Life can’t exist in a high entropy environment. Of course you can declare the entire solar system a closed system but because of the sun our solar system will be in an extremely low entropy state on average for a couple of billion years. Once the sun “dies” and the temperature averages out in our solar system there will be no life.
And yes it’s (almost) always an energy argument that’s why the water argument is not a good one. But not everything is an energy argument. Take He and H2 for example if you let that into the air it will eventually escape our atmosphere because of solar winds and is truly wasted/lost - but that’s not true for water. You can’t really waste water in a sense that we will have less water im the future (unless you split it into hydrogen and oxygen and let the hydrogen escape).
No one said anything about a high entropy environment. Entropy is a tool for thinking about this stuff, and it extends beyond thermodynamics as entropy is an information theory concept too. The more fragmented things become, the harder they are to work with. When you use energy (or water) for an industrial use it creates fragmentation and makes that water harder to use (especially for a different use case, drinking). You can’t just pump it back into the aquifer. This is a directional thing, not about high or low in absolute numbers.
Life can’t exist in a high entropy environment. Of course you can declare the entire solar system a closed system but because of the sun our solar system will be in an extremely low entropy state on average for a couple of billion years. Once the sun “dies” and the temperature averages out in our solar system there will be no life.
And yes it’s (almost) always an energy argument that’s why the water argument is not a good one. But not everything is an energy argument. Take He and H2 for example if you let that into the air it will eventually escape our atmosphere because of solar winds and is truly wasted/lost - but that’s not true for water. You can’t really waste water in a sense that we will have less water im the future (unless you split it into hydrogen and oxygen and let the hydrogen escape).
No one said anything about a high entropy environment. Entropy is a tool for thinking about this stuff, and it extends beyond thermodynamics as entropy is an information theory concept too. The more fragmented things become, the harder they are to work with. When you use energy (or water) for an industrial use it creates fragmentation and makes that water harder to use (especially for a different use case, drinking). You can’t just pump it back into the aquifer. This is a directional thing, not about high or low in absolute numbers.