IN ARMS is a novelette I wrote about awkward first dates, collapsing marine ice and submerged cities, AI senators, activism futures, laws about LAWs, parecon, and Beyond Beyond GDP. drive.google.com/file/d/1WREQnI…
I think when you look back at old writing, you sometimes see that it was governed by some secret influence that had to be invisible to you at the time.
In my case the secret invisible kernel was probably the 2004 Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore rom-com 50 First Dates mashed up with the fragment "a grows by any other name would smell as sweet" from Shakespeare's Growmeo and Juliet. 💦🤖💀
(* LAWs = Lethal Autonomous Weapons)
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Day 3 of the Climate Risk Summit, focused on communicating climate risk. Liz Bentley of the Royal Meteorological Society kicks off emphasising the need to tailor across sectors and contexts ... #COP26Universities#COP26
... and the tension between needing to deliver a clear message, and the fact that oversimplifying can cause more problems than it solves.
Asks, "Who is best placed to communicate? Experts or communicators?" One ideal answer is climate experts who are good communicators. (Another answer is good collaborative teams, of course ...)
Is there ever a situation where the approach is, "We're too holistic and joined up here! What we need is fewer partnerships and less communication among stakeholders!" I'm kind of serious ...
... not to say that calls for greater cooperation are mere platitudes; they identify that a lack of cooperation is more significant for some problems more than athors, and they set up the real content, which is an account of who should cooperate more closely and how.
But might it be good to cultivate more awareness of the opportunity cost of new collaboration? And also to keep alive the possibility that a problem might *not* be best addressed by the emergent capacities of networking existing actors more intensely - maybe it needs new actors?
Excited for Day 2 of the #COP26Universities Climate Summit. First up, Kirstie Ebi, Professor of Global Health, University of Washington, on "melting humans" (that's my summary, not hers) ...
... yesterday we heard the projection that we are headed to ten million deaths by heatwaves per year by the 2030s. chathamhouse.org/2021/09/climat…
Already about 30% of heat-related deaths are attributable to anthropogenic climate change. And of course it's unevenly distributed
Tipping points are large transitions to new system equilibriums. Antarctic sheet disintegration and the mass flooding of coastal cities, the destabilisation of the South American monsoon system, collapse of Amazon rainforest resilience, coral reef death ...
... the disintegration of the entire pattern of water flow throughout the oceans of the world. Rachel Warren, Nik Boers, Sebastian Rosier, Levke Caesar, at the #COP26Universities network Climate Risk Summit, exploring tipping points.
Nik Boers describes how comprehensive Earth system models can now be complemented and constrained by observation of statistical early warning signals, particularly the phenomenon of critical slowing down: variance and autocorrelation indicate a coming tipping point.
We have known for a very long time that one manifestation of climate change will be extreme weather events. What has changed is that we now see them happening. They are "in your face."
Two charts from IPCC WGI AR6, heatwaves and heavy precipitation. I am interested, from a climate science comms perspective, that the legend says "heavy precipitation" and Freddie Otto adds another word: "floods."
In some historic moneys, every 80 counted is rounded up to 100. So one transaction valued at 100,000 shells 'really' only transfers 64,000 shells, whereas 100,000 transactions of one cowry each would transfer all 100,000. Any guesses how such a convention alters market structure?
All else being equal, perhaps it favors the elite who are rich enough to deal in more expensive goods or in bulk when it's advantageous? But also encourages distribution via many small transactions, such as are associated with subsistence and more ‘everyday’ consumption?
Bearing on price-stickiness? The nominal price of a good can remain stable for longer spells simply because its merchants are not tinkering with the spread between buying and selling price, but rather reaping the profit associated with trading at a single customary price point?