Program for the Human Environment

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.

ABC TV’s Bill Blakemore interviewed Jesse for a 7-minute segment about the Census of Marine Life for the 17 February edition of his weekly program, Nature’s Edge.

Thanks to Bill and his crew for an excellent piece!