This evening I went to a physics lecture. What the Fuck???? No, I haven't gone crazy and yes I had an ulterior motive. The lecture was about physics, entropy and climate change. I actually wanted to understand more about entropy so I could flesh out my short play 'Entropia'. I don't know if I really achieved much real increase of knowledge, but the lecturer was entertaining and gave me some fun analogies I might be able to incorporate into the script.
I guess what I really took away from the lecture was a real understanding of the greenhouse problem and also a bit of a realistic take on what we can do about it. The lecturer was very pragmatic and wasn't proposing radically changing how we as human beings function in our world. He was basically saying that the only way we can get to our necessary CO2 targets by the required dates without reverting to the stone age was to get rid of coal and gas energy sources. What I really liked was that he also had a pragmatic solution. He pointed out that we can't possibly achieve it striving for renewable energy resources, and that the only real and achievable alternative was nuclear power.
This makes sense to me. I can't see any of us willingly changing the lifestyle we have developed and yet we do seem to agree that we need to do SOMETHING. Is it perfect? No. Is it achievable? Yes. Does the good outweigh the bad? Yes.
Regarding entropy - there seems to be some confusion as to whether it is the second or third law of thermodynamics. More research required.
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