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”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
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!
Nobel in physics for 2018
The day after some guy tells a room full of women physicists at CERN a bunch of nonsense, a [Canadian] woman, Donna Strickland of the University of Waterloo, wins the Nobel Prize in physics. Nice! As only the third female Nobel laureate in physics, she has august company: Maria Göppert-Mayer (1963), and Marie Curie (1903). IContinue reading “Nobel in physics for 2018”
After the monsoon
The North American Monsoon (NAM) is a major delivery system of water to the interior of the American Southwest, the Sonoran Desert in particular. The NAM usually peaks in the mid to late summer, arising from the south over the Sonoran desert (Adams and Comrie 1997; Higgins et al. 1997; Metcalfe et al. 2015). But theContinue reading “After the monsoon”
Climate determinism! Of cholera outbreaks.
The UK Met Office is involved in some very interesting things. I was not aware of this, but read about it just this morning on BBC News Online. The basic idea is simple: predict precipitation fields (not trivial in itself) and determine where there is likely to be increased local flood risk. I don’t knowContinue reading “Climate determinism! Of cholera outbreaks.”
Vienna images
A poster adhered to a public building in a park along Taliastrasse, 25 August 2018.
This guy
Jadav Molai Payeng, Forest man of India. Recently, a colleague here at IIASA and I have been doing some thinking about the concept of natural capital, those elements of the natural world that are (have been/will be) exploited as resources, or otherwise contribute economically. Trees are a classic example. What is the value of a tree?Continue reading “This guy”
I’m inclined to agree with The Economist here
Vienna tops the world’s most livable cities index from The Economist. I certainly find it pretty livable, though we do miss LA from time to time. But what’s really interesting is how the “most livable cities” are clustered (1) on or near coastlines (except for Calgary and Vienna; for Toronto, Lake Ontario counts), (2) in onlyContinue reading “I’m inclined to agree with The Economist here”
Marcus James Thomson, Ph.D. 