In December 2018 Jesse Ausubel had the privilege and fun of inclusion in the delegation to Stockholm of William Nordhaus for his receipt of a Nobel prize. The occasion stimulated Jesse’s recollection, “Getting to know Bill Nordhaus and Climate: On the occasion of his receipt of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for the study of the economics of climate change.“
Area of Research: Energy and Climate
Nordhaus Nobel
William Nordhaus today earned the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his pioneering work on climate change. Hooray for Bill!
Jesse first encountered Bill’s work in the late 1970s, started a magazine file of it, and retains to this day first editions of the classic inventive papers from 1975, Can We Control Carbon Dioxide?, and 1977, Strategies for the Control of Carbon Dioxide, and others that followed (see photo below).
Jesse served as a research assistant to Bill during the 1981-1983 Carbon Dioxide Assessment Committee of the National Academy of Sciences and co-authored with him the 1983 paper, J. A review of estimates of future carbon dioxide emissions in Changing climate: Report of the carbon dioxide assessment committee, pp. 153-185, National Academy Press, Washington DC 1983.
Breakthrough Virginia 2017
Jesse Ausubel offered 900 words of remarks On Energy Transitions to open a panel discussion at the Breakthrough Dialogue East at Airlie House in Virginia on 17 November 2017.
The Switch Interview
Jesse was interviewed by Switch Energy Alliance in this short video, where he discusses reducing industrial encroachment into nature.
Energy Density AAPG
We post Jesse Ausubel’s centennial address to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). The address, Density: Key to Fake and True News about Energy and Environment, will appear in the AAPG’s Search and Discovery, as contribution #70272 (2017).
Centennial meeting of petroleum geologists
Jesse Ausubel speaks in Houston at the 4 April 2017 session of the centennial meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists on the next 100 years of energy use.
Lux interview with Jesse Ausubel
Paul Kedrosky and Sam Arbesman of venture capital firm Lux posted a podcast in their Intersections series of an interview with Jesse Ausubel about energy and resources, transportation and food.
Nuclear Density
We post “Power Density and the Nuclear Opportunity” by Jesse H. Ausubel. The talk is adapted from the keynote address to the Nuclear Power Council, Electric Power Research Institute, Atlanta, Georgia, 3 September 2015. Thanks to EPRI’s Neil Wilmshurst for the opportunity to develop and present the talk.
Zero emission power plant construction
We are pleased to read that North Carolina-based company NET Power Breaks Ground on Demonstration Plant for World’s First Emissions-Free, Low-Cost Fossil Fuel Power Technology. The NET Power technology, which uses carbon dioxide as a working fluid to drive a combustion turbine, is precisely what we proposed in our work on Zero Emission Power Plants during the 1990s with Cesare Marchetti, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Eugen Yantovski, and colleagues at Tokyo Electric Power. See, for example, the sections on ZEPPs in Five worthy ways to spend large amounts of money for research on environment and resources (The Bridge 29(3): 4-16, 1999) and JH Ausubel Big green energy machines (The Industrial Physicist 10(5): 20-24, 2004). We wish for the success of NET Power and also Clean Energy Systems, another firm with promising ZEPP technology.
Energy Xchange radio interview
The Energy Xchange, an independent producer of podcasts, recorded a 1-hour conversation on energy of
Scott W. Tinker – director, Bureau of Economic Geology,University of Texas at Austin;
Steven E. Koonin– former undersecretary for science, U.S. Department of Energy
Jesse H. Ausubel – director, Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University;
Podcast and transcript are here. Faster to browse the text than listen.