First Law of Ecology

First Law of Ecology

Robert Neulieb Ph. D.

It is frustrating to hear about the necessity to conserve energy when a failure to conserve energy on any scale larger than Nano in time and space would earn one The Nobel Prize in Physics.  Phrases such as energy production and consumption are heard on the most sophisticated news networks.  It is possible to convert chemical, nuclear or other energy into electrical, kinetic or just maintain kinetic energy accompanied an increase in internal energy (likely temperature) of the surrounding, but it is not possible to either produce or consume energy.  The difference is not just semantics.

Entropy and The Second Law of Thermodynamics offer many insights.  It tells us that energy runs downhill in its usefulness with any conversion.  More importantly to ecology, it tells us that it is really order that can be transferred from one place or substance to another always with losses.  Within one closed system only net degradation is possible.  Increased order is possible at one location only if greater sacrifices are made elsewhere.

The sun-earth interaction is most illuminating.  The degradations occurring in the sun have no human connection.  Its solar energy, however, is the only energy that can create net order on earth.  The sun-earth interaction can be viewed as the opportunity to collect some order relinquished by the sun and incorporate it on earth.  Billions of years of the water cycle, and the development of the earth’s surface, plants and animals attests to its potential.  The ordering/degradation potentials of actions can be viewed as the First Law of Ecology.