Sustainable development and climate warming as two sides of the same process (Dedicated to the 200th anniversary of thermodynamics)
Prof. Yu. P. Chukova
Krasnopresnensky Ecological Fund, Russia
Abstract: Currently, there are no more important issues than sustainable development and climate warming. At the UN, they are two different departments. In all countries, these works are well funded, but the key to the formidable problem first formulated by the Club of Rome in the second half of the 20th century has not yet been found. For a long time, it was thought that greenhouse gases would be the key. However, this did not happen.
This paper presents the results obtained in the framework of quantum thermodynamics of irreversible isothermal processes cusing the black box method. The efficiency (see the ordinate axis in the figure) of converting the energy of electromagnetic (solar) radiation into Helmholtz free energy in open and closed systems is calculated.
It is shown that the laws of quantum thermodynamics of isothermal processes 1, 2 are applicable to living nature and allow us to eliminate white spots in the study of human vision (dotted line), photosynthesis of algae and plants (dot-and-dash line), and photomovement of protozoa (solid line). These problems have been waiting to be solved for more than a hundred years, despite the efforts of the world's leading scientists. The simplicity of the design of solar cells (dots) allowed us to understand the essence of internal processes in complex living systems and show that sustainable development is possible only in conditions of linear growth of the entropy generation rate (a straight line in the figure in semi-logarithmic coordinates), where E is the spectral density of absorbed solar radiation. When the entropy generation rate increases superlinearly, the fraction of the Sun's energy converted to heat begins to grow faster. The efficiency will decrease and the system temperature will increase.
The way of preserving sustainable development is shown on the example of cyanobacteria. The global ecosystem of Meadows is compared with the thermodynamic system. The role of behavioral response in preserving sustainable development is shown, and a concrete way to save our civilization is proposed.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: To be announced soon