Tom Roberts wrote:

Dr Photon wrote:
I guess there will always be a problem with comparing what's "over
here" with what's "over there"


Yes, and that implies a similar problem summing up what's "over there"
with what's "over here"....

The basic problem with non-local "conservation of energy" is the
difficulty or impossibility of integration in curved manifolds.

so what exactly does the paper Bill Hobba referenced imply?
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/9701/9701028.pdf
This seems to be basically saying that whether or not we can define the
energy of a region (at least it is not defined absolutely), we still
know that it is not arbitrarily increasing or decreasing. But does it
also give a measure of the energy of a region?

If there is a way that conservation of energy is not conserved
non-locally, is there any way to get at it?


No. Thermodynamically this is not free energy.

well I expected that of course, but it's fun to try!

br