In the Loop - Entropy, Part 5
February 2, 2020

     Perhaps the best way to understand how entropy works is to understand when it doesn't.

     * * *

    The westernmost habitat of the North American eastern white oak tree lies in far eastern Oklahoma – running through the county just to the west of mine, in fact, according to the U.S. Forest Service Field Guide to Native Oak Species of Eastern North America (2003).  A mature white oak with a diameter of 36 inches is likely over 100 years old.  It weighs nearly 16,000 pounds, and stored carbon atoms make up approximately half that weight.  In order to store up – to sequester – that much carbon, the tree had to draw down nearly 30,000 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air.  That's more than 13.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide.  Just tuck that tid-bit away for now; we'll need it later.

     * * *

    Recall the miracle of photosynthesis: a plant traps sunlight in its green material through a chemical called chlorophyll, by which it converts photons to sugar (i.e., into food for itself, thus adding to its own mass) using the raw materials of carbon dioxide, water, and various soil nutrients. Oh, and the "waste product" of this process?  Oxygen.  

     That's certainly convenient for us.

    Different plants draw in carbon dioxide at different rates, but they all do it.  And botanists have figured out how to calculate it with a good deal of accuracy.  

    The rest of us need to get in on this game.  At a minimum, the rest of us ought to understand how this miraculous cycle works, since our lives absolutely depend on it.  I, for one, want to be in the loop.

     And that's just it: it's a loop.  It's an energy cycle.  That's how an open energy system (or at least this particular open energy system called Earth) works.  An external source – the sun – provides the energy necessary for otherwise free-floating, disorganized materials, such as carbon dioxide, water, and soil components, to organize into . . . ta-da!  A tree.  The sun, by contrast, is a closed energy system; it will have no source of additional fuel once it has fused all its hydrogen atoms to form helium atoms.  And yet, destined as it is by the law of entropy for its own eventual collapse, the sun nonetheless powers a continuous process of flouting entropy here on Earth, starting with plant life.  And that plant life, in turn, makes all other life on Earth possible.  It's as if the sun says to the universe, "Fine. You and I may be in a death spiral, but if I'm going down, I'm giving you – this bird!"

      Take that, universe.

    Of course, the tree will die, and the bird too, and in dying they will release all their stored materials, including their carbon, back to the earth and into its atmosphere.  But as long as the sun continues fusing those blessed hydrogen atoms and sending photons our way, the stored materials from that dead tree and that dead bird will become a new tree and a new bird.  Or my oatmeal.  Or my baby.

      Take that, universe.