Planet Earth has been orbiting a medium sized star out near the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy for about four billion years. Very recently, at the beginning of what Christians on earth call the third millennium, this planet called earth has begun making waves in the noosphere, that is, in the universe of intelligence. It is time to record the progress on planet earth and to speculate about its future. First we look at the energy that powers the earth. The well known energy is the energy of thermodynamics, the physical energy needed to do work.
Work means moving a force through a distance.
The energy needed to do work is best summarized in two laws first described toward the end of its second millennium by a young French engineer named Nicholas Sadi Carnot. The first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed. In other words you can't get something from nothing. You can change energy from one form to another, but in every energy change you end up with the same total amount of energy that you began with. As some put it, there is no free lunch.