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I disagree, you can’t tell how useful their model is for assessing impact on animal and plant species because they do not have any animal or plant data in their

I disagree, you can’t tell how useful their model is for assessing impact on animal and plant species because they do not have any animal or plant data in their model. Maybe animals and plants can move faster than we thought so the current velocity doesn’t dictate local extinctions? Maybe temperature velocity is a bad measure of climate change rate with respect to ecosystems? My criticism is that the paper takes half of the problem, and uses some ambiguous criteria (eg 100 years) so their model is effectively useless on its own. It’s like writing a paper that describes how long your piece of string is; unless your measurement method is novel it’s useless for anyone else wanting to measure their own string.

Timon3 3y ago
> I disagree, you can’t tell how useful their model is for assessing impact on animal and plant species because they do not have any animal or plant data in their model. Maybe animals and plants can move faster than we thought so the current velocity doesn’t dictate local extinctions? Maybe temperature velocity is a bad measure of climate change rate with respect to ecosystems? Are they making any judgement on this? I can't see it. I just see a proposed model for the change of position of environments. They're not saying "and this will lead all animal species to die out" or "we must act now", they just say "this is how the environments change positions". So why are you looking for more? > My criticism is that the paper takes half of the problem, and uses some ambiguous criteria (eg 100 years) so their model is effectively useless on its own. What use are you looking for? They proposed a useful model that other papers can build upon. That is how science works. Why must they look at this problem from every angle you want for the paper to be useful? > It’s like writing a paper that describes how long your piece of string is; unless your measurement method is novel it’s useless for anyone else wanting to measure their own string. No, it's more like a paper that describes a model to determine the length of a piece of string by showing it for a specific example. You find it useless because you say "hey, you guys didn't look at my string!".
- brutusborn 3y ago
  I admit I’m probably being a bit too picky, but I honestly don’t think this is how science works, I think this paper is a good example of the problem of low quality papers clogging up academic publishing due to perverse incentives. I had a quick look through the first half dozen citations on the paper, and it is a lot of stuff like this: “The effects of modern climate change are occurring more quickly in grasslands relative to many other ecosystems (Loarie et al. 2009;” This quote doesn’t really use any of the data/methods of the original paper, it just uses the paper to support the fairly obvious idea that climate change has variable effects that differ by environment. Another: “ On the other hand, the climate is shifting rapidly (Loarie et al. 2009)” again nothing is the paper is used, and they claim the paper says change is rapid, but to determine what is “rapid” we would need to compare our velocity to a value we think is “not rabid”. This would provide us with some testable hypothesis (eg “2% of regions move velocity faster than the fastest moving population in the region”). I don’t think my analogy was very good - I’m not critical because they didn’t look at my string, I’m critical because i don’t think their paper can truly help other teams measure their bits of string (or my piece). I agree their method might be useful, but it seems pretty obvious and I don’t understand why they wouldn’t apply it to a scientific theory themselves. Currently they have a model looking for a theory to test, but without any indication that their model is useful for any particular hypothesis. So many climate papers are just models with no link to any tangible hypothesis/predictions. This means they are unfalsifiable and so unscientific in Popper’s epistemology. I would even argue they are unscientific in terms of Lakatos’ Research Programmes because they are likely to be used to support auxiliary climate hypothesis in degenerating programs (since if they were part of a progressive program they would have explicit theory/predictions).
  - Timon3 3y ago
    > I had a quick look through the first half dozen citations on the paper, and it is a lot of stuff like this: “The effects of modern climate change are occurring more quickly in grasslands relative to many other ecosystems (Loarie et al. 2009;” This quote doesn’t really use any of the data/methods of the original paper, it just uses the paper to support the fairly obvious idea that climate change has variable effects that differ by environment. I don't see a reference to Loarie et al. 2009, and I can't find that quote in the article. > Another: “ On the other hand, the climate is shifting rapidly (Loarie et al. 2009)” again nothing is the paper is used, and they claim the paper says change is rapid, but to determine what is “rapid” we would need to compare our velocity to a value we think is “not rabid”. This would provide us with some testable hypothesis (eg “2% of regions move velocity faster than the fastest moving population in the region”). Same goes for this.

Timon3 3y ago

> I disagree, you can’t tell how useful their model is for assessing impact on animal and plant species because they do not have any animal or plant data in their model. Maybe animals and plants can move faster than we thought so the current velocity doesn’t dictate local extinctions? Maybe temperature velocity is a bad measure of climate change rate with respect to ecosystems? Are they making any judgement on this? I can't see it. I just see a proposed model for the change of position of environments. They're not saying "and this will lead all animal species to die out" or "we must act now", they just say "this is how the environments change positions". So why are you looking for more? > My criticism is that the paper takes half of the problem, and uses some ambiguous criteria (eg 100 years) so their model is effectively useless on its own. What use are you looking for? They proposed a useful model that other papers can build upon. That is how science works. Why must they look at this problem from every angle you want for the paper to be useful? > It’s like writing a paper that describes how long your piece of string is; unless your measurement method is novel it’s useless for anyone else wanting to measure their own string. No, it's more like a paper that describes a model to determine the length of a piece of string by showing it for a specific example. You find it useless because you say "hey, you guys didn't look at my string!".

brutusborn 3y ago
I admit I’m probably being a bit too picky, but I honestly don’t think this is how science works, I think this paper is a good example of the problem of low quality papers clogging up academic publishing due to perverse incentives. I had a quick look through the first half dozen citations on the paper, and it is a lot of stuff like this: “The effects of modern climate change are occurring more quickly in grasslands relative to many other ecosystems (Loarie et al. 2009;” This quote doesn’t really use any of the data/methods of the original paper, it just uses the paper to support the fairly obvious idea that climate change has variable effects that differ by environment. Another: “ On the other hand, the climate is shifting rapidly (Loarie et al. 2009)” again nothing is the paper is used, and they claim the paper says change is rapid, but to determine what is “rapid” we would need to compare our velocity to a value we think is “not rabid”. This would provide us with some testable hypothesis (eg “2% of regions move velocity faster than the fastest moving population in the region”). I don’t think my analogy was very good - I’m not critical because they didn’t look at my string, I’m critical because i don’t think their paper can truly help other teams measure their bits of string (or my piece). I agree their method might be useful, but it seems pretty obvious and I don’t understand why they wouldn’t apply it to a scientific theory themselves. Currently they have a model looking for a theory to test, but without any indication that their model is useful for any particular hypothesis. So many climate papers are just models with no link to any tangible hypothesis/predictions. This means they are unfalsifiable and so unscientific in Popper’s epistemology. I would even argue they are unscientific in terms of Lakatos’ Research Programmes because they are likely to be used to support auxiliary climate hypothesis in degenerating programs (since if they were part of a progressive program they would have explicit theory/predictions).
- Timon3 3y ago
  > I had a quick look through the first half dozen citations on the paper, and it is a lot of stuff like this: “The effects of modern climate change are occurring more quickly in grasslands relative to many other ecosystems (Loarie et al. 2009;” This quote doesn’t really use any of the data/methods of the original paper, it just uses the paper to support the fairly obvious idea that climate change has variable effects that differ by environment. I don't see a reference to Loarie et al. 2009, and I can't find that quote in the article. > Another: “ On the other hand, the climate is shifting rapidly (Loarie et al. 2009)” again nothing is the paper is used, and they claim the paper says change is rapid, but to determine what is “rapid” we would need to compare our velocity to a value we think is “not rabid”. This would provide us with some testable hypothesis (eg “2% of regions move velocity faster than the fastest moving population in the region”). Same goes for this.