Another thought on the generative AI debate. As more and more AI slop papers come out, it becomes *more* important to actually read the papers and *more* important to gain domain expertise to spot fakes. An AI generated summary of an AI generated paper isn't going to tell you the paper is fake. #AI #AcademicChatter

There is some discourse right now on how not everything is digitized and cannot be replaced with generative AI summaries. Another point is that sometimes the data is scattered around, and you need to put it together in a standardized way. This requires expertise. I am doing this with sea level data. Be sure to check out WALIS, the project led by Alessio Rovere. Alessio has done a great deal to put together a standardized database of sea level data, compiled by experts (I contributed a couple of studies). Generative AI is not going to be able to do things like this.

The World Atlas of Last Interglacial Shorelines

What is WALIS?

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5979520

Generative AI is a conservative machine. It can only give you accounts of previous experts, and only then from things that are digitized. Generative AI is not particularly useful for someone who wants to gain domain expertise. You have to draw your own conclusions from what has been done previously. #AI #AcademicChatter

Şahiner et al analyze a diamiction from King George Island in the South Shetland Islands in Antarctica. The diamiction has a luminescence age dating to the last interglacial (MIS 5e), implying that there was an advance of glaciers of on the island during that time. #Antarctica #ClimateChange https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.70035

I have been seeing posts today that NCAR might be shut down by the US government. This would be a tragic loss for climate science. They develop CESM, probably the most widely used climate model. I used it in the last paper I published! #ClimateChange #AcademicChatter

Nothing brings up my frustration with modern search than what I went through today. I want a translation of "analogue" (as in "analogue for future climate") in Japanese. Doing a search with both "analogue" and "未来の気候" fails and machine translation brings up incorrect words. I even had a (non-expert) Japanese person helping me. After 40 minutes, we found "類推" - analogy. I still am not sure if that is correct. #AcademicChatter

I have written a post about Day 9 of the Ark of Coral Reefs cruise. We stopped at Inujima (Dog Island), a place of granite and art.

Raised Beaches

The Ark of Coral Reefs cruise – Day 9

An old quarry on Inujima. When we awoke early in the morning of day 9 (September 22), we were already at our destination for the day, Inujima. Inuj...