There’s a young field at the interface of science and mathematics called spatial statistics. It’s so new that its first international conference is taking place next month in the Netherlands.

It’s an important line of work, with the potential to help clarify everything from the risk of disease outbreaks to the rate of warming across the vast and sparsely monitored Antarctic continent. I hope its practitioners make a lot of progress.

I also hope that progress, going forward, mostly doesn’t resemble the fight that has played out between Eric Steig of the University of Washington and Ryan O’Donnell, an independent data analyst, in the wake of competing papers aiming to use these methods to clarify patterns of temperature change across Antarctica.

I also hope that tussles at the edges of understanding, where data are scant or uncertainty is high, don’t distract the public too much from the basics of climate science, which are boringly undisputed yet still speak of a rising risk that sorely needs addressing.

Here’s what’s happened on the Antarctic “edge”: Read more…

A well-maintained coal plant in SimCity Societies, a game released in 2007.

A city polluted due to mismanagement of coal-plant emissions.

My post over the weekend on growing recognition of a role for gaming in learning generated a great mix of responses that are worth highlighting and building on here.

The piece focused on Will Wright, the mind behind Spore and The Sims, and solicited questions for Wright as well as others’ views on the notion that virtual experiences can help fit infinite human aspirations on a finite planet.

Early efforts have focused on embedding scientific or environmental themes in conventional games, as was the case in SimCity Societies (left) in 2007. (The climate-related components of the game were sponsored by BP, which was the subject of a very different game last year.)

That’s just one tiny facet of what might be explored. I think far greater potential lies in using gaming technology and design, along with explosively expanding communication channels, to foster global collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Not all games involve avatars or buttons. I’ve participated in Model U.N. meetings and events organized by the International Education and Resource Network, but would love to help see similar efforts bring students around the globe together via the Web to play out scenarios in which they grapple with issues that grownups are stuck on — like the “climate divide” behind many of the fights over global cooperation to limit climate risks.

Here are some of the most interesting insights and reactions from readers (I’ve added some links and video here and there for context): Read more…

Feb. 9, 12:10 a.m. | Updated The Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that the Pacific walrus, greatly recovered from decades of slaughter but facing stress in the warming Arctic climate, merits protection under the Endangered Species Act. (The photograph above was taken by John Sarvis/USFWS.)

But the species, like others that face rising pressure but are not in imminent danger, will for now remain in the regulatory equivalent of an overcrowded hospital triage department. The Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the petition that resulted in the agency decision, calls the “warranted but precluded” species status given to the walrus and many other species a “black hole.”

The walrus’s situation will be reviewed annually, according to the wildlife service. Here’s background from the agency:

• Status Review of the Pacific Walrus
• Questions and Answers

On a related front, a new paper in the journal Nature Communications (available in full online) projects deep reductions in litter size in the polar bear population along the western shores of Hudson Bay, should the open-water season continue to lengthen as foreseen under the warming influence of accumulating greenhouse gases. Bears in other parts of the Arctic with similar ice patterns could face equal peril, according to the paper. I’ve queried the authors about some details in the analysis and will file more on that research when I can.

For walruses, here’s where things stood when biologists and filmmakers from a wildlife group spotted vast herds crowded onshore in areas where the marine mammals typically rest on ice floes (as I reported, this coastal crowding is not an unprecedented phenomenon):

From the Archives, Oct. 2, 2009 The established icons of Arctic climate change are the polar bear and, to a lesser extent, those indigenous communities that are trying to maintain traditional ways in the face of slushy floes and the relentless erosion of coasts exposed to waves as sea ice retreats.

Now comes the Pacific walrus. The giant clam-digging marine mammal, greatly recovered from enormous hunting pressure, appears to be facing rising climate-related stresses as the sea ice that it normally relies on as a haven and nursery has stayed far from the coasts on the Russian and American sides of the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea. I have an article running in The Times describing the latest analysis of recent stampeding episodes of walruses crowded onshore in the absence of ice. [Read the rest.]

I recently wrote a couple of pieces aiming to move “Beyond the Eternal Food Fight” between techno-cornucopians convinced that innovation and efficiency will feed 9 billion prospering people and enviro-calamatists convinced the cliff is nigh, or we’re already over it.

It may be time to do the same thing for the hybrid debate over the role of climate change in propelling food price spikes and political instability in Egypt and other turbulent places.

When you look behind dueling posts and columns, it’s clear that the building and long-lasting influence of humans on the climate system is progressively tipping the odds toward outcomes that can be bad for agriculture in many struggling places. And it’s doing so just as the human “population cluster bomb” is creating high densities of people in many of those same places and the growth of the global middle class is amplifying appetites.

However difficult it may be, though, it’s probably best not to look with too tight a view at particular events, most recently the turmoil in Egypt, in building arguments for specific policies. And it’s clear, too, that trends in food availability and cost are shaped by so many local and global factors, with all kinds of feedback loops, that claiming causality is inadvisable.

Keith Kloor and Roger Pielke, Jr., have both pointed out that events in Egypt remain the geopolitical equivalent of a Rorschach inkblot, shaped by a sufficiently wide array of factors that they can be linked to just about any agenda – particularly the environment and climate change.

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Rising food prices have clearly jolted a country and region where a “youth bulge” had already created trouble by producing too many young men with too few job prospects.

Pielke points out that a longer view of prices, adjusted for inflation, makes a link to climate change pretty challenging. The paper he cites, by Daniel Sumner, the director of the University of California Agricultural Issues Center, is well worth reading.

For analysts and campaigners stressing the climate factor as the keystone influence on food prices, it’s also worth remembering that grain stocks these days are also not particularly stressed, from the local (Kansas) level up through a global view. A post from last fall on grain stocks and food (in)security on the Big Picture Agriculture blog (at the time, the unrest was in Mozambique) has some helpful context on the mix of issues affecting food availability: Read more…

Andrew C. Revkin for The New York Times Will Wright, the mind behind The Sims and Spore, describes the relationship of gaming to learning.

At the National Academies summit exploring ways to use entertainment technologies to foster science education, Will Wright, the mind behind The Sims and Spore, gave a warp-speed talk laying out why game design has great potential in this arena. [Feb. 9, 6:50 p.m. | Updated Many more views on the up side of gaming are here.]

The full session will be online in coming days. In the meantime, you can watch the final few minutes of Wright’s fascinating talk below: Read more…

What does this parody of a Lady Ga Ga video have to do with efforts to renew American inquiry and innovation?

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It was mentioned at a one-day event in Los Angeles organized by the National Academies to explore ways to use the tools and products of the entertainment world to renew Americans’ lagging engagement in, and appreciation for, science. The consequences for innovation and competitiveness are the focus of the academies.

You can follow others’ observations on Twitter using the tag #SEESummit.

I’m going to post rough riffs and reactions below through the day, as time allows:

Janet English, a prize-winning science teacher at El Toro High School in San Diego, introduces a batch of students to inspire the adults in the room to build the environment kids need to become learners and leaders.

Then she recalls her experiment to see if it’s possible to hula hoop in zero-g:

Sir Ken Robinson discusses the need to reexamine the anachronistic norms for education aimed at innovation, the destructive lines between arts and sciences, and new models for teaching that can advance human progress.

“Most people only discover who they are after they’ve recovered from their education,” he says. “If you make science arid, you lose another generation.”

Here his most famous riff on these issues:

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Tony DeRose from Pixar describes the wonders of the annual “Maker Faire” in the San Francisco Bay area, including the potato cannon gatling gun:

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He also describes Saphira, a fire-breathing dragon, built by his son and others.

It’s great to hear Karen Cator of Dept. of Education bulding a vision of a borderless “classroom” in which telecommunication tech is not turned off but exploited.

To my mind one goal should be to aggregate best practices, but also best experiments!

One great example is Margaret Rubega at University of Connecticut, who used Twitter as a tool to engage studentson tracking, and communicating, bird behavior.

Another is the Atlantic Rising project, linking classrooms around the Atlantic Ocean, from Ghana to Scotland to Nantucket, on understanding ocean and climate change.

7:16 p.m. | Updated Gal Luft, an analyst of the intersection of energy and security policy, has posted a troubling portrait of what might unfold in the United States if the turmoil in Egypt spread to Saudi Arabia, along with the limited options to respond, given deep dependence on petroleum. [There's much, much more on the Saudi question.]

It’s been clear for a long while that America remains hostage to oil shocks – and has yet to initiate the long-term and sustained effort that’d be required to limit the economic and strategic risks.

I sent the piece to several other scholars and researchers in this arena. Below you can read a section of Luft’s analysis, followed by an e-mail chat with him and then a variety of reactions, including those of Vaclav Smil at the University of Manitoba and R. James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

From Luft’s column: Read more…

Pano Kroko, a man of many talents whom I met a few years ago at a retreat on the role of the Internet in forging human progress, saw my post “Explaining Egypt” and offered some reflections on the causes and meaning of the uprising and whatever comes next. (The photo above, of anti-government demonstrators on Wednesday night, is by Ed Ou for The New York Times.) Kroko’s comment is reposted here as a “Your Dot” contribution:

The Egyptian uprising has been in the offing for more than 10 years. A well organized effort that uses current tools but otherwise an expected Nile drought, failed agriculture and food shortages rebellion as old as age and time and quite cyclical in Egypt.

I suppose that puts it somewhat in the economics and environmental arena… It’s not an accident that Africa suffers the most immediate effects of climate change.

In some ways it has crossed the Berkeley line and it leads to popular uprisings against stupid governments that are out of touch with reality of the people. Climate change delivers political change too. In this case as it turns out a positive outcome realized — yet.

Surely cellphones and social media matter and much like in the French revolution print lithography and broad sheet typography was critical — it wasn’t crucial.

The current rebellions are not about access to tech but about the basics: Food, free will, future survival, self determination and happiness.

He provided a link to the latest post on his Bleeding Edge blog, which is highly relevant. Kroko discusses the environmental and economic drivers of the unrest in a broader context that includes President Obama’s stated pursuit of sustainable economic growth. Here’s an excerpt and a link to the rest: Read more…

I’m in Tempe, Ariz., today, where the fountains are frozen, having (barely) escaped the Groundhog Day blizzard that just swept much of the country. I won’t be able to join my friend and Pace University colleague John Cronin on the “snowfa” carved on Main Street in Beacon, N.Y., until the weekend (the photo is by Russ Cusick, whose work has been featured here before).

I am preparing to spend most of today at Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability with one of my favorite thinkers, Braden Allenby, exploring one of the core questions of Dot Earth, which I phrased this way in a recent post:

Through science, we are getting the growing impression that our petri dish has an edge. Do we grow unabated until fundamental resource constraints rein us in, or can we modulate behaviors to soften the transition to some steadier state?

Distilled, it’s a formula: 9 billion people + 1 planet = ?

It’s notable that Allenby’s title at Arizona State is Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics. As I’ve written neither of those pursuits, in isolation, is likely to provide humans with a smooth ride in the next few generations.

As I wrote the other day, the question then devolves to, “Sustain What?”

I can’t wait to report back.

(My answers to some of the great reader questions submitted following the “Sustain What” piece will be coming before the week is out.)

One of the worst experiences at sea is hitting bottom where you expect deep water. The photo above shows the aftermath of an awful night for me in 1980. I was at the helm of the circumnavigating sailboat Wanderlust when, around 1 a.m., a gale blew up and drove me off course into shallow waters off Messolonghi, Greece. (There’s a long, mostly happy story about what happened next.)

But this was in warm waters and the bottom was a sand bar, not rock. In far less hospitable waters along the Antarctic peninsula, a cruise ship, the MV Polar Star, became the latest in a string of vessels getting into trouble way down south, in this case hitting an uncharted rock yesterday near Detaille Island. The outer of the ship’s twin hulls was slightly breached and the vessel is now slowly making its way up the Antarctic Peninsula enroute to Ushuaia, Argentina, according to a news release from the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (the excerpt below has to be preceded by a euphemism alert because of the phrase I’ve italicized):

Polar Star Expeditions reports that following yesterday’s incident when the double-hulled ship touched a rock that resulted in a minor breach of the outer hull, officers and crew spent the day assessing damage, taking corrective measures, and consulting with the Halifax home office, flag state and classification society officials. Last evening at approximately 2100 local time, the MV Polar Star departed its location near Detaille Island and is currently heading north-northeast at approximately 10 knots toward Arctowski Station, a Polish research facility on King George Island in the South Shetland Islands. There, as an added precaution, station divers will make an underwater inspection to confirm that the vessel is fit to return to Ushuaia,

Thanks, Jon Bowermaster, for alerting me to this latest development in the increasingly busy waters at both ends of the earth.

Having stood on the shifting sea ice near the North Pole once, I do feel the desire to be bipolar and go to Antarctic waters someday, despite conditions that will always make trips there adventure travel in the purest sense of that word.