Trevor Craig Energy Science 110 Energy, Complexity, and Civilization 7 9/13/11 This lecture was about how

energy is what controls our lives and the civilizations we have. Society is very complex, this complexity is not for free, it takes much energy to exist. Society takes lots of energy this can be seen when comparing the energy densities of stars and societies, stars have an energy density of 1e^-6 W/g where society has a much bigger number of 1e^-1, obviously societies require more energy. Energy equals technology *resources, this comes in to play when we look at societies. Successful societies tend to be more complex in nature, thus using more energy, but this is not always the case. Native Americans were a low energy society, most of the energy they used came from the grass and their technology was the horse. As time has gone on our technology has advanced and we use more resources causing an increase in energy. Much of this energy comes from fossil fuels, in 1880 the world only extracted 10 EJ worth of fossil fuels, but as societies have become more complex the amount of energy we extract has gone up to 10^3 EJ in 1990. So as our societies are becoming more complex we have been creating new technology, which according to our formula of energy=technology*resources, uses more energy. One new technology is the automobile. In 1910 there was about 10^6 vehicles but in the year 1990 there was approximately 10^9 vehicles for the world, from this we can see society as a whole is using more energy. When societies have high energy, technology, and resources they become very organized and complex, for example like Hong Kong, but if you take the energy and resources out of the picture the society will fall and soon degrade to ruins.

Societies are on top when they have both new technology and resources, while using more energy. When Britain was at the height of its empire it was using a lot of energy, in 1800 it was using about 110 TWh of coal, which is what was necessary for the empire to stay on top. Now the United States uses the most energy in all of history, mostly due to our military, using approximately 75 EJ as of 1975, compared to Englands 5 EJ in 1975. Some say that the amount of energy the United States uses is too much. When there is 5000 kg oil-eq per capita, life expectancy increases, infant mortality decreases, and GDP is still high enough for a wealthy life style. The United States uses more like 8000 kg oil-eq per capita, so are we using too much energy than what we actually need, increasing things like CO2 emissions, in turn increasing global warming?

Thermodynamics- Physics that deals with the relationships and conversions between heat and other forms of energy.

Entropy- A thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.