Regenesis (16 page)

Although barely noted and not contributing to the Flynn effect (as yet), the first permitted use of calculators in SAT tests probably marked a major milestone in the man-machine merger. How many of us have participated in conversations that are semidiscreetly augmented by Google or text messaging? Even without invoking artificial intelligence, such commonplace enhancements of our decision making amount to nongenetic ways of augmenting intelligence. In parallel, incremental improvements in current blood stem cell transplantation will make us more confident in the safety and efficacy of adult stem cell genome engineering. Such clinical genetic interventions will not be usefully lumped together with eugenics, especially if they are confined to somatic cells and not germ line cells, if they are done voluntarily by individuals and families and not at the behest of governments, and if they are diverse and not monochrome.

The concepts of maximizing evolution by means of population size, speed of mutation, replication, selection, and recombination apply here too, although their effects are harder to estimate, especially as we consider the way in which our cultural and technological artifacts increasingly become part of our evolutionary life. With “generation” times (i.e., the time between applying selection to cultural variations “generated” on the Internet) possibly in the nanosecond range (rather than the seven minute world-record minimum for replicating a living cell), and with 10
¹⁸
bytes “selected” per day, this form of evolution starts to get interesting. Every day the composition of which 10
¹⁸
bytes are sent over the Internet is selected by economic, intellectual, and entertainment (Darwinian) selective forces. Our computer-aided evolution can enable us to inherit acquired traits, after Lamarck, while gene pools of accelerated evolution will be subject to Galtonian market pressures. In
Chapter 9
, for example, we will see how Nic Volker and Timothy Ray Brown have become living testimonials to the power of stem cell transplants to change body genetics (to eliminate intestinal problems, leukemia, and AIDS), and how their newly “acquired” state will likely spread to many other patients by viral word of mouth.

What limits the number of computer replication and selection operations? Energy. Right now computers accomplish 10
⁹
operations per Joule while DNA replication is far more efficient at about 2x10
¹⁹
operations per
Joule. So, biologically inspired improvements in computer efficiency might lie in the near future. For example, the encoding digital information in DNA (text and images, using the scheme A:00, C:01, G:10, T:11, as described more fully in
Chapter 8
), in addition to being potentially a billion times more compact, less expensive, and longer-lived than paper or CD/Blu-ray disks, could be more efficient to manufacture and search.

The second part of the energy equation is the cost of acquiring the energy from a renewable source. Read on.

“The Best Substitute for Petroleum Is Petroleum”

On Sunday, February 24, 2008, a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 flew from London to Amsterdam with a blend of 20 percent biofuel and 80 percent standard Jet-A in one of its fuel tanks. It was a short trip, only 221 miles, and lasted only 70 minutes; moreover, as a demonstration flight the plane carried no paying passengers. Nevertheless, this was the first flight by a commercial airliner that was powered in part by biofuel (in this case a mix of coconut and babassu nut oils). Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Atlantic Airlines as well as Virgin Fuels, called the flight “historic.”

It was the first of a series of proof-of-concept test flights. Later that year, in December, an Air New Zealand Boeing 747 made a two-hour demonstration flight from Auckland International Airport. With one of its four Rolls Royce engines powered by a fifty-fifty blend of jatropha oil and standard jet fuel, the plane climbed to its normal cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. The pilot shut down the bio-fueled engine, restarted it, and then performed a number of other exercises before making a routine landing. “We undertook a range of tests on the ground and in flight with the jatropha biofuel performing well through both the fuel system and engine,” said the carrier's chief pilot, David Morgan.

About two weeks later, on January 7, 2009, a Continental Airlines Boeing 737 departed from Bush International Airport in Houston, Texas, with one of its fuel tanks containing the most exotic brew yet: a mixture of 50 percent conventional jet fuel, 47.5 percent jatropha oil, and, something new, 2.5 percent algae-derived biofuel. For two hours, the plane flew a series of maneuvers over the Gulf of Mexico, including a midair engine shutdown and successful restart, after which it landed without incident. “This is really a kind of landmark,” pilot Rich Jankowski said afterward.

These three flights were a window onto the coming era of biofuels, for by the summer of 2011 at least six airlines, including KLM, Lufthansa, and Finnair, had used biofuels on commercial flights carrying paying passengers. With the global fuel market operating at a trillion dollar level, diminishing oil reserves in the ground, much of it controlled by unstable or unfriendly political regimes, and a global warming crisis caused in large part by carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels (not to mention the human, economic, and environmental costs of disasters such as British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon oil rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010), the idea of renewable energy sources exerted a powerful appeal.

In fact, the whole idea of biofuels, especially the vision of having microbes such as cyanobacteria “grow” petroleum for you, seemed to be surrounded by a halo effect, a magical radiance. After all, it was like getting something for nothing, or almost. The idea was that we're going to leave the fossil fuels in the ground and put microorganisms to work for us, producing whatever alternative fuels we need. As a side benefit, those same microbes would clean up the atmosphere and help save the world in the process.

Who could resist such a dream? Not many. As the twenty-first century began, airlines, automakers, national governments (especially the military components thereof), and even the oil companies themselves were all jumping on the biofuels bandwagon, and looking to replace, or at least supplement, fossil fuels with fuels that are
grown
, like maple syrup, tomato juice, and coconut milk (or for that matter, cow's milk).

By 2010 there were more than two hundred companies in the United States, including one located on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in Ignacio, Colorado, plus dozens more abroad, competing for the potential
fortunes to be made from microbes that produce fuels. But there was more to biopetroleum than biofuels. In 2011 retail giant Walmart began selling a bio-based motor oil, G-Oil, which was being advertised in car magazines as “green bio-based full synthetic motor oil.” The ads ran under a banner headline, “Change your oil, change the world,” while a text at the bottom announced that the oil was “Grown and made in the USA.” What the ads failed to mention was that the oil was not made by special-purpose and efficient microbes, but was based on some of the least efficient biosources of all—rendered beef, pork, and chicken fat. (How an oil made from animal fat could be “fully synthetic” was not explained.) Nevertheless, the fact that such a product was now being marketed by a major retailer (and used as a lubricant in Mazdaspeed Formula One racing cars) showed that the idea of bio-based petroleum had suddenly come of age. All at once, it was glamorous.

Of course there were a few minor problems with this otherwise rosy scenario. One of the earliest start-ups to enter the algae-to-biofuels game was GreenFuel Technologies Corporation. Founded in 2001 and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it planned to produce vast quantities of algae using CO
₂
smokestack emissions from power plants, and then use the resulting masses of algae to make biodiesel, among other things. The company christened this process as its proprietary Emissions to Biofuels technology, and raised $70 million in private funding. By 2005 the company had established a working bioreactor pilot plant in Arizona. But two years later the pilot plant was producing more algae than it could convert into fuel. Growing the algae, the company discovered, was the easy part. The hard part was getting the algae to make petroleum, especially in a cost-effective way. Further compounding its difficulties, the company did not perform any genetic engineering on the microbe it was using. In 2009, having been blindsided by the fine print of microbiology, GreenFuel filed for bankruptcy.

California-based Solazyme provided another cautionary tale. Unlike GreenFuel Technologies, Solazyme did not go out of business. To the contrary, the company was wildly successful, announcing in 2010 that “we delivered over 80,000 liters (21,000 gallons) of algal-derived marine diesel and jet fuel to the U.S. Navy, constituting the world's largest delivery of 100% microbial-derived, non-ethanol biofuel.” What the company did
not reveal, although the
Marine Corps Times
did, was the price per gallon of this otherwise auspicious and forward-looking new substance: $424.

No consumer in a calm and sober frame of mind would pay anything like that kind of money for a gallon of gas. But the military, which was famous for its thousand dollar toilet seats and wrenches, had a totally different mind-set when it came to spending. But if the military was your major customer for algal-derived biofuels, then you had to wonder about the real-world viability of the product. Was it really anything more than a pipe dream?

The Virgin Atlantic test flight was powered in part by coconut oil. But one critic (Jeff Gazzard of the Aviation Environment Federation, based in the UK) quoted an estimate published in
Petroleum Week
that if the flight had been made entirely on coconut oil, it would have consumed 3 million coconuts. By any standard, that's a lot of coconuts.

Apparently, though,
Petroleum Week
made a slight miscalculation. According to Wikipedia, a thousand mature coconuts yield approximately 70 liters of coconut oil, which is to say that fourteen coconuts make one liter of the stuff. And according to the
Boeing.com
website, the 747 family of aircraft has an average fuel mileage consumption rate of nineteen liters per mile. So a flight of 221 miles would require 221 x 19 = 4,199 liters of coconut oil. And at the rate of fourteen coconuts per liter, the flight would require only 4,199 x 14 = 59,985 coconuts.

But that's
still
a lot of coconuts. And people eat coconuts.

By contrast, both the Air New Zealand and Continental Airlines demonstration flights were powered in part by jatropha oil, which, because it's made from a nonfood crop, at least had the advantage of avoiding the food-for-fuel problem (unless land normally used for food is displaced to grow the jatropha plants). Nevertheless, the global aviation industry currently burns through about 240 million tons of jet fuel per year, and one industry journal calculated that producing that amount of fuel from jatropha alone would require planting a land area that was twice the size of France.

So maybe biofuels really are the fuel of the future—and always will be.

If time travel ever becomes possible, the Carboniferous period, which lasted for some 74 million years, from about 360 million to 286 million years ago, would be a good era to avoid. Huge insects crawled, crept, and flitted across the earth. Two of them were the largest known insects of all time, the centipede
Arthropleura
, which grew to a length of more than eight feet, and the giant dragonfly
Meganeura
, which had a wingspan of some two and a half feet. These enormous dimensions were possible because at that time oxygen made up 35 percent of total air volume (rather than our current wimpy 21 percent).