11 square miles covered with moss since 1986 just doesn’t sound all that dramatic to me, but apparently for Antarctica this is a big deal and not a good sign. Apparently it has been happening for awhile in (originally sarcastically named?) Greenland, and it is not as big of a surprise there, but it is still not a good sign.
I’ve seen a lot of fucked up spreadsheets in my time. In fact, you could probably say most spreadsheets contain errors, and this article confirms it. Nonetheless, quality control procedures that apply to other types of software (and spreadsheets are a very useful kind of software because they are very powerful and have an easy learning curve, which is also their downfall) can and should be adapted to spreadsheets. One of the most important ones (which really applies to any program or project) is to begin the quality control process in the planning and concept development phase.
Spreadsheet quality assurance: a literature review
Spreadsheets are very common for information processing to support decision making by both professional developers and non-technical end users. Moreover, business intelligence and artificial intelligence are increasingly popular in the industry nowadays, where spreadsheets have been used as, or integrated into, intelligent or expert systems in various application domains. However, it has been repeatedly reported that faults often exist in operational spreadsheets, which could severely compromise the quality of conclusions and decisions based on the spreadsheets. With a view to systematically examining this problem via survey of existing work, we have conducted a comprehensive literature review on the quality issues and related techniques of spreadsheets over a 35.5-year period (from January 1987 to June 2022) for target journals and a 10.5-year period (from January 2012 to June 2022) for target conferences. Among other findings, two major ones are: (a) Spreadsheet quality is best addressed throughout the whole spreadsheet life cycle, rather than just focusing on a few specific stages of the life cycle. (b) Relatively more studies focus on spreadsheet testing and debugging (related to fault detection and removal) when compared with spreadsheet specification, modeling, and design (related to development). As prevention is better than cure, more research should be performed on the early stages of the spreadsheet life cycle. Enlightened by our comprehensive review, we have identified the major research gaps as well as highlighted key research directions for future work in the area.
The floating ice shelves holding back the rest of the ice on Greenland are in worse shape than previously thought, according to this article. The article says the ice in this area is enough to raise global sea level by about 2 m. From a quick skim, I didn’t get a sense of how long the authors think that might take to happen, other than “long term”.
Anecdotally, we have seen an increase in rapid intensification of hurricanes in recent years. A “new study” (which the journalist does not name or link to, a pet peeve of mine) confirms this using data.
The study looked at 830 Atlantic tropical cyclones since 1971. It found that in the last 20 years, 8.1% of the time storms powered from a Category 1 minor storm to a major hurricane in just 24 hours. That happened only 3.2% of the time from 1971 to 1990, according to a study in the journal Scientific Reports. Category 1 hurricanes top out at 95 mph (153 kph) and a hurricane has to have at least 111 mph (178 kph) winds to become major.
When storms rapidly intensify, especially as they near land, it makes it difficult for people in the storm’s path to decide on what they should do — evacuate or hunker down. It also makes it harder for meteorologists to predict how bad it will be and for emergency managers to prepare, Garner and other scientists said.
Associated Press
Insurance companies take note of these things, and recall that the National Flood Insurance Program does not cover wind damage. If you live near the coast, this could be catastrophic for you. I predict the government will have to start picking up more and more of the tab for storms and other natural disasters over time, and this will gradually make us all a little poorer as we can’t afford to have other nice things, even if we don’t live near the coast.
This article proposes a circularity index to measure how close various European countries are to a circular economy.
Increased carbon dioxide concentrations have spurred plant growth up to a point, but at the same time increased temperatures have led to increased evaporation and transpiration (evaporation of water from plants to the atmosphere). The net result, if I understand this article in Science correctly, is that the drying effect now more than offsets the increased carbon uptake effect, so the growth rate of plants is no longer increasing as carbon dioxide concentrations increase.
I like the way the abstract of this paper distinguishes between (1) the accuracy of a model as measured by comparing it to physical observations (always assuming those are an accurate or at least unbiased measurement of the true state of the universe and (2) the appropriateness of a model to be used in decision making. I find these concepts very, very difficult to get across even to scientists and engineers.
Ecological forecasting models: Accuracy versus decisional quality
We consider here forecasting models in ecology or in agronomy, aiming at decision making based upon exceeding a quantitative threshold. We address specifically how to link the intrinsic quality of the model (its accuracy) with its decisional quality, ie its capacity to avoid false decisions and their associated costs. The accuracy of the model can be evaluated by the [Greek symbol rho – I don’t know what they mean by this just from reading the abstract] of the regression of observed values versus estimated ones or by the determination coefficient. We show that the decisional quality depends not only of this accuracy but also of the threshold retained to make the decision as well as on the state of nature. The two kinds of decisional errors consists either in deciding no action while an action is required (false negatives) or to act while it is useless (false positives). We also prove that the costs associated to those decisions depend also both of the accuracy of the model and of the value of the decision threshold.
Ecological Modeling
Exxon’s climate science was as good as that of government and academic scientists as long ago as the 1970s. They accurately predicted what was going to happen. And then they publicly lied and lied and lied about it. This is one of the most evil things ever done in the history of our world, because it affects every single one of the billions of people on the planet, and tens or hundreds or trillions yet to be born. And they knew exactly what they were doing. These people knowingly conspired to ruin a planet where every living being we know of in this universe live. And they did it for short term wealth and power, I guess.
On the basis of company records, we quantitatively evaluated all available global warming projections documented by—and in many cases modeled by—Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists between 1977 and 2003. We find that most of their projections accurately forecast warming that is consistent with subsequent observations. Their projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models. Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp also correctly rejected the prospect of a coming ice age, accurately predicted when human-caused global warming would first be detected, and reasonably estimated the “carbon budget” for holding warming below 2°C. On each of these points, however, the company’s public statements about climate science contradicted its own scientific data.
Science
According to a new Nature article (which this AP story does not link to directly), at 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming,
An international team of scientists looked at 16 climate tipping points — when a warming side effect is irreversible, self-perpetuating and major — and calculated rough temperature thresholds at which they are triggered. None of them are considered likely at current temperatures, though a few are possible. But with only a few more tenths of a degree of warming from now, at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming since pre-industrial times, four move into the likely range, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science.
AP
The coral reefs will affect fishermen around the world in the very near future. The others, even though they are irreversible, may play out slowly even over centuries, according to the article.
Well, lots of salad apparently.
How Much Food Can We Grow in Urban Areas? Food Production and Crop Yields of Urban Agriculture: A Meta-Analysis
Urban agriculture can contribute to food security, food system resilience and sustainability at the city level. While studies have examined urban agricultural productivity, we lack systemic knowledge of how agricultural productivity of urban systems compares to conventional agriculture and how productivity varies for different urban spaces (e.g., allotments vs. rooftops vs. indoor farming) and growing systems (e.g., hydroponics vs. soil-based agriculture). Here, we present a global meta-analysis that seeks to quantify crop yields of urban agriculture for a broad range of crops and explore differences in yields for distinct urban spaces and growing systems. We found 200 studies reporting urban crop yields, from which 2,062 observations were extracted. Lettuces and chicories were the most studied urban grown crops. We observed high agronomic suitability of urban areas, with urban agricultural yields on par with or greater than global average conventional agricultural yields. “Cucumbers and gherkins” was the category of crops for which differences in yields between urban and conventional agriculture were the greatest (17 kg m−2 cycle−1 vs. 3.8 kg m−2 cycle−1). Some urban spaces and growing systems also had a significant effect on specific crop yields (e.g., tomato yields in hydroponic systems were significantly greater than tomato yields in soil-based systems). This analysis provides a more robust, globally relevant evidence base on the productivity of urban agriculture that can be used in future research and practice relating to urban agriculture, especially in scaling-up studies aiming to estimate the self-sufficiency of cities and towns and their potential to meet local food demand.
Earth’s Future
Water, energy, and fertilizer-efficient urban agriculture for some fresh produce in cities seems like a pretty good idea. Urban aquaculture seems practical to me. Growing enormous amounts of grain and protein does not at the moment, unless we are going to do it in high-rises under lights. That might be technological doable but farm fields out in the countryside are probably going to be more cost-effective for a long time to come, especially when the environmental costs are mostly not counted.
Even growing a few percent of our calories in cities might help to buffer any future food shocks by giving us extra time to react to them, and by reducing panic and economic disruption it could cause.