It's that nice part of a project where all our hopes and dreams of what it might be have yet to meet reality! Here's hoping. Also, you're the first person to pick up on the John Wayne reference. It's been in a few presentations and no-one's even asked "why have you got a picture of John Wayne...?"

On "the rest of the world", as I mentioned in the post, I'm talking a lot to Anne Owen in Leeds School of Environment - she's working on global IO models for investigating consumption-based carbon emissions. That stuff is non-spatial, in the sense that any changes in the models have no direct spatial consequence. Even without that, the complexities are, um, complex.

It comes down to what you want the models to do. I don't think they're ever going to create a completely accurate map of reality, but can hopefully help us get a sense of its shape. I always think of the difference to the global economy that containerisation made - I think probably the biggest single impact tech of the 20th century. Couldn't have been predicted. That doesn't invalidate using data and modelling to try and get a better sense of where we're going though. We need to strike some middle ground between pure rejection of quant methods (e.g. critics of economics wanting to shake of the dictatorship of reason) and unwarranted hubris. Tricksy.