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Can someone explain "planetary boundary" in this context? What does the first sentence mean?

majormunky 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries "Planetary boundaries is a concept highlighting human-caused perturbations of Earth systems making them relevant in a way not accommodated by the environmental boundaries separating the three ages within the Holocene epoch."
revolvingocelot 4y ago
"Planetary boundaries is a concept highlighting human-caused perturbations of Earth systems [...] The framework is based on scientific evidence that human actions, especially those of industrialized societies since the Industrial Revolution, have become the main driver of global environmental change. According to the framework, "transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental-scale to planetary-scale systems."[2]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries The first sentence suggests that the study's authors are concerned that PFAS and its similar cousins represent a non-linear, large-scale environmental threat.
- bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
  Ah, so a boundary is between continuous "regimes" governed by a single behavior; crossing the boundary means moving into a different, as-yet unexplored regime.
  - revolvingocelot 4y ago
    Indeed -- in this case, a large-scale diffusion of a very stable family of waterproofing chemicals into the, uh, global water cycle. The idea is that it's possible for human activity to fundamentally change the nature of some system whose behaviour we think of as stable and inviolable. Considering how goddamn important water is to basically everything in the biosphere, I think of it as more an eaten-by-a-grue "unexplored", rather than enticing-terra-nova, style of thing.
    - incompatible 4y ago
      It's interesting how humanity will accept this kind of "experiment" when it's a side-effect of something designed to give a little convenience, or for somebody to make a bit more profit. If a scientist proposed doing it on purpose, just to find out what would happen, there would probably be less enthusiasm. It's also interesting how it's the political "conservatives" who seems to be most accepting of these kinds of environmental changes, when "conservatism" is supposed to be about preserving the way things are now, or perhaps how they were in some recent "golden age" past, as I understand the term.
  - Thorrez 4y ago
    Sounds kind of like the singularity.
- Libbum 4y ago
  An additional thing to understand here is that PFAS is not a new boundary at all in the context of the planetary boundaries framework - they fall under the already defined category of Novel Entities. Since that's a catch all category for many things (nuclear waste, other synthetic chemicals, there's even debate with the original authors of the framework if Artificial Intelligence should be considered), the boundary value itself is not currently defined. One school of thought is that the boundary value for this category should be zero - as any synthetic substance is more than nature generates. Regardless, papers like this one are helpful to piece together all of the novel entities research amd get a better picture of how this boundary interacts with the rest of the Earth System.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries "Planetary boundaries is a concept highlighting human-caused perturbations of Earth systems making them relevant in a way not accommodated by the environmental boundaries separating the three ages within the Holocene epoch."

revolvingocelot 4y ago

"Planetary boundaries is a concept highlighting human-caused perturbations of Earth systems [...] The framework is based on scientific evidence that human actions, especially those of industrialized societies since the Industrial Revolution, have become the main driver of global environmental change. According to the framework, "transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental-scale to planetary-scale systems."[2]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries The first sentence suggests that the study's authors are concerned that PFAS and its similar cousins represent a non-linear, large-scale environmental threat.

bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
Ah, so a boundary is between continuous "regimes" governed by a single behavior; crossing the boundary means moving into a different, as-yet unexplored regime.
- revolvingocelot 4y ago
  Indeed -- in this case, a large-scale diffusion of a very stable family of waterproofing chemicals into the, uh, global water cycle. The idea is that it's possible for human activity to fundamentally change the nature of some system whose behaviour we think of as stable and inviolable. Considering how goddamn important water is to basically everything in the biosphere, I think of it as more an eaten-by-a-grue "unexplored", rather than enticing-terra-nova, style of thing.
  - incompatible 4y ago
    It's interesting how humanity will accept this kind of "experiment" when it's a side-effect of something designed to give a little convenience, or for somebody to make a bit more profit. If a scientist proposed doing it on purpose, just to find out what would happen, there would probably be less enthusiasm. It's also interesting how it's the political "conservatives" who seems to be most accepting of these kinds of environmental changes, when "conservatism" is supposed to be about preserving the way things are now, or perhaps how they were in some recent "golden age" past, as I understand the term.
- Thorrez 4y ago
  Sounds kind of like the singularity.
Libbum 4y ago
An additional thing to understand here is that PFAS is not a new boundary at all in the context of the planetary boundaries framework - they fall under the already defined category of Novel Entities. Since that's a catch all category for many things (nuclear waste, other synthetic chemicals, there's even debate with the original authors of the framework if Artificial Intelligence should be considered), the boundary value itself is not currently defined. One school of thought is that the boundary value for this category should be zero - as any synthetic substance is more than nature generates. Regardless, papers like this one are helpful to piece together all of the novel entities research amd get a better picture of how this boundary interacts with the rest of the Earth System.