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Another possible future for Africa and the world

Africa can’t afford that this century be like its last one. No one can. These days I have Africa on the mind because we’re modelling land use systems projected to 2050, and it’s hard to keep Africans fed, healthy, and developing economically (to any reasonable standard) without wrecking the continent’s natural systems, and ultimately theContinue reading “Another possible future for Africa and the world”

Wandering San Francisco during AGU a few years ago

We used to live in the Bay Area. In Spring 2011, I spent nearly every day working in San Francisco. I know it quite well and used to miss it a lot. I took these while back for the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, in 2016, I think.

More Galileos, fewer Simplicios

I recently had a short conversation with a European colleague at IIASA, touching on the acceptance of global warming in North America. (In her northern European country, in which the lumber industry is critical, the public conversation about climate change is mature, advanced, and solutions-oriented. Obviously that’s not quite the case everywhere.) It suddenly struckContinue reading “More Galileos, fewer Simplicios”

oh the pre-humanity

These archaeologists have turned up evidence that human ancestors were established in Arabia about 300 thousand years ago. The location is no surprise, because our ancestors passed through as they radiated out of Africa. It’s the timing that’s interesting. Before moving to Oman in 2007, I became very interested in the prospect of finding moreContinue reading “oh the pre-humanity”

Neutrinos and Experimental Physics with Art McDonald, 2015 Nobel laureate in physics

Art McDonald, the former director of SNO and 2015 Nobel Prize in physics laureate, gives a really nice talk at the Perimeter Institute. I was expecting a rather dull review of his pathway to the SNO neutrino mass measurement papers in 2002-2004 (for which the Nobel was awarded) — but he has been busy! HeContinue reading “Neutrinos and Experimental Physics with Art McDonald, 2015 Nobel laureate in physics”

The Astonishing Simplicity of Everything

This is a really nice and easy to follow lecture by the director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI), Neil Turok, called “The Astonishing Simplicity of Everything”. PI is a top-tier research centre for theoretical physics, located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It is really exciting to see how much physics in Canada hasContinue reading “The Astonishing Simplicity of Everything”

O . M . G .

This sucks.

One Earth Climate Model

Tools like these are crucial. We need to figure out how to integrate the best available data and modelling within the domains in which policy decisions are made — the halls of government and, equally, the kitchen table.

California fires hit home

Glen MacDonald, UCLA Geography, was under a mandatory evacuation order from his home in Thousand Oaks, CA, during the fires there. He was interviewed by Nightline immediately afterward, https://abcnews.go.com/video/embed?id=59101829 and then went on Democracy Now this morning: https://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2018/11/13/climate_scientist_who_fled_ca_wildfire Featured image: DemocracyNow!

History may not repeat, but it rhymes

I wrote this for IIASA’s NEXUS blog for a post on 5 October 2018. While living in Cairo in 2010, I witnessed first-hand the human toll of political and environmental disasters that washed over Africa at the end of the last century. Unprecedented numbers of migrants were pressing into North Africa, many pushed out of theirContinue reading “History may not repeat, but it rhymes”