GENUINE OR RIFKINATED

Entropy is a mathematical quantity in thermodynamics which can be interpreted as the degree to which the energy content of a closed system has irreversibly changed to heat, or more broadly, the degree to which the order of a system has changed to disorder. This has been interpreted by dull-witted reactionaries like Jeremy Rifkin (who saw the word entropy in browsing through some books above his head, and then wrote a book of scandalous nonsense about it himself) to mean that the earth is running out of usable energy and civilization is running down. I have previously explained the fallacy of such quackery [AtE Sept 81], but Drexler gives an impressive example that I had not met before.

A corked bottle has a partition as shown, with water on the left and salt on the right. Now shake it until all the salt has dissolved. The entropy (disorder) has increased, and never again can you separate the brine into an orderly drop of water and heap of salt, at least according to the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics as mutilated by Jeremy Rifkin. (Paul Lysenko Ehrlich, in a widely used text, laments that "the Second Law tends to be inscrutable.")

Oh no? Let the salt water flow into the left part and put it in the sun, with the partition shading the right half. The water will evaporate laving behind the salt, and condensing as fresh water in the cool right half of the bottle.

A raspberry to Rifkin (yes, the very same who is trying to wreck genetic engineering): the bottle, exactly like the earth, is not a closed system. What the brilliant sage has overlooked is, of all things, solar energy, which continually reaches the earth from outside.

Alas, the teachings of Rifkin, Ehrlich and Omar Shariff are not easily displaced from the Sunday supplements, let alone from the halls of higher education. For as Drexler remarks (elsewhere), "Ask not whether a rumor is true; ask instead how it spreads. Experience shows that ideas evolved to be successful replicators need have little to do with the truth."