Reposted from thread at doomstead diner http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/forum/index.php/topic,4011.msg65174.html#msg65174I've been reading the four pages of posts. I will ignore the snark.
I believe the discussion of entropy merits some clarification.
ENTROPY EVIDENCED in LIFE FORM THERMODYNAMICS:JRM asked,
Do you understand in essence what thermodynamic entropy has to do -- generally -- with order and complexity in various living and non-living complex systems?
Is this something that can be explained to people with basically no "higher math" skills or knowledge? To a scientific layman?
The Trophic pyramid is the best explanation for entropy in the thermodynamics of living organisms. It applies 24/7 to all life forms on this planet.
Every trophic level has about one tenth the biomass of the one it feeds on below it. WHY? Because 90% of the ENERGY the life forms need to live and reproduce is LOST due to entropy when the one biomass is consumed by another. And, of course, every life form dies. That is further evidence of entropy in the thermodynamics of life forms.
NO ONE can say this entropy is not happening. NO ONE can say there is any evidence that it will happen "in reverse" some day, despite what cosmologists postulate about oscillating universes. And what happens in the non-living universe of matter is off topic here anyway.
The MASSIVE amount of energy stored in the base from captured sunlight is necessary because energy is LOST as the secondary and tertiary trophic levels EAT the life forms below them.And entropy flies in the face of the increasing complexity of life forms postulated by SET. Yeah, there is a LOT of complexity out there in life forms. Science DOES NOT have an answer to that one, despite what JoeMc claims.