Energy efficiency

We are constantly told that improving energy efficiency is the key to an effective energy policy, but the truth is that it is an essentially meaningless goal. The direct cost and the indirect (environmental, societal, etc.) costs vary greatly between energy sources, so the importance of efficiency also varies. There may be good reasons to reduce use of coal (air pollution) or oil (oil imports) – but if we can supply energy at low cost and with little environmental impact (space-based solar power comes close), why should we care how much of it people use? 

The solar radiation falling on the Earth is 10,000 times greater than the total energy used by humans. If the Earth were a black body, our current energy use would increase the temperature by 0.007 deg C – but in fact there are feedback mechanisms that stabilize the temperature, so the real temperature rise is much less than this. We have a long way to go before we need worry about direct planetary heating from energy use.

The claim that we must reduce use of all kinds of energy stems from the environik fantasy of a future in which we all live frugally in modest, wind-powered cottages among the trees, cultivating our little organic gardens, using only small-scale technology, and celebrating our solidarity with all creatures, great and small. This pastoral idyll cannot happen, because this kind of agriculture cannot support the present or future world population, and because a hand-ax or a screwdriver implies the existence of Pittsburgh. These idiots dream of a kind of worldwide Vermont, but the reality would be more like a slum in Bangladesh.

The annual global consumption of marketed energy has increased by a factor of 25 since 1900, and now stands at 500 quads (1 Q = 10^15 BTU = 2.93 X 10^11 kWh). Although energy intensity (energy used per dollar of GDP) has been decreasing everywhere, the world will need at least 3000 Q/year by the end of this century.

Energy policy MUST be directed to finding within a few decades ways to generate an order of magnitude more energy than the human race uses now, at affordable cost and with minimal environmental impact.

In the longer term, we may need thousands of times more energy. The next post offers an example.

I don't object to improving energy efficiency if in a particular instance it saves money or reduces environmental, impact, but it is a trivial distraction from the real problem of supplying energy.

Deterring illegal immigrants

A simple solution to the illegal immigrant problem: Pay illegals to report their US employers.

If an illegal worker reports his/her US employer to ICE, fine that employer $100,000 for every illegal employed. Deport all the illegals employed there -- but pay $100,000 to the one who filed the report. Inform all the deportees that if they are found illegally in the US again, they will spend 2 years in prison.

This would create a competition among illegal employees to be the first to report the employer, and therefore to go home with what amounts to a fortune in Mexico. This might lead to a temporary influx of illegals who come here with the specific intention of getting a job and immediately ratting out the employer. However, employers would soon learn that any illegal hired would be very likely to report it immediately to ICE, leading to a crippling fine. So the jobs would soon dry up, removing the principal incentive for coming here illegally.

This program would cost the taxpayers nothing, as it would be funded entirely by employer fines.

Synthetic Life

On May 19. Craig Venter announced that his team at the Venter Institute in La Jolla had succeeded in creating synthetic life. Why has this attracted so little attention?

Venter became famous a decade ago because he was frustrated with the slow progress and high cost of the NIH Human Genome Project, which began in 1990. In 1997 he founded Celera Corporation, which did the job in 3 years at a cost of $300 million. The government-funded effort took 13 years, finishing in 2003, and cost $2.7 billion.

What Venter et al have now done is as follows:

(1) They sequenced the genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides (which causes lung disease in goats). Its DNA has 1.08 million base pairs.

(2) Starting with the chemicals adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine (T) which make up the genetic code, they synthesized stretches of DNA corresponding to segments of the M. mycoides DNA and then managed to get them all to hook up in the right sequence. Thus they constructed from scratch a copy of the bacterium's DNA.

(3) They inserted this synthetic DNA into a different bacterium, M. capricolum, which had had the genes for its restriction enzymes removed (which means that it had no defenses against foreign DNA). The synthetic DNA took over, and the cells started reproducing and behaving just like natural M. mycoides.

A good way of looking at this is that they have taken the cell machinery ("hardware") of M. capricolum and replaced its software (the DNA), which tells it what kind of creature it should be. Having a cell "boot up" with entirely artificial software is an astounding achievement.

There is now a live bacterium in La Jolla whose genetic code was not determined by evolution but by typing it on a computer. This is the first unequivocal example of Intelligent Design – but the Intelligent Designer was Craig Venter, not God.

In my opinion, there have been five major revolutions in human society: the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the breakout into space, the computer revolution, and now the creation of artificial life. This is HUGE.

In this first test, the team copied natural DNA, but now they can begin exploring variations, perhaps producing wholly new life forms. A major goal is to understand what features of DNA are essential for viable life. Venter's company, Synthetic Genomics Inc., hopes to start producing designer bacteria that can do things like making fuel from algae or cleaning up oil spills.

It is a long way from synthetic bacteria to synthetic differentiated creatures (e.g., living androids), but the way is now open. It will happen sooner than we expect. We need to start thinking about the ethical implications. 

An interesting sidebar is that all DNA has long stretches of base pairs ("junk DNA") with no known function. Although some of it surely does things we don't yet understand, it appears that you can add arbitrary segments without affecting viability. 

There are 256 ways to choose the 4 bases in a stretch of four, so you can use combinations of four base pairs to represent letters, punctuation, etc. Venter & co devised such an alphabet, and included quite a bit of text in their synthetic M. mycoides. The information includes the following quotes: "TO LIVE, TO ERR, TO FALL, TO TRIUMPH, TO RECREATE LIFE OUT OF LIFE." - JAMES JOYCE; "SEE THINGS NOT AS THEY ARE, BUT AS THEY MIGHT BE.”- J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER; "WHAT I CANNOT BUILD, I CANNOT UNDERSTAND." - RICHARD FEYNMAN.

We need an international agreement about the code used to include text in synthetic DNA, and a requirement that it include info about its origin (so that any life that escapes control can be identified).

Incidentally, the human genome has 3.3 billion base pairs, and 96% of it is thought to be junk. This suggests that you could encode the St James Bible four times over in a strand of human DNA, and still have it work to create a human being.

Science fiction story: we find that human junk DNA is not random; we crack the code, and find a long message encoded in our genome. It could be instructions for interstellar communication, left by aliens who created us, or it might be a version of the Bible, in Aramaic…