Category Archives: biology

Professor James Hansen responds and explains:

The recent paper by Hansen, Soto, and others has caused a stir, as I suspect it was intended to do so. I posted about this paper earlier. Now Professor Hansen has responded to the critics of his team’s work and … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, arXiv, astrophysics, bifurcations, biology, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate models, COP21, denial, disingenuity, dynamical systems, ecology, education, environment, ethics, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, James Hansen, maths, meteorology, NASA, NCAR, new forms of scientific peer review, NOAA, oceanography, open source scientific software, physics, Principles of Planetary Climate, probability, rationality, reasonableness, science, science education, sea level rise, temporal myopia, the right to know, time series, WAIS, zero carbon | 1 Comment

rappin’ the truth

(Hat tip to the Yale Climate Connections project.)

Posted in Bill Nye, biology, Boston, carbon dioxide, chemistry, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, ecology, education, environment, evolution, geophysics, global warming, investment in wind and solar energy, Neill deGrasse Tyson, physics, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, science, science education | 1 Comment

Links explaining climate change Kevin Jones liked

Kevin Jones asked me if I could put the links in a Comment on a post I made at Google+ in a collection or something for reference. I am therefore repeating the Comment with these details below. No one simple … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, astrophysics, bifurcations, biology, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, chance, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, climate models, climate zombies, conservation, consumption, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, dynamical systems, ecology, economics, efficiency, energy, energy reduction, environment, exponential growth, forecasting, fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels, geophysics, global warming, history, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, living shorelines, mass extinctions, mass transit, mathematics, maths, meteorology, methane, microgrids, model comparison, NASA, natural gas, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, physics, politics, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, rationality, Ray Pierrehumbert, reasonableness, science, science education, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea level rise, sociology, solar power, statistics, temporal myopia, the right to know, Tony Seba, WHOI, wind power, zero carbon | Leave a comment

“Can we avert the post-antibiotic world?”

(Hat tip to Dan Satterfield.) A TED talk. Bacteria develop resistence so quickly that pharmaceutical companies have decided developing new ones is not in their best interest. From the speaker, Maryn McKenna.

Posted in adaptation, bacteria, biology, dynamical systems, ecology, environment, evolution, forecasting, humanism, population biology, rationality, statistics, sustainability, temporal myopia | Leave a comment

ARTICLE: “Why the rise of green energy makes utility companies nervous”

Bill McKibben writes about the hope of domestic and home solar, and air-based heat pumps (*), in The New Yorker. I share that hope. Another good book on the same: Mark Schapiro’s Carbon Shock: A tale or risk and calculus … Continue reading

Posted in biology, clean disruption, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, decentralized electric power generation, decentralized energy, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, energy, energy reduction, environment, ethics, investment in wind and solar energy, rationality, reasonableness, solar power, sustainability, wind power, zero carbon | Leave a comment

Destroying the Most Persistent Scientific Myth In America – Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal – AGU Blogosphere

Destroying the Most Persistent Scientific Myth In America – Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal – AGU Blogosphere.

Posted in Bayesian, biology, carbon dioxide, chance, citizen science, climate, climate change, climate disruption, climate education, denial, ecology, education, ensembles, environment, forecasting, geophysics, global warming, hiatus, history, IPCC, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, obfuscating data, physics, probability, rationality, reasonableness, science, science education, spatial statistics, statistics, temporal myopia, time series | Leave a comment

“This planet comes with limits”

Carl Safina elaborates on the limits of exploitation. It’s consistent with what David Suzuki conveys in his succinct presentation, linked below: As Suzuki says, this isn’t politics or opinion, or even biology, it’s just math.

Posted in Anthropocene, biology, carbon dioxide, citizenship, climate change, ecology, environment, forecasting, history, humanism, physics, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, risk | Leave a comment

“Human activity has nothing big enough to affect Earth”

“Human activity has nothing big enough to affect Earth.” That’s disingenuous and, usually, the speaker knows better but is trying to dissuade an audience from thinking human activity does. Or they parrot someone who is trying to do that. But … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropocene, biology, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, consumption, ecology, economics, energy, energy reduction, engineering, environment, ethics, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, history, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, meteorology, methane, natural gas, notes, open data, physics, politics, population biology, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, solar power, statistics, the right to know, time series, wind power | Leave a comment

R vs Python: Practical Data Analysis

R vs Python: Practical Data Analysis (Nonlinear Regression).

Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, biology, climate change, ecology, environment, Python 3, R, statistics, Wordpress | Leave a comment

International Darwin Day: 12th February 2015

http://darwinday.org/ http://darwinday.org/about/

Posted in atheism, biology, Boston Ethical Society, Charles Darwin, civilization, Darwin Day, ecology, environment, evolution, science, science education, UU Humanists | Leave a comment

The B-Team

Yes!! B Team Leaders Call for Net-Zero Greenhouse-Gas Emissions by 2050 About the B Team. See also Track 0

Posted in astrophysics, biology, Boston Ethical Society, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, compassion, conservation, consumption, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, environment, ethics, forecasting, geoengineering, geophysics, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, meteorology, NOAA, oceanography, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, sociology, the right to know, wind power | Leave a comment

David Suzuki on the 59th minute and exponential growth

Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, biology, bridge to nowhere, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate change, climate education, demand-side solutions, ecology, economics, engineering, environment, ethics, forecasting, geophysics, IPCC, mathematics, maths, meteorology, physics, population biology, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sociology, statistics | 3 Comments

On nested equivalence classes of climate models, ordered by computational complexity

I’m digging into the internals of ABC, for professional and scientific reasons. I’ve linked a great tutorial elsewhere, and argued that this framework, advanced by Wood, and Wilkinson (Robert), and Wilkinson (Darren), and Hartig and colleagues, and Robert and colleagues, … Continue reading

Posted in approximate Bayesian computation, Bayes, Bayesian, biology, ecology, environment, forecasting, geophysics, IPCC, mathematics, maths, MCMC, meteorology, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, optimization, population biology, Principles of Planetary Climate, probabilistic programming, R, science, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search | Leave a comment

“[W]e want to model the process as we would simulate it.”

Professor Darren Wilkinson offers a pithy insight on how to go about constructing statistical models, notably hierarchical ones: “… we want to model the process as we would simulate it ….” This appears in his blog post One-way ANOVA with … Continue reading

Posted in approximate Bayesian computation, Bayes, Bayesian, biology, ecology, engineering, forecasting, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, model comparison, optimization, population biology, probabilistic programming, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, sociology, statistics, stochastic algorithms | Tagged | Leave a comment

struggling with problems already partly solved by others

Climate modelers and models see as their frontier the problem of dealing with spontaneous dynamics in systems such as atmosphere or ocean which are not directly forced by boundary conditions such as radiative forcing due to increased greenhouse gas (“GHG”) … Continue reading

Posted in approximate Bayesian computation, Bayes, Bayesian, biology, climate, climate education, differential equations, ecology, engineering, environment, geophysics, IPCC, mathematics, mathematics education, meteorology, model comparison, NCAR, NOAA, oceanography, physics, population biology, probabilistic programming, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, science education, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search | 1 Comment

illustrating particle filters and Bayesian fusion using successive location estimates on the unit circle

Introduction Modern treatments of Bayesian integration to obtain posterior densities often use some form of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (“MCMC”), typically Gibbs sampling. Gibbs works well with many Bayesian hierarchical models. The standard problem-solving situation with these is that a … Continue reading

Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, biology, mathematics, maths, population biology, probabilistic programming, R, statistics, stochastic algorithms | 1 Comment

Species abundances, raw abundances, and species composition

From Climate Change Ecology, An intuitive explanation for the 'double-zeroes' problem with Euclidean distances.

Posted in biology, climate, conservation, ecology, environment, mathematics, mathematics education, population biology, Schnabel census, science, science education, statistics | 3 Comments

Liddell and Kruschke, on conditional logistic Bayesian estimation

(“Ostracism and fines in a public goods game with accidental contributions: The importance of punishment type”) An overview. The article

Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, biology, citizenship, civilization, compassion, ecology, economics, ethics, humanism, investing, MCMC, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, sociology, statistics | Leave a comment

Exciting if improbable news

There’s a report in the Financial Times today that UN negotiators are considering a proposal to phase out oil, coal, and gas by 2050. There’s a second permitting fossil fuels to be used, but only in countries which ensured “net … Continue reading

Posted in biology, Boston Ethical Society, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide sequestration, Carbon Tax, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, consumption, ecology, economics, energy, energy reduction, environment, fossil fuel divestment, geophysics, investing, investment in wind and solar energy, IPCC, meteorology, methane, nuclear power, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, solar power, wind power | Leave a comment

Why I don’t eat commercially caught fish

And, of course, I don’t eat land animals either. I will sometimes have scallops and clams.

Posted in atheism, biology, Boston Ethical Society, ethics, humanism, oceanography, Unitarian Universalism, UU Humanists | 1 Comment

Global temperatures, Friday, 21st November 2014

From the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer. Hat tip to Carl Safina.

Posted in biology, climate, climate education, forecasting, geophysics, meteorology, NOAA, oceanography, physics, rationality, science, scientific publishing, the right to know | Leave a comment

Defeating “The Index” in Gilbert, Arizona

“Home rule” means a lot of things. But, as the Catholic hierarchy in Rome once did, the educational authorities of Gilbert, Arizona, USA, are apparently taking it one step too far. Dan Satterfield reports that certain pages in a biology … Continue reading

Posted in atheism, biology, Boston Ethical Society, citizenship, ecology, education, environment, humanism, physics, rationality, reasonableness, science, scientific publishing, the right to know | Leave a comment

“People are too insignificant to affect climate”

Setting aside outright fabrications (1) such as those promulgated by the Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), laughingly selected as the Chair of the House Committee on Science, a common claim in the Comment sections at The Hill and elsewhere is that … Continue reading

Posted in biology, Boston Ethical Society, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, climate, conservation, ecology, environment, history, humanism, rationality, reasonableness, science, Uncategorized, Unitarian Universalism | 1 Comment

“Rising seas will be unstoppable”

Carl Safina, author of the exquisite The View From Lazy Point, writes, in part: Well. Who. Cares. This is news you can snooze. So go ahead and hit that snooze button. Could we plan for what will happen centuries from … Continue reading

Posted in biology, carbon dioxide, citizenship, civilization, climate, climate education, conservation, consumption, ecology, economics, energy, energy reduction, engineering, environment, geoengineering, geophysics, humanism, meteorology, oceanography, physics, politics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science, solar power, wind power | Leave a comment

Hope. This is why, in part, I am an atheist.

Carl Sagan’s last interview on Charlie Rose: The point is, how can any world view which is based upon either ignorance of, apathy towards, or misconception about the physical universe offer any realistic promise or hope or optimism, any more … Continue reading

Posted in astronomy, astrophysics, atheism, biology, Boston Ethical Society, Carl Sagan, citizenship, civilization, ecology, education, engineering, environment, geophysics, history, humanism, mathematics, maths, meteorology, NASA, Neill deGrasse Tyson, oceanography, physics, rationality, reasonableness, risk, science | Leave a comment

Lotka-Volterra systems and predator-prey relationships

Lotka-Volterra systems are one of the oldest and most fundamental mathematical renditions of ecological problems.  They are typically illustrated with predator-prey relationships, but I was introduced to them dealing with problems of competition for space by plants in niche ecological … Continue reading

Posted in biology, ecology, mathematics, maths, physics, science | Tagged | Leave a comment

“Gary Greenberg: The beautiful nano details of our world”

Posted in biology, mathematics, science | Tagged | Leave a comment

World Ocean Radio

I sometimes wish my UU community would understand the following: We are not living in reality; if so, we would not enable delusion. We are not being practical; if so, we would assure that our needs would be sustained for … Continue reading

Posted in atheism, biology, climate, climate education, ecology, environment, oceanography, reasonableness, science | Tagged | Leave a comment

“Detecting Causality in Complex Ecosystems”

Sugihara, May, Ye, Hsieh, Deyle, Fogarty, and Munch published what I consider to be a pretty interesting paper in Science called “Detecting causality in complex ecosystems”, linked: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1227079 http://www.uvm.edu/~cdanfort/csc-reading-group/sugihara-causality-science-2012.pdf Professor Andrew Gelman of Columbia seemed unimpressed by the article, and … Continue reading

Posted in Bayesian, biology, ecology, economics, engineering, maths, reasonableness, science, statistics | 2 Comments