I’m a postdoc researcher at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), UC Santa Barbara. I am working on the Iterative Eden Project (IEP), a UCSB-based initiative to develop the scientific basis for a sustainable world of 10 billion people.
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villager is up on CRAN
Shout out to my colleagues on the SeibalSim Project, Gerardo Aldana (UCSB), Toni Gonzalez (UCSB), and especially Tommy Thelen (NCEAS) for getting this thing ready for primetime. The new R package, villager, is a great new tool to carry out agent-based modeling work. It is designed for archaeologists and non-expert modelers to test their ideasContinue reading “villager is up on CRAN”

Just my reflections on COP26
Reposted from a comment I made to Linkedin post on reflections from COP26. China has advertised its progress transitioning away from coal, particularly in its energy sector. Part of this is due to domestic political reasons: a decade ago, the Chinese government in Beijing faced enormous demonstrations from ordinary Chinese opposed to the cost inContinue reading “Just my reflections on COP26”

Pushing back the origins of New World human occupation
With new dating on charcoal from a context stratigraphically above human footprints set in the playa at Alkali Flat in the US, Bennett et al. writing in Science demonstrate the presence of humans in North America between 23-21 ka ago. This is a big deal. There has been a lot to suggest that humans occupiedContinue reading “Pushing back the origins of New World human occupation”
Press from CROs Nature paper
David Vetter writes in Forbes that CROs have great potential in carbon markets, after interviewing lead-author Johannes Bednar and co-authors Myles Allen and Michael Obersteiner. Also contains an audio rendition. Writing in Cosmos, Ellen Phiddian connects the possible application of CROs to a report from a Swiss reinsurance institute that explains the enormous potential costContinue reading “Press from CROs Nature paper”

Operationalizing the net negative carbon economy
I am happy to announce that Johannes’ paper, on which I am a co-author, has just been published in Nature. Embargo ended at 8 AM California time today. See the IIASA press release here. Bednar, J., Obersteiner, M., Baklanov, A., Thomson, M., Wagner, F., Geden, O., Allen, M., Hall, J. (2021). Operationalizing the net negativeContinue reading “Operationalizing the net negative carbon economy”

Hot topic
The UEFA Euro 2020 tournament is being played out during a heat wave in Europe, including some of the warmest temperatures in recorded history (which is pretty long there). A friend of mine in Vienna was texting his complaints about it to me today. Well, California says, “hold my kombucha”: Update: The hottest temperatures everContinue reading “Hot topic”
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