Robert Ayres (scientist) Robert Underwood Ayres is an American-born physicist and economist. His career has focused on the application of physical ideas, especially the laws of thermodynamics , to economics ; a long-standing pioneering interest in material flows and transformations —a concept which he originated. His most recent work challenges the widely held economic theory of growth .Career Trained as a physicist at the University of Chicago , University of Maryland , and King's College London , Ayres has dedicated his professional life to advancing the environment, technology and resource end of the sustainability agenda. His major research interests include technological change, environmental economics , "industrial metabolism" and "eco-restructuring". He has worked at the Hudson Institute , Resources for the Future Inc and International Research and Technology Corp. From 1979 until 1992 he was Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University , Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, except for two years on leave at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg Austria. In 1992 he moved to the international business school INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France as Sandoz Professor of Environment and Management. Since his formal retirement in 2000 he has been Jubilee Visiting Professor and king Karl Gustav XVI professor of environmental science at Chalmers Institute of Technology Gothenburg. He is currently an Institute Scholar at IIASA. He remains an active researcher. He has written or co-authored 20 books, edited or coedited another dozen books, written or co-authored more than 200 journal articles and book chapters not to mention many unpublished reports, on subjects ranging from environmental effects of nuclear war to theoretical economics. But most of his life-work is interdisciplinary . He was a pioneer of a new field, sometimes called Industrial Metabolism or Industrial Ecology . He has contributed to futures studies , technological forecasting , transportation and energy studies, material flow studies, environmental technology, environmental economics, thermodynamics and economics, and the theory of economic growth . Here taken from one of his recent papers are two paragraphs that provide a flavor of his recent work: Mainstream economics today is based to a large extent on bad ideas. Economic concepts, from foundational issues like markets, supply and demand and “free trade”, to money and finance, lack any systematic awareness of the physical process of production or the implications of the Laws of Thermodynamics for those processes. A corollary, almost worthy of being a separate bad idea on its own, is that energy doesn’t matter because the cost share of energy in the economy is so small that it can be ignored e.g.. The so-called “production functions” used by all schools of economic thought that build growth models omit any necessary role for energy, as if output could be produced by labor and capital alone—or as if energy is merely a form of man-made capital that can be produced by labor and capital. The essential truth missing from economic education today is that energy is the stuff of the universe , that all matter is also a form of energy , and that the economic system is essentially a system for extracting, processing and transforming energy as resources into energy embodied in products and services. This is a thermodynamic process, as the Rumanian economist Georgescu-Roegen said half a century ago. The economic process is subject to both the first law of thermodynamics and the second law of thermodynamics . The “first law” implies that the notion of “consumption” as applied to products is misleading: material transformation processes unavoidably generate large quantities of material wastes or residualsPublications Paperback Paperback Alternative ISBNs: Hardcover e-book Alternative
Popular articles Javier Milei - Argentine libertarian economist, author, radio conductor and public speaker sympathetic to the Austrian School of economic thought. He became widely known for his regular ...Jimmy Carter - American politician, philanthropist, and former farmer who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previ...UEFA Euro 2024 - The 2024 UEFA European Football Championship , commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2024 or simply Euro 2024 , will be the 17th edition of the UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial internationa...Argentina - country located mostly in the southern half of South America. Sharing the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, the country is also b...Sam Altman - American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger. He is the former president of Y Combinator and now the CEO of OpenAI. Early life and education. ...Rosalynn Carter - American who served as First Lady of the United States from 1977 to 1981 as the wife of President Jimmy Carter. For decades, she has been a leading advocate for numerou...Next Argentine presidential election - Next Argentine presidential election - presidential election in Argentina....Popular movies The Hunger Games (film) - 2012 American dystopian action thriller science fiction-adventure film directed by Gary Ross and based on Suzanne Collins’s 2008 novel of the same name. It is the first insta...untitled Captain Marvel sequel - part of Marvel Cinematic Universe....Killers of the Flower Moon (film project) - Killers of the Flower Moon - film project in United States of America. It was presented as drama, detective fiction, thriller. The film project starred Leonardo Dicaprio, Robert De Niro. Director of...Five Nights at Freddy's (film) - Five Nights at Freddy's - film published in 2017 in United States of America. Scenarist of the film - Scott Cawthon....Popular video games Minecraft - sandbox video game developed by Mojang Studios. Created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language and released as a public alpha for personal computers in 2...Grand Theft Auto V - 2013 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the first main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series since 2008's Grand Theft ...Roblox - online game platform and game creation system that allows users to program games and play games created by other users. Founded by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004 and released in...Baldur's Gate III - upcoming role-playing video game developed and published by Larian Studios for Microsoft Windows and the Stadia streaming service. It is the third main game in the Baldur's ...Alan Wake - action-adventure video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Studios, released for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The story follows best-selling thri...Fortnite - online video game developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in three distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: ...Super Mario RPG - is a role-playing video game developed by Square and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1996. It was directed by Yoshihiko Maekawa and Chihiro Fujioka and produced by...Popular books Book of Revelation - The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament, and consequently is also the final book of the Christian Bible. Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: apok...Book of Genesis - account of the creation of the world, the early history of humanity, Israel's ancestors and the origins...Gospel of Matthew - The Gospel According to Matthew is the first book of the New Testament and one of the three synoptic gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, rejected and executed in Israel, pronounces judgement on ...Michelin Guide - Michelin Guides are a series of guide books published by the French tyre company Michelin for more than a century. The term normally refers to the annually published Michelin Red Guide , the oldest...Psalms - The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms , the Psalter or "the Psalms", is the first book of the Ketuvim , the third section of the Hebrew Bible, and thus a book of th...Ecclesiastes - Ecclesiastes is one of 24 books of the Tanakh , where it is classified as one of the Ketuvim . Originally written c. 450–200 BCE, it is also among the canonical Wisdom literature of the Old Tes...The 48 Laws of Power - non-fiction book by American author Robert Greene. The book...Popular television series The Crown (TV series) - historical drama web television series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, created and principally written by Peter Morgan, and produced by Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Tel...Friends - American sitcom television series, created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004, lasting ten seasons. With an ensemble cast sta...Young Sheldon - spin-off prequel to The Big Bang Theory and begins with the character Sheldon...Modern Family - American television mockumentary family sitcom created by Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan for the American Broadcasting Company. It ran for eleven seasons, from September 23...Loki (TV series) - upcoming American web television miniseries created for Disney+ by Michael Waldron, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, shar...Game of Thrones - American fantasy drama television series created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss for HBO. It...Shameless (American TV series) - American comedy-drama television series developed by John Wells which debuted on Showtime on January 9, 2011. It...
OWIKI.org . Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.