How Technology Defeats Itself Through the Rumford Effect

Modern society is a driverless hotrod
without brakes going 90 miles an hour
down a dead-end alley with a brick wall
at the end.

--Dave Foreman

As one dedicated to the protection of wild nature, I couldn't agree more. But as a student of that nature, the diabolical pistons, drive shaft and wheels of Dave's colorful image have long fascinated me. I've even tried to run them in reverse, looking for logical arguments to support my instinctive passion for the wild. In fact, looking back, we find the best of the arguments in support of the wild already present in the brainchild of the early industrial revolution, namely the then-budding science of thermodynamics.

Thermodynamics is concerned with energy metabolism, with the processes of transformation of one energy form into another, which makes the industrial monster run and at the same time fixes the nature of its bite. Our lead into the matter of energy transformations is the work of Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford), a loyalist physicist of revolutionary days who noticed that when cannon were bored frictional heat was produced equivalent in amount to the input of mechanical energy from the boring machine. This result, which boggled 18th century minds, illustrates the equivalence of different energy forms and may be called the "Rumford effect" (Mueller, "Energy in the Environment and the Second Law of Thermodynamics", NASA Doc. X-644-72-130, 1972.). For me it has been a helpful concept in understanding the environmental impact of technology.

Those concerned about the environmental effects of energy use have long touted the role of increased efficiency in overcoming failings of the industrial machine, and in many quarters the impression was left that if efficiency could be increased enough, pollution would vanish (Mueller, Lughnasadh). This assumption also underlies the confidence in so-called "clean energy" sources such as solar, hydro, and wind, and explains the disregard of the use to which this energy is put once it enters distribution lines. Let's examine the notion of clean energy.

The diagram shows how energy fed into a machine or technological process is split into "useful" and waste energy. In anthropocentric terms, the efficiency is the ratio of useful to total energy input. Unfortunately, this definition has little validity in the natural world where different values hold sway.

The negative environmental impact of waste energy is obvious, as in the case of thermal pollution from power plants. But an important point usually overlooked is that once a particular technology is chosen, the forms of waste energy and pollution are utterly fixed. Thus, frictional heat (thermal pollution) was one of the inescapable consequences of boring cannon (another was undoubtedly metal borings which form toxic wastes on contact with water). The forms of waste energy and pollution can of course be altered by tinkering, as with "pollution control devices." But then one must cope with waste and pollution from these secondary sources. (Witness the climatic effects of tall chimneys or the sludge disposal problems of "scrubbers.")

A further point is that the waste frictional heat from an industrial process such as cannon boring is in a sense different from waste energy from a power plant, inasmuch as it has passed through a "useful" stage, whereas that from the power plant has not. With cannon boring, the frictional energy itself played an indispensable role in the "use." This is a general aspect of the Rumford effect-even presumed useful objects such as bedsprings and teacups finally give up their energy as various forms of pollution when they wear out and are scrapped. Thus all technologic energy, whether it is waste from the start or whether it passes through a useful form, ends up as pollution. This is in marked contrast to natural energy forms to which organisms have adapted through the millennia.

As a result of our lack of control over pollution emanating from any technology-except by introducing another technology- the economic marketplace works, at least in the long term, to ensure a variety of pollution forms of unpredictable toxicity and degradation (Mueller, Science, 192, 1976).

Pollution from degraded as well as waste energy may be regarded as energy out of control. Alternatively we can speak of increased entropy or disorder as defined by the second law of thermodynamics. When technologic processes and machines convert energy inputs such as fuels and wind energy into useful forms -mechanical, chemical, electrical, etc.- by steps, there is a loss or waste component at each step. If one of these steps results in a manufactured product, some energy resides in the product and will be dissipated as pollution in the environment as the product wears out and is scrapped. Since all technologic energy ends up as pollution one way or another through the generalized Rumford effect, and since the quality of pollution is usually unpredictable, all energy eventually passes from control, and the impact of energy use depends not on efficiency but on total energy use.

But isn't it true that if we use energy more efficiently we'll need less of it to accomplish the same task and thus total energy use will be reduced? Yes, but the history of energy use has been one of continuous expansion so that any small increase in efficiency is readily overcome. Even if the increase in efficiency kept pace with technological expansion, the rate of pollution production would remain essentially the same and the pollution load would continue to increase. Furthermore, the increase in entropy that accompanies the expenditure of energy implies a disordering effect of enormous consequence to the regulation of industry and society.

The generalized Rumford effect presents us with a devastating world picture of technology, of a truly driverless machine. In this picture we see every technological process and artifact either bearing a legacy of realized pollution or containing potential pollution. The realized pollution is that energy expended in service or manufacturing as both waste and useful energy. The potential pollution is represented by the energy bound in manufactured or otherwise technologically-altered materials. All these energy forms result in pollution over which we have no overall control except to diminish or cease their use.

The illusory nature of the use and dissipation of energy is well illustrated by our waste disposal systems. Among public officials, sanitary landfills have been regarded as greatly preferable to open dumps. Although such landfills, in which trash is covered by earth, may contain only small amounts of highly toxic materials, they inevitably contain huge masses of energy-rich materials such as plastic and paper. What was not anticipated and is still not fully grasped is that the energy available from the latter can, through chemical reaction and anaerobic decay, act to concentrate and mobilize the former. Thus gases such as methane and heated aqueous fluids can transport heavy metals, PCBs, dioxin and other poisons into soil, air and water. All over the world, and particularly in "advanced societies", there are waste dumps , all toxic in varying degree, undergoing a ripening process in which their latent energy components represent time bombs that are even now beginning to explode. Thermodynamics precludes successful "cleanups" of these dumps because they represent enormous entropy pumps which have been working for years.

To those who despair that all this is completely pessimistic, I can only answer that it depends on one's point of view. For decades, establishment scientists aided and abetted our rampant technology by selectively applying certain scientific principles suited to coercing nature. This led to "progress" but also to a multiplicity of interlocking environmental and social crises. They ignored the "bad news" of other scientific principles such as are embodied in ecology and thermodynamics. To those of us who believe that our only salvation is a return to nature's dominion, the consequent loss of material conveniences is a small price to pay. To us, the pessimistic signals from science are messages of hope. Those who still cling to the narrow and outmoded world view of the technological optimist are about to learn the hard truth of that brick wall.