statistical aspects of climate change [discuss]

As part of its annual conference in Aberdeen, Scotland, the RSS is organising a discussion meeting on two papers presented on Wednesday 14 September 2022, 5.00PM – 7.00PM (GMT+1), with free on-line registration.

Two papers will be presented:

‘Assessing present and future risk of water damage using building attributes, meteorology, and topography’ by Heinrich-Mertsching et al.​
‘The importance of context in extreme value analysis with application to extreme temperatures in the USA and Greenland’ by Clarkson et al.​

“The Discussion Meeting at this year’s RSS conference in Aberdeen will feature two papers on the Statistical Aspects of Climate Change. The Discussion Meetings Committee chose this topic area motivated by the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) held in Glasgow last year and because climate changes and the environment is one of the RSS’s six current campaigning priorities for 2022.

You are welcome to listen to the speakers and join in the discussion of the papers which follows the presentations. All the proceedings will be published in a forthcoming issue of Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series C (Applied Statistics) .”

Dr Shirley Coleman, Chair and Honorary Officer for Discussion Meetings

new trajectories?

visitors allowed in Svalbard

and it only gets worse [verbatim]

“[DT] is a racist and he stokes racism in this country, and it does not just offend our sensibilities, it fundamentally changes the character of this country and it leads to violence.” Beto O’Rourke, 4 August

“I am the chosen one, somebody had to do it.” DT, 08/21

““Essentially [Greenland] it’s a large real estate deal. A lot of things can be done.” DT, 08/18

“They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?” DT, 08/25

“If that perfect phone call with the President of Ukraine isn’t considered appropriate, then no future President can EVER again speak to another foreign leader!” DT, 09/27

“As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!).” DT 10/07

“[The Kurds] didn’t help us in the second world war, they didn’t help us with Normandy.” DT 10/10

Nature snapshots

In this 15 March issue of Nature, a rather puzzling article on altruism that seemed to rely on the Hamilton rule:

linking fitness and number of offspring and benefits through kth-order moments. In a stochastic environment represented by distribution π. Hard to fathom what comes from data and what follows from this (hypothetical) model. Plus a proposal for geoengineering meltdown delays on some Greenland and Antarctica glaciers. Scary. And a film review of Iceman (Der Mann aus dem Eis), retracing Ötzi’s life in an archaeologically acceptable rendering. Including a reconstituted local language, Rhaetic.