Jesse Ausubel will be honored with the 2022 Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest. This award is presented annually by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the Nierenberg Family to honor the memory of William A. Nierenberg, an esteemed physicist and national science leader who served Scripps Oceanography as director for two decades. Previous awardees include atmospheric scientist Warren Washington, biochemist and Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, filmmaker Sir David Attenborough, and primatologist Dame Jane Goodall, among others.
Area of Research: Energy and Climate
Iddo on resource demands of renewables
PHE senior research associate Iddo Wernick publishes an op-ed in RealClear Science: Green Technologies Have a Glaring Problem of Scale
Podcast with Jesse Ausubel
Jesse reflects on decarbonization, dematerialization, land-sparing, industrial ecology, industrialization of the oceans, biological traces of fishes and of Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Seven Deadly Sins in an 83″ podcast with Robert Bryce, author of Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: and A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations.
The Podcast is also on YouTube where you get to see who sings Take Me Out to the Ballgame.
Quantifying forest change in the European Union
Quantifying forest change in the European Union
Iddo Wernick, our long-time collaborator Pekka Kauppi, and other forestry experts published Quantifying forest change in the European Union in Nature vol 592 pages E13–E14 (2021). The authors argue that net carbon stored in the EU continues to increase as forest volume accumulates faster than additions to (and fluctuations in) the annual harvest.
For some of our earlier forest work, see PNAS publishes Forests paper and Quandaries of forest area, volume, biomass, and carbon explored with the forest identity.
Carbon benefits from Forest Transitions promoting biomass expansions and thickening
Eos article on Measuring Ambient Ocean Sound During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Measuring Ambient Ocean Sound During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An expanded nonmilitary hydrophone network provides new opportunities to understand the variability and trends of ocean sound and the effects of sound on marine organisms by Peter L. Tyack, Jennifer Miksis-Olds, Jesse Ausubel, and Edward R. Urban Jr. appears in Eos magazine. Let’s learn from the COVID-19 pause to help achieve safer operations for shipping industries, offshore energy operators, navies, and other users of the ocean.
A slighly abbreviated version appeared in Maritime Executive as COVID-19 Downturn Creates an Opportunity to Study a Quieter Ocean.
Undergrad interviews Jesse Ausubel about his career
Wake Forest University undergraduate Karina Macosko asks Jesse about climate change, counting fish, and other subjects of his work in a 15-minute video interview.
Shellenberger Book Review
PHE Researcher Iddo Wernick published a review of the recently released book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger
Robert Bryce on electricity
The lively mind and pen of Robert Bryce have authored the new book, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations. We were happy to talk with Robert about subjects in the book, for example, vertical cities. ‘Ausubel continued, “Basically, height is electrical.”‘ (p. 24)