Climate change certainty

So how certain is climate change, really?

Turns out the global scientific community is a lot more certain than you might expect, given how much climate change gets denied in politics.

Here’s the basic run-down of what we know:

  • Global warming has been happening — and the evidence is unequivocal.
  • Human activities have definitely contributed to global warming.
  • It’s 95% certain that human activities have caused most of the global warming since 1950.
  • The best estimate is that human activities have caused all or nearly all of the global warming since 1950.

Or to sum up in a single sentence: Global warming is unequivocally happening, and humans have caused most — maybe all — of it.

Continue reading for details and citations.

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R: Heatmap plots

I’m working with a dataset of trace-metals concentrations in different streams, and I wanted to see the overall mean concentration for each metal, in each stream. I used a heatmap to plot a grid of streams vs. metals, with a color shading in each cell representing the mean concentration.

Heatmap - wet weather metals

Light blue values are lower concentrations, dark red values are higher concentrations (grey cells contain no data). Since some metals occur at much higher concentrations than others (by a few orders of magnitude), all the data have been scaled (more on the methods below) — which is why the heatmap does not have a legend with actual values. It’s purely a high-low gradient.

Metals are in alphabetical order down the left-hand side. Streams are across the top, sorted so that the streams with the overall highest metals concentrations are on the left, going to the overall lowest metals concentrations on the right.

There are several webpages with instructions on how to build a heatmap like this in R, using ggplot2, and I’ve made my own modifications to both the aesthetics and the data-handling. Continue reading

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R: How to fix column names containing spaces

A basic rule of R is to avoid naming data-frame columns using names that contain spaces. R will accept a name containing spaces, but the spaces then make it impossible to reference the object in a function. Neither single or double quotes can work around this problem, and other data structures also share this limitation. (Note that commas also cause similar problems, as do many special characters.)

> select(x, Date, Depth, Total Phosphorus)
Error: unexpected symbol in "select(x, Date, Depth, Total Phosphorus"
> select(x, Date, Depth, "Total Phosphorus")
Error: All select() inputs must resolve to integer column positions.
The following do not:
*  "Total Phosphorus"

When I’m creating my own column names it’s easy to avoid the issue, but often I’m working with data that comes from other sources — and contains spaces in problematic places.

At the moment I’m working with lab data where every water-quality parameter (nitrogen, phosphorus, copper, temperature, etc.) is its own line in the dataset, with one column for the parameter name and another column for the value — often called “long” or “molten” format. The names-with-spaces problem comes when I spread out the data into “wide” format, where each row is a complete sampling date and each parameter becomes its own column.

Many of the parameters have spaces (and sometimes commas) in the name the lab uses, such as “Ammonia Nitrogen” or “Copper, Dissolved”. When I use the spread() function (from the “tidyr” package), these become column names containing spaces and commas. After trying a few approaches, I found a simple, elegant way to do it in a single line using the “stringr” package.

To fix a dataframe (or any other named structure) “x” that already has names containing spaces and/or commas:

names(x)<-str_replace_all(names(x), c(" " = "." , "," = "" ))

This replaces spaces with periods, and commas with nothing (to avoid creating double periods like “Copper..Dissolved”). Spaces and commas are the only two problematic characters I have in my dataset; if you have others, add them to the str_replace_all() call. The result from a names() call is a vector of strings, which the stringr functions can manipulate easily before passing it back through the names() function.

Another approach is to remove the spaces from the long/molten dataset before spreading it out. It’s very similar code, only on a column of parameter names:

y$Parameter<-str_replace_all(y$Parameter, c(" " = "." , "," = "" ))

 

UPDATE: I’ve discovered that tibbles — the tidyverse version of the dataframe — can handle names with spaces and other special characters. To refer to those non-standard names in functions, surround the name with backticks (on my keyboard, the backtick is on the  ~  key):

`​Copper, Dissolved`

 

Even though I’m working primarily with tibbles now, I’m going to keep renaming my columns so they’re easier to work with as I go through the rest of the data analysis. I prefer not to have to type the backticks all the time.

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When hatred isn’t urgent

I don’t think that Trump’s platform of hatred and bigotry got him elected. I think that too many decent people were willing to vote for him despite his racism, sexism and all the rest — because they thought other things were more important. The hatred simply didn’t seem like an urgent problem.

But when racism means that I could get shot by the police, it threatens my basic ability to survive. When sexism keeps me from getting a job, it threatens my basic ability to survive. And when something threatens my basic ability to survive, it’s urgent.

Too many of us with privilege don’t see hatred as urgent. We know racism and sexism are sorta problematic, sure  — but other things are more pressing. We’ll deal with them later, when we’ve got time and energy. If we remember to. If it doesn’t get in the way.

We need to change. 

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You don’t know what’s in your cleaning products

8115464937_bc1a808bfb_zWhat’s in your household cleaning products? Even if you’ve read the label, there’s probably still a lot left off. No law requires a complete list of ingredients on the labels of household cleaning products, unlike food or cosmetics. And what they’re not telling you about could still hurt you.

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Wading through the red tape to get a government job

Now that I work for the county, I’m getting questions about how to apply for jobs here. Government job applications play by different rules than the rest of the world, so most of the advice you find out there on resumes and cover letters don’t quite apply. I’d like to expand this further (with collaborative input) to cover the whole job application process, but here are some tips for now:

The first round of screening is a “minimum qualifications” round where anyone who doesn’t meet each and every one of the listed qualifications will get excluded. It can be brutal.

To help pass the qualifications screening, HR recommends copying the list of qualifications verbatim from the job posting and answering each one. I do this in the cover letter. I write a normal one-page cover letter, and then on the next page(s) I address the qualifications.

If you’re applying for a job that requires X years of experience, address that with a table that lists each position title, years in the position, and totals them up. Either include a statement that all jobs were full-time, or include an hours-per-week column and a full-time-equivalent column. Also, on your resume put the hours-per-week for each position. (It’s in the online application, but most people will use either the online or the paper copy, not both.)

For resumes, the usual “short and sweet” approach that works everywhere else is counterproductive when applying for government jobs. Your resume has to stand alone to prove that you’re well qualified for the job (if you’re hired, it actually gets submitted to the state for oversight). That means that it needs a fair bit of detail to show that you do indeed have all the skills, knowledge, and experience you need for the job. Yes, your resume will get long in the process.

The advice I was given by HR when I was applying is to make sure that all the keywords in the job description and qualifications are addressed in your resume. You don’t necessarily need to use the exact words, but you do need to make it very clear – the first screener may be an HR person who doesn’t understand the field well enough to understand specific terms — and in any case the screener will be working bleary-eyed through a stack of ~150 applications.

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Fertilizing streams to save salmon?

forest stream - Barka FabianovaIt’s not often I read a technical report that’s jaw-dropping, but this one sure was. It’s the Fraser Valley Stream Nutrient Enrichment effort, where they’ve been adding phosphorus fertilizer to salmon-bearing streams. Much of my work focuses on keeping excess phosphorus (and nitrogen) out of lakes and streams — and here’s a big effort dumping it directly in?!? What’s up with that? Continue reading

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Unleaded, please!

The last place I expected to find worrisome amounts of lead is in something designed to pipe water around the home — like a garden hose. But HealthyStoff.org (a project of the Michigan-based Ecology Center) tested 21 hoses, and found lead, phthalates, BPA, and other compounds of concern, including chemicals that have been banned from children’s toys. In a test where they left a hose in the sun for two days and then tested the water, BPA and phthalates far exceeded federal drinking-water standards.

Vilsekogen - garden with hoseI had never given it much thought — sure, garden hoses aren’t really built for drinking out of, but they’re used all the time for water we end up ingesting, whether that’s watering the garden, playing in a sprinkler, or filling up a water jug to take camping. If you had asked me yesterday, I’d have guessed that maybe they’re not officially food-safe, but they must meet some kind of standard, right?

Nope. Continue reading

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Are you a lawn lemming?

Do you fertilize your lawn? Pull weeds? Water?

More importantly — do you know why you do these things?

The Washington Post recently ran an article highlighting the role of social pressure in people’s decisions about fertilizing their lawns. One of the studies they highlighted was just published by some of my urban-ecology sociology colleagues at the University of Minnesota (Nick Martini and Kristen Nelson): Continue reading

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Compost conjectures

creative commons license, by Sarah Gilbert

How much food waste do Minnesotans compost at home? This is one of those questions where we really don’t know the answer. Backyard composting is a purely private affair, one that doesn’t pass through any sort of permitting or reporting process. So what’s an ecologist to do? I often find myself in a position like this, where nobody has measured the thing I want to know — but I can piece together enough information to make a decent estimate. It’s a fascinating process, so let’s pull back the curtain and take a look…

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