The circular economy and an endless recycling of materials is an absurd proposal, and not only from a technical perspective; the very idea of a “sustainable” high tech society is in a direct conflict with the laws of physics. After reviewing the technical reasons behind
You have a great grasp of relevant science, communicate it exceedingly well, and are nailing the idiocy of various green dreams that are literally impossible.
While what you argue appears self-evident for the increasingly unlikely prospects of the ‘green/clean’ utopian future a lot of ‘futurists’ predict will unfold as the seemingly endless stream of technological ‘breakthroughs’ come to fruition, it seems that the vast majority of people who even show some awareness of our predicament will ignore/deny/rationalise away the evidence (universal thermodynamic laws or not) in order to cling to their dreams of infinite growth and ‘progress’ upon a finite planet. I even find the argument about physical, material limits is denied by many/most of these people.
This notion that limits are meaningless appears to have got its legs from economists and business ‘leaders’ who have argued that technological progress and human ingenuity trump material limits, particularly due to the idea of infinite substitutability and recycling. History has apparently demonstrated again and again that humans adapt their technology and resource use by finding alternative and/or new sources for their material wants.
What this approach does, however, is not only focus upon a relatively small slice of human pre/history where the leveraging of a number of catalysts to technological change have occurred (especially the creation of debt-/credit-based fiat currency and hydrocarbon use that both allow the pulling of finite resources from the future into the present), but cherry picks behaviours and events.
The processes that contribute to the recurrent collapse of complex societies are minimised/ignored, with a lot of rationalising that ‘this time is different’. We can recycle. We can elect ‘wise’ leaders’. We can work together. We can avoid past mistakes. We can mine passing asteroids. We can innovate. We can migrate to other planets. We can overcome limits. We can adapt. We can slow/control/halt the growth imperative. We can find a means of creating limitless ‘clean’ energy. We can do anything we imagine and set our minds to.
And while these assertions can make us feel better by avoiding the anxieties that arise when we frame things from a perspective where these ‘hopes’ are viewed as magical thinking that avoids reality, they are leading us to pursue the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario (of the 13 possible) painted by the original Limits to Growth study. A scenario where human ecological overshoot and the consequential collapse of population and industrial society were imminent during our current century.
The Limits to Growth researchers proposed that it was possible to avoid this scenario and achieve a sustainable lifestyle but required significant changes be made as soon as possible. In the intervening years, however, our species seems to have ignored the warnings and ‘motored’ ahead with ‘business-as-usual’. And rather than heed the signals our planet and its other species have been sending us (and increasingly so over the past handful of decades), we’ve doubled down on our avoidance behaviours—especially the stories we share about all this and how everything will be alright…somehow but mostly because of human ingenuity and technology, those god-like qualities we storytelling apes possess.
Thanks for a stimulating article, but, respectfully, I am uncertain of the purpose behind writing it. Is it a perpetuation of the "man is bad" concept and the resignation that we face an inescapably dystopian future? Before shaking an admonishing finger at all of these horrible, destructive capitalists, each of us must be willing to accept responsibility for much of what has gone wrong. Our rampant consumerism, willful ignorance of important issues, and allegiances to following the directives of "experts" and "leaders" have enabled the environmental sins upon which your article often focuses.
I would also like to question 2 points raised in the post. In reference to recycling, you pose the question "Which one will run out first: the high quality energy needed to do recycling, or the material left to be recycled?". I don't understand the mechanism by which "the material" for recycling is going to disappear. Apparently the countless hours spent by chemists balancing chemical equations in observance of the law of conservation of mass were poorly spent? Although the embodied energy will change, a rearrangement of chemical bonds does not alter the overall number and type of atoms in a chemical process. So what is "the material" that would be running out in a recycling process? Second point - the second law of thermodynamics is applicable to closed systems. Neither the earth, nor the living inhabitants of it, are closed systems. We constantly receive a massive amount of energy from our nearest star. Although I concur that major changes in how we exist are long past due, I must say that your reliance on the second law of thermodynamics as the base premise for your argument is not valid, thankfully. Were it true, perhaps we all might as well swallow the big black pill, assume the fetal position in a dark corner of the room, and wait patiently for our own extinction.
There is this tendency to use abstract models to justify previously held views, or use them to predict events that haven't happened yet. Models are representations of reality based on data we think relevant or have the ability to see. Reality is continuous, so slicing it into data means much is lost, meaning models cannot be accurate.
There is no "law" of thermodynamics. They are explanations of observed phenomena, which are useful up to a point but cannot be applied to complex systems without getting things wrong. Read any evironmental collapse book from 20 years ago and see if their predictions have come to pass. All that can be said is that the general trend is in a certain direction but the future is uncertain. But that does not imply complacency or fantasy.
Peter Petrosino: "First point [...] I don't understand the mechanism by which "the material" for recycling is going to disappear [...] what is "the material" that would be running out in a recycling process?"
Dilution. Recycling uses energy to extract / separate wanted atoms from unwanted atoms. The ratio of wanted atoms in the recycling stock decreases as they are extracted, but the energy inputs to the recycling process increase in a non linear rapidly increasing manner, until no more wanted atoms can be extracted: the second 'law' prohibits 100% of all the wanted atoms from being recovered from a given mass of recycling stock. On subsequent passes through the recycling process more and more of the wanted atoms must be thrown out with the waste atoms.
Peter Petrosino: "Second point - the second law of thermodynamics is applicable to closed systems. [...]
Correct. The sun / earth / life system is closed. Simply observing that an animal or plant is separate within the whole misses the point: their 'aint no more high energy density fuels at the bottom of this gravity well beyond what ever fossil fuels still in the ground. Period. Meanwhile, the sun's energy is too dilute (low energy density per unit of area on the earth's surface) to support anything faster than photosynthesis, which over billions of years was concentrated to give us a fossil fuel bonanza lasting a few centuries: this is thermodynamics in action as it were.
I hope the above has disabused your misunderstandings of thermodynamics and that the The Honest Sorcerer's "reliance on the second law of thermodynamics as the base premise for your argument" is in fact entirely correct and "valid".
Ho Natasha and thanks for your comment. Dilution is not a rebuttal to my position that atoms will not disappear. I wholeheartedly agree that there will be energy input required in the recycling process, as was true during the initial process of synthesizing the plastic/original material. Can you explain to me exactly how the second law "prohibits 100% of all the wanted atoms from being recovered"? Unless I am mistaken, you are attempting to utilize the second law as support for your contention erroneously. By your reasoning and if your interpretation of the second law was true in this respect, the numerous cyclic processes on earth that have been happening long before the appearance of man (nitrogen, carbon, etc.) would have already resulted in a planet wide accumulation of unrecoverable atoms and a halt to all life on earth. Additionally, you are incorrect in your characterization of "the sun/earth/life system" as closed. You need to view the earth component only and it is energetically not even close to a closed system. Since energy is the bone of contention here, it is of primary importance and you appear to be skirting that very issue. Or perhaps you would argue that we are not constantly bathed with vast amounts of energy from the sun? I contend simply that true recycling is not only possible, but will become essential as we deplete fossil fuels and have to adapt. Your adherence to the trope of "it took millions of years to form such energy dense fossil fuels and we are doomed now that they are running out" is defeatist and factually unsound on the latter point. Is it not interesting that media sources have worked overtime to create such a false binary - that we are either going to soon run out of fossil fuels and then slip into another Dark Age (or worse) or fossil fuels are actually more abundant than anyone knows and we're all set until further notice. Your retort to my premise is a version of the same that has been programmed into all consumers of this false binary - renewable energy is a falsehood and can't satisfy modern society's demands! Look at how windmills only work in the wind! Look at how electric cars won't start or catch fire! Ad infinitum. Your own reasoning leads to a singular conclusion. We choose to either find an alternative to our current, unsustainably wasteful business-as-usual approach, or we perish. Thankfully, unlike you, I am not willing to just take The Sorcerer's word for it and I hope that others out there don't blindly drink from his goblet of despair. Identifying problems in the world is a wonderful tool to improve our lives, but only lamenting our supposed horrific condition based on incorrect information and offering no possible solutions is illogical, possibly dishonest, and certainly intellectually lazy. In closing, I suppose I haven't been "disabused" by your comment, but on the other hand, you may have done a capable job of illuminating the falsehoods upon which the Sorcerer's and your contentions rest. Please further enlighten me if I have misinterpreted your comments.
Sorry but you seem to have missed out on doing your thermodynamics homework.
"Dilution is not a rebuttal to my position that atoms will not disappear" - this is 'straw man' : nobody is claiming "atoms will disappear" they simply become too diluted to extract / isolate (to be reused in in new product / machines etc.) because they use more and more energy the more dilute the atoms become in a given mass of recyclable feed stock compared to the unwanted (waste) atoms.
The point is that in a given mass of recycled input material less than 100% of the wanted atoms can be extracted, the last atoms will remain embedded in the mass of unwanted atoms. For example seawater has enough uranium dissolved in it to last humans for 100,000's of years BUT only 3 or 4 atoms of uranium per billion atoms of everything else, means the energy to get those 3 or 4 atoms out and leave the other billion behind, and then use those uranium atoms in reactors, requires close to more than the energy in those 3 or 4 uranium atoms / billion. Levitation by pulling upon your shoe laces doesn't work.
Shaking your metaphorical fist with emotional rendition of physical reality as a "goblet of despair" doesn't change reality. And our host is far from being alone in his conclusions :
You are clearly clueless about material supply chains and how machine are built.
If your 'vision' is correct please show us engineering references to electric generation machines that have been or can be built only with electricity?
And how do you propose to set up mining & refining & raw material transport operations (needed to build low energy solar energy flow harvesting machines) in remote locations with only electricity?
Natasha, let me first address your source materials. Quote from source #1 - "All wildlife systems are in steep decline." This, along with numerous other statements are alarming opinions, but unsupported by any facts. The reader is asked to simply buy into his premises. Source #2 - "What’s the harm in believing there’s a fat “Santa Claus” God in the sky noting down every time any intelligent creature in the entire universe is naughty or nice on the trillions of inhabited planets in the universe every second of every day for eternity?" The author begins with this statement and then proceeds to admonish evangelicals who are, in his view, hoping to ruin the world for everyone, including accelerating an apocalypse, in order to bring back Jesus. The material given is too farcical to have any significance. Source #3 - "Climate change has its own casualty list (e.g., polar bears, coral reefs), but this is the tip of the iceberg in relation to habitat destruction, wild population declines, and permanent extinctions. Adaptation can’t respond nearly quickly enough to mitigate these influences." Although the author raises many valid points, his base contention is that anthropogenic climate change (previously known as global warming) is unquestioningly real. FYI - the predicted decline in polar bear populations and coral reefs falls right in with the claims that there would be widespread desertification across the globe, along with rising sea levels and vast losses of habitable land. Interestingly, polar bear numbers are not in decline and are quite robust, coral reefs are not dying off, ocean front property has not been lost and is still fetching ridiculously high prices, and desert areas have diminished globally, as the earth is actually greening. Source #4 - A good read, breaking down the economics of liquid natural gas, but it doesn't seem to contradict anything that I have stated. If you offered this as evidence that there is an energy cost/loss for each step in energy processing, I completely agree and have not made statements to the contrary. Our energy sources will need to shift and we will need to make choices regarding how the available energy is allocated. Can we continue on with business as usual? No. Will our lives change? Certainly. Will the changes be for the better or for the worse? That remains to be seen and is greatly under individual control. I think we can agree on those points, at least. Am I clueless about material supply chains and how machines are built? You presume so, but such is not the case. You are possibly locked into thinking only of traditional forms of material procurement and machines can be built from whatever components are necessary, regardless of whether the components are from virgin or recycled materials. You query regarding me offering examples of "electric generation machines that have been or can be built only with electricity" I suspect may be a typo, as the energy used to construct a machine can very easily be entirely electrical. I am energy independent, harvesting all of our power needs from solar and wind and I frequently fabricate products with my welders and other supporting electrical tools. Could I build an electrical generator using these tools? Yes, actually. However, if you are basically accusing me of magical thinking by stating that atoms are not destroyed or damaged by chemical and/or physical alterations, I would retort that you may be doing the inverse, suggesting that so many problems are insurmountable. There is apparently now an internet term for such folks - a "doomer". As you have offered no factual points to counter my contention, I stand by my premise that all materials are entirely recyclable, even though the process may be energy intensive and costly. This would also greatly diminish the need for such energy costly mining operations. Thank you for the lively exchange.
Peter, you artificially ring fence / render as externalities input materials in your examples by writing : "You query regarding me offering examples of "electric generation machines that have been or can be built only with electricity" I suspect may be a typo, as the energy used to construct a machine can very easily be entirely electrical."
No it can NOT! You have to include the ENTIRE supply chain, from rocks in the ground needed to manufacture and power the "welders" you "frequently fabricate products with" and manufacture and power the computer and global networks you are typing on, etc... with all your examples.
You MUST include all the infrastructure like ALL the metals and sand in the concrete in electric grids, that ALL REQUIRE diesel in their supply chains and bulk remote locations transport. ALL metal is mined using diesel. NO metals can be mined with electricity alone. No diesel = no electric machines. Period. To pretend otherwise is magical thinking.
I agree with all the points you raise, bar one: "it is the increase of entropy alone which gives time its direction."
If entropy can be seen as 'disorder increasing with time', how can it cause the thing which forms part of its description? 'The increase of disorder with time, causes time'? That is circular.
'Entropy never decreases with time, in a closed system' is the most we can say.
(However, great piece, and 100% correct about the stupidity/impossibility of a sustainable high tech world.)
While I don't disagree with your conclusion, you left out an important bit of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: "in a closed system."
We do not operate "in a closed system." Indeed, if we did, neither we, nor any life at all, would exist on this planet.
In "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision," Fritjov Capra keeps repeating an important phrase, "in a system far from equilibrium."
Thanks to a constant stream of energy from our Sun, we, and all the other life on this planet, are able to exist. That may be, for some number of people, ample enough energy for a more-or-less modern civilization — if we leave enough extra for the rest of nature to have its share.
But we are currently using about 40% more energy than that gathered by all the photosynthesizing plants on the planet. What could go wrong with that?
The world is a boat full of sandwiches on the lake. My friend and I are on the boat, eating the sandwiches. He plays the guitar, I sing. We take turns rowing. There’s no place to shit so we just shit in the boat. A long time ago the boat had organised itself so that the sunshine hitting the boat turned the shit into sandwiches, but as we tried to start speeding up the manufacture of sandwiches, shit started to be left behind.
It got worse when we started also making oars on the boat. Shit started accumulating. Now we’re drowning in shit.
I agree we will however run out of sandwiches before we drown in shit.
Some people are able to confidently ignore both aspects in the above story. They just play the guitar and sing louder. These people are like middle schoolers with fingers in their ears. Sometimes they say we can ignore the big picture because we can’t fully grasp its details. If they can ignore reality, I can ignore them.
Thank you B🙏
You have a great grasp of relevant science, communicate it exceedingly well, and are nailing the idiocy of various green dreams that are literally impossible.
I've often wondered can they really be that myopic? The phrase too stupid to be stupid comes to mind..
And I think surely their advisers know all this?..
My sense is they do but what choice do they have? Who would vote for degrowth?
While what you argue appears self-evident for the increasingly unlikely prospects of the ‘green/clean’ utopian future a lot of ‘futurists’ predict will unfold as the seemingly endless stream of technological ‘breakthroughs’ come to fruition, it seems that the vast majority of people who even show some awareness of our predicament will ignore/deny/rationalise away the evidence (universal thermodynamic laws or not) in order to cling to their dreams of infinite growth and ‘progress’ upon a finite planet. I even find the argument about physical, material limits is denied by many/most of these people.
This notion that limits are meaningless appears to have got its legs from economists and business ‘leaders’ who have argued that technological progress and human ingenuity trump material limits, particularly due to the idea of infinite substitutability and recycling. History has apparently demonstrated again and again that humans adapt their technology and resource use by finding alternative and/or new sources for their material wants.
What this approach does, however, is not only focus upon a relatively small slice of human pre/history where the leveraging of a number of catalysts to technological change have occurred (especially the creation of debt-/credit-based fiat currency and hydrocarbon use that both allow the pulling of finite resources from the future into the present), but cherry picks behaviours and events.
The processes that contribute to the recurrent collapse of complex societies are minimised/ignored, with a lot of rationalising that ‘this time is different’. We can recycle. We can elect ‘wise’ leaders’. We can work together. We can avoid past mistakes. We can mine passing asteroids. We can innovate. We can migrate to other planets. We can overcome limits. We can adapt. We can slow/control/halt the growth imperative. We can find a means of creating limitless ‘clean’ energy. We can do anything we imagine and set our minds to.
And while these assertions can make us feel better by avoiding the anxieties that arise when we frame things from a perspective where these ‘hopes’ are viewed as magical thinking that avoids reality, they are leading us to pursue the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario (of the 13 possible) painted by the original Limits to Growth study. A scenario where human ecological overshoot and the consequential collapse of population and industrial society were imminent during our current century.
The Limits to Growth researchers proposed that it was possible to avoid this scenario and achieve a sustainable lifestyle but required significant changes be made as soon as possible. In the intervening years, however, our species seems to have ignored the warnings and ‘motored’ ahead with ‘business-as-usual’. And rather than heed the signals our planet and its other species have been sending us (and increasingly so over the past handful of decades), we’ve doubled down on our avoidance behaviours—especially the stories we share about all this and how everything will be alright…somehow but mostly because of human ingenuity and technology, those god-like qualities we storytelling apes possess.
Thanks for a stimulating article, but, respectfully, I am uncertain of the purpose behind writing it. Is it a perpetuation of the "man is bad" concept and the resignation that we face an inescapably dystopian future? Before shaking an admonishing finger at all of these horrible, destructive capitalists, each of us must be willing to accept responsibility for much of what has gone wrong. Our rampant consumerism, willful ignorance of important issues, and allegiances to following the directives of "experts" and "leaders" have enabled the environmental sins upon which your article often focuses.
I would also like to question 2 points raised in the post. In reference to recycling, you pose the question "Which one will run out first: the high quality energy needed to do recycling, or the material left to be recycled?". I don't understand the mechanism by which "the material" for recycling is going to disappear. Apparently the countless hours spent by chemists balancing chemical equations in observance of the law of conservation of mass were poorly spent? Although the embodied energy will change, a rearrangement of chemical bonds does not alter the overall number and type of atoms in a chemical process. So what is "the material" that would be running out in a recycling process? Second point - the second law of thermodynamics is applicable to closed systems. Neither the earth, nor the living inhabitants of it, are closed systems. We constantly receive a massive amount of energy from our nearest star. Although I concur that major changes in how we exist are long past due, I must say that your reliance on the second law of thermodynamics as the base premise for your argument is not valid, thankfully. Were it true, perhaps we all might as well swallow the big black pill, assume the fetal position in a dark corner of the room, and wait patiently for our own extinction.
The sooner humans go extinct.... the better.
There is this tendency to use abstract models to justify previously held views, or use them to predict events that haven't happened yet. Models are representations of reality based on data we think relevant or have the ability to see. Reality is continuous, so slicing it into data means much is lost, meaning models cannot be accurate.
There is no "law" of thermodynamics. They are explanations of observed phenomena, which are useful up to a point but cannot be applied to complex systems without getting things wrong. Read any evironmental collapse book from 20 years ago and see if their predictions have come to pass. All that can be said is that the general trend is in a certain direction but the future is uncertain. But that does not imply complacency or fantasy.
Peter Petrosino: "First point [...] I don't understand the mechanism by which "the material" for recycling is going to disappear [...] what is "the material" that would be running out in a recycling process?"
Dilution. Recycling uses energy to extract / separate wanted atoms from unwanted atoms. The ratio of wanted atoms in the recycling stock decreases as they are extracted, but the energy inputs to the recycling process increase in a non linear rapidly increasing manner, until no more wanted atoms can be extracted: the second 'law' prohibits 100% of all the wanted atoms from being recovered from a given mass of recycling stock. On subsequent passes through the recycling process more and more of the wanted atoms must be thrown out with the waste atoms.
Peter Petrosino: "Second point - the second law of thermodynamics is applicable to closed systems. [...]
Correct. The sun / earth / life system is closed. Simply observing that an animal or plant is separate within the whole misses the point: their 'aint no more high energy density fuels at the bottom of this gravity well beyond what ever fossil fuels still in the ground. Period. Meanwhile, the sun's energy is too dilute (low energy density per unit of area on the earth's surface) to support anything faster than photosynthesis, which over billions of years was concentrated to give us a fossil fuel bonanza lasting a few centuries: this is thermodynamics in action as it were.
I hope the above has disabused your misunderstandings of thermodynamics and that the The Honest Sorcerer's "reliance on the second law of thermodynamics as the base premise for your argument" is in fact entirely correct and "valid".
Ho Natasha and thanks for your comment. Dilution is not a rebuttal to my position that atoms will not disappear. I wholeheartedly agree that there will be energy input required in the recycling process, as was true during the initial process of synthesizing the plastic/original material. Can you explain to me exactly how the second law "prohibits 100% of all the wanted atoms from being recovered"? Unless I am mistaken, you are attempting to utilize the second law as support for your contention erroneously. By your reasoning and if your interpretation of the second law was true in this respect, the numerous cyclic processes on earth that have been happening long before the appearance of man (nitrogen, carbon, etc.) would have already resulted in a planet wide accumulation of unrecoverable atoms and a halt to all life on earth. Additionally, you are incorrect in your characterization of "the sun/earth/life system" as closed. You need to view the earth component only and it is energetically not even close to a closed system. Since energy is the bone of contention here, it is of primary importance and you appear to be skirting that very issue. Or perhaps you would argue that we are not constantly bathed with vast amounts of energy from the sun? I contend simply that true recycling is not only possible, but will become essential as we deplete fossil fuels and have to adapt. Your adherence to the trope of "it took millions of years to form such energy dense fossil fuels and we are doomed now that they are running out" is defeatist and factually unsound on the latter point. Is it not interesting that media sources have worked overtime to create such a false binary - that we are either going to soon run out of fossil fuels and then slip into another Dark Age (or worse) or fossil fuels are actually more abundant than anyone knows and we're all set until further notice. Your retort to my premise is a version of the same that has been programmed into all consumers of this false binary - renewable energy is a falsehood and can't satisfy modern society's demands! Look at how windmills only work in the wind! Look at how electric cars won't start or catch fire! Ad infinitum. Your own reasoning leads to a singular conclusion. We choose to either find an alternative to our current, unsustainably wasteful business-as-usual approach, or we perish. Thankfully, unlike you, I am not willing to just take The Sorcerer's word for it and I hope that others out there don't blindly drink from his goblet of despair. Identifying problems in the world is a wonderful tool to improve our lives, but only lamenting our supposed horrific condition based on incorrect information and offering no possible solutions is illogical, possibly dishonest, and certainly intellectually lazy. In closing, I suppose I haven't been "disabused" by your comment, but on the other hand, you may have done a capable job of illuminating the falsehoods upon which the Sorcerer's and your contentions rest. Please further enlighten me if I have misinterpreted your comments.
Sorry but you seem to have missed out on doing your thermodynamics homework.
"Dilution is not a rebuttal to my position that atoms will not disappear" - this is 'straw man' : nobody is claiming "atoms will disappear" they simply become too diluted to extract / isolate (to be reused in in new product / machines etc.) because they use more and more energy the more dilute the atoms become in a given mass of recyclable feed stock compared to the unwanted (waste) atoms.
The point is that in a given mass of recycled input material less than 100% of the wanted atoms can be extracted, the last atoms will remain embedded in the mass of unwanted atoms. For example seawater has enough uranium dissolved in it to last humans for 100,000's of years BUT only 3 or 4 atoms of uranium per billion atoms of everything else, means the energy to get those 3 or 4 atoms out and leave the other billion behind, and then use those uranium atoms in reactors, requires close to more than the energy in those 3 or 4 uranium atoms / billion. Levitation by pulling upon your shoe laces doesn't work.
Shaking your metaphorical fist with emotional rendition of physical reality as a "goblet of despair" doesn't change reality. And our host is far from being alone in his conclusions :
https://www.simonmichaux.com/
https://ourfiniteworld.com/
https://energyskeptic.com/
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
You are clearly clueless about material supply chains and how machine are built.
If your 'vision' is correct please show us engineering references to electric generation machines that have been or can be built only with electricity?
And how do you propose to set up mining & refining & raw material transport operations (needed to build low energy solar energy flow harvesting machines) in remote locations with only electricity?
Natasha, let me first address your source materials. Quote from source #1 - "All wildlife systems are in steep decline." This, along with numerous other statements are alarming opinions, but unsupported by any facts. The reader is asked to simply buy into his premises. Source #2 - "What’s the harm in believing there’s a fat “Santa Claus” God in the sky noting down every time any intelligent creature in the entire universe is naughty or nice on the trillions of inhabited planets in the universe every second of every day for eternity?" The author begins with this statement and then proceeds to admonish evangelicals who are, in his view, hoping to ruin the world for everyone, including accelerating an apocalypse, in order to bring back Jesus. The material given is too farcical to have any significance. Source #3 - "Climate change has its own casualty list (e.g., polar bears, coral reefs), but this is the tip of the iceberg in relation to habitat destruction, wild population declines, and permanent extinctions. Adaptation can’t respond nearly quickly enough to mitigate these influences." Although the author raises many valid points, his base contention is that anthropogenic climate change (previously known as global warming) is unquestioningly real. FYI - the predicted decline in polar bear populations and coral reefs falls right in with the claims that there would be widespread desertification across the globe, along with rising sea levels and vast losses of habitable land. Interestingly, polar bear numbers are not in decline and are quite robust, coral reefs are not dying off, ocean front property has not been lost and is still fetching ridiculously high prices, and desert areas have diminished globally, as the earth is actually greening. Source #4 - A good read, breaking down the economics of liquid natural gas, but it doesn't seem to contradict anything that I have stated. If you offered this as evidence that there is an energy cost/loss for each step in energy processing, I completely agree and have not made statements to the contrary. Our energy sources will need to shift and we will need to make choices regarding how the available energy is allocated. Can we continue on with business as usual? No. Will our lives change? Certainly. Will the changes be for the better or for the worse? That remains to be seen and is greatly under individual control. I think we can agree on those points, at least. Am I clueless about material supply chains and how machines are built? You presume so, but such is not the case. You are possibly locked into thinking only of traditional forms of material procurement and machines can be built from whatever components are necessary, regardless of whether the components are from virgin or recycled materials. You query regarding me offering examples of "electric generation machines that have been or can be built only with electricity" I suspect may be a typo, as the energy used to construct a machine can very easily be entirely electrical. I am energy independent, harvesting all of our power needs from solar and wind and I frequently fabricate products with my welders and other supporting electrical tools. Could I build an electrical generator using these tools? Yes, actually. However, if you are basically accusing me of magical thinking by stating that atoms are not destroyed or damaged by chemical and/or physical alterations, I would retort that you may be doing the inverse, suggesting that so many problems are insurmountable. There is apparently now an internet term for such folks - a "doomer". As you have offered no factual points to counter my contention, I stand by my premise that all materials are entirely recyclable, even though the process may be energy intensive and costly. This would also greatly diminish the need for such energy costly mining operations. Thank you for the lively exchange.
Peter, you artificially ring fence / render as externalities input materials in your examples by writing : "You query regarding me offering examples of "electric generation machines that have been or can be built only with electricity" I suspect may be a typo, as the energy used to construct a machine can very easily be entirely electrical."
No it can NOT! You have to include the ENTIRE supply chain, from rocks in the ground needed to manufacture and power the "welders" you "frequently fabricate products with" and manufacture and power the computer and global networks you are typing on, etc... with all your examples.
You MUST include all the infrastructure like ALL the metals and sand in the concrete in electric grids, that ALL REQUIRE diesel in their supply chains and bulk remote locations transport. ALL metal is mined using diesel. NO metals can be mined with electricity alone. No diesel = no electric machines. Period. To pretend otherwise is magical thinking.
Thank you. Good article!
I agree with all the points you raise, bar one: "it is the increase of entropy alone which gives time its direction."
If entropy can be seen as 'disorder increasing with time', how can it cause the thing which forms part of its description? 'The increase of disorder with time, causes time'? That is circular.
'Entropy never decreases with time, in a closed system' is the most we can say.
(However, great piece, and 100% correct about the stupidity/impossibility of a sustainable high tech world.)
While I don't disagree with your conclusion, you left out an important bit of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: "in a closed system."
We do not operate "in a closed system." Indeed, if we did, neither we, nor any life at all, would exist on this planet.
In "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision," Fritjov Capra keeps repeating an important phrase, "in a system far from equilibrium."
Thanks to a constant stream of energy from our Sun, we, and all the other life on this planet, are able to exist. That may be, for some number of people, ample enough energy for a more-or-less modern civilization — if we leave enough extra for the rest of nature to have its share.
But we are currently using about 40% more energy than that gathered by all the photosynthesizing plants on the planet. What could go wrong with that?
Nicely articulated.
Entropy ➡️ negentropy ➡️ entropy ➡️
with each round of entropy reducing the possibility of negentropy!
I think about it like this.
The world is a boat full of sandwiches on the lake. My friend and I are on the boat, eating the sandwiches. He plays the guitar, I sing. We take turns rowing. There’s no place to shit so we just shit in the boat. A long time ago the boat had organised itself so that the sunshine hitting the boat turned the shit into sandwiches, but as we tried to start speeding up the manufacture of sandwiches, shit started to be left behind.
It got worse when we started also making oars on the boat. Shit started accumulating. Now we’re drowning in shit.
I agree we will however run out of sandwiches before we drown in shit.
Some people are able to confidently ignore both aspects in the above story. They just play the guitar and sing louder. These people are like middle schoolers with fingers in their ears. Sometimes they say we can ignore the big picture because we can’t fully grasp its details. If they can ignore reality, I can ignore them.
Looking forward to continuation of estrangement.