Earth Day, Clean Energy, and Entropy

By Jack Hokikian, Ph.D., Author of:

The Science of Disorder: Understanding the Complexity, Uncertainty, and Pollution in Our World

Version 1.1, Updated 7/6/2010
 

I found the meaning of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the principle that in every natural process the sum of the entropies of all bodies involved in the process increases. [1]
              —Max Planck, Physics Nobel Laureate

Complexity has a consequence that seems to draw very little comment. [2]

        —Lindsey Grant, Former State Department Official

On April 22, 2010, humanity celebrated worldwide the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. In an article titled “At 40, Earth Day Is Now Big Business,” the New York Times pointed out that the organizers of Earth Day 1970 “took no money from corporations and held teach-ins ‘to challenge corporate and government leaders.’ ”

    Four decades later, however, “the day has turned into a premier marketing platform for selling a variety of goods and services, like office products, Greek yogurt and eco-dentistry.” One umbrella manufacturer was advertising a “specially designed umbrella, with a drain so that water 'can be stored, reused and recycled.’ ” [3]

    The Washington Post had a similar message: While the organizers of the first event spent $120,000 to put it on, the Earth Day Network, which oversees Earth Day activities worldwide, “boasts an $8.5 million budget and a long roster of corporate sponsors, including Underwriters Laboratories, Siemens, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, AT&T Mobile and Procter & Gamble.” [4]

    In addition, the Washington Post had arranged an online conversation with Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, to discuss the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day: where the environmental movement stands now, the upcoming Senate climate and energy bill, cap and trade, clean energy and more. In his opening statement, the Secretary of Energy said: "Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, this Administration has made a historic investment in clean energy and the jobs of the future."

    The Secretary of Energy used the concept of clean energy five more times in answering questions, including the statements: "The Federal government . . . through the Recovery Act is making an $80 billion investment in clean energy;" and "We do need a new industrial revolution . . . to help reduce energy use and create a new, clean energy economy." [5]

    In recent years, ‘clean energy’ has become a widely used phrase. It has become part of our daily lexicon. Here are two examples: In an article titled “Gates seeks more spending on clean energy research,” Associated Press reports: “Billionaire Bill Gates is urging the government to triple spending on what he says everyone, rich and poor, will need in the future: clean, cheap energy.” [6] Earlier, in a message “To the Class of 2010,” President Barack Obama said: “Love science? You can discover new sources of clean energy.” [7] But what is clean energy?

    Interestingly, Wikipedia on the Internet, which has contents/definitions of just about everything, does not have a Webpage for clean energy. It redirects the search to sustainable energy.

    The discipline of thermodynamics states that heat is a form of energy. Without this assertion, the First Law of Thermodynamics, the law of conservation of energy, cannot exist. [8] The First Law says energy in the universe is constant. Energy cannot be created or destroyed but can be transformed from one form to another.

    Thermal energy—heat—is measured in calories, a highly popular unit of energy. Is heat a clean form of energy?

    Speaking of heat, in an Atlantic Monthly article titled “Five and a Half Utopias,” in the section “The Technological Utopia,” the Nobel laureate in physics Steven Weinberg wrote: “I tremble at the thought of two billion air-conditioners in a future China and India, each adding its own exhaust heat to the earth’s atmosphere.” [9]

   Thermodynamics has another law, much more consequential to humanity than the First Law, namely, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the law of entropy. It stipulates that entropy increases in all processes irreversibly. Physicists identify entropy as a measure of the disorder or complexity of a thermodynamic system.

    Physics Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger described the Second Law this way: “Every process, event, happening—call it what you will; everything that is going on in Nature means an increase of the entropy of the part of the world where it is going on.” [10] Economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen put it another way: “From the viewpoint of thermodynamics, matter-energy enters the economic process in a state of low entropy and comes out of it in a state of high entropy.” [11]

    In economic terms, the Second Law can be regarded as Nature’s unyielding tax collector. It exacts a tax from all our activities by increasing the disorder of our thermodynamic system. More than a half century ago, the eminent physicist Arnold Sommerfeld brought to our attention that the law of entropy ranks higher than the law of energy. [12] The Second Law is the supreme manager of everything happening in the universe. Through increases in entropy, it dictates the manner in which all processes proceed in Nature, while the First Law merely keeps track of credits and debits, making sure that energy is not created or destroyed.

    In everyday life, we all feel and are affected by the cumulative effects of the physical, social, environmental, economic, and intellectual entropies within us and around us. Consequently, it is to our advantage to learn and understand what entropy is all about.

    Regrettably, humanity is not paying much attention to entropy. Consequently, we have Earth Day, but not Entropy Day. United States has Department of Energy, but not Department of Entropy.

    Although we do not use entropy in everyday life, we use other words that essentially mean entropy, which include disorder, complexity, waste, pollution, externalities, side effects, collateral effects and unintended consequences. For example, we find in Audubon, the magazine of the National Audubon Society: “The automobile pollutes, as does virtually every human endeavor, from making a campfire to raising cattle to publishing magazines.” [13] A similar statement is found in U.S. News and World Report: “At bottom, economic activity generates pollution, whether it is acid rain, toxic waste or smog.” [14] Connoisseurs of the Second Law recognize what these assertions mean: that all processes and activities generate entropy.

    Because the Second Law has been ignored, the so-called renewable energy sources derived from the Sun have been hailed as benign alternatives to oil, coal, and nuclear plants. However, even the “ecologically favored” solar sources of energy have serious drawbacks. In a report issued by the National Audubon Society, and reported by Time magazine, physicist Larry Medsker, after surveying nine renewable sources, found that “all have potentially unwelcome, occasionally even hazardous, side effects.” As Russell W. Peterson—past president of the Audubon Society—summarized, “Even with solar energy, there is no such thing as a free lunch.” [15]

    Not only is there no free lunch, but entropy is produced in all energy usage. “Any use of energy has an environmental impact of some kind,” writes physicist Robert H. Romer in Energy: An Introduction to Physics, adding “each particular kind of energy use has its own special effect on the environment in addition to the generation of heat, not only on scenery and wildlife but also on the health of human inhabitants.” [16]

    The father of quantum theory, Max Planck, whose doctoral dissertation was on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, reminded us repeatedly that we need to account for the total thermodynamic situation, not part of it. [17] The discipline of thermodynamics keeps us honest. Many of our gross errors in judgment have come about because we have considered part of the thermodynamic system.

    In recent years, humanity is increasing entropy massively and rapidly, thus paying a high price to the Second Law. Humanity is feeling the cumulative effects of the entropies of globalization, technology, obsolescence, waste products, the Internet, wars and conflicts, toxic chemicals, electronic gadgets, prescription drugs, financial crises, oil spills and more.

   In the case of chemicals, a recent article in Washington Post titled “U.S. facing ‘grievous harm’ from chemicals in air, food, water, panel says,” points out that about “80,000 chemicals are in commercial use in the United States, but federal regulators have assessed only about 200 for safety.” [18]

    If we learned from the very beginning of childhood that all processes increase the disorder of our environment, and that all our activities contribute to that disorder, we would be more aware of the consequences of our actions throughout our lives.

    Jack Hokikian's email: jhokikian@losfelizpublishing.com

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References and Notes

[1] Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography, and Other Papers, trans. by Frank Gaynor (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968, copyright 1949 by Philosophical Library), p. 18. See, also, Jack Hokikian, The Science of Disorder: Understanding the Complexity, Uncertainty, and Pollution in Our World (Los Angeles: Los Feliz Publishing, 2002), pp. 123-147.

[2] Lindsey Grant, Juggernaut: Growth on a Finite Planet (Santa Ana, Calif.: Seven Locks Press, 1996), p. 87. See, also, Hokikian, The Science of Disorder, pp. 97-100.

[3] Leslie Kaufman, “At 40, Earth Day Is Now Big Business,” New York Times, April 21, 2010.

[4] David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin, “Unfinished Business: The Environment 40 Years After Earth Day;" "Born in 1970, event has cause for celebration -- and a midlife crisis,” Washington Post, April 22, 2010.

[5] “Earth Day: Environmental movement 40 years later, Obama administration message, saving the planet.” Washington Post, April 22, 2010, at 10:30 a.m. ET, Energy Secretary Steven Chu online. See, also, William Branigin, “Obama Lays Out Clean-Energy Plans,” Washington Post, March 24, 2009.

[6] Frederic J. Frommer, “Gates seeks more spending on clean energy research,” Associated Press, June 10, 2010.

[7] President Barack Obama, “To the Class of 2010,” Los Angeles Times, Parade, May 16, 2010, pp. 4-5.

[8] Hokikian, The Science of Disorder, pp. 5-10.

[9] Steven Weinberg, “Five and a Half Utopias,” Atlantic Monthly, January 2000, p. 113.

[10] Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1944), p. 72.

[11] Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Energy and Economic Myths: Institutional and Analytical Economic Essays (New York: Pergamon Press, 1976), p. 54.

[12] Arnold Sommerfeld, Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, Lectures on Theoretical Physics, Vol. V, trans. by J. Kestin (New York: Academic Press, 1956), p. 40. See, also, Hokikian, The Science of Disorder, pp. 132-133. Note: Sommerfeld was no ordinary physicist. Although he did not receive the Nobel prize, four of his doctoral students did—Hans Bethe, Wolfgang Pauli, Peter Debye (in chemistry), and Warner Heisenberg. Hokikian, The Science of Disorder, p. 130.

[13] Stephan Wilkinson, “The Automobile and the Environment: Our Next Car?” Audubon, May-June 1993, p. 58.

[14] Betsy Carpenter, “Living with Our Legacy,” U.S. News & World Report, April 23, 1990, p. 65. See, also, Hokikian, The Science of Disorder, p. 240.

[15] Hokikian, The Science of Disorder, p.132; “No Free Lunch: A New Look at Solar Energy,” Time, January 10, 1983, p. 53.

[16] Robert H. Romer, Energy: An Introduction to Physics (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1976), p. 362. See, also, Hokikian, The Science of Disorder, p. 132.

[17] Max Planck, Treatise on Thermodynamics, 3rd ed., trans. by Alexander Ogg (New York: Dover Publications, 1945), p. 104. See, also, Hokikian, The Science of Disorder, p. 210.

[18] Lindsey Layton, “U.S. facing ‘grievous harm’ from chemicals in air, food, water, panel says,” Washington Post, May 7, 2010. See, also, Hokikian, The Science of Disorder, p. 59.