On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 08:10:59AM -0700, Fred Foldvary wrote: > Entropy says a closed system will dissipate into unavailable energy.
Entropy applies to open systems too. The way it works is, a given energy source (the sun) and heat sink (outer space) allows you to remove so many bits of entropy per second from your system, so that limits your activities to producing no more than that many bits of entropy per second. > But the earth is not a closed system. It keeps getting solar energy, and > therefore the biomass and economic activity can increase indefinitely, so > long as the sun continues to shine. Economic activity can't increase indefinitely, because eventually we'll have improved our technologies to the limits imposed by physics, and used up every square inch of sunlight. At that point thermodynamics will determine the ultimate limit on the rate of economic activity on Earth. On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 11:35:31AM +0200, Hentrich, Steffen wrote: > Probably you don't know, but the connection of entropy and economy is still, > obviously without relevance, a common concept in so called ecological > economics, a field of research with huge influence in environmental policy, > especially in Germany. Because I don't agree with that, I'm looking for > profound arguments against that costly influence. Your comment is right, but > for my audience probably not convincing. Can you cite a paper from this literature? Without knowing more it's hard to tell if the concept of entropy is being used correctly or not.
