@alexlipp.github.io
Lecturer in Earth Sciences @es-ucl.bsky.social | Interested in rivers, mud, mountains, pollution, carbon cycling, quantitative methods, open science | alexlipp.github.io | www.sewagemap.co.uk | he/him | ๐ ๐ฑ ๐ ๐งโโ๏ธ ๐ ๐โโ๏ธ
Good! I have been keeping a list of other vital environmental datasets and models that were publicly funded but now sit behind a paywall (looking at you CEH ๐). Can we initiate some community efforts to open up all such datasets? A digital right-to-roam as it wereโฆ
๐ฏโฆ Sewage pollution is โeasyโ (ish) to monitor: itโs literally a pipe. Agriculture is so much harder because itโs a diffuse source and not just one evil company to point the finger atโฆ ๐คท
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... โโIs university still worth it?โ is the wrong questionโ
The student-loan system now actively subsidises the rest of the state, fails to adequately support HE, *and* has punitive life-long repayment terms for students ๐ซ
wonkhe.com/blogs/gradua...
Remarkable quote: "Weโve gone from government suggesting that the state would subsidise undergraduate student loans by about 45p in the pound, to making a profit on them for that cohort."
๐จ Pre-announcement! ๐จ
Weโre hiring for 2 x two-year, full-time roles to join me and the wider @palaeoverse.bsky.social team @es-ucl.bsky.social.
- Research Software Engineer (REF: B04-06999): lnkd.in/eNRBiPnP
- Community Engagement Coordinator (REF: B04-06998): lnkd.in/ejUACCzn
This was a very fun project to work on, with some neat stats & maths from fractals to fluid mechanics. We were surprised that for such a high profile dataset like sewage spills there had been such limited public statistical analysis until now! ๐ฉ ๐งฎ ๐งโ๐ป
eartharxiv.org/repository/v... 8/8
This matters because water companies now need to create hydraulic models of thousands of CSOs to reduce their spillingโฆ but unless they can model infiltration (hard!) they are likely to underestimate the frequency of the most damaging, long duration spills! 7/
www.gov.uk/government/p...
What causes the heavy tail? When trying to replicate it using hydraulic models we can only do so by including infiltration of groundwater into pipes through cracksโฆ this suggests that these long duration spills are *not* only occurring after heavy rainโฆ
eartharxiv.org/repository/v...
6/
We think this is driven by daily fluctuations in water usage (๐ฟ ๐ฉ) which modulates the length of sewage spillsโฆ
eartharxiv.org/repository/v...
5/
A total (and cool ๐ค) surprise for us, was the discovery of a periodic variation of the misfit to this modelled trend, fluctuating around spills that are multiples of 24 hours longโฆ whatโs causing this?
eartharxiv.org/repository/v...
4/
Statistically, this tail is well described by a stretched exponential distribution. Itโs not quite as heavy as a power law, but much heavier than a vanilla exponentialโฆ
eartharxiv.org/repository/v...
3/
We find that sewage spills follow a very heavy-tailed distribution. 10% of spills account for 85% of all spilling *time*. So, itโs not the infrequent, short spills we should care about, itโs the infrequent long onesโฆ
eartharxiv.org/repository/v...
2/
In our ๐ซ new preprint ๐ซ Barney Dobson & I drill into the statistics behind โshittyโ headlines like these about the number & duration of sewage pollution spills.
We analyse a dataset of nearly 4 million individual #sewage spill eventsโฆ 1/
eartharxiv.org/repository/v...
Is this all subjects? Undergrad & postgrad?
OTOH the environment agency *is* massively under-resourced so not totally their fault, *but* this defence is totally inappropriateโฆ Youโre an arm of the State, itโs right and good to be subject to criticism and you need to respond to it better than โuwu donโt be so meanโ ๐
Many people believe that the way to attract people to the geosciences is via logical, utilitarian returns on an undergraduate degree.
But left unexplored is the power of the field's inherent irrational, cosmic horror to command attention.
It's 2nd only to astronomy in that, & much more immediate.
I mean cโmon youโre the CEH! You famously study things that are naturally messy and green and blue! Why opt forโฆ. black with very hard lines?!
so pleased everyone is choosing such unique and distinctive typefaces
Another research institute opting for โshort lived AI start-up chicโ in their (no doubt vastly expensive) rebranding I see
Finally, the scientific models used by agencies to model nutrient pollution are _remarkably_ opaque and under scrutinised given their ubiquitous importance (as I have written about previously: alexlipp.github.io/posts/2024/0...)
also the population change assumes (iirc) its all *new* population into catchment, rather than say residents moving *within* catchment (=no net increase). so, population density increasing due to limited supply would be a โwinโ for nutrient neutralityโฆ
youโre right on the gist (nutrient neutrality is mad) but actually population growth *is* linear with nutrient outflow (ie itโs not a capacity thing). Problem is builders canโt pay to increase treatment efficiency at existing plants (!?) even though that can workโฆ
The perfect conditions continue ๐ ๐!
โฆ and blessed with some Aurora Borealis too! #studygeologyandseethenorthernlights
Stunning conditions (and enthusiastic students!) for the first few days of the @es-ucl.bsky.social mapping course in North West Scotland! โ๏ธ โฐ๏ธ โ๏ธ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ ๐บ๏ธ #fieldworkfriday
Neat idea from psephology that might be useful for geological ternary plots too. Similar to the 4 component solid solution of garnet.
Focus on "universities" raising fees misses the point that the real injustice is the interest rates & repayment thresholds on student debt which I suspect plays greater role in determining how much is paid over a lifetime than the initial "up-front" fees...
Given that universities/gov are savaged in the media even for increasing fees with inflation, is there anything meaningfully lost from advocating for a one-off step change back to an inflation adjusted ยฃ9k (~ยฃ13k)?
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