Eminent coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson recently gave a talk at TED called How we wrecked the ocean, which presents a popular version of his research on the long-term human impact on the ocean.
Tag Archives: video
Johan Röckstrom talks about Planetary Boundaries
Johan Röckstrom recently gave a talk on Planetary Boundaries based on the papers Nature (doi:10.1038/461472a) and Ecology and Society.
In those papers the authors propose propose nine planetary boundaries, beyond which the functioning of the earth system will fundamentally change from the conditions in which human civilization has emerged. They argue that we have crossed the climate, nitrogen and extinction boundaries, and need to change the course of our civilization to move back into conditions which provide a safety for human civilization.
The talk is now up in two parts on YouTube (but the quality is only ok).
Naomi Oreskes on Merchants of Doubt
Historian of science Naomi Oreskes recently gave a talk at Brown University, based on her new book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, about how right wing scientists founded the George Marshall Institute which has become a key hub for successfully spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about climate change, along with other environmental issues, and how myths about science enable these political strategies to work. Below is a video of her talk.
Below is a related 2007 talk of her’s from the University of California The American Denial of Global Warming, that provides more details on environmental denial.
Dennis Meadows on Limits to Growth
A video of Dennis Meadows, co-author of Limits to Growth, from the 2009 World Economic Forum meetings in Davos meeting where he reflects on economic growth, oil, and decline.
via the Oil Drum
Cyber-Environmental Politics?
Google and renewable energy? Hackers, deforestation and carbon emission rights? This might sound like an odd mix of events, but something is definitely in pipeline. Global environmental change and rapid information technological change have for a long time been viewed as parallel, and decoupled global phenomena. A number of events in the last month indicate that this is likely to change. Just consider the following events:
GoodMorning! Full Render #2 from blprnt on Vimeo.
Internet giant Google recently got an approval in the US, to buy and sell energy. This happens after the company’s explicit ambition to become one of the major players in renewable energy. According to the New York Times: “The company’s Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl said the company was fully committed to accelerating the development of renewable energy technologies that can prove more cost-effective than coal power, as a means of both curbing carbon emissions and trimming its own giant energy bill”.
In addition, computer hackers seem to have found a new pool of resources to steal from – emissions trading. As reported by Wired recently, hackers have been successful in stealing millions of dollars by launching “a targeted phishing attack against employees of numerous companies in Europe, New Zealand and Japan, which appeared to come from the German Emissions Trading Authority”. A similar attack was assumed in Brazil in December 2008 when hackers managed to get in to the government logging databases. The impacts? Illegal harvest of 1.7 million cubic meters of timber, according to Wired.
One final example is of course the ongoing bashing of the IPCC, and the now infamous e-mail hack of UK climate scientists. An interesting follow up is this op-ed in The Australian, arguing that the Internet is allowing climate change skeptics to gain traction. One of the more thought-provoking quotes from the article states:
The `climate consensus’ may hold the establishment — the universities, the media, big business, government — but it is losing the jungles of the web. After all, getting research grants, doing pieces to camera and advising boards takes time. The very ostracism the sceptics suffered has left them free to do their digging untroubled by grant applications and invitations to Stockholm.
See also John Bruno of climateshifts.org, who asks “Who is orchestrating the cyber-bullying?”.
Are moving into an era of cyber-environmental politics? I’m pretty sure that we are.
Reflecting the Niger Delta: Tolu Ogunlesi on Tings Dey Happen
On 3 Quarks Daily Tolu Ogunlesi writes about American Dan Hoyle’s Tings Dey Happen. Dan Hoyle was inspired to write a one man play about Nigeria and the oil industry after being a Fulbright scholar in at the University of Port Harcourt, in Nigeria’s oil and conflict rich Niger delta:
TINGS DEY HAPPEN is in Pidgin English. When I heard Hoyle was going to be performing in Nigeria, at the invitation of the State Department, I decided I had to see the show. More than anything, I was curious to see what Hoyle’s idea of pidgin amounted to. There is so much contrived stuff that passes for Pidgin English in popular culture, that I really didn’t have any significant expectations.
By the end of the 75 minute performance, which took place at the heavily guarded American Guest Quarters on the Ikoyi waterfront in Lagos, I was more than impressed. Hoyle’s pidgin is impressive, as authentic (I hesitate to use that word) as it gets.
Hoyle cuts right through to the occasionally dark, often comical heart of Nigerian society. Early on in the one-man show (Dan plays all the voices, and they are myriad), a Nigerian explains that in Nigeria there are “no friends, only associates.”
Gangs roam the delta, but in Hoyle’s world, criminal and crude are, quite refreshingly, not synonyms. Some of the militants speak good English. They even have a sense of humour. “There’s no sign that says ‘Welcome to Nembe Creek’, ‘cos if you haven’t noticed, you’re not welcome,” Hoyle’s white character is told. Not long after the militants add, perhaps tongue-in-cheek: “We are too intelligent to kidnap you.” Perhaps this is because they know that he is merely an academic, with little potential for generating a decent ransom.
…
Relaunch of Adaptiveness and Innovation Blog
Yes, we are relaunching! For a couple of months in 2009, the Stockholm Resilience Centre hosted a small conference blog for the Amsterdam 2009 Conference on Earth System Governance. We posted a number of phone and Skype-interviews with prominent scholars in the field of earth system science and governance, with the ambition to explore the role of governance, institutions, networks and organizations in building adaptive capacity, and supporting innovation in an era of global environmental change.
After a quite successful experimental phase, we now move into the relaunch phase. That means: more blogposts, more authors, and (hopefully) a larger audience. The writing team now consists of an interesting mix of scientists ranging from resilience science, development studies, and network theory, to transition and innovation research. See the blog here, and meet the new team here.
This short animated interview with myself, pretty much summarizes what we intend to do with this digital platform. Enjoy!
Sander van der Leeuw and The Archaeology of Innovation
Sander van der Leeuw, is archeologist and member of the Resilience Alliance. His talk a the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco, The Archaeology of Innovation is available online as a video.
Richard Alley explains how CO2 is the climate’s “biggest control knob”
Richard Alley gave a well reviewed Bjerknes Lecture at the December AGU meetings in San Francisco, in which clearly and interestingly explains the paleo-climatic evidence of how CO2 is a key part of the Earth’s climate regulatory system. Lots of interesting research, some of it quite recent, is synthesized clearly.
His talk The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate History is available on the AGU meeting website.
Richard Alley, is a professor of geosciences, at Penn State University and author of the popular science paeleo-climatology book The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future.
Video Tutorial on Social Network Analysis Using R
From the Complexity and Social Networks Blog links to video of Steve Goodreau and David Hunter running a tutorial on Social Network Analysis Using R. They recommend some prior knowledge of R and standard network analytic methods as the tutorial covers:
- use of exponential random graph (ERG or p*) models for representing structural hypotheses,
- model parameterization, simulation and inference,
- degeneracy checking, and goodness-of-fit assessment.
For more information, please see the workshop web page, or our project home page .
Goudreau-Hunter Political Networks 2009 1 of 5 from David Lazer on Vimeo.
Goudreau-Hunter Political Networks 2 of 5 from David Lazer on Vimeo.
Goudreau-Hunter Political Networks 2009 3 of 5 from David Lazer on Vimeo.
Goudrieu-Hunter Political Networks 2009 4 of 5 from David Lazer on Vimeo.
Gooudreau-Hunter Political Networks 2009 5 of 5 from David Lazer on Vimeo.