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Scientists recently are investigating the nature of entropy increase in the earth's climate system. It states that entropy of thermal reservoirs connected through a nonlinear system, in which materials interact mutually, will increase along a path of revolution with a maximum rate of entropy increase, among a manifold of allowed paths which correlates the global climate change.

Entropy enhancement and global climate change with its severe effects on natural and agricultural ecosystems are of national and international concern. Model simulations based on per capita energy consumption indicate that the rate of warming in this century will be greater than any increases in the past. The key issues related to energy consumption as contributing factor to entropy are: intense per capita energy consumption, population growth, bio-diversity, atmospheric change, ozone loss, green house warming and the energy policies of developed and developing nations.

Energy use and energy policy interact with politics, society, economics, political economy, technology, resources, and the environment. Interrelationships between energy, environment and development are deep rooted. Environmental policies around the globe are of great concern. Alternative approaches to the concepts of energy use and environment in relation to social and physical planning are to be established. A need for alternative energy policy: energy for sustainable development is highly recommended.

Energy consumption as a contributing factor to entropy is generically related with the environment and pollution, especially with the greenhouse effects and the global warming. It is established that human populations always consume the most easily available energy first. They are then forced to develop more sophisticated technologies to consume energy that is more difficult to obtain. In pre-industrial era, as people outgrew supplies of renewable energy such as timber and animal fuels, they developed technology for mining and burning coal. This is what precipitated the Industrial Revolution. It is fact that each successive step up the ladder of energy consumption means more expensive technological development and consequently, more pollution.

Physics explains how the resulting pollution is "built-in" to the increased energy consumption; that is to say, whenever energy is converted from one form to another, as in energy consumption, only a part of that energy can be used, while the other part takes the form of entropy, or "disorder."

The first law of thermodynamics declares that energy (or matter-energy) can neither be created nor destroyed. This seems to suggest that the use of energy will not reduce the amount of energy available to be used again. But this is not the case. The second law declares that whenever work is done, whenever energy is used, the amount of usable energy declines. The decline of usable energy is the increase of entropy. For example, when a piece of coal is burned, the energy in the coal is transformed into heat and ash. This, too, is energy, and the amount of energy in the heat and ashes equals that previously in the coal. But now it is dispersed. The dispersed heat cannot be used again in the way it was originally used.

The quantities derived from thermodynamics are the most obvious and natural. Thermodynamic potential is a fundamental measure of a system's capacity to perform work. The science of thermodynamics enables us to determine the minimum expenditure of thermodynamic potential to achieve a given physical change. Since every process requires the consumption of some thermodynamic potential, we are able to compare different processes and select that which is the most thermodynamically efficient. The change in thermodynamic potential associated with a process will measure all of the energy exchanged as well as the effects upon the degree of disorder or dilution, i.e., the entropy of the system.

There lies a theory, which says that growth in technology will combat our pollution and population problems, as well as the coming energy crisis. But energy consumption for technological development will enhance the entropy. The crisis posed by the world is the population explosion.

Global warming is an increase in the earth's temperature due to the use of fossil fuels and certain industrial and agricultural processes leading to build up of " greenhouse gases" (principally carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and water vapour) in the atmosphere. Elevated global temperatures could result in coastal flooding and shifting of major climatic zones and may have serious implications for agricultural productivity.

Environment is composed of all of the external factors affecting an organism. These factors may be other living organisms (biotic factors) or nonliving variables (abiotic factors), such as water, soil, climate, light, and oxygen. All interacting biotic and abiotic factors together make up an ecosystem. Organisms and their environment constantly interact, and both are changed by this interaction. Additionally, environmental factors, singly or in combination, ultimately limit the size that any population may attain. This limit, a population's Carrying capacity, is usually reached because needed resources are in short supply. Occasionally, carrying capacity may be dictated by the direct actions of other species, as when predators limit the number of their prey in a specific area.

Erwin Schrodinger (1945) has described life as a system in steady-state thermodynamic non-equilibrium that maintains its constant distance from equilibrium (death) by feeding on low entropy from its environment.

Bio-energetic is the study of the processes by which living cell use, store and release energy. A central compound of bio-energetic is energy transformation, the conversion of energy from one form to another. All cells transform energy. In all such transformations some energy is lost to the environment. The lost energy, which is no longer available for useful work, goes to the enhancement of entropy.

Ecosystem constitutes with organisms living in particular environment and the physical parts of the environment that effect them. The ecosystems (coined by British ecologist Sir Arthur George Tansley 1935) is the natural system in "constant interchange" among their living and nonliving parts. Study of relationships between organism and their living and nonliving parts. Ecosystem is described by different feeding levels-known as trophic levels. Plants are in the first trophic level, animal and insects in the second level, flesh eaters in the third, carnivorous that feed on other carnivorous in the fourth and bacteria-fungi in the fifth tropic level.

Population Growth and intense per capita energy consumption may be seen to be at the root of virtually all of the world's environmental problems. Global Warming, Depletion of Ozone Layer, Air Pollution, Ground Water Depletion, Chemical Risks, Pesticide Residue in Crops and in Fish are examples of toxic substances that may be encountered in daily life.

Global environmental collapse is not inevitable. But the developed world must work with the developing world to ensure that new industrialized economies do not add to the world's environmental problems. One must think of sustainable development rather than economic expansion. Conservation strategies have to become more widely accepted, and people must learn that energy use can be dramatically diminished without sacrificing comport. In short, with the technology that currently exists, the years of global environmental mistreatment can begin to be revered.

The author is the Professor of physics and Chairperson, Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Source: http://thetimetocare.blogspot.com/
Source: www.makeearthbetterplace.org