Dr. Evan J. Gowan / is on Nostr

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

Last Notes

2024-12-01 05:28:05

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@nprofile…hm0v @nprofile…uvjf Yeah, your mileage on Mastodon is really dependent if the niche you want is here. Two years ago (after Musk bought Twitter), there were more climate and Earth science people here, but they left when they found out they could not get the same level of engagement here. So it is definitely not as easy as it once was to find people of that niche. But that is OK, there is still plenty of interesting things here, notably less people posting about doom.

2024-12-01 04:47:44

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@nprofile…hm0v @nprofile…uvjf I am personally finding that social media has become exhausting. It used to be you could share papers on Twitter and other people would do the same and that made it useful to keep up to date with what was being published. Now it seems to be just high volume posters talking exclusively about what is wrong with the world. The chronological feed on Mastodon (and Bluesky) has fixed this to a certain extent, but I am just not seeing the value anymore.

2024-12-01 04:30:19

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@nprofile…uvjf Yeah, I'm getting dozens of new followers every day on Bluesky. Even if they aren't all bots (many definitely are), these people are following me because I am on some lists rather than following me for what I post. I expect low engagement. I don't know if I would blame Bluesky on this, because they could not have anticipated such a large influx of users, and I doubt they have the capacity to deal with spambots right now.

2024-12-01 03:30:32

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If you are interested in this topic, make sure to have a look at the review paper that April Dalton and I published a couple of years ago. https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/1447/2022/

2024-11-27 11:22:17

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@nprofile…hkqw That is something I can agree on!

2024-11-27 10:46:08

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@nprofile…hkqw From my experience in Japan, stratification as I proposed would be highly beneficial. For instance, everyone here wants to do their undergrad at University of Tokyo, because it has a lot of prestige from its research endeavors. However, the actual level of undergraduate education is not higher than other universities (and lower than in Canada). By splitting the undergrad section to a separate university, it would reduce its perceived eliteness of the undergraduate degree.

2024-11-27 10:14:47

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@nprofile…hkqw From my experiences, I think there are actually a lot of benefits to separating research/postgraduate departments and those focused primarily on teaching undergraduate students, perhaps even by making them into separate universities altogether (as was done when ANU was founded). I would not have had the same rich PHD experience if I did it where I did my undergrad, which was a primarily undergraduate education department. In such a system, funding could be better targeted.

2024-11-26 14:43:01

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@nprofile…hkqw It was definitely a great place to do a PHD, though I finished 10 years ago so I do not know if anything has changed.

2024-11-26 13:44:05

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@nprofile…ucf9 I am skeptical of the older MIS 3 radiocarbon dates they published, they are from humic acids or are conventional dates that are at the limit of that method. I suspect that this advance is from MIS 4 or MIS 6. The Manitoba Geological Survey is going to have some OSL data out soon that put the margin in Manitoba in early-mid MIS 3. The second advance at around 30 ka seems plausible - there are cosmogenically dated erratics in ND beyond the late glacial advance that are that age as well.

2024-11-26 10:37:50

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@nprofile…hkqw If he is aiming to change the perception of geology to the general public, I doubt that this piece will do it!
I remember when I was ANU, there was chatter I heard that the mining companies would hire foreign geologists before considering local graduates (I had a couple of classmates from my undergraduate who did make the move). It felt like there was a perception that the quality of education was not as good as in the US and Canada, even if that was necessarily true.

2024-11-26 05:18:00

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@nprofile…k3n9 As a geographer and climate scientist, this map is so incorrect I do not know where to begin.

2024-11-25 10:32:56

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@nprofile…wajd It is pretty sad that middle school students strive to become bureaucrats, though.

2024-11-25 08:42:10

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@nprofile…x3q0 @nprofile…gw7s I am pretty skeptical of the results from these process emulators for this very reason. If the model has deficiencies, the emulator will amplify them. I think it is much better to compare the results of different runs from the same model. Every model behaves differently overall, but the relative sensitivity of changes to specific parameters is often similar.

2024-11-25 03:05:32

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@nprofile…pspd It seems likely that the rise of populist movements will target academy and try to weaken it. The bureaucrats in charge seem happy to go along with this as long as they keep filling their pockets. I look at the acceptance of American university administrators in the violent crushing of Gaza War protestors earlier this year as a good example of this.

2024-11-25 03:03:31

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@nprofile…pspd Academy in China ebbed and flowed through its long history depending on the relative strength of its ruler. There were many periods when it thrived, but there were times when the emperors found the it a threat and conducted mass purges.
The decline of scientific advance (at least in the eyes of people like Hossenfelder) can be traced to overt control of academy by bureaucrats, many who are brazenly grifting (look at the rise in university president salaries, for instance).

2024-07-24 06:05:37

So, I guess you can't use an external USB microphone on an Android phone? The Google results from my searches are just AI generated nonsense. When I record video with my microphone plugged in, there is no sound recorded. There doesn't appear to be any settings for microphones on the phone. I have Android version 12 if that helps. #Android

2024-05-24 04:19:22

The reports of Google's AI results spouting nonsense is no surprise at all. Garbage in, garbage out. If you want to create a good AI, you need to have experts actually vet the training data. Of course, at that point, why not just have experts posting the information rather than AI?
Don't answer, I know exactly why they are doing it. #AI #ArtificialIntelligence