Environmental Crisis As Entropy Crisis | The second law of thermodynamics and entropy

Our environmental crisis as Entropy Crisis boils down to human undertakings generating more entropy than the biosphere can handle. This excess entropy load usually results from excess energy consumption in the production of economic goods.

Environmental crisis as entropy crisis

 With the help of the second law of thermodynamics, we can understand our environmental crisis and the way to deal with it. So far as the human point of view is concerned, all the disorders in the environment are the result of human efforts to make nature as per our own desires.

Environmental crisis as entropy crisis example 

Overuse of automobiles for travel, Use of natural gas in factories and mills. From the physical point of view, the disorder in environmental balance or the entropy crisis is the result of our useless struggle to ignore the second law of thermodynamics.

The second law of thermodynamics and entropy

 When we try to increase the order in a system, it increases a great disorder in the environment. The contribution of a single person is smaller as compared to the contributions of all persons which affects the overall life support system.

As all the energy processes we use are not very efficient, that’s why most of the energy is lost as heat in the environment. Also, we cannot improve the efficiency beyond a limit due to the second law of thermodynamics. Heat is the unavoidable result of second law of thermodynamics and also the final conversion of all the energies is the heat.

Entropy in Ecosystem

An increase in the temperature of the environment means an increase in entropy. A small change in the temperature can affect the metabolic rates in plants and animals which can disturb the overall ecological balance. In addition to thermal pollution, most energy transformation processes such as heat engines used for transportation and for power generation cause air pollution.

In effect, all forms of energy production have some undesirable effects and in some cases, all problems cannot be anticipated in advance. The imperative from thermodynamics is that whenever you do anything, be sure to take into account its present and possible future impact on your environment.

This is an ecological imperative that we must consider now if we are to prevent an extreme degradation of life on our beautiful but fragile earth.