This commentary is by Daniel A. Young, a retired engineer who has lived in Hyde Park for the past 30 years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of California and a master’s degree in environmental science from New Jersey Institute of Technology. And worked as a chemical engineer for 40 years,
Entropy, not energy, is the driving force that activates the universe. An axiomatic part of the Second Law of thermodynamics is the “Principle of Maximum Entropy Production,” which can be stated as follows:
“In any system, entropy will be produced as rapidly as possible within the constraints imposed by the system definition.”
This principle makes the creation of entropy a force that drives the activity of the universe. Everything from electrons jumping across orbitals to astronomical supernovae is driven by the need for entropy to increase.
In my physics class, I learned that energy is “the ability to do work.” But then in thermodynamics, I learned that energy is conserved, and the same amount of energy is left after work is done as was there before the work was started.
Clearly, energy is not consumed by the performance of work. In fact the First Law of thermodynamics says that energy is conserved, neither created nor destroyed.
There is evidence that Ludwig Boltzmann, one of the founders of thermodynamics, knew this as early as 1824. Einstein knew it in 1933. Entropy content is a measure of the disorder in a system and it is related to the energy available to do work. A disordered system is one that has no energy available in a form that can support activity. In an ordered system, the energy is available in a form that can do work.
Entropy is not conserved. The amount of entropy increases whenever any change of any kind takes place in the universe. In so doing, the entropy destabilizes ordered systems; the amount of order in the universe continually decreases.
Energy enters the Earth system as shortwave radiation, a particularly low entropy form. It radiates away as longwave radiation, a high entropy form.
The mathematics tells us that the energy leaving the Earth for outer space carries more than 20 times the entropy coming to the earth from the sun. The Earth responds to this huge extraction of disorder by becoming increasingly ordered.
This is the driver of the evolutionary process, the increasing order and complexity of systems on the surface of the Earth. It doesn’t matter if the system is biological, climatic, weather-related or geological; all earthly processes will evolve into more stable, ordered and complex forms as long as the negative entropy balance persists.
As long as more entropy (disorder) is extracted from the Earth than is accrued within it, evolution will favor order. As soon as the negative entropy balance is reduced, evolution will slow down, as happens when the radiation of energy into outer space is restricted by the presence of greenhouse gases.
As a consequence of the fact that energy always flows down an energy gradient, the entropy balance is always negative, making the Earth evolve toward some level of order. It is a fundamental property of heat that the entropy balance of any system through which energy flows will always be negative.
The order level set point toward which the Earth evolves can be reset to a less ordered condition. Evolution can reset its goal. When the resulting set point is lower than the existing level of order on the planet, our system of planetary order begins to devolve, evolution is halted and the more elaborately ordered systems begin to deteriorate. Such systems include, in addition to ourselves, mature ecosystems, stable weather patterns, species diversity, climate stability — all systems that have become stable over long periods of time by approaching their evolutionary set point.
If we are to save the world from a disastrously disordered fate, it is best that we understand the ultimate cause of the condition, and stop the destructive practices that exacerbate it.
