The program Jesse has managed for the Sloan Foundation on the Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable is featured in the Wall Street Journal (May 30)0r the original article scanned.
Blog
UN CoML Talk
On 4 June Jesse addressed a session of the UN Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and Law of the Sea in New York City about the Census of Marine Life. We post Jesse’s short talk and power point slide show (Warning – 8.1MB file!)
Jesse’s Oak Ridge slides
Jesse presented the 9th annual Alvin M. Weinberg lecture at Oak Ridge National Laboratory 5 June, expanding his April Austin talk on decarbonization. Now 88 and continuously creative, Alvin directed the lab from 1948-1973 and has mentored us in energy systems. Here is the expanded Oak Ridge version of “Decarbonization: The Next 100 Years” and its Powerpoint slides.
DNA barcoding Protocol for CoML
DNA barcoding is an exciting new approach to taxonomy that will have profound value for studies of environment and
evolution. PHE Guest Investigator Mark Stoeckle took the lead in preparing the Census of Marine Life (CoML) DNA Barcoding Protocol.
CoML is the first organization to officially promote this new approach, highlighted in Nature magazine 15 May 2003.
Godfather – The Scientist
From Problem to Offer to Use
Liberally transposed from The Godfather by Mario Puzo
This manuscript is extremely insulting. It should not be allowed to reproduce.
1980
Chapter 1
Anton Regelmässig sat at the terminal and waited for justice; vengeance on the programmers who had so cruelly damaged his model, who had tried to dishonor him.
But the computer went down and he could see the two young programmers laughing and smiling on the other side of the glass partition where the colored lights of the machines blinked festively.
It was all a farce.
The black bile, sourly bitter, rose in Regelmässig’s throat, overflowing through tightly clenched teeth, and dribbling on to the keyboard below him. He took some old printout and held it against his lips.
Out of control, Regelmässig leaned forward toward the glass window beyond which the programmers now lounged casually against the cool blue computers. “You will weep as I have wept — I will make you weep as your crashes make me weep.”
All his years in modeling, Regelmässig had trusted in computer services. Now his brain smoked with hatred and wild visions of clubbing the two young men to death with his old wooden slide rule. “They have made a fool of me.” He paused and then made his decision, no longer fearing the cost. “For justice I must go on my knees to Don Gvishiani.”
In the garishly decorated guest bungalow of Resource Analysis Inc. in Palo Alto, Franklin Baxter was as jealously drunk as an ordinary scientist might be. Sprawled on the sensual Polynesian couch, he drank straight from a bottle of bourbon, then dunked his head in the silver bucket of ice cubes and water. It was four in the morning and he was spinning drunken fantasies of murdering his graduate assistant when she got back. If she ever did come back. It was too late to call any of the long string of previous young women who had done his work for him. Now his “science” bored them. He smiled a little to himself that once his calculations attracted any smart young woman he wanted.
Gulping at his bottle of bourbon, he finally heard her key in the door. As she walked into the room, it was easy to remember why every member of the American Physical Society wanted not only her brain but her body.
“Where the hell were you?” Baxter asked.
“Out modeling,” answered Violet Faraday.
She had misjudged his drunkenness. He sprang over the table on which lay the new issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists with the report on the Baxter-Faraday recommendations on containment of fusion reactions.
“It’s midnight for you this time, Violet.” He grabbed her by the throat; then his anger became insecure as he thought of the equations ebbing from her brain.
“Come on, smash me in the head. That’s what you really want to do.”
One more surge of wrath rose in Baxter, but her mind was a magic shield. He hated the woman now lying there pale on the pile of scholarly journals, but without her he might never publish again. And never get the biggest Department of Energy research contract ever proposed.
“You poor silly bastard. You will always be a dumb romantic Professor. You still think science is really like those days when you were a young researcher at Los Alamos.” She picked up the soft red velvet purse which contained her calculator, walked into the bedroom, and he heard her turn the key in the lock.
Baxter sat on the floor with his face in his hands. The sick, humiliating despair overwhelmed him. And then the gutter toughness that had helped him survive the jungle of MIT made him pick up the telephone and call for a taxi, which would take him to the airport for the long flight to Austria. There was one person who could save him. He would go back to Laxenburg, to IIASA. He would go back to the one man with the power, the wisdom, he needed and a love of science he still trusted. His Godfather Gvishiani.
The engineer Morgulyev, angular and hard as the coal he was trying to liquefy, scowled at his wife, his nubile daughter Larissa, and his helper Bialystock.
Morgulyev asked fiercely, “Have you dishonored my family? Have you given my daughter a little hardware to remember you by now that the project is over and you know Moscow will kick your ass back to your shitty little institute in Siberia?”
Bialystock, a scrawny dog-like creature, put his hand over his heart and said almost in tears, but cleverly, “Corresponding Member, I swear by the memory of Mendeleev I have never taken advantage of your kindness.
I love your daughter with all respect. I asked for her hand with all respect. I know I have no right, but if they send me back to Novosibirsk I can never return to Moscow. I will never be able to marry Larissa.”
Morgulyev’s wife spoke. “Stop all this foolishness. You know what must be done.”
Larissa was weeping. She was already plump, homely, and had never overcome her fear of warm water. She would never get a husband as smart as Bialystock. “I’ll go live in Siberia,” she screamed at her father. “I’ll run away if you don’t keep him here.”
Morgulyev glanced at her shrewdly. She was a ‘hot number,’ this daughter of his. He had seen her brush her buttocks against Bialystock’s white coat as they passed in the narrow aisles of the laboratory. Well, the young rascal’s hot coal would soon be fluidized in her bed, Morgulyev thought lewdly, if proper steps were not taken. Bialystock must be kept in Moscow and made a resident. And there was only one man who could arrange such an affair. The Godfather. Don Gvishiani.
Chapter 2
All of these people and many others received engraved invitations to the IIASA Conference, to be celebrated the last week in May in 1980. The chairman of the Council of 17 Families, which controlled IIASA, Don Jermen Gvishiani, never forgot his old friends and colleagues, though he himself now traveled almost constantly and was always busy in meetings with other decision-makers. There was no doubt the Conference would be a momentous occasion. A Nobel Prize had been awarded to an IIASA scientist, and the Conference was just what people needed to show their joy.
And so on that Monday afternoon, the friends of Don Gvishiani streamed out of Vienna to do him honor. They bore discs, tapes, manila envelopes stuffed with working papers, notebooks with their latest results.
Don Jermen Gvishiani was a man to whom everybody came for help and never were they disappointed. He made no empty promises nor the craven excuse that his hands were tied by more powerful forces in the world than himself. It was not necessary that he be your uncle, it was not even important that you had no means to repay him. Only one thing was required. That you, you yourself, proclaim your friendship. His reward? The friendship itself, the respectful title of Academician, or the more affectionate title of Don. And perhaps, to show respect only, never for profit, some humble gift — a graciously inscribed reprint, a nicely framed satellite photograph for his son, or at Christmas a brightly wrapped box of the newest microprocessors. It was understood, it was merely good manners, to proclaim that you were in his debt and that he had the right to call upon you any time to redeem your debt by some small service.
Now, on this great day, when the Nobel Prize would be brought home to IIASA, Don Jermen Gvishiani stood in the portico of the carriageway of Schloss Laxenburg and greeted his guests, all of them known, all of them trusted. Don Gvishiani received all of the scientists — junior and senior, well funded and poor — with an equal show of love. He slighted no one. That was his character. And the guests exclaimed at how well he looked in his French suit that an inexperienced observer might have thought the Don himself was the winner of the Prize. Occasionally he would turn after greeting a guest and note something to his dutiful secretary, Vivien Schimmel, who was standing tightly to one side. Always at the service of the Godfather, her eyes flickered over the gathering crowd. Now and then she mumbled a weak agreement to the affable remarks of the Institute’s deputy for administration, Lieberman. Lieberman, thought Schimmel, again fails to appreciate the seriousness of a situation.
There was a reception before the opening of the Conference, and Don Gvishiani, notoriously strait-laced in such matters, disappeared into the Institute. From behind the closed window of Don Gvishiani’s office, a second floor corner room, Andrei Bykov watched the festivities out on the lawn. The walls behind him were stacked with back issues of the Journal of Operations Research, Management Science, and the Untouchables. Bykov was the Don’s lawyer and Consigliore, or counselor, and as such held the most vital subordinate position in the family business. He and the Don had solved many a knotty problem in this room, and so when he saw the Don leave the festivities and enter the Schloss, he knew, Conference or not, there would be a little work this day. The Don would be coming to see him. He went to the computer terminal and called up the list of the people who had been granted permission to see Don Gvishiani privately. When the Don entered the room, Bykov showed him the list. Don Gvishiani nodded and said, leave Regelmässig until the end.
Bykov walked out onto the breakfast terrace beneath which the supplicants stood clustered on the lawn. He pointed to the engineer, the angular Morgulyev.
Don Gvishiani greeted the engineer with an embrace. They had played together as children and had grown up in friendship. They had both arranged to win scholarships to study at the Institute for Automatic Control in Palermo, where the young Don Gvishiani had first learned to control with an automatic. Now, since many decades, every autumn a big truck arrived at Don Gvishiani’s dacha in the Moscow region and unloaded a ton of the highest grade coal. And all through the years, lean and fat, Morgulyev made sure that the researchers in the Don’s laboratories were never cold, that an experiment never failed for lack of power. Now the time had come for the engineer to claim his rights as a loyal friend, and Don Gvishiani looked forward with great pleasure to granting the request.
Morgulyev told the story of his daughter and Bialystock. A pure and honorable love had sprung up between the honest lad and his sheltered Larissa, but now the project was over, the poor boy would be sent back to Novosibirsk, and the engineer’s daughter would die of a broken heart. Only Godfather Gvishiani could help this afflicted couple. He was their last hope.
The Don walked Morgulyev up and down the room, his hand on the engineer’s shoulder, his head nodding with understanding to keep up the man’s courage. When the engineer had finished, Don Gvishiani smiled at him and said, “My dear friend, put all your worries aside.” He went on to explain very carefully what must be done. The officials of the district would be petitioned. A special bill would be introduced that would allow Bialystock to become a resident. The bill would surely pass. It was a privilege all these rascals extended to each other. Don Gvishiani explained that this would cost money. The engineer nodded his head vigorously. He did not expect such a great favor for nothing. That was understood. A special document does not come cheap. Morgulyev was almost tearful in thanks. The engineer embraced Don Gvishiani before disappearing down the stairs and out onto the lawn.
Bykov smile at the Don. “That’s a good investment for Morgulyev. A son-in-law and a cheap lifetime assistant in his lab all for a few thousand rubles.”
The next few cases were simple ones. A health care expert who needed subjects for his experiments. For reasons not gone into, they were no longer available. Someone who needed a license to export a computer. An aging scientist who wanted to be restored to the executive committee of an international association. A friend’s nephew whose papers kept being turned down by the leading journal in his field. All showed their gratitude as Don Gvishiani showed that generosity was personal, that a great man did not mind an inconvenience for a friend.
After this long procession the Don looked questioningly at Bykov. “Is Regelmässig the only one left?” Bykov nodded. “Before you bring him in, tell Levien to come here. He should learn some things.”
Chapter 3
Anton Regelmässig followed Bykov into the corner room of the Schloss and found Don Gvishiani sitting behind a large desk. Roger Levien, director of the Institute, was standing by the window, looking out onto the lawn. For the first time that afternoon the Don behaved coolly. He did not embrace the visitor or shake hands. Regelmässig was in severe disfavor with Don Gvishiani.
Regelmässig began his request obliquely. “You must excuse me for not doing the respect of presenting my model at your conference. It is being reprogrammed still.” He glanced at Bykov and Levien to indicate he did not wish to speak before them. But the Don was merciless.
“We all know of your model’s misfortune,” Don Gvishiani said. “If I can help in any way, you have only to speak. My model will be linked to your model, after all. I have never forgotten that honor.” This was a rebuke.
Regelmässig, ashen-faced, asked directly now, “May I speak to you alone?”
Don Gvishiani shook his head. “I trust these two men with my life. They are my two right arms. I cannot insult them by sending them away.”
The modeler closed his eyes for a moment and then began to speak. “Convinced that science and technology, if wisely directed, can benefit all mankind, believing that international cooperation between national institutions promotes cooperation between nations and so the economic and social progress of peoples, I began the development of my global model in the purest collaborative spirit. And I believed in man-machine systems. Computers have made my fortune. So, when my model seemed complete, I gave it freedom, published the programs, and made it available to other scientists. Many used it, some played with it. Few came to meet its creator. I accepted all this without protest, the fault is mine. A month ago two young programmers took out my model for a run. They fed it false data and tried to take advantage of it. The model resisted, rejecting the spurious values. But they tricked my model, forced it to submit to their commands, to agree to anything. When I went to the terminal room the next day my tapes were strewn about and unreproducible results from the model had been sent by electronic mail to my colleagues all over the world. Why did they do it? Why did they do this to me? And I wept.”
Regelmässig could barely speak, his voice human with suffering. “Why did I weep? This model was the light of my life, as responsive as a child. It trusted people and now it will never trust them. The model is crippled. It may never have credibility again.”
“I went to the Chief of computer services, like a good scientist. The two programmers were called. They were brought for investigation. The evidence was overwhelming, and they pleaded guilty. Their computing privileges were suspended. But that very day they had new passwords. And then I said, ‘I must go to Don Gvishiani for justice.”‘
The Don bowed his head to show respect for the man’s grief. But when he spoke, the words were cold with offended dignity. “But why did you go to computer services? Why didn’t you come to me at the beginning of this affair?”
Regelmässig muttered almost inaudibly. “What do you want of me? Tell me what you wish. But do what I beg you to do.”
Regelmässig hesitated, then bent down and put his lips so close to the Don’s hairy ear that they almost touched. Don Gvishiani listened like a priest in a confessional, gazing away into the distance, impassive, remote. When Regelmässig finally straightened, the Don spoke. “That I cannot do. You are being carried away.”
Regelmässig blurted, “I can arrange for the Foundation to fund anything. “
The Don continued calmly. “We have known each other many years, you and I, but until this day, you never came to me for counsel or help. You found your laboratory a paradise. You had a good trade, you made a good living, and you thought the world a harmless place where you could study as you willed. You never armed yourself with true friends. Your programs were secure, there was peer review, there were passwords, you and yours could come to no harm. You did not need Don Gvishiani. Now you come to me and say, ‘Don Gvishiani, give me justice.’ And you do not ask with respect. You come to my Institute on this special day, and you ask me to destroy and you say ‘I can arrange for the Foundation to fund anything.’ What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?”
Regelmässig cried out in his anguish and fear, “Computers have been good to me. I wanted my methods compared. I wanted my model to be a model for other models.”
The Don clapped his hands together with decisive approval. “Well spoken, very fine. Then you have nothing to complain about. The computer has ruled. You have received the justice of the machine.”
Regelmässig was reduced by this cruel irony, but spoke again, softly. “Yes, I have received justice. But my model has not received justice.”
The Don, approving this distinction, asked, “Then what justice do you ask?”
“The model is now flawed; they should be flawed.”
“You asked for more,” the Don said. “Your model has not blown up.”
Regelmässig said reluctantly, “Let them be disfigured as it is disfigured.
The Don sighed, a good-hearted man who cannot remain angry with an erring friend. He stroked his grey and white mustache twice, then spoke. “If you had come to me for justice right away those scum would be weeping bitter tears this day. If by some misfortune an honest man like yourself made enemies they would become my enemies, and then, believe me, they would fear you. Even oceanographers do not like to sleep with the caviar.”
Regelmässig bowed his head and murmured in a strangled voice, “Be my friend, I accept.”
Don Gvishiani put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Good, you shall have justice. Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do me a service in return.”
When the door closed behind the grateful modeler, Don Gvishiani turned to Bykov and said, “Give this affair to Hammerl and tell him to be sure to use reliable people, people who do not get carried away at high speeds.”
The Don noted that Levien was gazing through the window at the reception on the lawn. It was hopeless, if he refused to be instructed, Levien could never run the IIASA family, could never become a Don.
From the lawn, startling all three men, there came a happy shout. Roger Levien pressed close to the window. What he saw made him move quickly towards the door, a delighted smile on his face. “It’s Frankie, he came to the Conference, what did I tell you.” Bykov moved to the window, “It’s really your godson,” he said to Don Gvishiani. “Shall I bring him here?”
“No,” the Don said. “Let his colleagues enjoy him. Let him come to see me when he is ready.” He smiled at Bykov. “You see? He is a good godson.”
Bykov felt a twinge of jealousy, and as he noted Baxter almost losing his balance on a step, added dryly, “It’s been two years. He’s probably in trouble again and wants you to help.”
“And whom should he come to if not his godfather?” asked Don Gvishiani.
Chapter 4
The first one to see Baxter enter the Schloss was Vivien Schimmel. She forgot her secretarial dignity for a moment and squealed “Frankie.” Then, she ran into his arms. He hugged her and kept his arm around her as others came up to greet him. They were all his old colleagues, people with whom he had shared the early days of the Institute. Then Vivien was dragging him away from his old assistant Lieberman to Dantzorovich, the Nobel Prize winner. Baxter saw with amusement that the old man looked a little sore at no longer being the star of the day. Baxter turned on all his charm, shaking Dantzorovich’s hand, and offering congratulations for all to hear.
They were all proud of Baxter. He was of them and had become a famous scientist, invited to visit the most prestigious laboratories in the world. And yet he had shown proper respect for his Godfather by traveling thousands of miles to attend the ceremony. With the most delicate courtesy, Baxter let Dantzorovich’s voice rise over his own, let the Nobel Prize winner take Vivien from his arm, and then raised a toast. The whole party broke into applause, the three of them embraced each other.
Only Don Gvishiani, standing one step back into the Oval Room, sensed something amiss. Cheerily, with bluff good humor, careful not to give offence to his guests, he called out, “My godson has come five thousand miles to do us honor, and no one takes his coat?” At once half a dozen hands were thrust at Baxter. He took off his black raincoat and rushed to embrace his Godfather. As he did so, he whispered something into the older man’s ear. Don Gvishiani led him into the Schloss.
Andrei Bykov held out his hand when Baxter came into the room. Baxter shook it and said, “How are you, Andrei?” But without his usual charm that consisted of a genuine warmth for people. Bykov was a little hurt by this coolness, but shrugged it off. It was one of the penalties for being the Don’s hatchet man.
Franklin Baxter said to the Don, “When I got the invitation I said to myself, ‘My Godfather isn’t mad at me anymore.’ I called you five times after I lost the Harvard Chair and Andrei always told me you were out or busy, so I knew you were sore.”
Don Gvishiani was filling glasses from a golden bottle of Georgian Brandy. “That’s all forgotten. Now. Can I do something for you still? You’re not too prominent, too distinguished that I can’t help you?”
Baxter gulped down the yellow fiery liquid and held out his glass to be refilled. He tried to sound jaunty. “I’m not a hotshot anymore, Godfather. I’m aging. I’m going down. You were right. I should never have left physics for that trashy systems analysis. I don’t blame you for getting sore at me.”
The Don shrugged, “I worried about you, you’re my godson, that’s all.”
Baxter paced up and down. “I was crazy about that stuff. Big research contracts. Trips to Washington. High government contacts. And you know what they do with my model? Use it like a whore, like some standard slut package. Not for problems of global or universal importance, but for their own cheap little numbers.”
Don Gvishiani curtly broke in. “How is your family?”
Baxter sighed. “I take care of them. After the divorce the courts said I gave more than I should. Violet laughs at me. She can’t understand why I don’t make the kids get scholarships. They never speak to me any way.” Baxter lit a cigarette. “Godfather, right now, life doesn’t seem worth living.”
Don Gvishiani said simply, “These are troubles I can’t help you with.” He paused, then asked, “What’s the matter with your research?”
All the assured charm, the self-mockery, disappeared from Franklin Baxter’s face. He said almost brokenly, “Godfather, I can’t program anymore, something’s happened to me, The doctors don’t know what.” Bykov and the Don looked at Baxter with surprise; Baxter had always been so tough. Baxter went on. “My early work had a lot of applications. I was a star. Now they throw me out. The Assistant Secretary of the Department always hated my guts, and now he’s paying me off.”
Don Gvishiani stood before his godson and asked grimly, “Why doesn’t this man like you?”
“I’ve always contributed my models to international organizations; transfer of technology and all that stuff. Well, he’s never liked it, and when I snatched a graduate assistant he had saved for himself, he started sending my proposals to reviewers he knew would disapprove. And I can’t do research alone anymore. Godfather, what the hell can I do?”
Don Gvishiani’s face had become cold without a hint of sympathy. He said contemptuously, “You can start by acting like a scientist.” Suddenly anger contorted his face. He shouted. “Like a scientist!” He reached over the desk and grabbed Baxter by the lapel. “Is it possible that you spent so much time in my presence and turned out no better than this? A freelance consultant who weeps and begs for pity? Who cries out like a student –‘What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?”‘
The mimicry of the Don was so extraordinary, so unexpected, that Bykov and Baxter were startled into laughter. Don Gvishiani was pleased. For a moment he reflected on how much he loved his godson. How would Levien have reacted to such a tongue-lashing? He would have been cowed, offered a cold smile and left the Schloss, not to be seen for weeks. But, Frankie, ah, what a fine fellow he was, smiling now, gathering strength, knowing already the true purpose of his Godfather.
Don Gvishiani went on. “You took the woman of your boss, a man more powerful than yourself, then you complain he won’t help you. You leave your family to run around with a graduate student, and you are amazed that she laughs at you.” Don Gvishiani paused to ask in a patient voice, “Are you willing to take my advice this time?”
“You’ve been a fine godson, you’ve given me all respect. But what of other old friends? One year you run around with chemists, the next year mathematicians. That biologist who was so good early in the ecology project, he had some bad luck and you never saw him again. And how about your old assistant Lieberman? He’s given up science for administration. He drinks too much out of disappointment, but he never complains. He never says anything against you. You couldn’t help him out a bit? Why not?”
Franklin Baxter said with patient weariness, “Godfather, he just hasn’t got enough talent. He’s ok with industry, but he’s not big time.”
Don Gvishiani leaned back in the padded black vinyl chair and allowed his eyes to close for a moment. “And you, godson, shall I get you a job with industry?” When Baxter didn’t answer, the Don went on. “Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than peer review, it is almost the equal of tenure. Never forget that. If you had built up a wall of friendships you wouldn’t have to ask for help. Now, tell me why you can’t model.”
Baxter answered quietly. “My mind is weak. I write one or two equations and then I can’t solve them for hours or days. I can’t make it through revisions and corrections. My mind is weak, it’s some sort of sickness.”
“So you have woman trouble. You can’t concentrate. Now tell me the trouble you’re having with this Washington program officer who won’t let you work.” The Don was getting down to business.
“He’s bigger than one of your program officers,” Baxter said. He runs a division. He advises the President on energy research. Just a month ago he got the legislation to do the biggest research program in years. And the principal investigator is a guy just like me. I wouldn’t have to pick up a new field, just be myself. I wouldn’t even have to model. I might win a National Medal of Science for it. Everybody knows it’s perfect for me and I’d be big again. As a scientist. But that bastard is paying me off, he won’t give it to me. I offered to do it for nothing, without travel, and he still says no. He sent word that if I would kiss his ass in the Great Hall of the Academy of Sciences, maybe he’ll think about it.”
Don Gvishiani dismissed this emotional nonsense with a wave of his hand. Among reasonable men problems of science could always be solved. He patted Baxter on the shoulder. “You’re discouraged. Nobody cares about you, so you think. And you’ve lost a lot of weight. You drink a lot, eh? You don’t sleep and you take pills?” He shook his head disapprovingly.
“Now I want you to follow my orders,” the Don said. “I want you to stay at IIASA for one month. I want you to eat well, to rest and to sleep. Maybe you can learn something about the world from us in this little town that might even help you in the great Washington. But no methodology, no women, and no heurigers. At the end of the month you can go back to Washington and this program officer will give you what you want. Done?”
Franklin Baxter could not altogether believe that the Don had such power. But his Godfather had never said such and such a thing without having it done. “This guy is a personal friend of the President of the Academy of Sciences,” Baxter said. “You can’t even raise your voice to him. “
“He’s a scientist,” the Don said blandly. “I’ll offer him a method he can’t refuse.”
Austin decarbonization
On 25 April Jesse participated in a symposium on Priorities in the Geosciences at the University of Texas, Austin and spoke on “Decarbonization: The Next 100 Years“.
Decarbonization: The Next 100 Years
Jesse H. Ausubel
50th Anniversary Symposium of the Geology Foundation
Jackson School of Geosciences, U. of Texas
Austin, Texas
25 April 2003
Introduction
About 750,000 years ago some of our ancestors made a wood fire in a cave in the south of France near Marseilles. From such early fires until about the year 1800 energy supply changed little. The system relied on carbon, like a mesquite grill.
The most important and surprising fact to emerge from energy studies during the past two decades is that, for the last 200 years, the world has progressively pursued a path of decarbonization, a decreasing relative reliance on carbon [Figure 1]. Think of decarbonization as the course over time in the ratio of tons of carbon in the energy supply to the total energy supply, for example, tons of carbon per tons of oil equivalent encompassing all energy supplies.
Alternately, think hydrocarbons. Both hydrogen and carbon burn to release heat, so we can consider decarbonization as the ratio of hydrogen and carbon in our bowl of energy chili. When the energy system relied on hay and wood, it relied most heavily on carbon. Wood is made of much cellulose and some lignin. Heated cellulose leaves charcoal, almost pure carbon. Lignin is a hydrocarbon with a complex benzenic structure. Wood effectively burns about ten carbon for each hydrogen atom. Coal approaches parity with one or two C’s per H, depending on the variety [Figure 2]. Oils are lighter yet, with, for example, with two H’s per C, in kerosene or jet fuel. A molecule of methane, the typical natural gas, is a carbon-trim CH4.
Thus, the inverse of decarbonization is the ascendancy of hydrogen [Figure 3]. Think of hydrogen and carbon competing for market niche as did horses and automobiles or audio cassettes and compact discs, except the H/C competition extends over 300 years. In 1800 carbon had 90% of the market. In 1935 the elements tied. With business as usual, hydrogen will garner 90% of the market around 2100.
Because carbon becomes soot or the feared greenhouse gas CO2, and hydrogen becomes only water when combusted, carbon appears a bad element, the black hat, and hydrogen a good one, the white hat. So, decarbonization is not only a fact but a happy fact.
Let me explain the course of decarbonization. Neither Thomas Jefferson nor Queen Victoria decreed it. Why does it happen? The driving force in evolution of the energy system is the increasing spatial density of energy consumption at the level of the end user.
By 1800 or so, in England and other early loci of industry, high population density and the slow but steady increase in energy use per capita increased the density of energy consumption. The British experience demonstrates that, when energy consumption per unit of area rises, the energy sources with higher economies of scale gain an advantage.
Wood and hay, the prevalent energy sources at the start of the 19th century, are bulky and awkward to transport and store. Consider the outcome if every high-rise resident needed to keep both a cord of wood on her floor for heat and a pile of hay in the garage for the SUV. Think of retailing these goods in the costly real estate of Dallas or New York. Sales of fuel wood in cities now are, of course, limited to decorative logs providing emotional warmth. Biomass gradually lost the competition with coal to fuel London and other multiplying and concentrating populations, even when wood was abundant.
Coal had a long run at the top of the energy heap. It ruled notwithstanding its devastating effects on miners’ lungs and lives, the urban air, and the land from which it came; but about 1900, the advantages of an energy system of fluids rather than solids began to become evident. On the privacy of its rails, a locomotive could pull a coal car of equal size to fuel it. Coal-powered automobiles, however, never had much appeal. The weight and volume of the fuel were hard problems, especially for a highly distributed transport system. Oil had a higher energy density than coal—and the advantage of flowing through pipelines and into tanks. Systems of tubes and cans can deliver carefully regulated quantities of fuel from the scale of the engine of a motor car to that of the Alaska pipeline. It is easy to understand why oil defeated coal by 1950 as the world’s leading energy source.
Yet, despite many improvements from wellhead to gasoline pump, distribution of oil is still clumsy. Fundamentally, oil is stored in a system of metal cans of all sizes. One famous can was the Exxon Valdez. Transfer between cans is imperfect, which brings out a fundamental point. The strongly preferred configuration for very dense spatial consumption of energy is a grid that can be fed and bled continuously at variable rates. There are two successful grids, gas and electricity.
Natural gas is distributed through an inconspicuous, pervasive, and efficient system of pipes. Its capillaries reach right to the kitchen. It provides an excellent hierarchy of storage, remaining safe in geological formations until shortly before use. Natural gas can be easily and highly purified, permitting complete combustion.
Electricity, which must be made from primary energy sources such as coal and gas, is both a substitute for these (as in space heating) and a unique wayto power devices that exist only because electricity became widely available. Electricity is an even cleaner energy carrier than natural gas and can be switched on and off with little effort and great effect. Electricity, however, continues to suffer a disadvantage: it cannot be stored efficiently, as today’s meager batteries show. Electrical losses also occurin transmission; with the present infrastructure, a distance of 100 km is normal for transmission, and about 1,000 km is the economic limit. Moreover, because of its limited storage, electricity is not good for dispersed uses, such as cars.
Nevertheless, the share of primary energy used to make electricity has grown steadily in all countries over the past 75 years and now approaches 40%. The Internet economy demands further electrification, with perfect reliability. Thus, the core energy game for the next 30 to 50 years is to expand and flawlessly operate the gas–electric system.
In contrast to what many believe, the stable dynamics of the energy system permit reliable forecasts. Decarbonization essentially defines the future of energy supply.
Globally we are destined to use about 50-80 billion tons more coal. This is about one-third what humans have mined in all our earlier history, and about 30 years at present levels of production, so all the participants in the coal industry have a generation or so in which to remodel themselves. We should squeeze the maximum electricity from the black rocks with the minimum fallout of nasties, but coal is not our primary concern because its use will fade anyway. In fact, coal companies would better concentrate on extracting methane from coal seams and sink CO2 there, staying in business without coal extraction. Using CO2 to displace methane (CH4)adsorbed in coal beds provides a two for one bargain. Tunneling, as we shall see, matters immensely for future human well being, so the coal industry also has a valuable skill to sell.
If it is dusk for coal, it is mid-afternoon for oil, which already has lost in energy markets other than transport. Globally, drivers and others will consume close to 300 billion tons more oil, before the fleet runs entirely on H2 separated from methane or water. This amount is almost double the petroleum that has so far been extracted, and about 50 years at present production, so oil companies can choose to play business as usual for a while. But the entry under the car’s hood of fuel cells or other motors fueled by H2 dooms oil, over the decades required for the turnover of the fleet, and makes a huge niche for the easy ways to make the needed hydrogen fuel.
For gas, it is midmorning, and the next decades will bring enormous growth, matching rising estimates of the gas resource base, which have more than doubled over the past 20 years. Preaching the advent of the Methane Age 20 years ago I felt myself a daring prophet but now this prophecy is like invoking the sunrise. Between its uses to fuel turbines to make electric power and for fuel cells for transport, gas will dominate the primary energy picture for the next five or six decades. I expect methane to provide perhaps 70% of primary energy soon after the year 2030 and to reach a peak absolute use in 2060 of about 30 x 1012 m3, ten times present annual use.
Through fuel cells we will adopt gas in transport as well as for electric power. Fuel cells, essentially continuous batteries, can be fed by hydrogen extracted from methane. In replacing the internal combustion engine, they will multiply automotive efficiencies and slash pollutants. Wood and coal fogged and blackened cities, and oil gave us brown clouds of smog; methane can complete the clearing of the skies of Houston and other cities in the world, soon to come, of one billion motor vehicles. Governments will need to make it easier to build and access gas pipelines. Attention must also be given to the safety and environmental aspects of gas use because pipelines and tanks can explode tragically. Refiners need to shift their focus to transforming methane into hydrogen and CO2.
Very Large ZEPPs
Now let me introduce the first of two Texas-size ideas. My first is zero emission electric power plants or ZEPPs, very large ZEPPs. The emission of concern is, of course, carbon, feared because of climate change. Although simply substituting methane for coal or oil reduces CO2 emissions by a third to a half, the peak use would correspond to 2 to 3 times today’s carbon emission to dispose annually. Even in 2020, we could already need to dispose carbon from natural gas alone equal to half today’s emission from all fuel and later methane would cause about 75% of total CO2 emissions. So, prevention of climate change must focus on methane. Can we find technology consistent with the evolution of the energy system to dispose economically and conveniently the carbon from making kilowatts? The practical means to dispose the carbon from generating electricity consistent with the future context is the very large ZEPP. Let me try to leave ZEPPs indelibly in your minds.
The basic idea of the ZEPP is a gas power plant operating at very high temperatures and pressures, so we can bleed off the CO2 as a liquid and sequester it underground in porous formations like those that harbor oil.
A criterion for ZEPPs is working on a Texas scale. One reason is the information economy. Even with efficiency increasing, the information economy demands huge amounts of electricity. Observe the recent rapid growth of demand in a college dormitory. Chips could well go into 1000 objects per capita, or 10 trillion objects, as China and India log into the game.
Big total energy use means big individual ZEPPs because the size of generating plants grows even faster than use, though in spurts. Plants grow because large is cheap, if technology can cope. Although the last wave of power station construction reached about 1.5 gigawatts (GW), growth of electricity use for the next 50 years can reasonably raise plant size to about 5 GW. For reference, my city, New York, now draws above 12 GW on a peak summer day.
Bigness is a plus for controlling emission. Although one big plant emits no more than many small plants, emission from one is easier to collect. Society cannot close the carbon cycle if we need to collect emissions from millions of microturbines.
Big ZEPPs means transmitting immense mechanical power from larger and larger generators through a large steel axle as fast as 3,000 revolutions per minute (RPM). The way around the limits of mechanical power transmission may be shrinking the machinery. Begin with a very high pressure CO2 gas turbine where fuel burns with oxygen. Needed pressure ranges from 40 to 1000 atmospheres, where CO2 would be recirculated as a liquid. The liquid combustion products would be bled out.
Fortunately for transmitting mechanical power, the high pressures shrink the machinery in a revolutionary way and so permits the turbine to rotate very fast. The generator could then also turn very fast, operating at high frequency, with appropriate power electronics to slow the generated electricity to 60 cycles.
Our envisioned hot temperature of 1500 degrees C will probably require using new ceramics now being engineered for aviation. Problems of stress corrosion and cracking will arise at the high temperatures and pressures and need to be solved. Power electronics to slow the cycles of the alternating current also raises big questions. What we envision is beyond the state of the art, but power electronics is still young, meaning expensive and unreliable, and we are thinking of the year 2020 and beyond.
The requisite oxygen for a 5 GW ZEPP also exceeds present capacity but could be made by cryoseparation. Moreover, the cryogenic plant may introduce a further benefit. Superconductors fit well with a cryogenic plant nearby. Superconducting generators are a sweet idea. Already today companies are selling small motors wound with high temperature superconducting wire that halve the size and weight of a conventional motor built with copper coils and also halve the electrical losses. Colleagues at Tokyo Electric Power calculate the overall ZEPP plant efficiency could be 70%, well above the 50-55% peak performance of today.
With a ZEPP fueled by natural gas transmitting immense power at 60 cycles, the next step is sequestering the waste carbon. At the high pressure, the waste carbon is, of course, already liquid carbon dioxide and thus easily-handled. Opportunity for storing CO2 will join access to customers and fuel in determining plant locations. Because most natural gas travels far through a few large pipelines, these pipelines are the logical sites for ZEPPs. The best way to sequester the emissions is in caverns underground, where coal, oil, and gas came from. On a small scale, CO2 already profitably helps tertiary recovery of oil. The challenge is large scale. The present annual volume of CO2 from all sources is about 15 km3. Of course natural geological traps only occasionally contain hydrocarbons, so one can extend storage to the traps that lack oil and gas that prospectors routinely find. Aquifers in silicate beds could be used to move the waste CO2 to the silicates where “weathering” would make carbonates and silica, an offset good for millions of years.
In short, the ZEPP vision is a supercompact, superpowerful, superfast turbine: 1-2 m diameter, potentially 10 GW or double the expected maximum demand, 30,000 RPMs, putting out electricity at 60 cycles plus CO2 that can be sequestered. ZEPPs the size of a locomotive or even an automobile, attached to gas pipelines, might replace the fleet of carbon emitting antiques now cluttering our landscape.
I propose starting introduction of ZEPPs in 2020, leading to a fleet of 500 5 GW ZEPPs by 2050. This does not seem an impossible feat for a world that built today’s worldwide fleet of some 430 nuclear power plants in about 30 years. ZEPPs, together with another generation of nuclear power plants in various configurations, can stop CO2 increase in the atmosphere near 2050 AD in the range 450-500 ppm, about one-quarter more than today, without sacrificing energy consumption.
ZEPPs merit tens of billions in R&D, because the plants will form a profitable industry worth much more to those who can capture the expertise to design, build, and operate them. They offer the best chance for safe use of the immense wealth of hydrocarbons in America and its offshore exclusive economic zones. Research on ZEPPs could occupy legions of academic researchers, and restore an authentic mission to the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories, working on development in conjunction with private companies. ZEPPs need champions, and I hope the U. of Texas will be one. The Geology Foundation and other parts of UT should whip the imaginations of the geologists to discover methane and develop leak-proof CO2 sequestration industries and the petrochemists to make more efficient processes suitable for plants two orders of magnitude larger than present fertilizer plants. Like the jumbo jets that carry the majority of passenger kilometers, compact ultra-powerful ZEPPs could be the workhorses of the energy system in the middle of the next century.
The Continental SuperGrid
Still, energy’s history will not end with natural gas. The completion of decarbonization ultimately depends on the production and use of pure hydrogen, already popular as rocket fuel and in other high-performance market niches. Environmentally, hydrogen is the immaterial material; its combustion yields only water vapor and energy. The hydrogen, of course, must eventually come from splitting water—not from cooking a hydrocarbon source. The energy to make the hydrogen must also be carbon-free. According to the historical trend in decarbonization, large-scale production of carbon-free hydrogen should begin about the year 2020.
Among the alternatives, including solar and photovoltaic routes, nuclear energy fits the context best. I am old enough to have been impressed by schoolbooks of the 1960s that asserted that the splitting and fusing of atoms was a giant step, akin to harnessing fire and starting to farm. We should persist in peacefully applying Albert Einstein’s revolutionary equations. It seems reasonable that understanding how to use nuclear power, and its acceptance, will take a century and more. Still, fission is a contrived and extravagant way to boil water if steam is required only about half of each day to make electricity.
Nuclear energy’s special potential is as an abundant source of electricity for electrolysis and high-temperature heat for water splitting while the cities sleep. Nuclear plants could nightly make H2 on the scale needed to meet the demand of billions of consumers. Windmills and other solar technologies cannot power modern people by the billions. Reactors that produce hydrogen could be situated far from population concentrations and pipe their main product to consumers.
Here let me introduce a second Texas-size idea, the continental SuperGrid to deliver electricity and hydrogen in an integrated energy pipeline. Specifically, the SuperGrid would use a high-capacity, superconducting power transmission cable cooled with liquid hydrogen produced by advanced nuclear plants. The SuperGrid would serve as both a distribution and a storage system for hydrogen, with hydrogen ultimately used in fuel cell vehicles and generators or refreshed internal combustion engines.
By continental, I mean coast-to-coast, indeed all of North America, making one integrated market for electricity. Continental SuperGrids should thrive on other continents, of course, but as an American I hope North America builds first and dominates the market for these systems, which in rough terms might cost $1 trillion, or $10 billion per year for 100 years. The continental scale allows much greater efficiency in the electric power system, flattening the electricity load curve which still follows the sun. Superconductivity solves the problem of power line losses. By high capacity, I mean 40-80 gigawatt (GW).
The fundamental design is for liquid hydrogen to be pumped through the center of an evacuated energy pipe, both to cool the surrounding superconducting cable and to serve as an interstate pipeline for the hydrogen-electricity energy economy [Figure 4]. The cable would carry direct current and might look either like a spine or a ring nearing many of North America’s large cities. Power converters would connect the direct current SuperGrid at various points to existing, high-voltage alternating current transmission substations.
Initially some forty 100-km long sections of the joint cable/pipeline might be joined by nuclear plants of a few GW supplying to the SuperGrid both electricity and hydrogen. High-temperature, gas-cooled reactors promise a particularly high-efficiency and scalable route to combined power and hydrogen production. Nuclear power fits with the SuperGrid because of its low cost of fuel/kwhr and its operational reliability at a constant power level. The hydrogen storage capacity of the SuperGrid, combined with fuel cells, may allow electricity networks to shift to a delivery system more like oil and gas, away from the present, costly, instant matching of supply to demand.
For safety, security, and aesthetics, let’s put the entire system, including cables and power plants, underground. I mentioned earlier that tunneling has a future even if coal mining does not. The decision to build underground critically determines the cost of the SuperGrid. But, benefits include reduced vulnerability to attack by human or other nature, public acceptance by lessening right-of-way disputes, reduced surface congestion, and real and perceived reduced exposure to real or hypothetical accidents and fallout.
An even more evolved concept for the underground corridors combines energy with transport. Sharing the tunnels, magnetically levitated trains in low pressure tubes would run on linear motors of superconducting magnets, speeding from Atlantic to Pacific in 1 hour. I am speaking now of 100 years, but that is our time frame. The maglevs would help spread the infrastructure cost over multiple uses.
As with ZEPPS, magic words for the SuperGrid are hydrogen, superconductivity, zero emissions, and small ecological footprint, to which we add energy storage, security, and reliability.
Conclusion
Evolution is a series of replacements. Replacements also mark the evolution of the energy system. Between about 1910 and 1930 cars replaced horses in the United States. Earlier steam engines had replaced water wheels and later electric drives replaced steam engines. These replacements required about 50 years in the marketplace. It required about the same amount of time for railways to replace canals as the lead mode of transport and longer for roads to overtake railways and for air to overtake roads.
Decarbonization is a series of replacements. Considering primary sources of energy, we find that coal replaced wood and hay, and oil in turn beat coal for the lead position in the world power game. Now natural gas is preparing to overtake oil. The so-called oil companies know it and invest accordingly. We must favor natural gas strongly everywhere and prepare the way for hydrogen, which is a yet better gas.
Importantly, the superior performance of the technology or product fits a larger market. Hydrogen and electricity can cleanly power a hundred megacities.
The global energy system has been evolving toward hydrogen but perhaps not fast enough, especially for those most anxious about climate change. With business as usual, the decarbonization of the energy system will require a century or more. To assuage social anxiety about possible climate change, we should start building ZEPPs, which will pay anyway because of their efficiency.
When increasing spatial density of energy consumption drives the system, we must match it with economies of scale in production and distribution. The coming world of ten billion people needs jumbo jets as the backbone of the energy system, not 2-seater Piper Cubs. Of course, the little planes play crucial roles in the capillary ends of the system and in providing back-up and flexibility. Most effort on the energy system the last couple of decades has been retouching here and there.
Now is the time to think and act big again. ZEPPs and the SuperGrid will bring riches to companies and nations and glory to engineers and scientists and the institutions that nurture them, such as the Geology Foundation and the Jackson School. Let’s commit now to the Texas-size ideas that will complete the grand and worthy challenge of decarbonization.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Cesare Marchetti, Perrin Meyer, Chauncey Starr, and Paul Waggoner.
This talk draws from:
Report of the National Energy Supergrid Workshop, 6-8 November 2002, Palo Alto CA, Thomas Overbye and Chauncey Starr, convenors
Supergrid Sparks Interest, Taylor Moore, EPRI Journal, November 2002, Microsoft Word – SuperGrid Concept Sparks Interest.doc (rockefeller.edu)
Some Ways to Lessen Worries about Climate Change Jesse H. Ausubel, Electricity Journal 14(1):24-33, 2001. https://phe.rockefeller.edu/Lessen_Worries/
Where is Energy Going? Jesse H. Ausubel, The Industrial Physicist 6(1): 16-19, 2000 (February). https://phe.rockefeller.edu/IndustrialPhysicistWhere/
Five Worthy Ways to Spend Large Amounts of Money for Research on Environment and Resources, Jesse H. Ausubel, The Bridge 29(3):4-16, Fall 1999. https://phe.rockefeller.edu/five_worthy_ways/
Resources and Environment in the 21st Century: Seeing Past the Phantoms, Jesse H. Ausubel, World Energy Council Journal, pp. 8-16, July 1998. https://phe.rockefeller.edu/phantoms/
Jesse H. Ausubel is director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University in New York
Land Cover scans
In response to requests for the pie charts from our paper Restoring the Forests (Foreign Affairs, 2000), we post here two scanned pdfs showing the past and prospective changes in global land cover. We regret we did not obtain the original electronic graphic files, which are no longer accessible. Thanks to Lesley Coben for assistance.
The Continental SuperGrid concept
The Continental SuperGrid concept for distribution of hydrogen and
electricity that we have aided and abetted is gaining attention.
An AP story in USA Today:
https://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2003-04-10-super-grid_x.htm
A Science Daily news item:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/03/030320073732.htm
The final report for the National Energy Supergrid workshop:
https://www.energy.ece.uiuc.edu/SuperGridReportFinal.pdf
We welcome Mark Stoeckle
We welcome Mark Stoeckle, MD as a Guest Investigator to the Program for the Human Environment. Dr. Stoeckle is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School and is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He will be working on the Census of Marine Life (CoML) and is presently helping to develop a DNA “barcode” for species identification. The goal of this project is to provide a practical method for identification of the estimated 10 million species of life on earth that can be used by CoML investigators, the general scientific community, and the interested public.