Some Ways to Lessen Worries about Climate Change [PDF]

JH Ausubel. The Electricity Journal 14 (1): 24–33 2001

…1990); US Department of Transportation, National Transportation Statistics (Washington, DC: Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 1999). Online at https://www.bts.gov/btsprod/nts/. Figure 4. The maximum size of power plants, US. Each line represents…

Elektron: Electrical Systems in Retrospect and Prospect

JH Ausubel, C Marchetti. Technological Trajectories and the Human Environment 110–134 1997 Also appeared in Daedalus 125(3):139-169, Summer 1996.

…hours. Projecting electricity demand matters because it influences investments in capacity. Accurate projections might have lessened the pain for the utilities, which ordered and then canceled plants; the equipment suppliers,…

CoML-New Species in Australia

Our Census of Marine Life colleagues exploring Australia ’s reefs have discovered hundreds of undescribed corals and other species, including a little animal that eats the tongues of fish. Browse…

Can Technology Spare the Earth?

JH Ausubel. Am Sci 84 (2): 166–178 1996 Republished in Current Perspectives in Geology, Fourth Edition, Michael McKinney, Robert L. Tolliver, Parri Shariff, eds., Wadsworth, Boston, MA, 1998.

…requires micro- or zero emissions per unit of economic activity to maintain or enhance environmental quality In other words, Americans need to clean processes by more than one order of…

Mitigation and Adaptation for Climate Change: Answers and Questions

JH Ausubel. The Bridge 23 (3): 15–30 1993 Also pp. 557-584 in Costs, Impacts, and Benefits of CO2 Mitigation, Y. Kaya, N. Nakicenovic, W.D. Nordhaus, and F.L. Toth, eds., International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, 1993.

…net costs (or benefits), but also for the levels of uncertainty surrounding them. Here the “Precautionary Principle” for environmental management comes into play. The Precautionary Principle is a legal term…

Full PDR issue online

The entire issue of Population and Development Review with our article about Peak Farmland is now online: Population and Public Policy: Essays in Honor of Paul Demeny https://www.popcouncil.org/publications/books/2012_PDRSuppPopPublicPolicy.asp and will…

How Did Noah’s Ark Float?

…far, in a free online service (https://www.eol.org/). “There are expectations of 8 to 50 million more species out there that we haven’t identified yet,” Edwards said. Other experts’ estimates of…

On Sparing Farmland and Spreading Forest

JH Ausubel. Forestry at the Great Divide: Proceedings of the Society of American Foresters 2001 Convention, Society of American Foresters, Bethesda MD 127–138 2002

…Improved tractors, low tilling, targeted herbicides and pesticides, and an extended capacity for N fixation might reduce energy consumption in agriculture by an order of magnitude. Lifting yields while minimizing…

Reasons to Worry About the Human Environment

JH Ausubel. Journal of the Cosmos Club of Washington D.C 8 (1): 12 1998 Republished in Technology in Society 21:217-231, 1999. 

…The annual worldwide production of most of the toxic heavy metals, including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, and mercury, has increased by 2–3 orders of magnitude over the past 1–2…

International Conflicts over Environment: Scientist’s Roles and Opportunities

JH Ausubel. Scientific Cooperation, State Conflict: The Role of Scientists in Mitigating International Discord, "Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences" 866: 253–258 1998

…War in 1990–1991. Though I believe the main motive for Iraq in the war was to raise its place in the international pecking order, oil resources certainly pointed the way….