commodity.
The rich will live in closed systems and will be able to afford the best
quality air, the Western middle classes will get reasonable quality air,
the Western excluded classes and the third world will see their life
expectancy reduced dramatically. This is nothing new! And it definitely
does not make the world stop, on the contrary, it will probably be good to
business - a whole, vital, new commodity to exploit. The same will happen
given dramatic depletion of the ozone layer. The rich will be able to
afford effective protection against radiation (no problem with that. There
is a functioning nuclear reactor 10 metres away from where I now sit, and
no radiation from it reaches this room), the poor will have an increased
death rate from cancer and other sun exposure-related problems. This does
not make the world stop, on the contrary - imagine a whole new and vital
commodity, radiation protection, to exploit.

That is, thermodynamics does not say doom is looming. It just points to the
direction that, within the organisation of the social system in which we
live, doom is looming, as usual, for the periphery. We can have 5, or 10,
perhaps even 15, billion people in this planet, as long as the vast
majority have low life expectancy, the lower  the more people.

Careless use of the hard sciences in the social sciences seems to be
endemic. Read e.g. Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont 1997, Intellectual
Impostures (original in French, editions Odile-jacob, there is an English
translation). Entropy is one of the most used and abused concepts.

Collectively, there seems to be more ego than sense in this discussion
group (and I do not mean Hanson). I joined to learn about world systems,
not to read vast amounts of nonsensical pseudo-scientific material. I will
be unsubscribing.

Best regards,

Nuno Barradas

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Dr Nuno Pessoa Barradas		| 
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