Ben Matthews

I was concerned about the gap between climate science and policy. So, having learned to program as a kid, I made an interactive model to help bridge that gap, to let people experiment. This evolved over 25 years - recently moved to scala.js, still developing, not for money but because we have to keep trying to solve complex problems.

As a kid, I learned to write i = i +1, before school maths taught me it can’t. The point is, computers do iteration well, especially to model dynamics of real non-linear systems, while classical maths is good at finding algebraic solutions to equilibria - typically more theoretical than real. Calculus is great for understanding repeatable dynamics - such as waves in physics, also integrating over some distributions. But even without knowing that well you could still approximate stuff numerically with simple loops, test it, and if an inner-loop turns out to be time-critical or accuracy-critical (most are not), ask a mathematical colleague to rethink it - believe in iteration rather than perfect solutions.

I’m aware of the racism issue, I even observed it myself in China, even many years ago.
But i’ve also seen similar problems in other corners of the world. Such cultural concepts can change slowly, as they did over here.
Anyway, I doubt this would dissuade people trying to connect what will become the world’s main supply of surplus young labour, with the world’s greatest demand for care-services, combined with spare apartments, money, and a milder climate. Not saying it’s good or bad, just trying to anticipate future changes.

That seems like a big change in one year. It may to some extent reflect delay, as on average chinese used to pair-up at a younger age than typical in europe, also maybe some feel old traditions aren’t necessary to keep a stable family with children. But the article says, the core factors are economic. Even so, as they have built so many surplus apartments, the [real] prices must drop, I wonder how many years before they are trying to sell the chinese dream to migrants from Africa or elsewhere.

Indeed to use scala-native you’d need pure-scala libraries, but the core lib re-implements most java lib, and there are now small simple external libs available for common tasks like file management, database, etc. - for example check out the lihaoyi suite.
I mainly use scala-js (to make this) which was formerly a java app - as it compiles to both js and jvm (cross-project) can gradually convert stuff you already wrote. I’ve tried native for stuff like pre-processing data files.

Scala compiles either to native, js or jvm - obviously the IO / interface options vary between these envs, but the lang is the same. Recently Scala 3.5 incorporates a simple-to-use CLI which makes it easier to compile to native (or just run a small file as a script, or experiment with a repl), native binaries are small and fast, and there are some simple io libraries. Since you can also compile to jvm to interop with java, that might help with transition.

I now use Scala 3, and very happy with syntactic whitespace (combined with an intelligent compiler)

Indeed that’s strange, and the flat slope in 2060 seems inconsistent with declared net-zero policies of China and even India. Russia has no such policy, but still strange to assume continuation of current government concepts there until 2060. (you can see the regional breakdown in supplem Fig 1. )

Regarding the map - an annual average cost is not so meaningful - in higher latitudes solar is not enough in winter - especially where it’s mostly cloudy during the first half of winter. Wind helps the balance but not everywhere, always. Of course, the sophisticated models behind the article know all that, the issue is simplistic presentation. I note “we assume hydrogen is used for seasonal storage” - this may be rather optimistic - how many dark months can that cover?

Scala-js is working on it - as its compiler design may facilitate this.
I haven’t yet tried (on todo list) and am not an expert, but bookmarked in passing:
recent github implementation, some history, following older discussion

Curious that the richer (western) countries seem more enthusiastic about taxing the rich …

I agree. The key symbiosis between coral and microalgae depends on fundamental thermodynamic equilibria of the carbonate chemistry of seawater - which are highly sensitive to temperature and atmospheric CO2, in very predictable ways. When living in coral becomes unprofitable for the algae, they leave. My instinct, from some experience with this system, is that introducing new species won’t do better than nature, nobody can beat thermodynamics. We have to reduce the CO2.

Wonder whether the popularity of the president will follow a similar pattern as in France, trying similar idea … ?

I use vscode as I develop this model in Scala3, whose language-server ‘metals’ integrates well with vscode, and when scala3 was new in mid-21 this was the platform they first targeted. But the scala command-line tools do the clever analysis, vscode provides the layout, colours, git integration, search/regex, web-preview etc… Now considering other options (eg zed) as vscode too dependent on potentially unsafe extensions (of which too much choice), also don’t want M$ scraping my code. Long ago when same model was in java I used netbeans, then eclipse. Would prefer a pure-scala toolset.

Note that Knesset has 120 seats (not obvious from the article). (also, of course, a large fraction of people between the river and the sea don’t get to vote for any of its seats)

Depends whose lifetime. Mine, maybe not, but for my children - yes. Also depends what indicator - global CO2 emissions maybe falling this year, but temperature will lag decades, sea-level even more (btw I do model these scenarios, so know well how they diverge ).

Nice graphic. Although probably you’d see more info with just a lineplot, separating north / south + land /ocean. What strikes me is how regular the gap is over the last year, and how it bulges most in July-December, which suggests the ocean (larger and less variable) dominates the numbers, with El Niño overlaid on steady warming trend. To get it back down quickly, we need more effort on short lived gases - mainly methane (tackling aviation-indeed cirrus might also help compensate for reduced ship-sulphate cooling ) .

That’s great progress, thanks for all the work!
Glad to see enhanced federation with rest of fediverse - a small detail : the link for ‘Automatically includes a hashtag with new posts’ should point to pull #4533 (not #4398 ) - should help discoverability from mastodon, especially if community tags become customisable.

“…at a rate of roughly 0.05 percent per day … would take a very long time” … but by my quick calculation 0.9995^3650 is 84% per decade, which is not long. Almost instantaneous on a geological timescale - and think how much the world changed when fungi learned how to digest lignin in wood - ending the era of coal-forming swamps.

Hi, excuse me for replying so late, but i’ve been away from lemmy for.a while. Well, to summarise, the model calculates the future trajectories, of population, economy, emissions, atmospheric gases, and climate response etc., according to a set of (hundreds of) diverse options and uncertainties which you can adjust - the key feature is that the change shows rapidly enough to let you follow cause -> effect, to understand how the system responds in a quasi-mechanical way.
Indeed you are right, complexity is beautiful, but hard. A challenge with such tools is to adjust gradually from simple to complex. Although SWIM has four complexity levels, they are no longer systematically implemented - also what seems simple or complex varies depending where each person is coming from, so i think to adapt the complexity filter into a topic-focus filter. Much todo …