The Rockefeller University

Program for the Human Environment

Jesse H. Ausubel, Director

Where is Energy Going?

Jesse H. Ausubel

This article appeared in the magazine The Industrial Physicist, published by the American Institute of Physics, in the February 2000 issue.

The essay had appeared in Italian in the special millennial edition of the Italian financial newspaper, Il Sole/24 Ore, on 17 November 1999; also in Italian as Benvenuti nel millennio nucleare, pp.163-168 in Duemila: Verso una societa aperta, M. Moussanet, ed., Il Sole 24 Ore, Milano, 2000.

Citation: The Industrial Physicist 6(1): 16-19, 2000 (February).

PDF version: where.pdf

There was an error in the printed version of Figure 3. Both the figure labeling and caption are wrong. The error has been corrected in the PDF version here and on The Industrial Physicist web site.

Figure 3 should read:

Figure 3. When total world per capita energy consumption (tons coal equivalent) is dissected into a succession of logistic curves, normalized on a scale that renders each S-shaped logistic pulse into a straight line, energy history is a succession of growth pulses evolving around the lead energy commodity of the era. In each era, consumption triples. "F" is the fraction of market share.

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URL: http://phe.rockefeller.edu/IndustrialPhysicistWhere/