If something is overriding the 2nd law to decrease entropy in living systems, please tell me what that is.
Simply poring energy at something isn’t enough. In order for entropy to decrease, work needs to be done in and on the system. What is the source of work?
When the Sun eventually explodes, would it’s mass have accounted for a significant increase in entropy, of atleast the solar system of which we are all a part? Increased order in localized zones is what the 2nd law of thermodynamics specifically cannot have jurisdiction over. That is why the precondition of isolation is so important; and for the law to be perfect, so must the isolation be perfect. That is not what we have on this planet.
There are millions of external factors influencing what happens on this planet. For a crude example, people congregate near zones of observation, to witness, say the appearance of a comet. Hasn’t this miniscule agent (compared to the scale of the solar system) affected the “entropy” of that group of people?
That would be the sun.
Simply poring energy at something isn’t enough. In order for entropy to decrease, work needs to be done in and on the system. What is the source of work?
That would be the living systems themselves.
(For someone who professes to know and love science, you sure post some whoppers!)
If you understood the Second Law of Thermodynamics well enough to discuss it, you'd know that your question doesn't even make sense. The Second Law doesn't need to be "overridden" for systems (including living systems, among others) to obtain a local decrease in entropy within themselves. Bringing about a local decrease in entropy isn't any kind of "exception" or "special case" of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it's part of the ordinary, regular process.
Simply poring energy at something isn’t enough.
Actually it can be, depending on initial conditions. You claim to have a background in meteorology, so it's surprising that you're not aware that "simply poring [sic] energy at" the oceans will produce ordered systems with locally decreased entropy known as "hurricanes". Of course, as always the local decrease in entropy will be offset by a larger increase in entropy in the system (Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and land areas) as a whole.
In order for entropy to decrease, work needs to be done in and on the system.
Sure, but it's not like having this happen requires extraordinary conditions, or that the manner in which this happens is somehow mysterious, unknown, or supernatural.
If we use the tendency of things to go downhill due to gravity as an analogy for the tendency of things increase in entropy due to the laws of Thermodynamics, the point is that it's not just that the Second Law of thermodynamics allows things to "go uphill" (i.e. go counter to the system-wide tendency towards entropic increase) as long as it's overbalanced elsewhere by other things going downhill -- what really needs to be understood is that processes can be *coupled* (naturally or on purpose) so that when one thing goes downhill, it can make other things go uphill. For example, a heavy weight tied to a lighter weight with a string that goes over a pulley (or even just a smooth "hill" between them) will drive the lighter weight uphill as the heavier weight slides downhill.
In the same way, processes that drive towards increases in entropy can and often are coupled to processes that drive a local decrease in entropy. The production of hurricanes is one example, and at the microscopic level such coupling abounds -- chemical processes very often are coupled in a natural chain of events, due to the nature of the reactants and products, so that one thermodynamically-favored chemical reaction will inevitably drive another which is ordinarily unfavored by thermodynamics (i.e. drive it "uphill" against entropy, resulting in a decreased local entropy).
Gee, it's too bad that biologists have never stopped to examine how the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to the processes in living cells, eh? Oh, wait...
From a standard biology textbook, "Molecular Biology of the Cell (4th edition)", here's a basic primer on thermodynamics as it relates to the cell: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=mboc4.box.256
From the same textbook, here's a broader discussion of the topic: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=mboc4.section.229
Life itself makes heavy use of these kinds of coupled chemical processes to keep cells orderly and functional against the longterm trend of thermal and other random influences to bring disorder the cell.
What is the source of work?
Energy differentials. For most forms of life, the (direct or indirect) source of the energy differential used to drive cellular processes is that big thing in the sky called "The Sun". A few forms of life use chemical energy directly, such as from sulphate/hydrogen metabolism.