If you stay in the U.S. as a factor here.

Enjoy a couple years ago coming from

George Bush was research more
than one living in different ways

chemicals are lies resources for

all the materials for

your buck but
it will not be a technical talk

about what

was in the best

real energy and
following this we have talked to

the ethical side of yours truly
global warming changed my life.

OK thanks.

As he said this is not going
to be a technical talk

which makes me quite uncomfortable.

I'm used to talking in equations and some
in fact some people in the room had to

endure an hour and
a half of equations earlier today from me.

So this is going to be a and
non-technical talk and so

a few thoughts on that the aim of doing
this is sort of to provoke dialogue and

just to get us to think about things and

I hope I'll have a lot of time
at the end to discuss things.

It's hopefully obvious from what
I'm just told you that I am not a.

An expert in the topic of ethics or public
policy or any of these things and so some.

You may be experts in those things and
you can probably hopefully excuse me for

making any statements that are too
naive and moving forward the flipside

of that is that all of us that are in
this room by any reasonable measure

belong to a highly educated
elite within the world.

And so although it's reasonable for
us to say that we're not experts and

public policy and

we're not experts in ethics of course in
some global perspective we should be and

so I don't think it's really OK for
us just to say well that's not my problem.

I'm not going to think about it and
so today what I'm going to do

is to share with share with you some
of my thoughts about these things and

perhaps get some questions from you.

So as I said the aim today is to think
about the issues that will deal with

personal and professional ethics since
we've just gone through an election cycle.

It might be worth defining
what a thoughtful dialogue is.

And so
here's my suggestions on doing that.

We're going to talk about things
that are value judgments.

OK And so that they won't have
a simple yes or no answers.

Different people in the room will
have different opinions on things and

different people on different days of the
week may have different opinions that's

OK when you're dealing with these things.

Think that facts matter a lot and so

we should really worry
about what the facts are.

However we should use them
with humility as a way to

understand things not as a weapon
other over the head with and

hopefully I'll be able to do that
with the facts that are used today.

I think it's very important that we remain
open to different points of view it's very

tempting I think in a lot of discussions
to decide that you want to be right and

sometimes that's worthwhile but many
times it's much more important to really

understand why the other folks
that you're talking with things.

But something differently and

to appreciate what their point of view is
within the room here we have people from

a whole range of different
countries around the world.

So we have very different
cultural backgrounds and

it's worth understanding the different
cultural backgrounds and

how they would influence at
different points of view.

And then finally you know it's always
almost always a good idea to spend more

time thinking than it is talking and
that is definitely true

when you start to talk about these issues
of personal judgment and things like that.

And so I hope that I will be able
to do that effectively today to

show a thoughtful way of looking
at things and I hope that

you know as you look at these issues
that you also can do the same thing.

OK so I want to give you a little bit
of personal background about myself.

You heard about my academic background
which is sort of relevant to this but

I think there's some other things that
are worthwhile pointing out and so

you know some of the things that you
might be helpful to know about may

have been married for
twenty years we have three kids.

So here are my three
kids at the Grand Canyon.

Kevin is now thirteen Rachel
is a leaven Martin is nine.

I do a number of things that
would mean I'd be treated with

great suspicion among
various different groups.

I am a consultant with
major oil companies and

in fact one of my colleagues from a major
oil company is visiting today and

there's a significant part of
the sort of renewable energy

community that might view that
intrinsically with suspicion.

I don't think that's a contradictory
thing for thinking about these issues but

there it is I receive in my research group
a lot of funding from oil companies.

I receive a lot of funding
from the federal government.

There's large sections of
society that would view that

as making me an intrinsically
suspect person.

Well.

So be it because that's what I do.

On the other side of that I
have strong religious beliefs.

And I would hope that if you had
the opportunity to look at I've on my

calendar or have my checkbook is
used that you would see those things

play out there again
within certain segments of

society those views would be viewed very
very suspiciously as though it's sort of

evidence of me having large sectors of
my brain not quite working correctly.

And I hope that that isn't true but
again that's part of who I am so

that's a little bit of
personal background.

One of the things that we'll be talking
about today is I want to think about

sort of the future of our society
on a very long term basis.

And so in order to do that.

I want you to add your name to the list
and just think about how old you are and

then decide how old you're
going to be in twenty fifty.

So in twenty fifty my kids will be
just reaching their fifty's and

average life expectancy in the US
is currently around eighty and so

I certainly plan to be alive and
well in twenty fifty and

most of you who are considerably younger
than I am will be quite a bit you know

will be not only alive and well but
in the prime of your life at that point

the reason I want to bring this up is for
you to realize that once we start start

talking about things that we
expect to happen by twenty fifty.

That's not sort of
an arbitrary theoretical idea.

But it's something that that's
going to be your lifetime.

And so it's worth thinking
about whether those are really

important kinds of things
that are going to go on.

All right so what I want to do is
spend a few minutes giving you

some information about
how we use energy today.

What we've done historically some of
the things that are happening that

influence my thinking about these
things and as we've talked about the.

Then I'll turn to my personal
response to these things and some of

the issues that I have thought about and
some of the things that I've done so

the information here is from the U.S.
Energy Information Agency which is

the source of all kinds of
interesting information about energy.

I'm going to stand over here so
I can see the slides little bit better.

If you look at energy in the U.S.
with the country has doubled the amount

of energy that it uses roughly in my
lifetime from the mid sixty's until now.

And so that trend is continuing.

We continue to use more and
more energy and

it's useful to look at where
we get this energy from so

in one thousand sixty five ninety four
percent was fossil fuel six percent was

renewable all that renewable is hydro
OK so that's not what we think of

these days as renewable solar wind
nothing like that it was all hydro and

the nuclear industry had only
just started twenty years later.

The only real change was
now that five percent of

all the energy came from nuclear.

And if one of the things that is
interesting in terms of energy history is

that the growth of the nuclear energy
industry in this country by historical

standards was very very very rapid and

in twenty years it went
from zero to five percent.

I think that's a useful benchmark
scale to keep in mind we fast forward

to two thousand and

five eight percent nuclear six percent
renewable eighty six percent fossil fuel.

The other point to notice here is
that now the nuclear number is just

starting to go down.

We haven't installed any
new nuclear capacity.

Since nine hundred seventy
nine Three Mile Island and

so that's where we are the point
that I'm trying to be or

that that I draw from this
is that our society is

entirely based on using fossil fuels and
nothing has changed in my lifetime.

Except that we now.

Used twice as many fossil fuels.

Because remember that we've gone from
roughly fifty to one hundred quads.

And so that the amount of energy we
use has changed the way we get it

doesn't change.

Now you might object to you might say
well look since two thousand and five.

You know we're finally seeing the light
we're starting to use renewable fuels.

Let's look at the history of solar and
wind.

It's down in the noise.

So this is the data going back to nine
hundred ninety I don't have data for

two thousand and ten but you can see
that the total amount of these you know

solar and wind resources that
are being used is far less than one

percent even though the growth
rates are very large so

if you're looking for a good place to
invest money investing in these industries

is probably a great idea because their
growth rate is very large and positive but

it's starting from something
that's nearly zero and so if you

just extrapolate these growth rates out
to the level of getting say five percent.

We're still talking.

Decades worth of time
to get to five percent.

So I look at these numbers and

I come to the conclusion that it
really stuck with fossil fuels.

We don't have an alternative.

Unless we can do something to
seriously change that number.

So that's the past.

Let's think about what's going
to happen in the future.

You know forecasting the future
is a dangerous business but

I think there's one safe
thing to forecast and

that is that as we go into the future
the world's going to use more energy.

So this is a forecast from the Department

of Energy called liquid hydrocarbons
it doesn't really matter very much.

What kind of energy you look at but

here is the world the demand in
millions of barrels of oil per day.

So we're about here today there was
actually a little dip because of

the global financial crisis but the trend
is just to go up and up and up and up.

Now of course this chart doesn't say
anything about where those millions

of barrels of fossil fuels
are going to come from but.

The demand will continue to go.

If you look at the entire world at
the moment we use about thirteen terawatts

of energy and a reasonable forecast for
twenty fifty and about how old you will be

in two thousand and fifty is that the
world will use fifty terawatts of energy.

OK.

Some of you have seen this before but

it's worthwhile realizing that this is a
mind bogglingly large change if the world

installed three nuclear plants every
week for the next fifty years.

That would give us ten terawatts So

that would get us from
thirteen to twenty three.

OK.

So regardless of what you think
about the environmental impact or

the supply of these fuels or anything
along those lines one of the key questions

I think that our global society will
be faced with for our lifetimes is

where do we get the energy from it's not
how do we get how do we make it but just

where do we get it from the driving force
as shown by this cartoon at the bottom.

You know we sit here in the United States
and we're pretty comfortable we have Eric

conditioning televisions and
whatnot and there's billions of

people around the world who would
aspire to have our lifestyle.

And I think that's a perfectly legitimate
aspiration and so a lot of this growth.

You can see that the growth within
the United States is projected to

continue up but it's fairly moderate

the growth in the developing world is
what's going to drive these numbers.

Now I'm not going to argue that this is
an exact forecast it doesn't really matter

whether we're going to need fifty
terawatts or forty terawatts or

sixty terawatts but we are going to need
a very very very large number and you know

we all should spend a little bit of time
thinking about where that will come from.

When you have extreme demands

on where energy comes from that has
great implications for global security.

So there's an interesting map made
by this world map or organization.

So this is the map of
the world where the size.

Each country is scaled proportionally
to how much petroleum it exported

some number of years ago that in
the years don't change very much.

So you can try and find your favorite
country Sierra originally from Australia

there's a straight here
it's pretty much gone.

This is Africa where all of
that's pretty much Africa.

This is Nigeria and
just a couple of countries.

So you can see that things
are grossly out of proportion.

This is the Middle East.

And so

you can see that the countries
that supply petroleum exports

are a very small minority among countries
and if you think about them strategically.

It's a very complicated picture.

If you look at the similar
map I want to show you.

But for coal it goes rather differently
United States Russia China Australia and

Germany are the ones that are gigantic.

And one of the implications I draw from
this in a fairly non sophisticated

way is that those five countries at the
bottom are going to burn a lot of coal.

There's no way in two thousand and

fifty that we're going to leave
all that coal in the ground.

It is what we have access to
it's within our own borders and

we'll certainly be using it.

So no matter what we might like to
do in terms of a perfect energy

source the economic or

the security reality I think is that we'll
be using things like coal for a long time.

All right so I've talked about
how much energy will use.

Now let me talk about climate change.

This is a very very famous plot and

I don't need to take a lot of time to
explain it but it's the long running

experiment measuring the concentration
of C O two in the atmosphere in Hawaii.

It's nice to me that it's in Hawaii
because it emphasizes that this is

a truly global issue doesn't
really matter where you make

the measurement the net result is that the
amount of C O two is going up very rapidly

this change correlates essentially
perfectly with the fossil.

That we burn that's the major source of
these anthropogenic concentrations and

the very very strong
scientific consensus is that

this increase in C O two in the atmosphere
is leading to changes in our climate.

The fact of the C O two is
increasing is incontrovertibly

the fact that the climate is changing
is also pretty much as clear.

So this is a chart that shows
the measured global mean temperature

for every year in about the last
one hundred fifty years and

what this individual has done
is to just organize these

temperatures by rank warmest year
first to call the year last.

OK And there's a color code here
which is a little bit hard to read

the important thing is that in red.

You have the years one thousand nine
hundred ninety to two thousand and

eight and what you notice is
that pretty much all the red

is among the warmest years when you
get to the most historical data.

It's all at the tail end of the graph.

OK So even though there's clearly
uncertainty in this measurement.

It's very very striking that.

If you count up the warmest years that
are known in the instrumental record.

They will happen very very recently.

If you like me you look at this you
think wow that's kind of amazing.

But it doesn't necessarily you know in
any way that you can really understand.

So let me show you two pieces of
data that to me a more compelling

convincing me that this is a real thing.

So the first thing is to show you some
data from where I grew up I grew up in

Australia in a little town called Armadale
it's about halfway between Sydney and

Brisbane.

It's up on the table lands above
the coast just near Armadale is the fifth

highest waterfall in the world which you
can't really see in this picture but

it's in there in these nice corridors.

So it's a very nice place.

One of the things that's
unusual about Ahmed.

From an Australian perspective
is it is very very very cold.

Now that's an Australian perspective
it's not really that cold but one of

the things that I definitely remember when
I was growing up was that during winter.

It was quite common to have days when
the temperature did not get very hot and

in particular if you sort of early
to choose ten degrees centigrade

as a cutoff and you measure how many days.

The temperature doesn't get
above ten degrees centigrade.

You can go back more or less this
doesn't this is half of my lifetime.

Basically this shows the number
of days in each year

when the maximum temperature was
less than ten degrees centigrade.

So the blue data the actual measurements.

There's a lot of scatter because this
is weather and so it kind of comes and

goes it's somewhat affected by
a range of different things.

But I've taken two very simple
approaches to this data.

One is that I just fitted
a straight line to it.

That's that black line and the other one
the red line shows a ten year moving

average the thing that jumps out
to me from this data is the number

of these days is going down the number of
cold days in my hometown is decreasing.

And it's decreasing quite a lot is
decreasing by a week's worth of days

per decade.

If we extrapolate this
forward several decades.

Then it's actually quite reasonable to
think that this number will be zero.

OK So that doesn't necessarily matter
all that much it means that the weekend

soccer games will be a little bit more
comfortable perhaps in the winter.

So that's to the people who live in the
town it's not a big deal it's perhaps more

of a big deal to the large farming
community that lives in the region because

when you anything you're used to
the weather behaving in some certain way

and so when the weather is changing that
has perhaps negative consequences for

the things that you're doing.

The other thing that is interesting.

Here.

So I've shown you here that the cold days
are going away and that's consistent with

global warming temperatures getting
warmer number of call days is less.

There's another piece of
data that won't show you.

But the other thing you could measure is
the number of nights when the temperature

gets below freezing.

That number's going up.

OK so that the influences of change in
climate are not necessarily simple.

Roughly speaking what's happening
is that there are many more nights

where the air is clear and when you
get a clear night in the winter at

least where I grew up that tends to
give you a cold overnight temperature.

So that's not a simple
thing that's happening.

However to me it's very
clear from the data.

That the climate in the little
town where I grew up is changing.

Remember also from that this
little town it's like Hawaii it's

out in the middle of nowhere.

It's not connected to the global
society particularly And so

this is something that's happening
all the way around the world.

OK so
that's something about where I grew up.

Now let me tell you about
where I go on vacation.

So here's a picture of my kids.

Through my wife's family we have a cabin
on Lake of the woods which borders

on cherry or Canada and
the state of Minnesota.

The families cabin has been there for
about sixty years.

My wife's grandparents built the cabin.

When they went up there
first sixty years ago.

Like in the woods is a gigantic like
it is the largest body of fresh water

that was part of it in the U.S.
aside from the Great Lakes.

It has something like
two thousand islands.

And in the summer when you go there it
is a fabulous place to have a holiday.

It's really great and so you can see there
they are the something in the like in

the winter of course not quite so
nice a bit colder and

in fact the way that you get materials
to our cabin which is on an island.

If you wait for
the entire lake to freeze and

you drive a truck across to the island and
bring it across.

So it's very very cold.

Place in the winter.

So there's my son and

I going to visit the neighbors in
the afternoon from our island.

The people who actually live
there the whole year round

are intensely interested in
when the lake freezes and

melts it makes a very big
difference in their life and so

it shouldn't surprise you to know that
they've been measuring when this happens.

And so here is a diagram
that shows when the ice out

from Whitefish Bay Whitefish Bay
is where our cabin is and this

is the number of days from the beginning
of the year to when the ice goes out.

I have never been there but

I'm told that when the ice goes
out it really is dramatic.

It happens in one day one day there's
ice everywhere the next day it is not.

So people obviously have tracked this.

And here is data from

the that the mid sixty's up to now again
there's a good deal of fluctuation.

But similar to the data I showed
you before the train is down.

Meaning that the lake is
frozen call less time.

Now from my selfish perspective
this is a great thing right.

We do not have hot water in our cabin.

And if I want to behave when
I'm there I go swimming

in the like on the years
where the ice goes out late.

It's very very cold on the years
when the ice goes out early.

It's much more pleasant and
so that seems nice.

However there's a downside to this.

So here's a here's a satellite photo taken
in two thousand and six of the lake.

So the scale here is hundreds of
kilometers from north to south.

This is the Minnesota end of the lake and
water.

It's a little bit difficult to see in the
photo but if you look down here there's

a very large region of bright green
there it is in the photo here.

This is an algal bloom in the lake and so
that has very good for mental effects on.

Water quality for the like.

Now the main course for
this algal bloom is in fact

two paper plants that are located in
International Falls which is down here.

So those paper plants put a fairly large
amount of phosphorus into the water

even though they're controlled and
what their emissions are the majority of

the phosphorous going into the lake
comes from these paper plants and so

you could say well the reason
the lake is blooming

is that we're putting this pollution
into light and that's true.

However you need two things to get
an algal bloom you need the nutrients and

you need warmth.

And so
the fact that the lake is getting warmer

is very directly contributing
to these algal blooms.

Now when I was up there this summer I went
to a men's breakfast where we had someone

from this lake of the woods Water Health
Organization give a talk and I'll tell

you the thing that got absolutely the most
attention was when the person said and

the fact is that these algal blooms might
diminish the number of fish in the lake.

And this people are very
very worried about that.

The purpose of these two examples is
to show you that in both of these

isolated locations that
are relevant to my life.

The climate is changing.

I'm not going to go through
the scientific evidence but

I believe it's very strong that it's
changing because of things that we our

society are doing to the atmosphere by
pumping C O two into the atmosphere.

Even if we don't want to accept that then
we have to worry about where all our

energy is going to come from.

And so now I want to turn from
thinking about this as an issue

that has at least some effect on my life
to looking at you know what it might mean

to the global society and
more importantly to me individually.

So first let me place us within global
society just to think about whether we.

Have any special position or not.

Here are two charts that
give some information on

what happens to various
people in the world.

The first one shows
the distribution of world G.D.P.

roughly speaking how wealthy people are so

the richest twenty percent
of the world eighty

two percent of the resources
that are around and then it very

rapidly narrows down the thing that I
hope is obvious from this without sort

of going into any of the details is that
in the United States we're living up here.

And there are billions and billions of
people who live down with these kind of

resources that in no way and enjoy the
advantages that we have in this country.

The other thing the other way to look
at this is what people die from and so

this is a chart showing causes of
death for all people in some year.

I guess one thousand nine hundred eight or
something like that.

If you look at the entire
world twenty five percent of

deaths occur from infectious diseases but
if you look at the fine print.

Here you find that sixty three percent
of children who die before they're

five died from infectious diseases.

We're very lucky.

I think living in a developed country
that we don't have to worry about this.

You know I have three children and
I didn't have to worry about any of them

dying from infectious diseases
before they were five.

However there are obviously a large
sectors of the world where.

That's a serious concern and when you have
children they may or may not live to grow

up the point of this is is simply to make
I hope the fairly obvious case that.

We have a very very privileged
economic position within the world.

To make that point again.

Here is the distribution of U.S. income.

And so if you do what this child is
showing a little hard to read are so

small is the number of
households that have him.

Incomes above a certain level here is one
hundred thousand dollars two hundred fifty

thousand dollars and so on all of you
that I hear attending graduate school or

getting a degree here.

Presumably aspire to.

Have gainful employment.

They're going to put you.

Well towards the operation of this graph.

So even within not just the global
perspective but within the US perspective.

All of us are well off.

OK There obviously are a significant
number of people who live on very limited

means in this country but that's not
a really a relevant thing to each of

us the place that we're living in
France that I draw from this is that

the issues that are associated
with providing energy and

that are associated with
that of course by energy.

Lie in our lap.

OK they're not the problem
of the other five

billion people in the world who
have less resources than us.

They're not even necessarily the problem
of the folks within the U.S.

that have very limited resources but

on the other hand those of us who are able
to live a very comfortable life here.

Should realize that
we're using a very great

fraction of the world's energy supply and
then I think it.

We should at least think about what our
response is to those kinds of issues.

All right so what should we do about this.

I have a relative who has quite serious
response to thinking about these things

as well we should just all get used
to living without electricity and so

this is where we would be if we were doing
that if I let my beard grow a little bit.

I look I don't think
that's a serious option.

And you know I don't we're not going to
go back to living in a cave and you know.

So we have to really think about this in a
sort of a grown up way I wouldn't say that

my relative.

About how we're going to deal with these
things and so that's what I'm going to

talk about I'm going to talk about
it from two different perspectives.

One is what I think about it
in my professional career.

I want to be clear that the things
I'm going to tell you about

my personal refractions on my life and

some of them might be appropriate to you
but some of them might not be but this is

related to my life as an engineering
professor at a research university.

I tried to make a list of
water days I do with my time

in roughly speaking I get to teach
undergraduates to train Ph D.

students and post-docs and
to develop technologies.

I've also tried to estimate how
much influence I have on people or

the world by doing this.

And here's my calculus for doing that
each time I teach an undergraduate for

one semester I have about a two
percent influence on them.

In the sense that they're going to take
about fifty classes at Georgia Tech and

so no matter how inspirational I am or I'm
not two percent about the best I've got.

On the other hand when a Ph D.

student works with me for four or
five years of their life.

Then I presumably have
a significantly larger influence on

their professional development and

so I generously call that seventy five
percent that maybe is an over estimate.

I actually think that those of
us on the research faculty here.

The people that we train that's
probably the single most

important product we have in terms of
our long term influence on society.

Because those individuals go out and they
really do things with their whole career

and it's actually very nice that pretty
is here visiting who did a Ph D.

in my group a number of years ago and
is now working in history and

doing things and
is a great example of doing that.

The other thing that I get to do.

Of course is to do research and to develop
things the influence level here is

obviously highly variable some of
the things we do very esoteric.

And in fact have no practical application

some of the things we do really
are working on short term applications.

We have a fair amount of
choice in how that works.

With two very special privileges
that we have as professors

that very few other people have we have
long term employment really no risk

of us getting fired unless the entire
state of Georgia's economy collapses and

dies which hopefully it will not and

more importantly we have freedom
to choose what we do work on now.

Someone's got to pay the bills
doing research is not free but

if I personally decide that
I really want to develop

a new technology for
removing phosphorus from like water.

I can do that and

I can look at getting a sponsor who would
be willing and working on doing that.

That's just not a privilege that very many
people have and so that's a special thing

so that raises for me some questions
that I think about one formulation would

be does all of my research need to be what
I would call socially responsible and

I'll let you decide what I mean what
you would mean by socially responsible.

I don't think the answer is yes and

the reason I don't think the answer is yes
is partly that I don't believe that I can

actually predict how my
research will be used.

When I look over the work that
I've done over my career.

Some of the very fundamental things
that I've done earlier on have been

influential it least in my own thinking
for more applied projects later.

OK so there's no sense.

I think that I should devote all
of my effort to working on very

short term commercialization let's say.

Because one of the goals I think of
working in a research university is

developing that long term knowledge.

On the other hand there's some of my
research portfolio to tackle globally

important problems.

I you know I can answer this question and
say that the answer

is yes that some of the things that we're
working on I think really directly.

Very important problems and
for me that Sim Porton.

Now I'm not arguing that every faculty
member at a research university needs

to have the same answer but

to me I find a lot of satisfaction in
tackling these kinds of things that I

think really can make a difference
to people in the long run.

A more complicated question and I don't
know the answer to this is what I've

written down sort of this is what
the standard professor should do right.

Teach classes do research
bring in big grants.

So if we do that.

I'm going to keep Dr Reserve
here pretty happy.

However I had said I've got these
special response special privileges and

so it's a least worth thinking through
whether there are other things that I

could do that are worthwhile giving
this talk is a very very tiny example

of doing that I was just spend so much
time thinking about and preparing for it.

One of the things I'd suggest that you do
is to think about these similar issues in

thinking about your own are the current
activities or especially for

those of you to the students in
terms of your planned career and

just think about you know how will you
look back on the things a number of

years from now and feel about the way
that you've done different things.

I'm absolutely not making an argument that

everybody has to drop what they're doing
and work on short term applied research.

I don't think that would be
a productive thing to do but.

If useful to think through these issues.

The other interesting thing
is to make a to look at

what some of the grand
challenges in society.

How are so here's a list of I think
it's fourteen grand challenges that

the National Academy of Engineering.

Listed a couple of years ago and

I've listed them by get them in some
order I put them in my own order.

The ones that have higher.

It in green are things that I think
are a core sort of engineering

chemical engineering kinds of things
that many of us are familiar with but

also related in some intimate way with
energy issues some of these obvious

make solar energy economical mean that
would be a fantastic thing to do provide

energy from fusion is a bit like science
fiction for me but if it actually worked.

It would be great develop carbon
sequestration methods that's something

that I would work on particular prevent
nuclear terror that doesn't sound

like an energy issue but I think it is
because I believe that there's going to be

a strong demand for using nuclear
energy in an ongoing way in society and

using nuclear energy is dealing
with it in a way that deals with

nuclear security concerns and
there are some other things here.

Some of these are managing the nitrogen
cycle that's something that

perhaps is not on the top of our mind for

a lot of us but understanding where
global fertilizers come from and

how they used to move very very important
then there's some other things here.

All these things are important.

They're all worthwhile to work on there's
lots of great things for us to work on.

So now let me turn to my personal life and
to do this.

I tried to estimate my
personal carbon footprint.

I'm thinking it would be a good
idea if as a society we needed

less carbon dioxide it would also
be useful if we use less energy and

so you can think of either carbon as
an intrinsic thing you want to reduce or

your carbon footprint just as a proxy for
the amount of energy that you use.

So I use there's this calculator
at the Nature Conservancy

there's various different calculators
that give slightly different results.

But they're all sort of more or less the
same it's all to show you this one turns

out to use just one thousand kilowatt
hours of electricity per year and

that plus a little bit
of gas that we use for

hot water comes out to just
under seven tons of C O two.

I'd drive a hybrid car.

I get forty miles a gallon in that car but

I drive it a long way because I live
a long commute from Georgia Tech.

So I drive about twelve thousand miles
a year that's five tons of C O two.

You know my family eats and so we enjoy
that that apparently generates the are two

major thing you notice here is
the carbon that comes from flying.

And I just went and opened up my Delta
frequent flyer account and counted up.

How many flights I done.

There were forty eight distinct
flights in the last year.

Covering about seventy thousand miles.

And so that turns out to generate
something like twenty five tons of

cereal to actually sort of
cross check this I called Delta

corporate relations people and managed to
get in touch with the person who manages

some of their environmental stuff and just
look at some of their internal numbers

that they sent me and that that number is
fairly consistent with what they sent.

So that means that I am and
generating something like forty tons of

C O two a year the worldwide
average is about five and

a half so clearly I'm generating
a lot more than my average share.

That's not surprising.

I live in the developed world if
you know anyone in this country or

anywhere in the developed world is
generating a large amount of C O two.

One interesting thing that I just know and
I won't dwell on it is that

my research group is the major
user of a large computer cluster.

There's the result for the computer
cluster the electricity in the cooling for

the computer cluster generates more than
three hundred tons per year of C O two.

This computer cost to has about
a thousand computer cores and so

it's you know you can go
through the numbers and

it turns out that you know really
that's a lot of electricity.

So in an interesting thing now I wouldn't
put all of that spirit you on my account.

You know add some of it
to my students accounts.

So they can worry about.

That.

Nevertheless it makes the point that.

What I do in my own life in my own home
and so on is just part of the picture

what we do in our professional
infrastructure is another issue.

All right so
what I want to finish up with just for

a few minutes is to tell you about
things that my family has already done.

Partly in response to these issues and
then some other things that maybe we could

consider doing and then we'll
just have a time for discussion.

So some of the things that
we've already done by U.S.

standards I drive a very efficient car I
drive a Honda Civic Hybrid and I'd That's

why I bought a number of years ago and now
driven nearly forty thousand miles in it.

So that's fine.

Now I can easily will not easily.

There is an obvious more radical step.

I could take which is to not live
twenty miles away from where I work.

OK And so I could easily change my
carbon footprint from driving simply by

driving a lot less that's not an easy
thing to do because of the way our society

is set up my children go to public schools
and I've personally made the choice that.

I'm not really willing to let them
do that if I live near Georgia Tech.

And so there's some very fundamental
infrastructure issues yet Chris.

Yeah you know that wouldn't make that
much difference to get from my house

to the North Spring station
is twenty five minute drive.

Yeah no it's that it's a very good point.

So another right you could say well
yeah you could use public transport

to use public transport from my house.

First of all you'd have to drive at least
fifteen to twenty minutes to get there and

it would increase my already lengthy
commute to well over an hour both ways.

That's really not practical option.

And I think that's a that's a that's
a societal failing that it's so

hard to do that.

Shortly after we moved to Georgia.

We actually replaced the the system in a.

House.

We were doing this because the age
creationist and was old and

clapped out needed replaced.

We brought deliberately
a very efficient system.

We've also installed insulation
in their attic and we've put

programmable thermostats in and I'm sort
of the thermostat police in the house.

So in winter.

I believe you should be cold and in summer
I believe you should be hot and thermostat

reflect that to some degree although I
will say compared to growing up where we

didn't have any central heating you know
we live a very climate controlled life.

OK so we could actually do
a lot differently by allowing

our house to be much more driven
by the weather cycle than we do.

Nevertheless at least we
are using an efficient system.

Recently we put a new roof on our house
again you know when you own a house.

The reality is that once
you have to do this right.

It's expensive when we did that we
deliberately chose a nice light color for

the roof and it turns out that makes
a reasonable amount of difference in

the amount of cooling that
you need during the summer.

Now there's actually
something quite simple.

We could have done to do
even better than that and

we could have put on a white roof.

That would have been good if we
put on a white roof we actually

would have got a federal tax credit so
that would be nice.

It turns out that the community that
we live in does not allow you to have

white roof.

And so I potentially could have gone and
had a fight with the.

Community Board but I didn't feel like
I had the energy to do that and so

we just went with a lighter colored roof.

OK So those are the things
that we've done which sound

like fairly mild kind of things but
I will point

out that there's a cost of many many
many thousands of dollars to do this.

Partly because for me to get a new roof
of any color costs a lot of money for

example to replace the age
of your house efficient or

not cost a lot of money but at least
when we were making these choices.

Certainly in my mind was this
idea of trying to do it in

an energy efficient way.

There's a lot of things we could.

Possibly Do we could actually try and
use circle green electricity so

E.M.C. which provides our electricity
has a program to do this.

It's no it's not solar
energy it's not wind energy.

It turns out that all of their
renewable energy comes from

a very small scale river
based hydro plant.

It's mainly landfill gas and forest waste.

OK landfill gas if you're
not familiar with that is

you collect methane from
rotting stuff in a landfill.

OK It's actually a very good idea.

Methane is a much more potent
greenhouse gas than C O two and

so this is a good thing to do.

We're planning on doing this.

I haven't actually got
around to doing it yet but

it will add one quarter
to my electricity bill.

And the way it works out that it's a base
basically twenty seven percent more that's

about three hundred dollars a year and
so you know this is real money.

I have to decide that I really am going to
pay an extra three hundred dollars a year

to do this.

I think it is a worthwhile thing to do and

one day when I actually get through from
being on hold with carbon and see who it.

I was I spent several probably two hours
on the phone with them last week because

I was interested in how much electricity
capacity they have for this program.

I very much doubt that it is scalable to
a large fraction of their customers but

I couldn't find anyone on the phone
that would tell me how much it was so

that was a bit disappointing.

The other thing and

my wife like this is I could fly less This
is actually the one that's a no brainer.

I can the most significant fraction of
that carbon output came from flying.

If I managed to reduce my
flying by twenty five percent.

And that would be the same as turning
off all the electricity at my house for

the year so that's that's a lot.

Now this is it's kind
of a complicated issue.

You know Chris is looking at me and smile
and smiling I mean at some level you.

To reduce how much you travel to but
the way that our jobs work

when we're successful at doing things and
in order to be successful at doing things

we need to travel and
we need to be at different places.

So that's it's a complicated issue and

it's not just as simple
as saying travel less.

However I will say that for me personally.

There are many attractions
to traveling less.

Traveling a lot gets tiring
my family doesn't like it.

And so there may be happy if I can find
a way to say no to people a little bit

more often.

The other sort of less direct
thing I could do would be

to purchase carbon offset when I travel so
Delta for

example has a program despite
talking to them a little bit.

I couldn't quite figure out the details.

They were programmed with
the Nature Conservancy where in a kind

of way they will effectively plant
trees that will capture carbon for

a very long period of time to offset the
carbon emissions that are made by flying.

And so a rough estimate of
the annual cost for doing this.

Based on one of these
climate calculators for

me is that that would be about
seven hundred dollars a year.

So that sounds like kind of a lot of
money except if you realize that I

spent something like ten thousand dollars
a year on business travel already and

in fact not my money.

Right.

So it's not your money either.

So you don't need to worry too much.

Ron But if if I add seven percent
to the cost of my plane tickets.

Now the fact is that my research sponsors
they don't know how much the plane ticket

cost anyway so I think again there's
a reasonable case to be made that this is

it worth the least worth considering doing
it raises an interesting issue is that if

the airline will directly make this part
of the cost of the plane ticket then it's.

Very easy for me to deal with
on the other hand if I have to

personally write a check to the Nature
Conservancy for seven hundred dollars.

I have a hard time believing that Georgia
Tech's going to reimburse me for that.

OK so

that what it suggests though is that if
there are at least options to easily fall

this into to the actual cost of doing this
kind of business that that's something

that those of us who are interested can
absorb now in a discussion we might want

to talk about whether people think carbon
offsets are a worthwhile thing to do.

It's actually not as it's not
a simple issue it's certainly

not as simple as just flying less.

OK perhaps I could install
solar panels on my home

not to be pretty cool have solar panels
there and generate my own tricity.

So I looked into this fairly carefully.

It would cost on the order of twenty
thousand dollars to do this to generate

Preacha Bill a matter of electricity and
it's going to take me something like

twenty to thirty years
to get that money back.

Now in my view that that's
something I'm not going to consider

doing you know that's
a huge amount of money.

I actually thought when I actually
looked at this information that

I had done something horribly wrong.

So I went to talk to Mike fellow who's
our resident solar energy expert and

he said yeah this is
true that domestic solar

energy really makes very
little economic sense.

So it might seem like a great idea but

economically seems very
sketchy thing to do.

It's a terrible typo should say be you
wife would buy electric vehicles and maybe

when I my current car reaches the end of
its lifetime I should buy a Chevy Volt or

some other kind of electric vehicle and
I should recharge it from a new

renewable electricity doesn't actually
help if you buy a Chevy Volt and then you

plug it into things that are generate
electricity from a coal fired power plant.

Then you might as well get
fossil fuel at all fossil fuel.

So that seems like something that
is perhaps worth considering.

In my estimation the economics still
look pretty bleak for this even.

If you buy an electric vehicle you
get a seventy thousand dollars

federal tax credit at the moment
it's still the payback period for

doing this is very very very long and
the logistics of using the car at

least the way I use my car
still look quite difficult.

So these last two are things that are
really not feasible from my point of view.

I have to tell you that
in preparing this list.

I got to this point and I realized
this was somewhat dissatisfying.

You know the same sort of thing coming
out around the edges to do things but

these are not really dramatic changes and

so that's the reality of
where we are I think.

So let me conclude now leave
a little bit of time for discussion.

I outlined already the fact
that I think the burden for

facing these future energy issues lies
with us in the developing world and

people like me who have
secure employment and

it's a very comfortable salary and
a comfortable life I'm not willing to

do anything about it then no one should
be willing to do anything about it.

There are ways that I could reduce my
personal C O two emissions by about half

without really changing
my lifestyle at all.

Provided that we're willing
to buy carbon offsets for

the fuel that I would use by flying places
doesn't actually reduce how much fuel is

used but at least that
offsets the carbon emissions.

However the methods that I would
suggest for making that reduction

are not scalable to the population at
large cup energy does not have enough

renewal energy that it can provide green
electrons to everybody in Cobb County.

You just can't do it.

There's no way to do that
with the current technology.

However I think there's a lot of value in
those of us who care about these things

sending market a positive economic signal.

If I say to carbon energy
I'm actually willing to pay

twenty five percent more for
my electricity.

That says to them.

OK there must be a bunch
of other suckers out there.

Who'd be willing to do this same
thing with a hybrid car that I drive.

OK I was willing to go and

spend more on buying a hybrid car because
I thought it was a worthwhile thing to do.

Plus I just wanted to drive the technology
along and so you know I think there

is a lot of value to again for
those of us who are interested in trying

to send these positive economic signals so
that filled up most of the hour.

And I'd.

Thank you for your attention and
would certainly welcome.

You know any responses or
comments that people have

for

your first of all your

bluster off

with No I

haven't that that but that number of
eleven thousand odd kilowatt hours.

For our house is the actual number that
is went to our electricity bill and

add it up pretty

well we must remember that

I don't know what the budget
more massive right.

Yeah that's true.

The order of wait five years or right.

And so basically if we simply
unplugged our appliances when

we weren't using them in most things you
have to truly unplug them because they

take some passive power anyway.

You're right you could you know bring
it down by five percent of your

posting walk

around your house lights because
you don't see where you go.

Yeah totally different
like what if you're right.

The other one of
the things that I remember

her just living here last year.

Exponential relationship is
immediately like Right I'm not going

to defend the quality of those forecasts
except to say that the slope is right.

But the point is if there's an exponential

like what if you know
we're in deep trouble.

It's going to be a lot bigger
than what will never get there.

Every now and
then it will like it will be well ordered

resources will run out of
resources before you know the coal

drop line.

How much will change.

We're able to train.

Well.

So let me tell you some of the places that
I traveled this year I went to Europe

three times how to do that by trying.

I am going to a stranger next month
very difficult to do that by train.

So I think the answer is it would make

little difference to me it
did you know my personal

travel is dominated by these long distance
flights my Pammy lives in Australia.

Right.
So if I want to see them it's a long way

in the Australian family
anything else business.

He said but sometimes

the answer is yes and sometimes the answer
is not you know they're there truly is no.

No matter how good the telecommunication
things are there is no substitute for

being there and seeing people in person.

You know a lot of these trips are to go to
conferences and exchange information and

to meet people.

I don't know.
So having said that a lot of the shorter

trips that I do within the U.S. are for
Project meanings and things like that and

you know sort of aggressively exploring
ways to not travel to do those things.

It is a worthwhile thing to
me personally on many levels.

Actually I think just like the priest

because exactly what you saw there
a lot of people are talking about.

Yeah but

I'll always be replaced by a lot

of you know having said that for
me if I look at how

much I've ply it's a pretty much
a monotonically increasing conscience.

Yes absolutely.

For me this is largely
like a justification of

the things that you are you know and
they survive and it's kind of for

it to look at you acknowledge things that
you shouldn't do it whether or not you can

change that about about your lifestyle or
just I mean I think it's OK to say

I shouldn't do this from an environmental
perspective but I did it anyway.

And that's the first step in
sort of recognizing this and

then I also want to just make the point
that you know it's very easy to say that

over things are expensive and this is
just a societal because he said but

I think a lot of times the restrictions
that you can make and there is like

we are to make that you wouldn't usually
there is an alternative that exists.

You might have to look harder but
I don't think

we all need to move way out into
the suburbs to find affordable housing and

good schools there's also this
there's just one example.

And so yeah I think we just
need to consider that and

like you said we wouldn't even want

to get I would say you know I don't have
tons of undergraduate definitely thing but

still I would say to some extent you know
expendable or most of us make it big.

OK if we've ever bought a four dollar copy
to start a stereo that's a great example

short using say you know I can buy organic
because it's expensive but there's other

choices if you've ever had your guard up
you know there's a person really lives.

No I preach I appreciate
those comments and

I you know largely agree with you
one of the reasons I tried to be

sort of fairly open with this is what my
family does is not to be defensive or

to justify things but just to say well
look this is the way we live our life.

It's once you do things
like have children and

buy a house then changing your
life becomes a lot harder.

You know and so there are right.

So I I agree with you that
there are often things

small things we can change making large
scale changes are often very difficult.

I also didn't talk at all about how our

society should respond in
a public policy sense.

So I'm sort of deliberately setting
that aside for today's purposes.

So yeah.

Thank you for your comments.

You know personally

I think it was.

Leaders where those dollar
values are small signs widely

read gas somewhere where those
premiums become larger and

larger whether it's present orders
that it's hard to read science says

so my question is do you think
that in terms of super measuring

war or peace to get the ball
rolling science says and this is

the whole nature

but let me just I want to understand
what you're saying are you cynical about

the value of doing these things
if they're done or whether that

whether what's being advertised is
actually being done a combination of both.

So if you look at the drug laws.

Right.

Great example.

Will the Nature Conservancy life
histories Anyway the differences

that don't matter really
present these trees or

are these trees going to be where
in addition to all right so

I think that goes across all
the different everybody's

like a better company
that was necessarily.

All right so I think right with
carbon offsets in particular I think

it's a very complicated issue for the
reasons you just alluded to that really

the question is is there a net change that
would not have happened if I didn't do

this I will say that with the carbon
offsets and also with for

instance the renewable energy that
you know now there are organized.

Set up effectively to order
these kinds of procedures and

I think if you know you're
curious about those things.

It's possible to look
into the procedures and

have those kinds of questions answered.

That's really important.

Right because when I turn on the lights
the electrons are a different color.

It's just the same electrons and

I really am just trusting
the electricity company that when I pay

you this extra money you are burning
methane from a landfill somewhere.

So I think on the corporate
side of things.

Those are absolutely critical issues and
if there are organizations that deal

with them in with any hint of not doing
it correctly could be very destructive.

But you know I I have to say.

Personally I'm sort of on the fence
about the carbon offset business for

the issues that you just raised one

well there's a lot of irony if you can you

can also you know that you can also point
the finger at people like you and me.

Chris and say OK how much energy.

Do you use flying around the world to
talk give talks at conferences about

generating energy.

You know sort of a self-fulfilling
thing at some point.

Yeah.

OK.

Well except OK That's But
still if the payback period is

enormously long time and so
let's look at it another way.

Let's let's imagine that.

I decided that this computer cluster here
should be powered by solar energy and

we you know put in enough batteries
that we have capacity and so on.

If it cost twenty thousand
dollars to do it from my

house then the upfront cost to do it.

For the computer cost there would be

something on the order
of a million dollars.

OK so that's you know a million actual
dollars that we have to spend now and

then on some paper accounting
scale thirty years from now we've

saved a million dollars So
now if I come to wrong and

I say OK here you know or
Melissa comes to Ron and says you know.

One of you young people
has become a rich donor

is going to give us a million dollars.

What do you want to do with a million
dollars You know that's that's really

the decision you have to make you want
to spend it on those solar panels

solar energy is also actually caught in
this the horrors of deflation because they

keep promising us that it's
going to get cheaper right.

So presumably if I wait five years.

It won't cost a million dollars
anymore now that it's not but

that's a real problem.

So you have to decide.

I know you can get really know you really
sunk your costs and you've hurt yourself.

So it's I mean the economics
are very very discouraging for

doing something like that.

Yes

well

that's why I now remember that list of
engineering challenges you know one

of the top ones was made.

Solar power economical.

I mean look if we could do that.

Would absolutely transform our world

for your silly production process

or your injury.

So there's an enormous amount of.

That well and
that raises the whole issue of sort of.

You know trying to a life cycle
analysis on a process in a very very

difficult issue I think in deciding
where to draw the boundaries for

anything solar energy driving a car.

Whatever it is you're Amber

left or right

by using the missing.

I mean meter

and really good really good with me

on this music.

But I think the correct
answer is the focus should

be everywhere so that they're all
the if you look at total energy usage.

It's there are large fractions
of the users that come from

industry large fractions our personal
use large fraction is transportation.

So one of the reasons that I went through
this personal exercise of sort of

dividing up my energy usage is sort of
to get at that issue of you know what

what things can I do to
make the most differ.

And it turns out that you know if we just
turned off all the electricity at our

house that would make some difference but
it's not the dominant cause for

me personally.

So that's a that's a very good
way to look at things but

definitely that you know people who
look at these policy issues carefully

have shown that really there are you
need to do things across the board

in all the different sectors and one of
the things that you know many folks who

are training chemical engineering can
do you go out and work in industry.

If you can work out how to make large
scale industrial processes more energy

efficient when your company is happy
because the probably the costs go down but

then the rest of us should
be happy because you've made

a gigantic difference in
the amount of energy use.

They really can't remove the number you
know if someone can remember the number.

The amount of energy in the world that
is used to make ammonia is gigantic.

That's what I want to
say it's two percent.

So one out of every fifty parts
of all energy in the world

is used to catalyze
the process of making ammonia.

That's a big deal if you can go out and
you work on a process like that and

you shave the energy usage by this much.

I mean that does much more than
me turning off the lights.

OK.

Just recently.

So that's that's another way.

People walk out if you're so good

just to give you a hint of how expensive
much energy is used in making aluminum.

A couple of years ago on one
of these long flying trips

I went to a conference in Iceland.

And when you drive from the airport
in Iceland which is an old U.S.

military base into the capital
right direct which is.

About fifty kilometers on the way
you pass a gigantic aluminum plant.

Now there's no natural look.

Site in Iceland.

It is sent there by ship
from places like astray or

the reason the plant is there
is that they have abundant

cheap electricity because they have
a huge amount of hydroelectricity so

right making purifying aluminum is
a horrifyingly energy intensive process.

And.

Right.
Any time it is not very much aluminum any

can but

if we can recycle that aluminum it makes
a difference that makes a difference.