The irreversible arrow of time: Why thermodynamics mandates the end of the fossil fuel era

“ There are certain great laws of nature that are immutable and inevitable. Such are the law of gravitation, the law of the conservation of energy and the law of the indestructibility of matter. Science, having learned those laws, does not do aught but recognize them, for science is the interpretation of nature. ”

“ Evolution is but the expression of this law of continuity, this succession of phenomena following one another like the links of a chain, without discontinuity through the vast extent of time and space.
The other great universal law, that of conservation, applies with equal force to living and to inanimate things. This law asserts the uncreateability and the indestructibility of matter and of energy. A given quantity of matter and of energy remains absolutely invariable through all the transformations through which it may pass. ”

“ The bodies of the first beginnings in time gone by moved in the same way in which they now move, and will ever hereafter be borne along in like manner, and the things which have been wont to be begotten, will be begotten after the same law," for there is nothing " extra," nothing outside and beyond the atoms which can either add to or take away from what we should call the energy of the universe. This proposition foreshadows the doctrine of conservation of energy. ”

“ Secondly, the metamorphosis of energy which has shown us that all the so-called real forces in inorganic nature, the mechanical forces and their complements, the so-called potential energies, heat, radiation (light, radiating heat) , electricity, magnetism, chemical energy, are different forms of universal motion, which pass, under certain conditions, the one into the other, so that in place of those of the one which disappear, a certain number of the other appear, so that the whole movement of nature is reduced to this perpetual process of transformation from one into the other. ”

“ And why should a perpetual motion, even under modern conditions, be impossible? The answer to this question is the statement of that great generalisation of modern science, which is known under the name of the Conservation of Energy. This principle asserts that no power can make its appearance in nature without an equivalent expenditure of some other power; that natural agents are so related to each other as to be mutually convertible, but that no new agency is created. Light runs into heat; heat into electricity; electricity into magnetism ”

“ Thermodynamics.—To understand the essential features of the science of thermodynamics it is necessary to revert to the discussion of work and energy. Whenever a substance gives up energy which it has in store the substance always undergoes change. Thus, the fuel which supplies the energy to a steam engine and the food which supplies the energy to a horse undergo a chemical change; the steam which carries the energy of the fuel from a boiler to a steam engine cools off or undergoes a thermal change when it gives up its energy to the engine ”

“ In grave earnestness, let me remind you, that as force cannot be annihilated any more than matter, but can only be changed in its mode of manifestation, so it appears beyond doubt that the force generated by the sun, and conveyed by his rays in the guise of heat, light, and chemical power, to the earth, is not extinguished there, but only changes its form. It apparently disappears when it falls upon plants, which never grow without it; but we cannot doubt that it is working in a new shape in their organs and tissues, and reappears in the heat and light which they give out when they are burned. ”

“ In the plant the atoms are separated, in the animal they recombine. And as surely as the force which moves a clock’s hands is derived from the arm which winds the clock, so surely is all terrestrial power drawn from the sun. Leaving out of account the eruption of volcanoes and the ebb and flow of the tides, every mechanical action on the earth’s surface, every manifestation of power, organic and inorganic, vital or physical, is produced by the sun. His warmth keeps the sea liquid, and the atmosphere a gas, and all the storms which agitate both are blown by the mechanical force of the sun. ”

“ Otherwise the vehicle temperature will keep rising until the Spaceship melts.
You Can’t Even Break Even
Any engineer is annoyed by having to throw energy away. Why is energy ever wasted? The Second Law of Thermodynamics guides us here. Experience has shown that heat cannot be transformed into another form of energy with 100% efficiency. We can’t explain Nature’s idiosyncracies, but we have to live with them. So, we accept the fact that every engine that starts out with heat must ultimately waste some of that energy (Figure 3) . ”

“ There are three great laws of energetics:
1. The sum total of the energy of the universe is invariable.
2. The several forms of energy are interconvertible, and possess an exact quantitative equivalence.
3. The tendency of all forms of kinetic energy is continually toward reduction to forms of molecular motion, and to their final dissipation uniformly throughout space. ”

“ That the process of diffusion obeys the laws of irreversible thermodynamics (if these laws are properly stated) is proved by the fact that the compensating transformations required to separate mixed gases do not essentially involve anything but transformation of energy. The process of allowing gases to mix by diffusion, and then separating them by a compensating transformation, thus constitutes an irreversible cycle, the outside effects of which are that energy somewhere or other must be less capable of transformation than it was before the change. ”

“ Now, in every process of any kind, a portion of the free energy becomes bound, but never does any part of the bound energy become free. Everything of which we have knowledge as happening is subject to this law. Hence, the utmost limit of human achievement is, that we should seize a part of this ceaseless river of free energy (mainly from the sun) flowing by us to the sea of dissipation, and divert it to human uses. ”

“ Temperature is like ‘ease of removing energy’. So if you sit them next to each other, nothing apparently happens; they pass energy back and forth equally, but the net result is nothing. So when things have become all of the same temperature, there is no more energy available to do anything. The principle of irreversibility is that if things are at different temperatures and are left to themselves, as time goes on they become more and more at the same temperature, and the availability of energy is perpetually decreasing. ”

“ The heat-tendency of the universe is also revealed in the
far-reaching "law of maximum work," which defines that chemical
change, accomplished without the intervention of external energy,
tends to the production of the body, or system of bodies, which
disengage the greatest quantity of heat. [1] And, again, vast
numbers of actions going on throughout nature are attended by
dissipatory thermal effects, as those arising from the motions of
proximate molecules (friction, viscosity) , and from the fall of
electrical potential. ”

“ The natural rate of flow of energy from its primary atomic reservoirs to the sea of waste heat energy of uniform temperature, allows life to proceed at a complete pace sternly regulated by the inexorable laws of supply and demand, which the biologists have recognised in their field as the struggle for existence. [5] [5] _Matter and Energy_, by Professor Soddy. It is certain that energy is an actual entity just as much as matter, and that it cannot be created or destroyed. Matter and ether are receptacles or vehicles of energy. ”

“ All of us know the problems rooted in our addiction to foreign oil – it constrains our economy, shifts wealth to hostile regimes, and leaves us dependent on unstable regions. These urgent dangers are eclipsed only by the long-term threat of climate change, which – unless we act – will lead to drought and famine abroad, devastating weather patterns and terrible storms on our shores, and the disappearance of our coastline at home.
For over three decades, we’ve listened to a growing chorus of warnings about our energy dependence. ”

“ What will man do when the forests disappear, when the coal fields are exhausted? Only one thing according to our present knowledge will remain; that is, to transmit power at great distances. Men will go to the waterfalls, to the tides, which are the stores of an infinitesimal part of Nature's immeasurable energy. There will they harness the energy and transmit the same to their settlements, to warm their homes by, to give them light, and to keep their obedient slaves, the machines, toiling. But how will they transmit this energy if not by electricity? ”

“ Heat is molecular motion. The molecules of every substance, as [Pg 284] we have seen on a previous page, are in a state of continual motion, and the more vigorous the motion the hotter the body. As wood or coal burns, the invisible molecules of these substances are violently agitated, and give rise to ether waves which our senses interpret as light and heat. In this constant movement of the molecules, then, we have a manifestation of the energy of motion and of heat.
That energy which disappears in one form reappears in another has been found to be universally true. ”

“ It is by this kind of attraction of the different particles one to the other that we are enabled to trace the laws of chemical affinity, and the wonderful variety of the exertions of these laws.
Now I want you to observe that one great exertion of this power which is known as chemical affinity is to produce heat and light; you know, as a matter of fact, no doubt, that when bodies burn they give out heat, but it is a curious thing that this heat does not continue—the heat goes away as soon as the action stops, and you see thereby that it depends upon the action during the time it is going on. ”

“ Bearing in mind the conservation of forces, that energy or power is as indestructible as matter, that it may be changed into other forms but never lost, it is plain that mechanical force may be applied to the living system and transformed into vital energy; that chemical action, animal heat, and magnetism may represent in the system the mechanical force transmitted to the body. ”

“ The law of the correlation of force told that the various forms of energy which appear around us—light, heat, electricity, etc.—are all parts of one common store of energy and convertible into each other. The question whether vital energy is in like manner correlated with other forms of energy was now extremely significant. Living forces had been considered as standing apart from the rest of nature. ”

“ IT is the object of this article to give a simple account of that fundamental principle in physics which is known as the second law of thermodynamics. No generalization of modern physics is of greater importance, not even the principle of the conservation of energy, and no generalization of modern physics is based upon such deeply seated and such widely diffused human intuitions. ”

“ It is here virtually—perhaps I may say expressly—conceded that if the matter and energy of the universe be finite and located in infinite space, the reasoning by which the theorists of thermodynamics maintain that perpetual motion is incompatible with the transformation and dissipation of energy, cannot be resisted. Unless matter and energy be infinite or space finite, the known laws of nature must eventually abolish all differences of temperature and destroy all life—this is what is admitted. ”

“ Everything we know points to the law that energy is as indestructible as matter itself. The heat scattered from the sun exists at least as ethereal vibration, if in no other form. But it is most assuredly true that this energy, so copiously dispensed, is lost to our solar system. There is no form in which it is returned, or in which it can be returned. The energy of the system is as surely declining as the store of energy of the clock declines according as the weight runs down. ”

“ Here is a fact to give enthusiasm over earthly progress serious pause. This earth, once uninhabitable, will be uninhabitable again. If not by wholesale catastrophe, then by the slow wearing down of the sun's heat, already passed its climacteric, this planet, the transient theatre of the human drama, will be no longer the scene of man's activity, but as cold as the moon, or as hot as colliding stars in heaven, will be able to sustain human life no more. ”

“ When men learn to interrupt this unperceived stream of energy so as to change directly into material motion the spirit that saturates the universe, and that produces force expressions, as it is constantly rushing from earth into space, and from space back again, they will have at command wherever they may be an endless source of power, light, and heat; mass motion, light and heat being convertible. ”

“ Nature turned them out of her laboratory in the twinkling of an eye and man can do the same if he is guided by her hints. The water wheel, the steam engine and the electrical engine are but the implements of a savage, they will disappear the moment we have cast off our swaddling clothes. The motive power of the future will be the sun’s rays. Tens of millions of tons of energy, but another name for force, are daily going to waste on the earth’s surface, while the blind toil with pick and shovel and plough. ”

“ Man will liberate himself from his dependence upon coal-and-water power, and all large cities will be surrounded by immense apparatus, real sunbeam traps, into which the heat of the sun will be gathered, and the obtained energy will be stored away in tremendous reservoirs. It is the force of the sun, stored away in coal, in waterfalls, in nourishment, that performs all the world’s work. ”