John-Oliver Engler

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• PhD Economics, MSc Physics
• Professor at University of Vechta

The global catastrophic risk (GCR) and existential risk (ER) literature focuses on analysing and preventing potential major global catastrophes including a human extinction event. Over the past two decades, the field of GCR/ER research has grown considerably. However, there has been little meta-research on the field itself. How large has this body...

In his Vulnerable World Hypothesis Nick Bostrom recently compared invention to drawing balls out of a giant urn containing at least one black ball (i.e. an invention that would destroy civilization). If this hypothesis is correct, there is a need to assess the global catastrophic risk associated with human ingenuity. Here, drawing on the theory of...

In academia and political debates, the notions of ‘degrowth’ has gained traction since the dawn of the 21st century. While some uncertainty around its exact definition remains, research on degrowth revolves around the idea of reducing resource and energy throughput as a unifying theme. We employ a mixed-methods design to systematically review the s...

The role of nuclear energy to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions continues to be a contentious issue in many countries. Public debate is often convoluted and largely revolves around price and costs of energy production technologies as well as their contribution to climate change. Here, we first dissect two interwoven factors bound to produce conf...

Digital learning environments such as virtual laboratories have been proposed to augment or even replace conventional forms of teaching in recent years. While there is some evidence on comparable learning outcomes between real and virtual labs, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of virtual labs as compared to conventional face-to-face teaching...

We combine the concepts of ‘black elephants’ and wicked problems with Roy Bhaskar’s critical realist philosophy of science and frame the current state of the coronavirus pandemic as an analogy for impending sustainability challenges. We point out and illustrate that the interaction of different ontological levels of our world as it ‘is’ will likely...

We investigate whether communication strategies that portray climate change as a nonlinear phenomenon provoke increases in laypeople’s climate change risk perceptions. In a high-powered, preregistered online experiment, participants were exposed to linear or nonlinear predictions of future temperature increases that would be expected if global gree...

1. Relational values recently emerged as a concept to comprehensively understand and communicate the many values of nature. Relational values can be defined as preferences and principles about human–nature relationships and focus both on human–nature connections and well as human–human connections. 2. Here, drawing on 819 face-to-face questionnaire...

This study explores the relationship between place attachment and energy conservation attitudes and behavioural intentions in the Pogány-havas microregion of Romania. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine three dimensions of place attachment: place identity, place dependence and nature bonding. While place attachment in the region...

We analyzed a unique data set of livestock numbers in the Mongolian southern Gobi. In a novel approach, we combined biophysical data on precipitation and pasture biomass productivity with data on fine wool prices from 1981 through 2015 to investigate dynamic patterns and responses of livestock numbers in Mongolia's southern Gobi. Using piecewise st...

The concept of resilience gained increased attention in sustainability science, with a notable spike from 2014 onwards. However, resilience is a multifaceted concept with no unanimous definition, making applications in the context of sustainability, a similarly multifarious term, a challenge. Here, we examine the use of resilience in well-cited sus...

Ecologically unequal exchange theory posits asymmetric net flows of biophysical resources from poorer to richer countries. To date, empirical evidence to support this theoretical notion as a systemic aspect of the global economy is largely lacking. Through environmentally-extended multi-regional input-output modelling, we provide empirical evidence...

The continued and extended use of nuclear power is often considered and discussed as a viable energy policy option to meet energy demands while also meeting national CO2 emission reduction goals. A central issue in energy policy for sustainability is the question of nuclear reactor safety. However, studies on nuclear reactor safety often run up aga...

The current coronavirus outbreak may provide an illustrative analogy for sustainability challenges, exemplifying how challenges such as climate change may become wicked problems demanding novel and drastic solution attempts.

We argue that the increasing use of experimental approaches in transition and transformational research on potential sustainability solutions could substantially profit from application of the principles of stratification and stratified experimental design. We illustrate our proposition with three worked examples of hypothetical transition experime...

We use recent results from astrobiology, particularly the A -form of the Drake equation and combine it with data on the evolution of life on Earth to obtain a new assessment of the prevalence of technological species in our Universe. A species is technological if it is, in theory, capable of interstellar communication. We find that between seven an...

We use recent results from astrobiology, particularly the A-form of the Drake equation and combine it with data on the evolution of life on Earth to obtain a new assessment of the prevalence of technological species in our Universe. A species is technological if it is, in theory, capable of interstellar 10 communication. We find that between seven...

We provide a conceptual review of the available knowledge on the role of human cognition biases for sustainability and sustainable behavior. Human cognition biases are defined as any deviation in decision making from the standard framework of rational choice. We distinguish between biases in individual decision making and biases in group decision m...

We use recent results from astrobiology, particularly the A-form of the Drake equation and combine it with data on the evolution of life on Earth to obtain a new assessment of the prevalence of technological species in our Universe. A species is technological if it is, in theory, capable of interstellar communication. We find that between seven and...

We synthesize and discuss the available knowledge on the role of human cognition biases for sustainability and sustainable behavior. Human cognition biases are defined as any deviation in decision making from the standard framework of rational choice. We distinguish between biases in individual decision making and biases in group decision making, a...

Utilizing a data set of 399 Namibian commercial cattle farmers, we provide a detailed empirical analysis of farm management under highly variable rainfall. Particularly, we provide an econometric analysis of what personal characteristics of the farmer, environmental characteristics, and charcteristics of the farm explain farm size and choice of sto...

We present a social-ecological typlogy for the world's rangelands that integrates the much debated non-equilibrium concept from ecology with socio-economic characteristics of rangeland systems. We propose that, as a first approximation, the socio-economic properties can be adequately captured and differentiated by the distinction between the two ma...

We propose a new three-step model-selection framework for size distributions in empirical data. It generalizes a recent frequentist plausibility-of-fit analysis (step 1) and combines it with a relative ranking based on the Bayesian Akaike information criterion (step 2). We enhance these statistical criteria with the additional criterion of microfou...

Full-disc solar images obtained with the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory were used to analyse solar differential rotation determined by tracing coronal bright points. Rotation velocity residuals, meridional motions and their relationship are investigated for a new data set from October 1, 1999 t...