The Second Law
March 11th 2007 01:00
The idea of getting something for nothing has always fascinated mankind. The dream of 100% profit has inspired stories in every culture- as well as the current U.S. Federal budget. In the real world, though, there's a little detail called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Depending on the context it's usually translated into English as "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch," or "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold."
President Bush went to Brazil to sign a deal on ethanol production. Ethanol is one of the alternatives to petroleum-based fuels that our so-called "leaders" started looking at merely three-plus decades after the Oil Embargo of the 70's demonstrated how fragile that rung of our economy was. As a fuel, ethanol has enormous potential.
But, like everything else real, it's not free. Mass conversion of corn into ethanol means less corn for livestock and human consumption: The cost of nachos and the meat goes up. Likewise of vast tracts of land are planted with sugarcane for ethanol; whatever the land was growing last year is now that much more scarce.
(NOTE: I am NOT arguing against ethanol; just pointing out that there are costs involved).
Similarly, there are those who confuse fuel cells as a "source" of energy. Fuel cells are like batteries: They can store energy, but the energy still has to come from somewhere. Hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells produce water as exhaust because they were filled by someone using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The problems are not intractable; we have found sources of power that don't leave us at the mercy of oil-rich nations; we've demonstrated our genius at inventing new technologies to transmit and store energy. We have brains and development capital and decades of research, and therefore the possibility of survival.
Unfortunately, too many of the defining decisions are in the hands of politicians who studied law instead of anything remotely like a physical science- which leaves us with a very high possibility that we're boned.
President Bush went to Brazil to sign a deal on ethanol production. Ethanol is one of the alternatives to petroleum-based fuels that our so-called "leaders" started looking at merely three-plus decades after the Oil Embargo of the 70's demonstrated how fragile that rung of our economy was. As a fuel, ethanol has enormous potential.
But, like everything else real, it's not free. Mass conversion of corn into ethanol means less corn for livestock and human consumption: The cost of nachos and the meat goes up. Likewise of vast tracts of land are planted with sugarcane for ethanol; whatever the land was growing last year is now that much more scarce.
(NOTE: I am NOT arguing against ethanol; just pointing out that there are costs involved).
Similarly, there are those who confuse fuel cells as a "source" of energy. Fuel cells are like batteries: They can store energy, but the energy still has to come from somewhere. Hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells produce water as exhaust because they were filled by someone using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The problems are not intractable; we have found sources of power that don't leave us at the mercy of oil-rich nations; we've demonstrated our genius at inventing new technologies to transmit and store energy. We have brains and development capital and decades of research, and therefore the possibility of survival.
Unfortunately, too many of the defining decisions are in the hands of politicians who studied law instead of anything remotely like a physical science- which leaves us with a very high possibility that we're boned.
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Comment by Timothy Powell
subjective determinist
Bad men
meditations while in genetics lectures