Steve Easterbrook / is on Nostr

Director, School of the Environment, University of Toronto. Professor of Computer Science. I study how climate models are built & tested + systems thinking for sustainability. New book, Computing the Climate, coming in 2023. He/him

#Climate #Sustainability #Environment #Resilience #STS #Transdisciplinarity #Community #Complexity #SystemsThinking #ClimateJustice #LandBack #Feminism #TransRights #Ecology #Computing #ML #Models #ClimateData
#fedi22

Last Notes

2024-10-03 01:10:35

Here's a new review paper of everything we know about #LongCovid
Some take aways:
- an estimated 65 million people worldwide currently experiencing it
- Prevalence between 5% and 10% in some countries
- Few reliable estimates of the number suffering the most serious, disabling form, but likely over 4 million in the US alone.
- more common in women and older people
- best way to prevent it is to prevent the initial infection
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867424008869
1/n

2024-09-13 13:27:56

I now typically get half a dozen emails *every day* from predatory journals and conferences, inviting me to send my paper / give a keynote talk. Many of them greet me using a name of one of my past co-authors.
Anyone know how to make this stop?
I wonder if I could dump them all by filtering on the word "esteemed"?
#AcademicProblems

2024-08-03 16:50:31

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BTW one small thing you can do to help. Download the SoundPrint app, and use it to take a noise measurement every time you visit a restaurant. Together we can build a useful crowdsourced map of restaurant noisiness.

2024-08-03 14:55:33

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It’s hard to find quiet restaurants, although I’ve discovered if you eat earlier in the evening it tends to be quieter. But why do they all need background music? Most wont even turn it down when I ask.
Academic conferences are particularly hard. The talks are fine. The rest is not. For me, the value of a conference is in the informal conversations in coffee breaks, and over lunch or dinner. I can’t do that now.
3/n

2024-08-03 14:43:01

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So I won’t be able to hear you in busy restaurants, urban streets, anywhere with background music, crowds, parties, or anywhere where several people are talking at once.
Teaching is now really difficult. We’ve installed air purifiers in all our classrooms, but they make enough of a hum that I can’t hear the students very well. I like to use a lot of breakout discussion in my classes, but I can’t hear anything any of them are saying if I do that.
2/n

2024-08-02 02:26:11

Two years ago, I experienced Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSNHL), and am now almost completely deaf in one ear. This year, one of my colleagues had the same thing. Now I see there's a study out showing a strong correlation between COVID and SSNHL.
I guess that explains a lot. But, shit.
BTW If you find you suddenly lose hearing in one ear, get yourself to a specialist *immediately*. You have a 24-36 hour window to save your hearing before it becomes permanent.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(24)00338-9/fulltext

2024-07-19 12:24:35

“If you believe a few people sitting in the street is a major impediment to traffic, take a look at what a sea surge, a flash flood, a windstorm or a rail-buckling, road-melting, bridge-jamming heat event can do to transport infrastructure.”
George Monbiot nails it on the draconian sentences for climate protesters in the UK
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/19/protest-democracy-labour-tories-laws

2024-05-22 21:23:50

Important read:
"technology is not going to save us, real or imaginary. We have to change our behavior. If we change our behavior, we have sufficient technology to save ourselves"
"Sustainability has come to mean, what kind of technological fixes can we come up with that will allow us to continue to do business as usual without paying a penalty for it?"
"we should not be talking about sustainability, but about survival, in terms of humanity’s future"
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-collapse-is-coming-will-humanity-adapt/

2024-05-18 22:43:00

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@npub1gnx…d5kh Mine doesn’t! I take it you don’t have cats. 😀😀😀

2024-05-08 10:47:25

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Climate scientists and climate activists know this in their bones. But it's remarkable how many of the world's elites (politicians, business leaders, technologists, public intellectuals, etc) remain stubbornly ignorant of the depth, urgency, and irreversibility of the #ClimateCrisis

2024-05-08 10:46:59

Front page of the Guardian today: "Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet..."
“[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature

2024-02-05 19:00:13

In two months time, there's a total eclipse across N. America. The path of the total eclipse will...
(checks notes)
...miss Toronto by about 10km. It goes straight up Lake Ontario, so I can't even just head out to the suburbs!
Time for a trip to Niagara, I think!

2023-07-09 21:58:00

I'd like to live in the world where the pedestrian lights are green by default, and the drivers have to press a button and wait ages for the lights to change.