Blog

We post the paper Death and the Human Environment, which appeared this
month in the journal Technology in Society.

We post the article The Evolution of Transport, which
appeared in this months issue of the magazine,
The Industrial Physicist.

The Census of Marine Life Home Page
CoML.org

Scientists Gear Up for Effort to Record Ocean Life

By REUTERS, February 22, 2001

SYDNEY – Marine scientists from across Australia are meeting at laboratories this week as part of an ambitious $1 billion international attempt to record all life in the world’s oceans, officials said Wednesday.

The International Census of Marine Life, being led by U.S. groups, could settle once and for all whether fabled animals such as Jules Verne’s giant squid populate the uncharted ocean depths.

“We should give them (giant squids) a run for their money if they were (down there),” said Don Michel, communications director of the Marine Research division of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).

Only around five percent of the world’s oceans have been surveyed for marine life — mostly in coastal regions.

The international census, expected to take 10 years, is being promoted by Jesse Ausubel of the U.S.-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a private philanthropic organization that fosters scientific programs.

An international steering committee from marine research institutions in the United States, Europe and Japan is due to release a scientific strategy for the data collection of the census later this year.

HIGH TECH SURVEY

So far 63 institutions in 15 countries had begun work around the world on an ocean bio-geographical information system that would support the census, Ausubel said in a CSIRO statement.

The Australian scientists were meeting in Hobart, on the island of Tasmania, to discuss Australia’s possible contribution to the project

The census would be conducted through multi-scanning technologies which can map the acoustic signatures of a wide range of sea life, Michel told Reuters.

Subsequent physical sampling of selected areas would then produce data that would be fed into super computers which would create models to produce fairly accurate estimates of most major forms of marine life.

The census would also use advanced electronic data-storage tags to track and monitor the behavior of large animals at the top of the food chain, such as whales, sea turtles and tuna, offering clues to the distribution and abundance of many other marine species, Ausubel said.

In addition, plans were under way to charter a ship “to go around the world in a Charles Darwin sort of way,” conducting deep water tests for viruses and bacteria, Michel said.

“(There could be) huge pharmaceutical applications,” he said.

The census project is expected to be backed by about $500 million from the United States, with the remaining $500 million expected to be contributed by Japan, Europe and other participants including Australia, Michel said.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

An adaptation of Jesse’s keynote address to the fall 2000 Business
Roundtable’s National Summit on Technology and Climate Change appears in
the January-February issue of The Electricity Journal.

Our simulation game of the US university, Virtual U, is one of ten finalists for best game of the year 2000 at the upcoming Independent Games Festival! Can we outsmart competitors such as “Shattered Galaxy”?

We post the paper The Forester’s Lever: Industrial Ecology and Wood Products, which
appeared recently in the Journal of Forestry.

We post the talk The Census of Marine Life and the Role of Aquariums, which Jesse
presented at the Musee Oceanographique, Monaco, 23 November 2000.

We post the paper “Restoring the Forests”, by David G. Victor and Jesse H. Ausubel,
which recently appeared in the journal Foreign Affairs.

The Forester’s Lever: Industrial Ecology and Wood Products, Iddo K.
Wernick, Paul E. Waggoner, and Jesse H. Ausubel, appeared in the Journal of
Forestry 98(10):8-14, 2000

and

Restoring the Forests, David G. Victor and Jesse H. Ausubel, appeared in
Foreign Affairs 79(6): 127-144, 2000

A column about us, “Optimistic about our environmental future”, is syndicated in many newspapers across the country.

By MITZI PERDUE, Scripps Howard News Service
September 11, 2000

As director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, Jesse Ausubel doesn’t have a lot of faith in man’s capacity for sacrifice and responsibility. Nevertheless, he’s optimistic about our environmental future.

We’ll get to the reasons for his optimism in a moment. But first, why is he so pessimistic about changing human behavior?

“Human nature hasn’t changed much since biblical times,” he points out. “We have to be very cautious in expecting abstinence or self-control.”

And he goes on to remind us, “The seven deadly sins are still very much with us today. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the president or a local auto mechanic, people are still driven by avarice, envy, jealousy, pride and so on.”

In Ausubel’s view, there’s a biological reason why these kinds of behaviors are difficult to change. It has to do with how our brains are structured.

The most primitive part of our brains has structures and functions that closely resemble a reptile’s brain. This reptilelike part controls such things as self-preservation, aggression, patrolling territory and displays of dominance or submission.

A second, less primitive, part of the human brain has a lot in common with the brains of other mammals. This section controls emotions and behaviors such as care of the young and mutual grooming.

The third and largest area of our brains, the neocortex, is the part that makes humans unique. The neocortex makes possible intellectual tasks such as reading, writing or abstract thinking.

Unfortunately, the reptilelike part of our brain is resistant to change. It’s extremely difficult to change, for example, the instinct for territoriality. The instinct to maximize territory, whether actual territory or physical possessions, is deeply wired into our brains and not easily satisfied. “Bill Gates may have $100 billion,” Ausubel points out, “but he hasn’t run out of ideas on how to spend his money.”

Ausubel can imagine a time when people may no longer have an innate desire for space and mobility and possessions, but unfortunately, the time scale for this could be a million years. He’d rather see us rely on changing technology instead of hoping that the human brain will change.

The good news is that technology is enabling us to have less impact on the environment. For example, improved agricultural technology means less land needs to be cultivated.

“If, during the next 60 to 70 years the world farmer reaches the average yield of today’s USA corn grower, the 10 billion people likely to live on Earth will need only half of today’s cropland.”

To show how this has already worked, he noted that since 1966 wheat farmers in India have increased yields so much that they have been able to save 50 million hectares of land from being plowed. That’s an area equivalent to the size of Spain.

Or take energy production. “The total efficiency of the energy system, from extracting a kilo of coal to the light it ultimately generates so you can read Harry Potter, is only about 5 percent. We’re far from the potential performance of what we could do,” he says.

Ausubel hopes that environmental engineers will help change technology since our brains aren’t going to change anytime soon. If you know of a young person who is looking for a career where he or she could make a difference, why not suggest environmental engineering?

On the Net: https://phe.rockefeller.edu.

(Mitzi Perdue writes about environmentally related matters for Scripps Howard News Service.)

SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
1090 Vermont Ave. N.W. Suite 1000
Washington, D.C. USA 20005
GENERAL LINE: 1.202.408.1484
FAX: 1.202.408.5950

On 10 September 2000 our beloved friend and valued colleague William A. Nierenberg, former director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, passed away. A Tribute was prepared for the Memorial Service held in Bill’s honor at Scripps on 28 September.