lee lynd talk
February 2nd, 2006 by Lawrence David
i got to meet lee lynd today and see him talk at the mit energy initiative colloquium. he’s one of the big dudes, it seems, in bioenergy. he co-leads a small consortia of government and academic labs aimed at producing energy from biomass (if i recall correctly).
he gave a pretty broad, policy-level talk on the future of bioenergy, specifically on the production of ethanol from biomass. what was really interesting was how upbeat he was; this was the first energy talk i’ve ever heard that didn’t say the world was going to end soon. in fact, lynd even claims that with only incremental advances in current technology, the US will in the relatively near future be able to rely on biomass-produced ethanol as a source of transportation fuel. since his talk was so general, it was difficult to evaluate how outlandish a statement that was. nonetheless, it was reassuring that his projections didn’t require any miracles eof science.
and, i thought he cited a nice quote for engineers:
If engineering is the application of science for human benefit, then the engineer must be a student of not only the application of science, but of human benefit as well. [John Prausnitz]
