Lawrence Lessig receives two Harvard appointments

By Holly MetterFAS CommunicationsThe world today uses enough power to illuminate150 billion light bulbs for a year.According to some estimates, by 2050, demandwill double, creating irreversible climatechange without reductionsin humanity’scarbon output.Improbably enough, your idle personalcomputer could play a big part in alteringthis outcome: Harvard chemist Alán Aspuru-Guzikhas received a multiyear renewablegrant from IBM to harness the powerDecember 18, 2008-February 4, 2009 Harvard University Gazette/ 9Idle computing power may ID candidate molecules for efficient solar panelstechnologyof idle desktop computers — a processknown as distributed computing — to developnext-generation solar cells that mighthelp satisfy the world’s future energy needs.“The solution to the energy problem requiresa combination of many different factors,including increasing the energy efficiencyof all activities in our society, dramaticallyramping up the use of all renewableenergy sources, implementing carbonsequestration schemes in our coal plants,and enacting progressive carbon tradingpolicies,” says Aspuru-Guzik, assistant professorof chemistry and chemical biology inthe Faculty of Arts and Sciences, whose researchgroup focuses on the development ofnovel materials for solar cells as a source ofrenewable local power generation.Aspuru-Guzik is among scientists worldwidewho are exploring more efficient waysto convert sunlight into electricity — “aprocess,” he says, “which would likely requireless than 1 percent of the planet’s surfaceto meet that need.”Commercially available solar cells arebased on silicon semiconductor technology.But the specialized manufacturing processis expensive, meaning these cells have not(See IBM, next page)How to get involvedIndividuals can download onto theircomputer a small software program,which, when the computer is not inuse, performs complex calculationsfor a specific World Community Gridproject. To contribute to Aspuru-Guzik’s project, please visitwww.worldcommunitygrid.org todownload the distributed computingclient, and select the Clean EnergyProject.Kris Snibbe/Harvard News OfficeDaniel Schrag, director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment and professor of earth and planetary sciences,said that most optimistic scenarios of climate change have atmospheric carbon dioxide leveling off at around 500 or 550parts per million — levels roughly double the 280 parts per million that ice cores show existed in preindustrial air.Climate options must include ‘all of the above’Problemimmense,says DanielSchrag, andthere ismuch to bedone — fastBy Alvin PowellHarvard News OfficeenvironmentClimate change has so much momentumbehind it that “either/or” discussions aboutoptions are meaningless because it’ll take allwe can do just to arrest carbon dioxide at levelsdouble those in preindustrial times, a topclimate scientist said Dec. 11.Daniel Schrag, director of the Harvard UniversityCenter for the Environment and professorof earth and planetarysciences, said thatmost optimistic scenarios of climate changehave atmospheric carbon dioxide leveling off ataround 500 or 550 parts per million — levelsroughly double the 280 parts per million thatice cores show existed in preindustrial air.More pessimistic “business as usual” scenarios,which factor in continued growth in thedeveloping world, show levels as high as 1,000parts per million by the turn of the century.While Schrag said those pessimistic scenarioswould almost certainly mean catastrophicchange, he cautioned that even the most optimisticscenario represents a considerable increasefrom today’s level of almost 390 partsper million.“What people don’t understand is that wewill be at 500 parts per million. The question is:Will we go to 1,000?” Schrag said. “Double thepreindustrial level might be a catastrophe, butit might also be the best we can do.”The potential changes in store includedroughts, floods, stronger storms, and increasedextinctions. Schrag also highlightedthe danger of sea level rise. The dramatic icemelt in recent summers has already mademuch of Russia’s northern coastline and theNorthwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacificthrough Canada ice-free for parts of theyear. Though the effects of climate change haveproven difficult to predict, Schrag said, it’s possiblethe Arctic Ocean will become ice-free assoon as a decade from now, far faster than recentpredictions that it would happen by midcentury.Melting Arctic ice has ramifications for peopleliving in coastal locations around the world,he said, since it is Arctic ice that helps keepGreenland’s immense glaciers cool. Greenland’sglaciers contain enough water to raisesea level by 7 meters should they melt or slipinto the sea. Schrag said scientists don’t knowwhether that will happen in 1,000 years, 200years, or even sooner.Schrag spoke at the Geological Lecture Hallin the third talk in the Harvard Museum of NaturalHistory’s Earth Matters lecture series. Theevent, “Solving the Climate-Energy Challenge,”featured Schrag and Kelly Gallagher, directorof the Energy Technology InnovationProject at the Harvard Kennedy School.The planetary systems — earth, air, andocean — that are affected by rising carbon dioxidelevels are so complex that scientists stilldon’t know how the Earth will respond. We are,in effect, conducting a planetwide experimenton the Earth, Schrag said, the outcome of whichis uncertain.“What we don’t know is very likely going tohurt us,” Schrag said.Another potential problem is that mountainsnowpacks are melting. Mountain snow andglaciers, refreshed each winter during coolertimes, have been shrinking, threatening areasthat rely on snowmelt-fed rivers, such as largeparts of the American West. One projectionshowed melting beginning weeks, even months,earlier, raising the possibility that snowmeltwill dry up by the middle of summer, leavingcrops to whither.“If that water runs out by July, agriculturein California is gone,” Schrag said.Major rivers of Asia on which millions ofpeople depend, such as the Indus, the Ganges,the Mekong, the Yellow, and the Yangtze, alldraw some of their flow from melting mountainice and snow, raising the specter of water(See Climate, next page)