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Study predicts imminent irreversible planetary collapse
- berdon 14y agoThis is very reminiscent of "The Day After Tomorrow"...
- planetguy 14y agoAlright, I've just read the paper and I'm surprised that it got published in Nature. I mean, as far as crystal ball gazing goes, saying that "shit might, y'know, change in the future and stuff" is pretty reliable, but I'm not really sure how it counts as science. Link to actual paper (may or may not work outside the ivory tower I currently occupy, someone please check and let me know): http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature1... edit: Apparently it doesn't, but try this one (pdf) http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012...
- runako 14y agoThe link does not work outside the ivory tower. (But thanks for posting anyway.)
- bzalasky 14y ago"Instant access to this article: $32"
- daenz 14y agoBut scary headlines that link to the article: Free
- SwellJoe 14y agoThe paper is pretty calm and careful about predictions, as far as I can tell. What assertion from the paper (which is behind a paywall at Nature.com, but can be found free online via sneaky methods like googling the title), specifically, do you feel is unsubstantiated or overblown? Current models of the entire planetary ecosystem are admittedly quite primitive, but they often have proven to be predictive. That which is predictive and reproduce-able is science, by my reckoning. And, this paper is drawing on expertise across an extremely broad spectrum of real research, not merely models or educated guesstimation.
- huggyface 14y agoCurrent models of the entire planetary ecosystem are admittedly quite primitive, but they often have proven to be predictive What have they predicted?
- planetguy 14y agoI don't know, but I also want to point out that "often proven to be predictive" is pretty weak cheese. I mean, I have a model for predicting the result of coin flips which is often predictive. It's called "heads".
- SwellJoe 14y agoAre you suggesting that models are not a useful scientific tool?
- bgilroy26 14y agoGoing from "We can be confident in our models" to "We can be confident in our planetary models" is a big step up in scale and complexity.
- ars 14y agoYes, somewhat. Models are a useful tool to see what happens when the science is known. They work well to check if you understand your theory well: You model it and experiment with it at the same time. If you model matches the real world then you are good to go. But if you try to make a model based only on your observations, without also being able to experiment, then that's not science, that's tautology. Your model will do whatever you want, and you have no way of knowing if it has anything to do with the real world because you can not run multiple experiments. In some cases if you wait long enough you may randomly get enough variation in the real world to be confident in your model (for example stellar evolution). But using a model to predict something you have never seen in the real world? That's not science, that's speculation.
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- gringomorcego 14y agoDude, did you read the thesis? It's the main blue part at the top, like every paper in Nature. It says that local ecosystems are known to go through critical transitions, and that what's make these transitions remarkable is that the tipping point is so hard to identify or predict. They are extrapolating this and saying that a global tipping point may exist as well. That's it. You are right, it's incredibly vague and there isn't any awesome undeniable evidence. That's the whole point of the paper. "Hey guys, we might be screwing up our shit more than we think, we need to start taking more measurements" is basically the entire gist of the paper.
- droithomme 14y agoThe article then states that "This study concludes we better not exceed the 50 per cent mark of wholesale transformation of Earth’s surface or we won’t be able to delay, never mind avert, a planetary collapse", as if that is a fact, and then claims that "We’ve already reached the 43 per cent mark through our conversion of landscapes into agricultural and urban areas" (maybe that is so for their definition). And then therefore concludes that "governments undertake five actions immediately", the first example being "Society globally has to collectively decide that we need to drastically lower our population very quickly" - so mankind must enter into a global depopulation program. We all know exactly what that is. It doesn't look like scientific claims at all, it looks like irrational hysteria with an agenda.
- jcdreads 14y agoThe authors do not say "drastically lower our population very quickly" anywhere in the paper. The closest I can see that they come to saying this is in the conclusion, where they talk about, "reducing world population growth and per capita resource consumption" (among other things) as being "vital". Please save your accusations of irrational, hysterical agendas for them that advocates hysteria and the abandonment of reason.
- ceol 14y agoI believe the parent was referring to the very last part of the SFU article. In full: > “Society globally has to collectively decide that we need to drastically lower our population very quickly. More of us need to move to optimal areas at higher density and let parts of the planet recover. Folks like us have to be forced to be materially poorer, at least in the short term. We also need to invest a lot more in creating technologies to produce and distribute food without eating up more land and wild species. It’s a very tall order.”
- Florin_Andrei 14y agoI can predict your political orientation with fairly high confidence based on this comment alone.
- reedlaw 14y agoSo in other words, this is such a politicized issue there's no way to have any discussion about the facts?
- Florin_Andrei 14y ago"no way" - maybe not. But it's certainly getting harder and harder. This is the age of irrationality.
- theorique 14y agoOK, so what's the game plan?
- Mz 14y agoEnvironmental Studies major here who used to argue this type thing a lot online. Soundbite version of my general position: It's the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine.
- kennethcwilbur 14y agoThey have a crystal ball?!?!
- gdacuna 14y ago"This study concludes we better not exceed the 50 per cent mark of wholesale transformation of Earth’s surface or we won’t be able to delay, never mind avert, a planetary collapse. We’ve already reached the 43 per cent mark through our conversion of landscapes into agricultural and urban areas, making Earth increasingly susceptible to an environmental epidemic." I'm guessing this really means the land surface of the Earth, rather than the Earth's surface as a whole, as ~70% of the Earth's surface is water. Without access to the paper itself, I can't say whether or not this is an issue with the "media release" or the research itself, of course.
- planetguy 14y agoThe study doesn't actually say anything of the sort anyway, what it says is a typically vague: " It is still unknown, however, what percentage of Earth’s ecosystems actually have to be transformed to new states by the direct action of humans for rapid state changes to be triggered in remaining ‘natural’ systems. That percentage may be knowable only in retrospect, but, judging from landscape-scale observations and simulations66, 67, 68, 69, 70, it can reasonably be expected to be as low as 50% (ref. 68), or even lower if the interaction effects of many local ecosystem transformations cause sufficiently large global-scale forcings to emerge." or in other words, "fuck, I dunno, half?"
- jerrya 14y agoStudy predicts imminent irreversible planetary collapse ... and modem tax Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!: prov. [Usenet] Since Usenet first got off the ground in 1980--81, it has grown exponentially, approximately doubling in size every year. On the other hand, most people feel the signal-to-noise ratio of Usenet has dropped steadily. These trends led, as far back as mid-1983, to predictions of the imminent collapse (or death) of the net. Ten years and numerous doublings later, enough of these gloomy prognostications have been confounded that the phrase “Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!” has become a running joke, hauled out any time someone grumbles about the S/N ratio or the huge and steadily increasing volume, or the possible loss of a key node or link, or the potential for lawsuits when ignoramuses post copyrighted material, etc., etc., etc http://catb.org/jargon/html/I/Imminent-Death-Of-The-Net-Predicted-.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/I/Imminent-Death-Of-The-Net-Pred...
- rnemo 14y agoI hate being that person, but I have to honestly ask, if the scientific community as a whole cannot agree on exactly how much effect humans personally cause to the environment today, how can anyone claim with the level of surety that these people seem to have that something major is going to happen, that humans can mitigate, within a lifetime?
- goodside 14y agoPublic uncertainty does not prevent isolated individuals from getting science done. There's no reason to suspect that publicized uncertainty about global warming has anything to do with objective difficulty in obtaining solid evidence rather than its tendency to attract polemicists, cranks, and opinionated amateurs.
- 7952 14y agoWhat difference does it make? Humans obviously have the power to drastically alter the planet. Doing so in a sustainable way is just good sense.
- excuse-me 14y agoThe planet is fine it's not going to collapse. A few species on a thin smear of biosphere on the outside of the planet might be in trouble - but the planet is perfectly safe until the sun expands.
- roc 14y agoWhy stop there then? If you've decided that 'safe' indicates the continuation of the mass that comprises our planet, and not the particular, temporarily-compatible, form it takes today, then why even worry about the expansion of the sun? Or a collision which may shatter it? In how many ways is an asteroid cloud meaningfully less 'safe' than a single barren rock of comparable mass? I mean, you've already dispensed with the anthropocentric definition of "safe" that implies "for human civilization". So why stop at the anthropocentric definition of "planet"? Why not take comfort in the fact that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, and as such, even being baked by the sun or destroyed in a collision of galaxies or pulled into a star or black hole will leave the energy that comprises "Earth" quite safe and sound? If we want to imply that man is insignificant, surely the fact that our planet itself is insignificant would only underscore that point.
- jcdreads 14y agoIt's sarcasm. (viz. George Carlin, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGOBm2J4tn0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGOBm2J4tn0 at about 2:20 in; the whole thing is classic Carlin at his most abrasive.)
- roc 14y agoI'm a big fan of George Carlin, but that point was still irrelevant and largely self-defeating when he first popularized it. For such an astute student of language, with an eye toward practicality over formality, I don't know how he could see a difference between his complaint that the colloquial 'save the planet' implied rather than explicitly expressed a human point of reference and his many rants against unnecessarily precise techno-jargon. (see: PTSD, pre-boarding, etc) The only useful value in highlighting that 'save the planet' implies 'so we can still live here', is to draw attention to how the knee-jerk response to such slogans and policy suggestions [1] is the height of arrogance/ignorance. But rather than exposing the absurdity of that knee-jerk response, his little rant has served as ammunition for that response, shifting the expectation of evidence of lasting harm to an intellectual game of pointless abstraction. [2] As such it started, and continues, to bother me. So, again, if you find any legitimate comfort in the idea of the planet continuing on without us (As Carlin may well have) there's no good reason to stop at that level of abstraction. And if you just want to complain about colloquial language, generally speaking, that pursuit winds up on the receiving end of the bulk of Carlin's analysis of language. [1] In short: dismissing any potential for a legitimate concern about defending life as we know it by casting conservationist policies as the work of extremists or dismissing any potential for damage by humans by suggesting that we're powerless to truly harm nature. [2] E.g. "We may turn America's breadbasket into a dust bowl - but after we all starve to death, things will grow again!" As if that matters to the conservationist or their opponent, being as they would both have starved to death.
- jboggan 14y ago"They are not all accounted for, the lost seeing-stones. We do not know who else may be watching." This sort of study is not science and only as good as the quality of their assumptions. I'm glad the authors and all participants got their names in a prestigious journal and I hope it helps their careers.
- vasco 14y agoBeing able to accept the fact that we as individuals die, what is the thing that stop us from accepting that we as a civilization, and as a species will eventually cease to exist? The planet will still be here and there will surely be life left once conditions don't permit humans to survive, but even if it should be impossible for life to persist on Earth, so what? It's not like Nature and the Universe were made for us to eventually dominate and expand, they just exist and so do we, for a while. PS: Obviously I don't think we should just nuke everything because we're /eventually/ going to die, but I find the general fear and surprise at the fact that we as a species could cease to exist interesting. Like we're entitled to live forever because the Universe is ours or something.
- saraid216 14y agoI accept that we'll cease to exist someday (at the very least, we'll definitely be gone by the heat death of the universe), but I don't really see any reason not to try to delay that point as far as possible, by whatever means possible. I mean... why the hell not?
- stretchwithme 14y agoI think we don't know the long term effects of the things we are doing. But the usual cure people propose, a massive expansion of government, is worse than the disease. It will ultimately lead to more wars and an end to dealing with threats to our existence. But doing nothing is not viable either. We need to get control of the planet. We simply cannot just let the next ice age or global warming occur. This sort of thing is the ultimate "tragedy of the commons". And some of those most familiar with that concept seem the least likely to apply it the effects of technology.
- saraid216 14y agoLast I checked, we haven't had a civil war in a while. If we had a decently sized "massive expansion of government" on, say, a planetary scale (for a planet-sized problem), wouldn't that therefore lead to less wars?
- stretchwithme 14y agoSince government is creating massive problems already, such as the global debt crisis, I really don't think all encompassing planetary government is a good idea at all. People seem to think nothing could ever go wrong with such a concept. But history tells another story about government. We've had some very bad totalitarian governments. I'd rather not trust any single organization that will never face any competition. I'm not saying its a bad idea to coordinate with other countries on specific issues. That's what treaties are for. Even there, some pretty bad ideas can be agreed upon. At least countries can leave a treaty that proves to be a disaster.
- saraid216 14y ago> I'd rather not trust any single organization that will never face any competition. Neither would I. That would be silly. Can you tell me what government is? In my experience, people who are afraid of governments becoming totalitarian cannot seem to grasp what the government itself is. Would you be an exception to this trend?
- apsec112 14y agoIt's almost amusing that this summary (don't have journal access, so haven't read the paper) doesn't bother to name any negative consequences of this so-called "planetary collapse". It's just "Shit. Bad stuff will happen. We're all doomed.", without even saying what the bad stuff is. Are they worried about agriculture? Species extinction? Disease? They don't say. How on Earth are we supposed to evaluate the likelihood of claims without knowing what the hell the claims are?
- InclinedPlane 14y agoIt's all pseudoscientific bullshit, of course they're not going to be specific. You'd be just as well off listening to any of the religious "end of days" rants. Edit: Here's the actual paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature1... I'll reserve my full judgement until I've read it, but I don't have high hopes. It seems quite odd to invent an entirely new scientific discipline in one fell swoop along with making such a bold prediction. PPS: After reading the paper my opinion is that this is far more pseudoscience than not, by a wide margin. There are some points worthy of further study (biodiversity studies, effects of the impact of human activity comprising a large and growing part of the world's energy budget, changes in ecosystems due to fragmentation due to human activity, etc.) but this paper steams by those topics at a thousand miles an hour. There is no theory here, only the vaguest outlines of one. Even the core terms (state, state shift, forcings) are vauguely and generically defined, if at all. There is no model, no predictions, and no evidence. Flatly put the ideas put forth here are non-falsifiable. At its simplest "state shift theory" can be boiled down to "change causes change, sometimes permanently". Figure 2 is a graph which plots "global ecological state" against "global forcing". There are no numbers and neither term is defined either quantitatively or qualitatively. As a side note the essay references the now debunked theory of Mt Kilimanjaro's glaciers melting due to global warming, despite the lack of evidence of local temperature increases there (the glaciers have been sublimating away and snowfall changes have failed to replace the lost material.) Nature should be ashamed to have printed this, even in an editorial context. It is so lacking in hard scientific rigor and so generic and amenable to any interpretation (there is no evidence presented whether "state change" could be beneficial or detrimental to humans or to Earth's species) that it doesn't belong within a thousand meters of a journal as prestigious as Nature. There is even a chance, though admittedly slim, that this could be a hoax, the work of someone who wishes to discredit the scientific establishment of today and its seemingly infinite ability to bend its standards and tarnish its history to print anything so long as the conclusions are politically correct (human population reduction, switching to "green" energy and "sustainable" agriculture, etc.) These topics are too important for us to abandon scientific rigor in our attempt to understand our world and how it works and will change. We cannot afford to slip into an era of superstition and ignorance where conclusions are assumed and evidence is irrelevant.
- sakopov 14y agoIt takes a certain skill to write a scientific paper with little to no scientific explanation. :)
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- maxk42 14y agoWhy is this shit on Hacker News, let alone any sort of scientific publication?