Don't just do something, stand there! Reflections on the counterintuitive behavior of complex systems, seen through the eyes of System Dynamics, Systems Thinking and simulation.
On the heels of the 40th anniversary of Limits to Growth, the Breakthrough crowd is still pushing a technical miracle, just around the corner. Their latest editorial paints sustainability advocates as the bad guys: Stop and think for a moment about the basic elements of the planetary boundaries hypothesis: apocalyptic fears of the future, a professed … Continue reading “The neo-cornucopians, live from planet Deepwater Horizon”
The following models are replicated from Steven Strogatz’ excellent text, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos. These are just a few of the many models in the text. They illustrate bifurcations in one-dimensional systems (saddle node, transcritical, pitchfork) and one two-dimensional system (Hopf). The pitchfork bifurcation is closely related to the cusp catastrophe in the climate model … Continue reading “Bifurcations from Strogatz’ Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos”
I’m at the 30th Balaton Group meeting this week. A group of us just put our heads together to think about online approaches to teaching and sharing systems thinking and systems modeling. The basic question was, if you needed thousands of systems thinkers in a hurry, how could you scale up systems education quickly? My … Continue reading “Sharing Systems”
There’s been a lot of wild speculation about the nuclear situation in Japan. Reporters were quick to start a “countdown to meltdown” based on only the sketchiest information about problems at plants, and then were quick to wonder if our troubles were over because the destruction of the containment structure at Fukushima I-1 didn’t breach … Continue reading “Nuclear accident dynamics”
Env-Econ is one of several econ sites to pick up on standupeconomist Yoram Bauman’s assessment, Grading Economics Textbooks on Climate Change. Most point out the bad, but there’s also a lot of good. On Bauman’s curve, there are 4 As, 3 Bs, 5 Cs, 3 Ds, and one F. Still, the bad tends to be … Continue reading “Economists in the bathtub”
The tipping loop, a positive feedback that drives sequential or concurrent projects into permanent firefighting mode, is actually just one of a number of positive feedbacks that create project management traps. Here are some others: Rework – the rework cycle is central to project dynamics. Rework arises when things aren’t done right the first time. … Continue reading “Firefighting and other project dynamics”
SDM has a new post about failure modes in DoD procurement. One of the key dynamics is firefighting: For example, McNew was working on a radar system attached to the belly of airplanes so they could track enemy ground movements for targeting by both ground and air fighters. “The contractor took used 707s,” McNew explains, … Continue reading “Dynamics of firefighting”
Complex systems find many ways of resisting or evading pressures, resulting in policy failure, backlashes, whack-a-mole games and other unintended consequences. Some great examples just wandered by my desk: Via Economist’s View: Immigration reform has a long history of unintended consequences: More than two decades of increased enforcement since the passage of the Immigration Reform … Continue reading “Policy Resistance – Immigration & Prohibition”
The principal benefit cited for cap & trade is “environmental certainty,” meaning that “a cap-and-trade system, coupled with adequate enforcement, assures that environmental goals actually would be achieved by a certain date.” Environmental certainty is a bit of a misnomer. I think of environmental certainty as ensuring a reasonable chance of avoiding serious climate impacts. … Continue reading “News Flash: There Is No "Environmental Certainty"”
A colleague recently pointed me to a debate on an MIT email list over Lorne Gunter’s National Post article, Forget Global Warming: Welcome to the New Ice Age. The article starts off with anecdotal evidence that this has been an unusually cold winter. If it had stopped where it said, “OK, so one winter does … Continue reading “Confused at the National Post”