John Kennedy
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micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy
@micefearboggis.bsky.social
3.3K followers 3.3K following 1.9K posts

Occasional climate scientist, diagram monkey, probabilistic historian, science anti-communicator. All views and opinions are my own. This is not, sadly, a promise of novelty: it’s a disclaimer. He/him. https://www.jkclimate.fr/ .. more

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Environmental science 43%
Geography 15%
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micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 13h
With the launch of "The Genesis Mission" (and everything else) this seems appropriate again.

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2025/06/28/w...
What is the right number of cormorants?
Cormorant1 numbers are falling, says the headline I just made up2, and scientists don’t know why. Reading it, I assume that this is a bad thing. If numbers keep falling, there will eventually…
diagrammonkey.wordpress.com

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 20h
What an amazing sound...

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 21h
I do like to point out the obvious.

Reposted by John Kennedy

beccathorne.bsky.social
Becca Thorne @beccathorne.bsky.social · 1d
A long day, but grabbed some painting time before the light became too poor. Oil on panel, 40 x 50cm

#oilpainting #landscape #hills

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 1d
Say hello to my little friend, Charlie Brown.
maggiek.bsky.social Maggie Koerth @maggiek.bsky.social · 1d
Rosebud, Charlie Brown.
builtfyrdetough.bsky.social Huldra of the Hill @builtfyrdetough.bsky.social · 1d
I wish for you in the future to find someone who will mourn you when you are gone, Charlie Brown. Respectfully.

Reposted by John Kennedy

maggiek.bsky.social
Maggie Koerth @maggiek.bsky.social · 1d
Rosebud, Charlie Brown.
builtfyrdetough.bsky.social Huldra of the Hill @builtfyrdetough.bsky.social · 1d
I wish for you in the future to find someone who will mourn you when you are gone, Charlie Brown. Respectfully.
mrjoncryer.bsky.social Jon Cryer @mrjoncryer.bsky.social · 1d
I like you, Charlie Brown. That is why I will kill you last.

Reposted by John Kennedy

kordinglab.bsky.social
Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 2d
Let's compare our world models. I find that different people seem to have rather distinct internal world models. E.g. I personally have neither visual imagination nor an inner voice, found it weird others do. Here is a quick google forms to check idea:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
World-models in your head
Talking with a lot of people, they have rather shocking different kinds of world-models. I believe that people have somewhat specialized simulators. Let me list some and then give you the chance to ad...
docs.google.com

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 2d
30 years is used for calculating climatologies and as a standard for comparison. It's eminently practical, that's why it's used. The difficulty comes if you think that 30 years is what climate is.

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 3d
Particularly if that something it’s a part of is a mouse.

Reposted by Peter Thorne

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 3d
Reverse work in progress.

#linocut #wip #printmaking
Linocut lino block half carved/half not, with the pencil sketch marks still visible on the uncarved bit. The image is of a man’s face looking to the right.

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 8d
The thirty year period is a sort of convenient compromise. For some variables it is longer than it needs to be, for others shorter. And yet, it’s become this weird magic number that somehow “defines” climate.

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 8d
It’s that time of year when we celebrate the celebrated, reward the rewarded, and cite the cited in a game everyone knows is meaningless and rigged.

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2021/11/17/t...
The 7590 most puissant researchers of the year
Our biannual list recognises the most influential researchers, the true pioneers of science, the giants on whose shoulders the rest of us stand like so many flakes of dandruff, the ones who made th…
diagrammonkey.wordpress.com

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 11d
I nodded off in a meeting and had a dream about sticking together the heads and tails of a bunch of worms that had got chopped in half. That became a new way for combining climate data sets.

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2025/01/09/p...
Probably a terrible idea
More bad ideas for sticking datasets together like wiggly worms.
diagrammonkey.wordpress.com

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 12d
Taking the Monte Carlo out of Monte Carlo

Notes on a paper about a systematic approach for reducing the size of ensembles needed for Monte Carlo style uncertainty calculations.

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2025/11/13/t...
Taking the Monte Carlo out of Monte Carlo
A typical undergraduate laboratory experiment will have you measure a few quantities, calculate some combination of these and then estimate uncertainty in the calculated value. Usually, the example…
diagrammonkey.wordpress.com

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 12d
Do you take 10,000 Monte Carlo samples into the shower*? Now you can just wash and go**.

* uncertainty estimation
** use far fewer samples.

www.ptb.de/cms/en/ptb/f...
A practically oriented efficient alternative to the Monte Carlo method for measurement uncertainty estimation
A novel method for numerical measurement uncertainty estimation has been recently developed at the PTB, offering a computationally efficient alternative to the widely used Monte Carlo method (MCM). Th...
www.ptb.de

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 12d
Journals - all journals - exist to launder expert judgement. The more prestigious the journal, the cleaner the product.
davidho.bsky.social David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12d
In Nature, you can say you did something "based on…our expert judgement". 🫠

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 12d
In my own life, the things I enjoy doing that help give my life shape and meaning - reading, writing, doodling, programming, working with interesting people, puzzling stuff out, doing science, chatting, research - are all things that tech wants to automate away like they're some tiresome impediment.

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 12d
Tying that back to technology, we currently have what may be a giant financial bubble associated with AI so not only does no one care if AI "success" improves quality of life, but we also have to live with the possibility that its "failure" will crash the economy, a lose-lose situation.

Reposted by John Kennedy

davidho.bsky.social
David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12d
In Nature, you can say you did something "based on…our expert judgement". 🫠

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 12d
But what does “better” even mean?

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 12d
We all have to work in the system as it is. If a high profile project like the carbon budget can’t get the attention it warrants, what chance does anyone else have? What then can we do to make the system better?

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 12d
There’s a small irony that a paywalled article was written to expand reach, I guess. But the small irony is a signal of broader tensions between transparency and reach, value for money, timeliness, impact and so on.

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 12d
I did wonder if you had “objective” metrics, what relevant audiences Nature opens up that aren’t already aware, who is the message not getting to etc but I know these things can be more art than science.

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 12d
What I mean is, we care about “the economy” because a strong economy is supposedly linked to a good quality of life but that leads to the situation where changes that objectively make life crappier for huge numbers of people are defended just because they increase stock price or whatever.

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 12d
Do you measure the “reach”?

Reposted by Scott C. Doney, Pierre Friedlingstein, John Kennedy , and 5 more

glenpeters.bsky.social
Glen Peters @glenpeters.bsky.social · 12d
📢Global Carbon Budget 2025📢

Fossil CO2 emissions continue to rise in 2025 while the terrestrial carbon sink recovers to pre-El Niño strength.

The key findings are covered in two reports this year:
* ESSDD (preprint): essd.copernicus.org/preprints/es...
* Nature: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 13d
This. Also more generally you can replace “the technology” with “the economy”.

Reposted by John Kennedy

jukebarosh.bsky.social
Jen Herman 🌪️ @jukebarosh.bsky.social · 13d
The most valid question (I don't seeing asked outside philosophy circles), is whether our quality of life (is there something else relevant?) is bettered by the technology. If not, wth are we playing at?

micefearboggis.bsky.social
John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 13d
OK, thanks. The WMO report in point 7 is misnamed. I think the "State of the Climate Update 2024" should be the 2025 report, which was presented at Earth Information Day this Monday. This one:

wmo.int/publication-...
State of the Climate Update for COP30
wmo.int