The Return of Nature, a lightly edited version of Jesse Ausubel’s Nature Rebounds SALT talk, has been published in The Breakthrough Journal.
A pdf version of the paper with more figures and photos, titled “Nature Rebounds”, can be found here.
Thanks to editors Dale Langford and Jenna Mukono, to Iddo Wernick for careful work on the figures, and to Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus for Breakthrough’s hospitality.
Jesse Ausubel’s short essay,Methane Hydrates and the Deep Carbon Observatory, about the recently published Frozen Heat report, has been posted on the DCO website.
The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) released the short report from the November 2014 Fort Worth meeting on America’s Increasing Reliance on Natural Gas: Benefits and Risks of a Methane Economy. Jesse Ausubel served on the organizing committee, chaired by Chris Cameron.
The full UNEP report on methane hydrates, Frozen Heat: UNEP Global Outlook on Methane Gas Hydrates, Volume 1 & 2 as well as Executive Summary, has been published.
PHE alumna Nadejda Victor and Jesse Ausubel contributed to Chapter one of Volume 2.
The 23 February 2015 New Yorker magazine features the acoustic company of our long-time research associate, Perrin Meyer, in a fascinating article about controlling sonic microenvironments, such as individual tables in restaurants, in Wizards of Sound.
Jesse Ausubel will give a lecture 6:30-8:30 pm at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Learn More
Jesse Ausubel’s Nature Rebounds January 2015 seminar for the Long Now Foundation is now available as:
Full-length Video on Long Now Public Website.
Also on YouTube.
The audio podcast is availabe at iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/salt-seminars-about-long-term/id186908455
And through the SoundCloud page: https://soundcloud.com/longnow/nature-rebounding-land-and-ocean-sparing-through-concentrating-human-activities
Working with colleagues at National Taiwan University, PHE researcher Iddo Wernick coauthored a paper, published in the journal Sustainability, on environmental evaluation of supply chains. The full citation is:
In a 2011 lecture at Iowa State University, Prof. Thomas Sinclair (North Carolina State) concluded from models and projections of yields of maize that maximum US corn yields would be in the neighborhood of 254 bushels per acre, that is, 16 metric tons per hectare.
Between 2009 and 2012 the national average corn yield has been 123 to 165 bushels per acre, about half Sinclair’s maximum of 254. Because Sinclair was speaking of maximum and the US Department of Agriculture reported actual yields for the vast US crop, the excess of Sinclair’s maximum over an actual average is not surprising and shows the opportunity for agronomist scientists is considerable.
Fortunately other reports, these of actual experience, show an even greater opportunity than that between Sinclair’s projected maximum and averages over the entire USA.
For 50 years the National Corn Growers Association has conducted a national contest, and in 2014 the NCGA reported seven participants beat 400 bushels per acre. One participant, Randy Dowdy of Valdosta, Georgia produced 503.
Thus, actual yields of corn show that farmers and suppliers have plenty of room to raise the US average yield from about 150 bushels per acre toward a maximum of 503.
And that performance that professors conclude impossible in theory can happen in practice.
PHE’s Iddo Wernick was named a Senior Fellow of the Breakthrough Institute for his work on the decoupling of resource use from the environment. This continues our connection with the Institute, as PHE was recognized last year with the award of the Breakthrough Paradigm Prize to Jesse for his work on harnessing technology to lighten the human footprint.