DrEvanGowan

@DrEvanGowan@fediscience.org

Climate Scientist at Kumamoto University, Japan. I study past climate, ice sheets and sea level change. #SeaLevel #Paleoclimate #IceSheets

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DrEvanGowan, to climate

I have written up a blog post about how I think you can deal with the dread of climate change. I believe that you can find hope by finding a community that shares your interests and passions, and by joining together, action can be taken. #ClimateChange #ClimateAction https://raisedbeaches.net/2024/03/27/dealing-with-the-dread-of-climate-change/

DrEvanGowan, to random

Kazmierczak et al have a preprint on a description of a model to couple subglacial meltwater routing and ice sheet sliding that takes into account basal geology in the Kori-ULB ice-sheet model. They first route the water, then parameterize the type of drainage system at a grid-scale level, which then is used to calculate the effective pressure at the base. #IceSheets #Glacier #ThwaitesGlacier https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2024/egusphere-2024-466/

DrEvanGowan, to random

Papers are being submitted that are written using AI. Reviews of papers are being written by AI. This is just going to be a circular spiral down the toilet for quality control, isn't it? https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.07183

DrEvanGowan, to random

Clark et al investigate sediment cores and geophysical data from the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica (often called the "Doomsday Glacier" by the news media) in order determine when it began to destabilize. They estimate that a stable position was attained by about 10,000 years ago, when the floating ice tongue became pinned on two topographic highs on the seafloor. They estimate that destabilization and retreat was initiated around 1940, after a strong El Nino.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2211711120

DrEvanGowan, to politics

Brian Mulroney, the former Prime Minister of Canada passed away today. He obviously left a complicated legacy (his dealings with arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber were particularly hideous). However, his government was probably the last to seriously tackle environmental issues, including the treaty with the US to end acid rain, and leading the efforts to end the production of CFCs.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/brian-mulroney-passes-away-1.7130287

DrEvanGowan, to random

Oliver Pollard has released a fork of my ice sheet reconstruction software, ICESHEET. I haven't checked in detail, but it looks like this version will take in NetCDF files, making it nicer to use with other programs like Generic Mapping Tools. https://github.com/oliverpollard/icesheet

DrEvanGowan, to random

I have been in this game for nearly 20 years. Rejections do sting, but after a while, you come to realize that they are just part of life and it is best not to dwell on it too much. Enjoy your accepted paper, and remember that your other work will eventually get out there!

DrEvanGowan, to random

It has been half a year since the end of my last postdoc. After some time off to reflect, I am starting my job quest in earnest. I have written some reflections on what will likely be the start of my pathway out of academia. I think for me, data analysis with something adjacent to climate change and risks is the most likely pathway, but I am still exploring. I am interested in chatting with those who have made the transition out, please let me know if you have!

https://raisedbeaches.net/2024/02/20/job-quest-the-beginning/

jonny, to random
@jonny@neuromatch.social avatar

Too many ppl taking the wrong lessons from the three-balled rat "AI" generated #frontiers paper. The problem isnt "predatory publishers" or that one person didnt peer review hard enough. The problem is that we actively construct a system where companies make billions of dollars selling prestige vouchers academics have to buy to survive. If the for-profit journals didnt make the system a game, there would be nothing to play.

Frontiers is a symptom. Science, Cell, Nature, and the prestige treadmill they exploit us with is the disease.

DrEvanGowan,

@jonny In many countries, academics are judged based on the number of papers and citations they have. Indeed, Frontiers is providing a service for people in these countries, which is hard to fathom for those not under such pressure. The problem is the capture of academic science by capitalists, where all that is valued are the numbers. A company like Frontiers would not exist in a system based on merits.

DrEvanGowan, to random

There are people out there using ChatGPT to help write their papers, but there is the very real possibility that it might take the input from your prompts and give it to someone else. Beware. https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/ars-reader-reports-chatgpt-is-sending-him-conversations-from-unrelated-ai-users/

koen_hufkens, to academicchatter
@koen_hufkens@mastodon.social avatar

Does anyone else take issue with, or have profound concerns about, platform science?

For clarity, it refers to the tendency the last decade for science to be organized into top down meta level networks (which at times, or more often than not, share a political and economic reality not to dissimilar to market based platform economics).

@academicchatter

DrEvanGowan,

@koen_hufkens @academicchatter Yeah, I have to agree, I am not sure what you mean by "platform science" or "meta level networks". I have never encountered these terms before.

DrEvanGowan,

@koen_hufkens @academicchatter I am still not sure if I fully understand, but in my field (Earth sciences), most work is still very decentralized. Generally speaking, even organized activities (e.g. climate model intercomparisons) are still done in a very ad hoc way, giving large degrees of freedom to each research group on how they approach the problem.

DrEvanGowan,

@koen_hufkens @academicchatter I think that in my field this is not really an issue, because there is such little funding in general that no one has the resources consolidate everything into one place like that. For example, there is no centralized database of geological evidence of past sea level variations (something that is very much needed to assess future potential sea level rise) - I am having to compile it myself.

DrEvanGowan,

@koen_hufkens @academicchatter Haha, I haven't even been able to convince anyone to give me a job to do this, let alone make it something that could be monetized. Even though my database is fully open on Github and described in a highly cited paper that I published 3 years ago, I do not know of anyone else using it.

petergleick, to random

This, rather than "Trump barely ekes out a win in New Hampshire" is how the media is going to play this??!

Trump barely got half the GOP votes and fewer than projected.

I don't actually care, since I think Trump is a far, far weaker candidate in the national election than Haley, but it's a sign of seriously distorted media coverage.

DrEvanGowan,

@petergleick As an outsider, I think you cannot call the United States a democracy. The presidential election is going to be a matchup between two deeply unpopular people who were chosen long before the primary season even started. Like, I do not understand why it is so taboo for Biden, someone who is very unpopular, to be forced to run again in a competitive primary. And of course, Trump is there because he promotes the big grift. In other countries, he would already be in jail.

DrEvanGowan, to climate

Fox et al investigate the interesting problem of the increasing intensity of Antarctic Peninsula glaciation during the past 3 million years or so. They find that the increase in glaciation is purely a function of tectonic uplift of the Peninsula, rather than requiring a climatic explanation. The uplifting mountains made it easier for an ice sheet to develop over time. #ClimateChange #Antarctica #IceSheets https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01336-7

DrEvanGowan, to climate

Berg et al investigate the impact of retreating glaciers on vertical land motion (glacial isostatic adjustment) in Greenland and northern Canada using fixed GNSS (i.e. GPS) stations. They find that the retreating glaciers do indeed cause local uplift that is measurable by the GNSS stations, and must be kept in mind when calculating the overall mass loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet. #IceSheets #ClimateChange #GlacialIsostaticAdjustment https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2023GL104851

DrEvanGowan, to random

Throwing this out there: Do other people find that if they email someone with a simple academic question that requires a two or three sentence reply at most, that greater than 50% of the time, you get no response? I am trying to find out if someone is doing something that I would like done, and I would be more comfortable if I conversed with the experts in this area before I push ahead. I highly doubt these people are so busy that they cannot spend a few minutes to reply. #AcademicChatter

DrEvanGowan, to climate

Modelling paleo sea level in western France has been notoriously difficult, so much so that researchers thought it would be impossible without using complicated 3D Earth models. Although preliminary, PaleoMIST 1.0 (my paleo ice sheet/topography reconstruction) does a pretty good job using a simple spherically symmetric Earth model. #PaleoSeaLevel #IceSheets #SeaLevel #ClimateChange #France

DrEvanGowan, to random

Marra et al date two shoreline deposits in the west side of Italy, which correspond to the MIS 5e interglacial and MIS 5c interstadial. They found that the MIS 5c sea level was similar to present day. Even accounting for tectonic uplift, which seems relatively small considering the elevation of the MIS 5e deposit at 9.5 m, this site implies much higher sea level than infered from marine δ¹⁸O records. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023PA004679

DrEvanGowan, to climate

I spent most of December in Canada, and indeed it was extremely warm compared to what would be expected. The lack of snow is very concerning. Last year was an exceptionally bad year for forest fires, and that could happen again if this continues. #ClimateChange #Canada https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-weather-low-snow-high-temperatures-1.7073579

DrEvanGowan, to random

I was looking at some paleo sea level data from the small island of Storöya in Svalbard, and it looks like Google Earth has the wrong location for the map outlines for the island, so it did not have a satellite photo of it! This is a GSHHG problem, likely (a similar problem is in northern Greenland). #GIS #GoogleEarth #Svalbard

DrEvanGowan,

@Ruth_Mottram GSHHG is the global dataset of coastlines. It is used in many things, including Google Earth, but it has inaccuracies in remote areas, like in Greenland. As a result, you should use caution in using Google Earth as a positioning reference in Greenland, since the satellite imagery is georeferenced to GSHHS. https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhg/

DrEvanGowan, to random

I bought A City on Mars by @ZachWeinersmith for my holiday read on Saturday. Unfortunately, I already finished it on Sunday night! It is a fascinating and sobering look at the extreme complications facing any kind of colony in space, demonstrating the sheer lack of research done on the feasibility of such an endeavor. I would not have even considered the geopolitical consequences of a space colony, and how it could cause war on Earth. That alone should make governments pause.

petersuber, (edited ) to twitter

In September 2020 I started what became a long #Twitter thread on #MultilingualResearch.
https://twitter.com/petersuber/status/1307774697531113474

Starting today, I'm stopping it on Twitter and continuing it on #Mastodon.

Here's a rollup of the complete Twitter thread.
https://resee.it/tweet/1307774697531113474

Here's a nearly complete archived version in the @waybackmachine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220908060944/https://twitter.com/petersuber/status/1307774697531113474

Watch this space for updates.

#Academia #Multilingualism
@academicchatter

🧵

DrEvanGowan,

@petersuber I am very supportive of the idea that papers can be published in the author's native language, along with an English language summary. In most cases, the summary is sufficient for non-speakers, and machine translations are now at the point that the details can be worked out if it is needed. The main issue is that non-English journals are not particularly well known (at least in my field of Earth sciences), so it is hard for the results to proliferate.

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