The Cooler Heads Coalition

Invites you to

a Congressional and Media Briefing

Climate Change:the Known,the Unknown,the Unknowable

 with

Mr. Jesse H. Ausubel

Rockefeller University

Friday, February 7

Noon-1:30 PM

628, Senate Dirksen Office Building

Lunch Provided

Reservations are required.

Please RSVP by calling Paul Georgia at (202) 331-2257

Or by e-mail:[email protected].

Climate Change: the Known, the Unknown, the Unknowable

Much of what is unknown about climate change that we want to know may be unknowable.  No amount of research in the next few decades will make much difference.  I will comment on sources of the limits to knowledge and on their implications for today’s research programs and expenditures.  Meanwhile, the most important “known,” or discovery, of the past 25 years of research on the energy system, namely, its de-carbonization, remains largely undigested in assessments of global warming and in response strategies.

Biography of Jesse H. Ausubel

Jesse H. Ausubel is Director of the Program for the Human Environment at the Rockefeller University in New York City.  Mr. Ausubel’s interests include environmental science and technology, industrial evolution, and the nature of the research enterprise.  Mr. Ausubel spent the first decade of his career in Washington, DC working for the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering.  On behalf of the Academies, he was one of the main organizers of the first U. N. World Climate Conference in Geneva in 1979, an event which substantially elevated the global warming issue on scientific and political agendas.  He was the main author of the 1983 NRC report, Changing Climate, the first comprehensive review of the greenhouse effect.  He also drafted Toward an International Geosphere-Biosphere Program: A Study of Global Change, the 1983 report originating the Global Change Program.  In 1991, Mr. Ausubel published the first paper on the concept of the “de-carbonization” of the energy system.  The main goal of his work at the Rockefeller University is elaborating a technical vision of a large, prosperous economy that approaches zero emissions and treads lightly on the earth.  http://phe.rockefeller.edu