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It'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

It'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 ago
It'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.
ktizo 14y ago
I thought the claim was that the earth's environment is subject to critical transitions, that critical transitions are by their very nature highly disruptive on all levels of a system, and that if you statistically map the environment then it looks strongly as though we look like we are approaching another one rather quickly. The thing is, if we are approaching a critical transition then it is very hard to say what the precise outcome would be as the whole point of these events is that they are highly chaotic. Is a bit like asking where a particular molecule of water is going to be after boiling a pan half dry.
- apsec112 14y ago
  "Transitions" is way too vague to mean anything. What will "transition"? The climate? Another climate transition on the order of the most recent interglacial beginning seems reasonable (+3-5 C over centuries), but if that's what "critical transition" means, we've been through dozens over the last million years and are none the worse for wear. (At least if you just look at species count.) What would the actual negative consequences of such a transition be? Would they outweigh the positive consequences? Would they outweigh the cost of avoidance measures, taking into account the probability that those avoidance measures won't work? The avoidance measures here are extreme even by extreme standards - we're talking a comparable cost to a global thermonuclear war (large decrease in population, large semi-permanent decrease in global GDP). We need numbers here, guys. Numbers.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    A critical transition is a mathematical definition related to a fundamental change in the structure of a system. Here's something pretty relevant if you want to know what they mean by this phrase - http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.2908 http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.2908
eschulte 14y ago
"the planet’s ecosystems, as we know them, could irreversibly collapse in the proverbial blink of an eye" seems like a fairly straightforward clearcut negative consequence. They're worried that ecosystems (those networks of interacting species) will collapse (meaning the ecosystem dynamics change and the vast majority of the species who rely on and compose the ecosystem go extinct).
- apsec112 14y ago
  That seems like obvious nonsense - eg. mile-wide asteroid impacts, which are much larger in terms of energy release than all nuclear arsenals combined, don't cause mass extinctions. But it at least gets credit for being a specific claim. Just saying "collapse" is vague, and could arguably apply to just about anything.
  - anthonyb 14y ago
    Oh for fuck's sake, just read the paper: BOX 1: Past planetary-scale critical transitions and state shifts Last glacial–interglacial transition18,24. The critical transition was a rapid warm–cold–warm fluctuation in climate between 14,300 and 11,000 yr ago, and the most pronounced biotic changes occurred between 12,900 and 11,300 yr ago24,27,30,54. The major biotic changes were the extinction of about half of the species of large-bodied mammals, several species of large birds and reptiles, and a few species of small animals30; a significant decrease in local and regional biodiversity as geographic ranges shifted individualistically, which also resulted in novel species assemblages37,49,53,54; and a global increase in human biomass and spread of humans to all continents27. The pre-transition global state was a glacial stage that lasted about 100,000 yr and the post-transition global state is an interglacial that Earth has been in for approximately 11,000 yr. The global forcings were orbitally induced, cyclic variations in solar insolation that caused rapid global warming. Direct and indirect of effects of humans probably contributed to extinctions of megafauna and subsequent ecological restructuring. So: collapse means widespread species and biosphere change, extinctions of large mammals. All this with relatively small forcings due to solar radiation changes.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

It'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.

ktizo 14y ago

I thought the claim was that the earth's environment is subject to critical transitions, that critical transitions are by their very nature highly disruptive on all levels of a system, and that if you statistically map the environment then it looks strongly as though we look like we are approaching another one rather quickly. The thing is, if we are approaching a critical transition then it is very hard to say what the precise outcome would be as the whole point of these events is that they are highly chaotic. Is a bit like asking where a particular molecule of water is going to be after boiling a pan half dry.

apsec112 14y ago
"Transitions" is way too vague to mean anything. What will "transition"? The climate? Another climate transition on the order of the most recent interglacial beginning seems reasonable (+3-5 C over centuries), but if that's what "critical transition" means, we've been through dozens over the last million years and are none the worse for wear. (At least if you just look at species count.) What would the actual negative consequences of such a transition be? Would they outweigh the positive consequences? Would they outweigh the cost of avoidance measures, taking into account the probability that those avoidance measures won't work? The avoidance measures here are extreme even by extreme standards - we're talking a comparable cost to a global thermonuclear war (large decrease in population, large semi-permanent decrease in global GDP). We need numbers here, guys. Numbers.
- ktizo 14y ago
  A critical transition is a mathematical definition related to a fundamental change in the structure of a system. Here's something pretty relevant if you want to know what they mean by this phrase - http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.2908 http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.2908

eschulte 14y ago

"the planet’s ecosystems, as we know them, could irreversibly collapse in the proverbial blink of an eye" seems like a fairly straightforward clearcut negative consequence. They're worried that ecosystems (those networks of interacting species) will collapse (meaning the ecosystem dynamics change and the vast majority of the species who rely on and compose the ecosystem go extinct).

apsec112 14y ago
That seems like obvious nonsense - eg. mile-wide asteroid impacts, which are much larger in terms of energy release than all nuclear arsenals combined, don't cause mass extinctions. But it at least gets credit for being a specific claim. Just saying "collapse" is vague, and could arguably apply to just about anything.
- anthonyb 14y ago
  Oh for fuck's sake, just read the paper: BOX 1: Past planetary-scale critical transitions and state shifts Last glacial–interglacial transition18,24. The critical transition was a rapid warm–cold–warm fluctuation in climate between 14,300 and 11,000 yr ago, and the most pronounced biotic changes occurred between 12,900 and 11,300 yr ago24,27,30,54. The major biotic changes were the extinction of about half of the species of large-bodied mammals, several species of large birds and reptiles, and a few species of small animals30; a significant decrease in local and regional biodiversity as geographic ranges shifted individualistically, which also resulted in novel species assemblages37,49,53,54; and a global increase in human biomass and spread of humans to all continents27. The pre-transition global state was a glacial stage that lasted about 100,000 yr and the post-transition global state is an interglacial that Earth has been in for approximately 11,000 yr. The global forcings were orbitally induced, cyclic variations in solar insolation that caused rapid global warming. Direct and indirect of effects of humans probably contributed to extinctions of megafauna and subsequent ecological restructuring. So: collapse means widespread species and biosphere change, extinctions of large mammals. All this with relatively small forcings due to solar radiation changes.