I have been thinking a lot about energy production. Why do we need to burn fossil fuels?
There is a great video with Brian Cox talking to Joe Hanson about life – what physics has to say about being alive. In the video I learned:
To be alive, we need energy to move. While the amount of energy in the universe is constant, the amount of energy in the universe that is useful to us is constantly decreasing. This follows the entropy law.
So, to be alive we are always seeking clumps of order that have energy, like the sun or another living being. The sun, a clump of order, is hydrogen atoms that are held tightly together by gravity. The atoms are crashing into each other and giving off energy. As the energy flows from the sun outwards into cold space, things can be moved, and organisms can be grown. Meanwhile the sun is losing energy and, after billions of years, will die.
And also, when we consume other living beings, the calories that we burn can be turned into energy. (Joe Hanson mentioned that it involves protons.) But once the being, a clump of order, is consumed we need to find another living being to consume.
This reminds me of the movie, Howl’s Moving Castle. The human characters are seen frying and eating meat. Meanwhile the fire character, who moves the castle, is seen eating meat scraps and wood scraps. Like all animals, we are agitators, burning clumps of order for the energy we need to be alive. But, we are multiple agitators, burning clumps of order to run both our bodies and our machines.
Actually, with green technology we could work with the sun. The energy coming from the sun creates the weather, and we can build wind turbines. The energy from the sun drives the water cycle, and we can build hydro electric works. And the energy from the sun can be captured directly, as plants do, and we can build solar panels. These are good, sustainable ideas.
However, there is the Dunkelflaute problem, when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. I will comment about Sabine Hossenfelder’s Dunkelflaute video next.