In a Dot Earth blog entry on African development, Andy Revkin of the New York Times refers to our work on the importance of energy gases.

With the release of new results building our picture of life in oceans past, the History of Marine Animal Populations project of the Census of Marine Life earns public attention, for example, in the San Diego Tribune and UK Guardian.

Dalhousie University bestows an honorary doctorate on Jesse,
really an honor for everyone who has contributed to the work of
the ‘Program for the Human Environment’ for the past 20 years.  We post
Jesse’s Convocation address, titled “Son et lumiere“, discussing
environmental dimensions of sound and light.

Oceans speak volumes. Sound spreads widely in the world’s oceans, and the clamour of human activity reaches every cove, says Jesse Ausubel, director of the Human Environment program at Rockefeller University in Manhattan.

“Motors and propellers are noisy; so are jet skis and oil-and-gas exploration. In fact, we make the oceans three decibels noisier each decade”, he says. In a convocation address this week at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Dr. Ausubel proposed turning down the volume for four hours in an International Quiet Ocean Experiment. That would be enough time for thousands of researchers around the world to see how sea creatures respond to pre-industrial noise levels, he says. Would whales, for example, change the frequencies they use to communicate? If we can quiet things down, would they return to their normal, natural frequency rather than deepening their voices or raising their voices? he said an interview.

Dr. Ausubel has experience with ambitious, large-scale scientific projects. He played an important role in creating the Encyclopedia of Life, an online catalogue of the species on Earth, and was also involved in establishing the Census for Marine Life, an international program to chart life in the oceans by 2010.

Scientists from around the world who are interested in his Quiet Ocean Experiment will get together for their first meeting before the end of the year .

Dr. Ausubel acknowledges how difficult it will be to get four noise-free hours. Navies and the world’s maritime industries would have to be on board. “Maybe the time to do it would be Christmas Day,” he says. “We would like to inconvenience people as little as possible”.

New York Times columnist John Tierney publishes an article “Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet” about the PHE work on whether Richer is Greener.

Some wonder whether the present economic slump will elicit a change of direction and faster progress in reducing environmental harm.  Jesse Ausubel and Paul Waggoner, assisted by Smriti Rao, examined what happened to USA energy use and emissions during the slumps of the 1930s and after World War II.   A short essay, “The Jack Rabbit of Depression, or Do economic slumps benefit environment?” provides our answer.  Two 40-second animations prepared by Smriti show the year-by-year changes from 1920 to 1940 of energy intensity and carbon emissions.

Keeping a steady course rather than darting about was also a theme of Jesse’s address “Natural Gas and the Jack Rabbit” to the Power South Energy Cooperative on 22 January 2009.

We post the rise and fall of sulfur dioxide emissions in the USA, which form an Environmental Kuznets Curve where richer is first dirtier and then richer becomes cleaner, as explored in the 3/12/09 posting about “Is Richer Greener“?

PHE-sponsored “Sushi-gate” investigation is featured in April 2009 Scripps Oceanographic Institute Magazine. The article, which describes work done by FISHBOL researchers Phil Hastings and Ron Burton, quotes PHE’s Mark Stoeckle and cites his daughter Kate, co-author with her high school classmate Louisa Strauss, of 2008 report on mislabeled fish sold in NYC revealed by DNA barcoding (aka “Sushi-gate”).

Thanks to scanning by Google Books, we post two vintage reports for which Jesse early in his career was the lead scribe: Changing Climate, Report of the Carbon Dioxide Assessment Committee, National Research Council, Washington DC , 1983. Toward an International Geosphere-Biosphere Program: A Study of Global Change, National Research Council, Washington DC , 1983.

“Changing Climate” was the first comprehensive review of the now popular global warming issue, while “Toward an IGBP” defined what became the Global Change Research Program.

Great scientist and friend Joshua Lederberg passed away 2 February 2008.  Josh recruited Jesse to The Rockefeller University in 1984, promoted him in 1989, and supported the formation of the Program for the Human Environment in 1993.   Jesse was honored to offer recollections of Josh at his memorial service in February 2008 and a tribute to Josh’s foresight at the January 2009 Rockefeller symposium celebrating his contributions.  The tribute highlights Josh’s astonishing anticipation in 1978 of the growth of email and the Internet.

On 19 January New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin blogged the text of our February 2004 Keystone talk Does Climate Still Matter.

This led to several requests for the visuals from the talk, which was the last that Jesse gave using transparencies. We have now scanned and posted the antique plastic Keystone slides.