K. Lee Lerner
A widely published writer recognized for his use of language, accuracy, and balanced presentation, K. Lee Lerner’s extensive dossier as an author, editor, and producer of science and factual media contains multiple award-winning books and media projects. Lerner also serves as a respected problem-solving intelligence and investigations consultant as well as a globally-experienced crisis communications expert.
Current consulting areas of focus include facilitating AI integration, providing cost-effective solutions to energy and environmental challenges, evaluating emerging biotech, and crisis management related to public health perils, including radiologic, chemical, and biologic hazards (e.g., infectious disease outbreaks). Specialty services provided government and private entities includes training personnel in the use of OSINT technology.
A member of the National Press Club in Washington, for more than 30 years, Lerner's syndicated 'Taking Bearings' essays have offered evidence-based perspectives on science, current events, and global issues.
"Lerner's influential Academia site consistently ranks among those most frequently accessed by students, scholars, and decision makers around the world." -- Harvard Scholar bio
A CV, bibliography, and additional biographical information are available at https://www.press.org/member/profile/k-lee-lerner and via Lerner's Harvard Scholar site (retired and archived, January 2025) to https://web.archive.org/web/20250106141113/https://scholar.harvard.edu/kleelerner
Photo: K. Lee Lerner weathering a storm aboard his sailboat, Bellissima (Bella). Copyright and reuse policy: Unless otherwise attributed, all writing and photos on this site are © K. Lee Lerner or ©LMG. All commercial rights reserved. The content is, however, CC BY-NC-ND for scholarly non-commercial use.
Address: LMG: kdesk@lernermedia.co.uk
London: +44.(0) 141.416.0408
Paris: +33 0870.469.221
US: 01 251.377.3564
Current consulting areas of focus include facilitating AI integration, providing cost-effective solutions to energy and environmental challenges, evaluating emerging biotech, and crisis management related to public health perils, including radiologic, chemical, and biologic hazards (e.g., infectious disease outbreaks). Specialty services provided government and private entities includes training personnel in the use of OSINT technology.
A member of the National Press Club in Washington, for more than 30 years, Lerner's syndicated 'Taking Bearings' essays have offered evidence-based perspectives on science, current events, and global issues.
"Lerner's influential Academia site consistently ranks among those most frequently accessed by students, scholars, and decision makers around the world." -- Harvard Scholar bio
A CV, bibliography, and additional biographical information are available at https://www.press.org/member/profile/k-lee-lerner and via Lerner's Harvard Scholar site (retired and archived, January 2025) to https://web.archive.org/web/20250106141113/https://scholar.harvard.edu/kleelerner
Photo: K. Lee Lerner weathering a storm aboard his sailboat, Bellissima (Bella). Copyright and reuse policy: Unless otherwise attributed, all writing and photos on this site are © K. Lee Lerner or ©LMG. All commercial rights reserved. The content is, however, CC BY-NC-ND for scholarly non-commercial use.
Address: LMG: kdesk@lernermedia.co.uk
London: +44.(0) 141.416.0408
Paris: +33 0870.469.221
US: 01 251.377.3564
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Whether students want to know how to live or work more sustainably, or want to know more about the ecology of sustainability, or want to learn more about the economics or politics involved with sustainability, this is the resource to turn to.
Topics on sustainability range from he ecology of sustainability to economics and politics of sustainability, The 149 entries explain basic principles of Sustainability, ranging from Agricultural Runoff to Zoning Laws, as well as discussions of important treaties, laws, organizations, and events related to sustainability, such as Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and Earth Day.
The energy sources considered alternative today were the only ones available throughout most of human history.
Nonrenewable fuels such as coal and petroleum only began to be widely used starting with the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s. Some renewables, such as hydropower and wood, remained in use even after the Industrial Revolution, though their share of the energy supply dwindled. Nuclear power first became available for electricity generation in the 1950s.
The Industrial Revolution changed energy production and use. Coal was burned in vast amounts to power factories and steam engines as the economies of Europe and North America grew and developed. Later, more efficient electricity became the preferred power source, but coal still had to be burned to produce electricity in large power plants. Then in 1886, the first internal combustion engine was developed and used in an automobile. Within a few decades there was a demand for gasoline to power these engines. By 1929, the number of cars in the United States had grown to twenty-three million, and in the quarter-century between 1904 and 1929, the number of trucks grew from just seven hundred to 3.4 million.
At the same time, technological advances improved life in the home. In 1920, for example, the United States produced a total of five thousand refrigerators. Just ten years later, the number had grown to one million per year. These and many other industrial and consumer developments required vast and growing amounts of fuel. Compounding the problem in the twenty-first century is that other nations of the world such as China and India are developing burgeoning and modern industrialized economies powered by fossil fuels. (download to read more) -- K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, editors. Apt, France. November, 2011
(more) -- K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, editors. Apt, France. November, 2011
Although the term energy is frequently used in media reports and everyday conversation, energy is actually complex term to introduce to younger students. We describe energy as a tangible substance that can be created, stored, moved about, etc., but energy isn't a tangible physical entity. When we say that the sun's energy powers earth, for example, it isn't energy per se that is transported to earth. Energy itself only exists as a state function (a function of the state or position of matter). In the case of transferring energy from the sun to earth, photons are the vector of energy change.
In a very simplistic manner, we can describe the transfer of energy essentially in terms of light photons, emitted from fusion reactions and excited atoms in the sun, that travel through space at energy levels described by an electromagnetic spectrum of wavelengths and frequencies (or photon energy levels) that then strike something (atmospheric gas, water molecules in the ocean, land, or a sunbather in a park). The impact then changes the energy state of the target atoms so that the net result is that the solar energy obtained from reactions within the sun is effectively transferred to atoms on earth.
Accordingly, instead of a precise definition more commonly used in physics courses, Energy in Context adopts the most common usage for the term energy and thus puts off dealing with conceptual and linguistic complexities until students and readers are more advanced in their studies... (more) -- Brenda Wilmoth Lerner and K. Lee Lerner, editors. Cambridge, MA. June, 2016.