What is Environmental Thermodynamics?
R. F. Mueller Aluminum cans are collected from roadsides and transported to a recycling center. A helicopter is used to fly junk out of a wilderness area. Does nature come out ahead in these “cleanup” activities? Hydrogen is frequently proposed as the clean fuel of the future. Does this make sense? A tractorcade is formed to protest the demise of the family farm. How does this rank as appropriate symbolism? A newly hired pollution control engineer for an industrial firm makes $200,000 a year, buys a large house in the suburbs and drives to work. How is this person’s life style related to the firm’s pollution control efforts? Increasingly environmentalists feel a need to reevaluate a variety of proposals and actions once thought to be non- controversial or beneficial to the environment. In this deeper analysis they inevitably confront concepts of thermodynamics, a science whose very name my strike fear into those not technically oriented. Yet, the assimilation of the central ideas of th
