8 Jul 2010: A new video overview of my paper Is humanity doomed? Insights from astrobiology is now available at YouTube. The video was produced by Mike Dawson from Penn State Geography. This is my first video overview to go up and thus is somewhat of a pilot effort.
7 Jun 2010: A new paper has been accepted for publication. "Space-time discounting in climate change adaptation" will appear in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. The article was written with my advisor, Bill Easterling, and is part of my Ph.D. dissertation - the first part to be accepted for publication.
25 May 2010: A new paper has been accepted for publication. "Intrinsic ethics regarding integrated assessment models for climate management" will appear in Science and Engineering Ethics. The article was written with seven other Penn State researchers affiliated with the Rock Ethics Institute as part of a broader project on Ethics in Environmental Education. A previous article from this project is "The role of the NSF Broader Impacts Criterion in enhancing research ethics pedagogy".
8 Mar 2010: Several website modifications are now up. There are new sections for my views on several aspects of ethics and for my magazine and online publications. Also, my academic publications page has been overhauled, now providing short summaries of each publication and linking to new html pages for most of them. Finally, I've revised my research page, linking to new pages on astrobiology, artificial general intelligence, and discounting. Hopefully these modifications will make this site more helpful.
13 Feb 2010: Two new articles out. Is humanity doomed? Insights from astrobiology has been published in the new open-access journal Sustainability. How Long Till Human-Level AI? What Do the Experts Say? has been published in h+ Magazine. h+ is short for "humanity plus" and is a symbol of transhumanism. I'm not a transhumanist myself but I do consider transhumanist topcs such as AI to be important. The new article was written with Ben Goertzel and Ted Goertzel as part of a broader project on artificial general intelligence. See article tweets at TechBlips.
30 Jan 2010: Check out the upcoming March 2010 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine for "Where have all the aliens gone? Sustainability may explain the absence of extraterrestrials", an article I wrote with Jacob Haqq-Misra. The article is based on our 'Sustainability Solution' to the Fermi Paradox (preprint (pdf)). At S&T's request we will not be posting preprints online. Buy the issue; it's a great magazine!
24 Dec 2009: So far, 18 of my 174 Geography 30 students have had their writing published - see this list. Meanwhile, my op-ed on the course, "Collaboration is key to sustainability", was published in the Centre Daily Times on December 1.
27 Nov 2009: Next week my Geography 30 students present their course projects at State College Borough Hall. The presentations are Tuesday (1 Dec) and Thursday (3 Dec) from 5-9pm. Full details here.
29 Sep 2009: My review of the film District 9 has been accepted at Journal of Evolution and Technology. See the preprint (pdf). Also, an article "Where have all the aliens gone? Sustainability may explain the absence of extraterrestrials" will appear in the popular magazine Sky & Telescope, probably in January 2010. The article is co-written by Jacob Haqq-Misra and is based on our 'Sustainability Solution' to the Fermi Paradox (preprint (pdf)). At S&T's request we will not be posting preprints online. Buy the issue; it's a great magazine!
2 Sep 2009: A new paper has been accepted for publication. "The role of the NSF Broader Impacts Criterion in enhancing research ethics pedagogy" will appear in Social Epistemology. See the summary (pdf) and the full paper (pdf). The article was written with seven other Penn State researchers affiliated with the Rock Ethics Institute as part of a broader project on Ethics in Environmental Education.
22 Aug 2009: A new paper has been accepted for publication. "Description, prescription and the choice of discount rates" will appear in Ecological Economics. See the summary (pdf) and the full paper (pdf). This fall I am again teaching Geography 30 (Geographic Perspectives on Sustainability and Human-Environment Systems) at Penn State while helping the Dutton Institute develop an online version of the course. See also the Geog 30 Fall 2009 course blog.
20 Jul 2009: An op-ed, "Senate should pass Clean Energy and Security Act", has been published in the Centre Daily Times. This is a different version of "Senate should pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act" published in the Odessa American (no online version) and the Asheville Citizen-Times.
14 Jul 2009: I just signed up for a Twitter account. I'll admit I'm a bit skeptical about the merits of Twitter, but I'm willing to give it a shot. Also, a new op-ed, "Senate should pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act", has been published in the Odessa American (no online version) and the Asheville Citizen-Times. It was distributed through the American Geographical Society Media Center.
11 Jul 2009: A new paper has been accepted for publication. "Universalist ethics in extraterrestrial encounter" will appear in Acta Astronautica. See the summary (pdf) and the full paper (pdf). And just in time for District 9...
3 Jul 2009: The summer Geography 30 has ended. Students submitted content from their course projects to various public forums. Two are available online: Cut meat consumption by Christina Ferry and Help the environment and yourself - don't drive by Alexis Roseman. I will teach the course again in the fall, with 178 students instead of 9.
9 Apr 2009: A new op-ed, "It's time to establish a geography department", published at the University of Rochester Campus Times. html * pdf (p.7)
2 Apr 2009: This summer I will be teaching Geography 30 (Geographic Perspectives on Sustainability and Human-Environment Systems) at Penn State.
20 Feb 2009: Summaries of the two new astrobiology papers are now available. For "Cost-benefit analysis of space exploration: Some ethical considerations", see the summary (pdf) and the full paper (pdf). For "The 'Sustainability Solution' to the Fermi Paradox", see the summary (pdf) and the full paper (pdf).
12 Feb 2009: Two new papers accepted for publication, both related to astrobiology. The first, "Cost-benefit analysis of space exploration: Some ethical considerations", will appear in Space Policy. See the preprint (pdf). The second, "The 'Sustainability Solution' to the Fermi Paradox", will appear in Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. See the preprint (pdf). The Sustainability Solution paper is written with Jacob Haqq-Misra, an astrobiologist/meteorologist here at Penn State.
4 Jan 2009: I'm now on the Lifeboat Foundation Advisory Board- see my profile there. Lifeboat is a nonprofit working on global catastrophic risk reduction.
13 October 2008: A review of the book Global Catastrophic Risks has been accepted for publication at Risk Analysis. See the preprint (pdf).
2 October 2008: A new paper, "The 'Hidden' Social Costs of Forestry Offsets", with Colin Hunt from the University of Queensland, has been accepted for publication at Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. See the preprint (pdf), a one-page summary (pdf), and the MASGC site. I also have a new op-ed out, "Reducing Catastrophic Risk Through Integrative Assessment", published at the Hawaii Reporter (link-html) and the Daily Camera (Boulder, CO) (link-html). The article was distributed through the American Geographical Society Media Center- see their archive: pdf.
27 July 2008: Just back from two weeks in Europe surrounding the Oxford Global Catastrophic Risks conference. The conference did an excellent job of bringing together an interdisciplinary group of researchers on this most important topic. I look forward to continued involvement in the GCR community.
13 May 2008: Just completed a new website redesign. My paper "Better to exist: a reply to Benatar" has recently been accepted for publication in the Journal of Medical Ethics; a preprint (pdf) is online. Over the next few weeks, I am attending meetings with the CMU Climate Decision Making Center in Pittsburgh and the Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship in St. Louis. This summer I will be primarily in State College working on various research projects.
Created 27 Jul 2007 * Updated 8 Jul 2010