[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy
John McCarthy wrote:
>
> Jay Hanson includes:
>
> The world doesn't come with dotted lines Harold. <G> We draw
> them! For example, the entropy of a dinner plate system
> increases when the dinner plate breaks.
>
> You may draw a line around the dinner plate system if you like, and
> its entropy indeed increases when the plate breaks. However, the
> dinner plate system is not closed, so its entropy goes down again when
> someone glues the plate back together or replaces the plate by
> another. When the plate breaks the entropy of the universe increases
> but by an amount that is trivial even on a time scale of billions of
> years.
I reply:
John, I'm amused by the way you redefine someone else's conjectural
system at will, introduce new conditions, and insist that this is the
way it should have been stated in the first place - the intent of the
initial poster and the illustrative effectiveness of his conjecture
notwithstanding. For the serious student I again recommend Yourgrau
et al., e.g. the discussion in section 1.6 is pertinent to biological
and environmental applications.
> Nuclear and solar energy each provide means of reducing the entropy of earth
> scale systems for billions of years.
>
> I need to go back to my previous .sig, "He who refuses to do
> arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
> --
By the way, the first stanza was Faust, the second Mephistophiles
pretending to be Faust.