James A. Rising

The goal of the Non-Renewable Spaceship project is to sketch the needs for a functioning ecosystem capable of sustaining a given population in space. Two motivations underlie this research: First, to construct a scenario which motivates society to set aside non-renewable resources for an indefinite future (in case of catastrophe, or if we find that “weak sustainability” is insufficient after all). Second, to try to answer E. O. Wilson’s question, “What do we need to save, for a healthy future world?” I’ve already worked out some of the principle resources: space, water, take-off fuel needs, and the ecosystem diversity that can be maintained under it.

See my presentation to the SDev student colloquium (results near the end). Try out different parameters of a partial model.

Using agricultural sector and income data, it is possible to calculate estimated Gini coefficients, based on a two-sector model. By comparing these estimates to measured Ginis, one can calculate the theoretical size of a poverty sector, expressed as a portion of the population with 0 income and a wealth sector, expressed as the portion of income earned by only the infinitesimally few.

See the calculations in my Gini Sectors Working Paper, and the calculated upper and lower bounds as a table for various countries.

My current research interests center around four avenues of exploration:

Open Model for Climate Behaviors: I applied for an EPA fellowship based on this. The idea is to construct a dynamic model of sufficient complexity that it’s possible to identify tipping points in the forces that affect American society’s climate behaviors. In other words, to build a system to help find small policy changes, which will grow to really change how people act. (Project Proposal)

Glaciers and Flooding in Himalayan River Basins: The Himalayan glaciers are melting, and their rivers are flooding– might these be related? No one seems to have checked. But I have a bunch of remote sensing analysis and good modeling that might be close to an answer. (Working Paper)

System Regression Estimators: My colleagues spend all their time running regressions, agonizing to find “exogenous” variables– variables which affect things but aren’t themselves affected. I don’t think such things exist, and I have some math that might let us give up the battle and estimate the relationships in whole systems, where everything affects everything else.

Self-Organized Criticality in Ecology: Self-organization is everywhere in human and natural systems, yet we’re only beginning to understand its implications. In particular, I think we’re very close to being able to describe ecological systems in the terms of self-organization, and I intend to give it a try.