Feed: Resilience Science - AggScore: 82.8

R. Dominguez-Faus and others analyze the impact of different biofuels on water in the USA in their article in Envir. Science and Technology, The Water Footprint of Biofuels: A Drink or Drive Issue? (doi:10.1021/es802162x).  The figure below, from the paper, shows the substantial ecological requirements (and variation) among biofuels. They write: The current and ongoing increase in [...]

Edward Wolf offers a trio of books reviews about planetary transformation and systems at Worldchanging in Straight Talk for the Planetary Era: Diplomats from 193 countries prepare to hammer out a global climate treaty in Copenhagen. But few expect this year’s activism, politics, or diplomacy to change the game. The 21st century to-do list keeps growing. [...]

Complex systems scientist Cosma Shalizi reviews economic journalist Justin Fox’s book The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street for American Scientist magazine in the article Twilight of the Efficient Markets: The Myth of the Rational Market, by Justin Fox, is an account—popular but thorough—of the roots, rise, [...]

In a Perspective in Science, Nancy Dise reviews how the response of peatlands to global change will be complex (doi:10.1126/science.1174268). She writes: Research from a variety of areas and approaches is converging upon the concept of peatlands as complex adaptive systems: self-regulating to some degree, but capable of rapid change and reorganization in response to [...]

Nitrogen deposition is increased the extent to which lake algal populations are regulated by phosphorus, shifting lake food webs.  Because, the patterns of human amplification of nitrogen and phosphorus trasport are different this should drive different patterns in lakes in different regions. James Elser and other write in Science Shifts in Lake N:P Stoichiometry and Nutrient [...]

Following up on a previous post about the resilience of the Nasca, the New York Times reports on the continued destruction of the huarango in the present day. The huarango, a giant relative of the mesquite tree of the American Southwest, survived the rise and fall of Pre-Hispanic civilizations, and plunder by Spanish conquistadors, whose chroniclers [...]

The Financial Times suggests that the IEA agrees with Herman Daly (at least a little bit), in  Did oil cause the latest recession? IEA weighs into the debate: A feature in the draft executive summary of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, which will be published tomorrow, revisits this argument and comes to a rather worrying conclusion. It [...]

The concept of resilience appears to be really spreading.  One interesting group of people attempting to build resilience in specific communities is the Transition town movement. A global network of communities each of which is attempting to build their resilience to climate change and peak oil while addressing the question: “for all those aspects of life [...]

In an interview with Terry Bisson, science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson talks about the importance of writing about utopias: Terry Bisson: My favorite of that series is Pacific Edge, the utopia of the series. What’s yours? Are there any particular problems in writing a utopia? Kim Stanley Robinson: My favorite is The Gold Coast, for personal [...]

Jon Foley argues for the integration of industrial and organic agriculture to meet the challenge of rising demand for agriculture production in a turbulent world in Room for Debate Blog on Can Biotech Food Cure World Hunger? … Currently, there are two paradigms of agriculture being widely promoted: local and organic systems versus globalized and industrialized [...]

The Economists looks at recent declines in fertility discusses current projections of world population, and how changes in a country’s demographic structure shape its economic development (but it doesn’t mention the role of urbanization).  In Fertility and living standards it writes: Sometime in the next few years (if it hasn’t happened already) the world will reach [...]

How innovative uses of simple information and communication technologies can build resilience.