How Scientists Can Fight COVID-19
A friend listed some calls for help: • The UK urgently needs help from modellers. You must be willing to work on specified tasks and meet deadlines. Previous experience in epidemic modelling is not...
View ArticleCompositional Game Theory and Climate Microeconomics
guest post by Jules Hedges Hi all This is a post I’ve been putting off for a long time until I was sure I was ready. I am the “lead developer” of a thing called compositional game theory (CGT). It’s an...
View ArticleUS Environmental Policy (Part 2)
On his first day in office, President-elect Biden plans to have the US rejoin the Paris climate accord. He has also pledged to sign ten executive orders on his first day in office: • Requiring...
View ArticleCeres
On 11 December 2020, Ceres, a sustainability nonprofit that works with investors on climate change, announced that a consortium of 30 investors managing $9 trillion in assets have committed to...
View ArticleConsolidated Appropriations Act, 2021
You may not have noticed, but the US Congress just passed the biggest climate-related bill in long time, with measures to help save the ozone layer and speed progress on solar, wind and nuclear energy,...
View ArticleGeoengineering – The Tipping Point
Back in 2013 I wrote about how we are approaching a tipping point, where public opinion on geoengineering suddenly starts to shift: Many express the fear that merely researching geoengineering schemes...
View ArticleThe Economics of Biodiversity
One problem with the Anthropocene is that our economic systems undervalue forms of “natural capital” for which there are no markets, or poorly developed markets. I’m talking about things like clean...
View ArticleMathematics for Humanity: a Plan
I’m working with an organization that may eventually fund proposals to fund workshops for research groups working on “mathematics for humanity”. This would include math related to climate change,...
View ArticleMathematics for Humanity
We discussed this here earlier, but now it’s actually happening! The International Centre for Mathematical Sciences, or ICMS, in Edinburgh, will host a new project entitled ‘Mathematics for Humanity’....
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Mathematics for Climate Change
Some good news! I’m now helping lead a new Fields Institute program on the mathematics of climate change. You may have heard of the Fields Medal, one of the most prestigious math prizes. But the Fields...
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Saving Climate Data (Part 3)
You can back up climate data, but how can anyone be sure your backups are accurate? Let’s suppose the databases you’ve backed up have been deleted, so that there’s no way to directly compare your...
View ArticleThe Irreversible Momentum of Clean Energy
The president of the US recently came out with an article in Science. It’s about climate change and clean energy: • Barack Obama, The irreversible momentum of clean energy, Science, 13 January 2017....
View ArticleSaving Climate Data (Part 4)
At noon today in Washington DC, while Trump was being inaugurated, all mentions of “climate change” and “global warming” were eliminated from the White House website. Well, not all. The word “climate”...
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Azimuth Backup Project (Part 3)
Along with the bad news there is some good news: • Over 380 people have pledged over $14,000 to the Azimuth Backup Project on Kickstarter, greatly surpassing our conservative initial goal of $5,000. •...
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Statebox: A Universal Language of Distributed Systems
guest post by Christian Williams A short time ago, on the Croatian island of Zlarin, there gathered a band of bold individuals—rebels of academia and industry, whose everyday thoughts and actions...
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Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment
I have predicted for a while that as the issue of climate change becomes ever more urgent, the public attitude regarding geoengineering will at some point undergo a phase transition. For a long time it...
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Exploring New Technologies
I’ve got some good news! I’ve been hired by Bryan Johnson to help evaluate and explain the potential of various technologies to address the problem of climate change. Johnson is an entrepreneur who...
View ArticleBreakthrough Institute on Climate Change
I found this article, apparently by Ted Nordhaus and Alex Trembath, to be quite thought-provoking. At times it sinks too deep into the moment’s politics for my taste, given that the issues it raises...
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UN Climate Action Summit
Christian Williams Hello, I’m Christian Williams. I study category theory with John Baez at UC Riverside. I’ve written two posts on Azimuth about promising distributed computing endeavors. I believe...
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Can We Fix The Air?
I published a slightly different version of this article in Nautilus on November 28, 2019. Water rushes into Venice’s city council chamber just minutes after the local government rejects measures to...
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