7 ms·

Study predicts imminent irreversible planetary collapse

32 points by Dinoguy1000 14y ago

InclinedPlane 14y ago
This has already been discussed extensively here (see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4097116 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4097116) For the record, my vote is that this is pseudoscience. No theory, model, or testable predictions are presented. It is a non-falsifiable idea that is couched in such generic and vague terms that it could mean just about anything.
- tsotha 14y ago
  I would even go so far as to call it junk science.
- methehack 14y ago
  "Did you read the original article or just the news story?", he asked, exasperated. The article that the news story references was just published in Nature, which has been around since 1869, is peered reviewed, well-respected, oft-cited, and has many distinguished moments, including the initial publication of Watson and Crick's work on DNA. "pseudoscience" might be unfair. Nice object lesson in the "social structures for doing something just aren’t there" though.
  - temphn 14y ago
    When publishing a paper, "peer review" typically means that two or three scientists ask you for one round of revisions before publishing. It does not mean complete replication of the source code and data analysis. It means a cursory pass, not a complete unit test suite. Nature and Science in particular have been forced to retract many papers recently for failure to replicate. A short list of recent retracted Nature and Science papers: http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/highly-cited-harvard-stem-cell-scientist-retracts-nature-paper/ http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/highly-cited... http://www.genomesunzipped.org/2012/04/guest-post-accurate-identification-of-rna-editing-sites-from-high-throughput-sequencing-data.php http://www.genomesunzipped.org/2012/04/guest-post-accurate-i... http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=study-fails-to-confirm-existence http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=study-fails... And here is a recent climate paper by Gergis which was retracted after the blogosphere found flaws while attempting to replicate their work: http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/10/more-on-screening-in-gergis-et-al-2012/ http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/10/more-on-screening-in-gerg... All of those papers were beaten up after they were accepted because other scientists couldn't replicate their results. Perhaps we should see whether this too holds up to scrutiny for a few years before remaking the $100T world economy.
    - scarmig 14y ago
      "retracted" is a bit strong: more accurate would be, put on hold temporarily while a statistical flaw is fixed. Even the author of the blog concedes that the overall paper could stand perfectly fine after the flaw is corrected. It's also interesting to note how the "auditors" compare to the scientists: while the scientists graciously send a thank you for pointing out a flaw and get to work on fixing it, the auditors seem almost entirely focused on crowing, getting a scalp and spreading conspiracy theories and innuendo. Interesting.
      - temphn 14y ago
        Well, the "auditors" are called denialists and attacked from many sides -- even though they are the only ones who publish full source code, push for raw data release, and actually try to replicate results. We are making $100T decisions on the basis of $1M papers and closed datasets. Regarding retraction, I think this is pretty unambiguous http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/08/gergis-et-al-put-on-hold/ http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/08/gergis-et-al-put-on-hold/ Dear Stephen, I am contacting you on behalf of all the authors of the Gergis et al (2012) study ‘Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium’ An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, which may affect the results. While the paper states that “both proxy climate and instrumental data were linearly detrended over the 1921–1990 period”, we discovered on Tuesday 5 June that the records used in the final analysis were not detrended for proxy selection, making this statement incorrect. Although this is an unfortunate data processing issue, it is likely to have implications for the results reported in the study. The journal has been contacted and the publication of the study has been put on hold. This is a normal part of science. The testing of scientific studies through independent analysis of data and methods strengthens the conclusions. In this study, an issue has been identified and the results are being re-checked. We would be grateful if you would post the notice below on your ClimateAudit web site. We would like to thank you and the participants at the ClimateAudit blog for your scrutiny of our study, which also identified this data processing issue. Thanks, David Karoly Print publication of scientific study put on hold An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium” by Joelle Gergis, Raphael Neukom, Stephen Phipps, Ailie Gallant and David Karoly, accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate. We are currently reviewing the data and results. Now, props to Karoly for being gracious in this takedown. Part of the problem is that a scientific paper is like a monolithic binary where a bugfix means going out and recalling every copy of the software out in the field. So paper authors usually are very resistant to bugfixes, as they are career ending.In this case Karoly severely damaged Gergis' career and may have hurt his own. From a purely self-interested perspective he should have just stonewalled the "denialists" like Michael Mann has. But he was honest as a scientist. Much better to move towards an open source culture where a "paper" is just the documentation for a major version number associated with a data/code repository.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    Yes, I read the original, in its entirety. As to peer-review, this was not published as either an "article" or "letter" (see: http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/2a_Manuscript_formatting.pdf http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/2a_Manuscript_forma...) but as a "review", which is more or less just a published essay. As such it falls under a much different peer review guideline. Even so, peer review is no surety of fact, far from it, it's nothing more than a signoff that the authors have seemingly followed the basic forms of reproducible scientific investigations. However, in this case I think that Nature has let down its readers even in publishing this essay as a "review". There is nothing that is not vague and generic in this essay. There is no model here, no theory. And no predictions nor falsifiability. It is not science in any sense and should not be treated as science. At best it is the shadowy outline of a future theory, at worst it is politics, mysticism, and superstition masquerading as science. And yes, reprinted in one of the most prestigious science journals of our times. That doesn't make it better, that makes it worse.
- astrofinch 14y ago
  At first I shared your frustration, but I glanced at the paper and it looks to me (as a layman) as though the authors did their homework. It was published in Nature after all. Here's a high level intuitive argument: Imagine that lots of important parameters about the Earth's climate and ecosystems could be modeled using a bunch of differential equations. Right now, due to humans, our current state is deep in historically unexplored territory. To be safe, it makes sense to try to modify all the parameters we can back to where they were in case weird stuff happens in the unexplored territory.
  - scarmig 14y ago
    It's also important to note that this is a review article: it's an attempt to distill an opinionated consensus in the field, not to fully flesh out the models and provide all the empirical evidence. For that, the reader should check the copious end notes.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    Just because they have plenty of notes doesn't mean that they've come up with something worthwhile. Their "theory" is nothing more substantive than New Age mysticism. They talk about states, state shifts, and forcings but do not fully describe any of them except at the most superficial levels. They put forward no tests (quantitative or qualitative) to determine the boundaries of a state or to test whether a "state shift" has occurred. That is a flaw at the very lowest level of their "theory". On top of that they build many fanciful constructs which have even less basis in the scientific method. I've commented on this before, but it bears repeating. Here is "Figure 2" from the article: http://i.imgur.com/Zi3uB.png http://i.imgur.com/Zi3uB.png. Neither axis is meaningful, they both lack a definition for what is being measured, let alone how, let alone how to sort it, even qualitatively. This is junk. It's no better than a diagram with "mood" on the y-axis and "emotional energy" on the x-axis, it's utterly, utterly meaningless.
rsanchez1 14y ago
"Society globally has to collectively decide that we need to drastically lower our population very quickly." Right, and how does Arne Mooers propose we do this? Thermonuclear war maybe? That would be too damaging. Sterilize everyone? Not even China does that. Maybe ask billions of people to escort themselves off the face of the Earth? Make some Solyent Green? Global pandemic? Maybe more people would take them seriously (and really take them seriously, not just run around scared) if they gave us more choices than "maybe die" and "definitely die".
- droithomme 14y ago
  That specific phrase "drastically lower our population very quickly" is very interesting because it appeared as exactly those words in the last article about this paper that appeared here yesterday: http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media-releases/2012/study-predicts-imminent-irreversible-planetary-collapse.html http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media-releases/2012/study-predicts-im... I made some comments about that exact wording and was criticized because that phrase as it is is not in the original paper, but was in the press release about the paper, a press release apparently written by the paper's authors since it gives them as contacts. And here the phrase, not from the actual paper, appears in yet another alarmist article claiming that total irreversible planetary doom is certain if purges do not begin.
  - mkramlich 14y ago
    > And here the phrase, not from the actual paper, appears in yet another ALARMIST article claiming that total irreversible planetary doom is CERTAIN if PURGES do not begin. I put three key words in bold above. But I want to focus on this: "doom is certain if purges do not begin." Please point me to where that was said, either in the paper itself or in the co-author's summary. You don't be able to because it doesn't exist. They didn't say that. You said that. I just grepped for "purge" in the paper and in the summary and article you linked to above, and they both yielded 0 results. The paper: http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012... ? I would argue that your comment -- where you falsely accused them of claiming that doom is certain if purges do not begin --- is the one being alarmist. I am certain of that. :P Also, strictly speaking, one possible explanation for why you might be seeing a seemingly growing number of recent "alarmist" articles about the climate & population impact, etc., is because, perhaps, the folks who are studying these areas are actually becoming increasingly alarmed. If that's happening, and they're sharing that with us, that's a good thing. "I wish that darn burglar alarm would stop going off every few weeks!" Well, are you more concerned about the inconvenience of repeatedly hearing the alarm, or that your house keeps getting robbed? :) Let's err on the side of the latter case, if any.
caffeineninja 14y ago
I'm having trouble deciding whether or not this is sensationalist journalism or the truth. looks up denial in the dictionary
sdm 14y ago
Interesting to see this coming from such a staunchly conservative university as SFU.
Morg 14y ago
Well, there goes another shock headline. The human species very much behaves like an individual in that it will always take a burnt finger to stop touching the hot plate. What that tells us is that we're indeed going to break the ecosystem/climate at some point. What history tells us is that we're going to fix it much faster than we broke it We have broken hunting/gathering and we had the fix before it became critical. (agriculture) We have broken fossile fuels and we had the fix before it became critical. (nuclear,elec,batteries,fuel cells) We have broken nuclear fission energy and we had the fix before it became critical. (fusion, hydro, geotherm) We may have almost broken the climate and we will fix it before it becomes critical. (There is no problem so far so I can't guess the fix, but we already have the capability to design any animal or plant and mass produce it to solve any ecosystem riddle)
paulsutter 14y ago
This article would be a lot more credible if it mentioned timescales. Do we have 1 year to make a change or 100? At current rates of progress, when do we reach this tipping point? Without at least that number, it's just a useless alarmist rant.
- scarmig 14y ago
  "Looking towards the year 2100, models forecast that pressures on biota will continue to increase. The co-opting of resources and energy use by humans will continue to increase as the global population reaches 9,500,000,000 people (by 2050), and effects will be greatly exacerbated if per capita resource use also increases. Projections for 2100 range from apopulation low of 6,200,000,000 (requiring a substantial decline in fertility rates) to 10,100,000,000 (requiring continued decline of fertility in countries that still have fertility above replacement level) to 27,000,000,000 (if fertility remains at 2005–2010 levels; this population size is not thought to be supportable; ref. 31). Rapid climate change shows no signs of slowing. Modelling suggests that for ,30% of Earth, the speed at which plant species will have to migrate to keep pace with projected climate change is greater than their dispersal rate when Earth last shifted from a glacial to an interglacial climate, and that dispersal will be thwartedby highly fragmented landscapes. Climates found at present on 10–48% of the planet are projected to disappear within a century, and climates that contemporary organisms have never experienced are likely to cover 12–39% of Earth. The mean global temperature by 2070 (or possibly a few decades earlier) will be higher than it has been since the human species evolved."
Randgalt 14y ago
Ludicrous. Idiocy.
astrofinch 14y ago
If radical climate change really is imminent, we should look in to geoengineering. Technology has already saved us from a few catastrophic predictions like this one.
alphasierra 14y ago
Need to read the article -- my library doesn't have access yet but this seems way too sensationalized. I have no doubt the world will change. I don't think that we could prevent it even if we turned off the figurative taps but there's no way that the article advocates that the planet will not support life after this change. Does it go into the probable losses and the mechanisms for those losses (heat/acidification/etc)? From that we could identify probable impacts to the nutrient cycle.
- alphasierra 14y ago
  Ok was able to read (thanks scarmig). Their claim is that we alter approximately 2.27 acres worth of environment to support each person (mainly nutrients). This comes out to 40%?? of the land of Earth being transformed and showing state change. Through this transformation of land and our consumption of primary nutrients we currently consume between 20-40% of the biota production and also degrade the whole production chain. Their claim is that at current human growth levels we will exceed 50% transformation of the land mass and this will cause rapid, unpredictable changes (state change) and we will reach this in 2025. Interestingly, they claim that through greenhouse gas emissions we have delayed this massive state change (by putting more energy into the environment).
perfunctory 14y ago
A pseudo-science article is at the top of the home page. hm.
rcthompson 14y ago
The article is a hodgepodge of mixed metaphors, and reading it leaves me with the impression that the theory itself is as well.
- goblin89 14y ago
  What about the original paper? Edit: Removed paywalled link (there's a better one somewhere in the thread). My point is that the article seems inaccurate, so it may be a mistake to judge the matter by the impression you get from the it. I'm yet to read the paper myself.
  - droithomme 14y ago
    I highly recommend everyone do as I have done: read the paper and track down the references they state support their claims such as "43%!" and "50%!" and determine whether or not the references cited support the claims as made. It's an entertaining exercise. Then, based on one's findings having done this, decide for oneself whether the paper should be withdrawn and all 22 of the authors fired from their positions.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - Devilboy 14y ago
      To save everyone time, what did you find?
      - droithomme 14y ago
        Like all the advocates are saying, read the paper. To that I add follow up on the citations. The advocates don't go into detail about their amazing findings, they just wax poetic about the brilliance of the paper without offering details. Since that's clearly the accepted standard, that's exactly where I'm standing on it as well. Does "Critical thresholds associated with habitat loss" refer to planetary scale changes or microenvironments? Does it support a tipping point of 50% altered planet? Read the paper to find out. That's just one reference. There's 100 to follow through on for the most fun. That's also the only way this can be seriously discussed. Otherwise every single damn thing I will point out here will be nitpicked to death by the population purge advocates. If everybody loads up on the facts then that can't happen. So reading the paper and following all the citations is the only way to decide for yourself. Anything advocates or critics say could be bullshit here. People won't know unless they go see for themselves. In this and the other thread discussing this paper, a number of people pointed out that they did not actually have proven models that really showed planetary doom, and it was also questioned whether 43% of the land mass on the planet is really either farm or city. To these responses, advocates attacked them, accused them of not reading the paper, and insisted the paper, and its citations, did support that. None of these advocates were willing to provide details about that. So at this point the only way to know is to read the paper and all the citations and decide if the advocates are right about this or not. I didn't have to read all 100 citations fortunately to find out since the claims are specifically footnoted.
scarmig 14y ago
Links to the actual paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature1... http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012...
mkramlich 14y ago
Here's where all the right-wing programmers on HN, with no relevant training or expertise in climate science, geology, physics, etc., all chime in with their own right-wing consensus view that, "Thems evil liberal hippie scientists have an agenda to raise our taxes and fund their labs! I say it's just mystic mumbo jumbo and bah humbug!" Meanwhile, serious mature accomplished people with relevant expertise and years of experience in the field, who study real data, and done lots of model tuning & analysis, and overall have a much deeper knowledge of the physical and biological systems involved are worried, very worried, and calling for action, and their numbers are growing. Given that humans can mistakes. And given that it's hard to know for sure who exactly is right. And given the magnitude of the stakes involved, the magnitude of the downside risk in the "bad" scenario variants, which kind of people do you think it would be wiser to believe and follow their advice? On climate, I'm going to bet on the climate scientists, and I hope enough of the rest of you join me, for all our sakes.
- Devilboy 14y ago
  OK so here's a question: Let's assume for the moment that this paper is 100% accurate in its assessment of the future of our climate, and let's further assume that the general public will continue to be apathetic for the time being. What's going to happen? Are we doomed because we won't be able to act on a large enough scale in time? Or will things change (quickly enough) once the average Joe starts 'feeling the heat'?
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  The scientific method is not "right wing". You can pretend that politically motivated pseudoscience is science, it does not make it so, and at the end of the day it hurts the cause of science. We live in a world (world, not just country) where strong support for science and reason is very much in the minority. We are so very close to the tipping point of falling into a new dark age of superstition. And by far the easiest way to end up in that state is to pervert and twist the scientific establishment into supporting a specific set of ideals a priori, independent of evidence and reason, and destroying the credibility of the scientific establishment and indeed in the very concept of science in the process. If you want to argue a point, argue from the evidence. Not with politics. Not with vitriol. Not with hatred. You make an ad hominem attack with your first sentence. Then you make good use of the fallacy of the excluded middle, the straw man argument, argument from authority, and then an appeal to popularity. You can do better. And when it comes to topics such as scientific integrity and ethics as well as the future of human civilization we must do better.

32 points by Dinoguy1000 14y ago

This has already been discussed extensively here (see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4097116 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4097116) For the record, my vote is that this is pseudoscience. No theory, model, or testable predictions are presented. It is a non-falsifiable idea that is couched in such generic and vague terms that it could mean just about anything.

tsotha 14y ago
I would even go so far as to call it junk science.
methehack 14y ago
"Did you read the original article or just the news story?", he asked, exasperated. The article that the news story references was just published in Nature, which has been around since 1869, is peered reviewed, well-respected, oft-cited, and has many distinguished moments, including the initial publication of Watson and Crick's work on DNA. "pseudoscience" might be unfair. Nice object lesson in the "social structures for doing something just aren’t there" though.
- temphn 14y ago
  When publishing a paper, "peer review" typically means that two or three scientists ask you for one round of revisions before publishing. It does not mean complete replication of the source code and data analysis. It means a cursory pass, not a complete unit test suite. Nature and Science in particular have been forced to retract many papers recently for failure to replicate. A short list of recent retracted Nature and Science papers: http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/highly-cited-harvard-stem-cell-scientist-retracts-nature-paper/ http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/highly-cited... http://www.genomesunzipped.org/2012/04/guest-post-accurate-identification-of-rna-editing-sites-from-high-throughput-sequencing-data.php http://www.genomesunzipped.org/2012/04/guest-post-accurate-i... http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=study-fails-to-confirm-existence http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=study-fails... And here is a recent climate paper by Gergis which was retracted after the blogosphere found flaws while attempting to replicate their work: http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/10/more-on-screening-in-gergis-et-al-2012/ http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/10/more-on-screening-in-gerg... All of those papers were beaten up after they were accepted because other scientists couldn't replicate their results. Perhaps we should see whether this too holds up to scrutiny for a few years before remaking the $100T world economy.
  - scarmig 14y ago
    "retracted" is a bit strong: more accurate would be, put on hold temporarily while a statistical flaw is fixed. Even the author of the blog concedes that the overall paper could stand perfectly fine after the flaw is corrected. It's also interesting to note how the "auditors" compare to the scientists: while the scientists graciously send a thank you for pointing out a flaw and get to work on fixing it, the auditors seem almost entirely focused on crowing, getting a scalp and spreading conspiracy theories and innuendo. Interesting.
    - temphn 14y ago
      Well, the "auditors" are called denialists and attacked from many sides -- even though they are the only ones who publish full source code, push for raw data release, and actually try to replicate results. We are making $100T decisions on the basis of $1M papers and closed datasets. Regarding retraction, I think this is pretty unambiguous http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/08/gergis-et-al-put-on-hold/ http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/08/gergis-et-al-put-on-hold/ Dear Stephen, I am contacting you on behalf of all the authors of the Gergis et al (2012) study ‘Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium’ An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, which may affect the results. While the paper states that “both proxy climate and instrumental data were linearly detrended over the 1921–1990 period”, we discovered on Tuesday 5 June that the records used in the final analysis were not detrended for proxy selection, making this statement incorrect. Although this is an unfortunate data processing issue, it is likely to have implications for the results reported in the study. The journal has been contacted and the publication of the study has been put on hold. This is a normal part of science. The testing of scientific studies through independent analysis of data and methods strengthens the conclusions. In this study, an issue has been identified and the results are being re-checked. We would be grateful if you would post the notice below on your ClimateAudit web site. We would like to thank you and the participants at the ClimateAudit blog for your scrutiny of our study, which also identified this data processing issue. Thanks, David Karoly Print publication of scientific study put on hold An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium” by Joelle Gergis, Raphael Neukom, Stephen Phipps, Ailie Gallant and David Karoly, accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate. We are currently reviewing the data and results. Now, props to Karoly for being gracious in this takedown. Part of the problem is that a scientific paper is like a monolithic binary where a bugfix means going out and recalling every copy of the software out in the field. So paper authors usually are very resistant to bugfixes, as they are career ending.In this case Karoly severely damaged Gergis' career and may have hurt his own. From a purely self-interested perspective he should have just stonewalled the "denialists" like Michael Mann has. But he was honest as a scientist. Much better to move towards an open source culture where a "paper" is just the documentation for a major version number associated with a data/code repository.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  Yes, I read the original, in its entirety. As to peer-review, this was not published as either an "article" or "letter" (see: http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/2a_Manuscript_formatting.pdf http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/2a_Manuscript_forma...) but as a "review", which is more or less just a published essay. As such it falls under a much different peer review guideline. Even so, peer review is no surety of fact, far from it, it's nothing more than a signoff that the authors have seemingly followed the basic forms of reproducible scientific investigations. However, in this case I think that Nature has let down its readers even in publishing this essay as a "review". There is nothing that is not vague and generic in this essay. There is no model here, no theory. And no predictions nor falsifiability. It is not science in any sense and should not be treated as science. At best it is the shadowy outline of a future theory, at worst it is politics, mysticism, and superstition masquerading as science. And yes, reprinted in one of the most prestigious science journals of our times. That doesn't make it better, that makes it worse.
astrofinch 14y ago
At first I shared your frustration, but I glanced at the paper and it looks to me (as a layman) as though the authors did their homework. It was published in Nature after all. Here's a high level intuitive argument: Imagine that lots of important parameters about the Earth's climate and ecosystems could be modeled using a bunch of differential equations. Right now, due to humans, our current state is deep in historically unexplored territory. To be safe, it makes sense to try to modify all the parameters we can back to where they were in case weird stuff happens in the unexplored territory.
- scarmig 14y ago
  It's also important to note that this is a review article: it's an attempt to distill an opinionated consensus in the field, not to fully flesh out the models and provide all the empirical evidence. For that, the reader should check the copious end notes.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  Just because they have plenty of notes doesn't mean that they've come up with something worthwhile. Their "theory" is nothing more substantive than New Age mysticism. They talk about states, state shifts, and forcings but do not fully describe any of them except at the most superficial levels. They put forward no tests (quantitative or qualitative) to determine the boundaries of a state or to test whether a "state shift" has occurred. That is a flaw at the very lowest level of their "theory". On top of that they build many fanciful constructs which have even less basis in the scientific method. I've commented on this before, but it bears repeating. Here is "Figure 2" from the article: http://i.imgur.com/Zi3uB.png http://i.imgur.com/Zi3uB.png. Neither axis is meaningful, they both lack a definition for what is being measured, let alone how, let alone how to sort it, even qualitatively. This is junk. It's no better than a diagram with "mood" on the y-axis and "emotional energy" on the x-axis, it's utterly, utterly meaningless.

rsanchez1 14y ago

"Society globally has to collectively decide that we need to drastically lower our population very quickly." Right, and how does Arne Mooers propose we do this? Thermonuclear war maybe? That would be too damaging. Sterilize everyone? Not even China does that. Maybe ask billions of people to escort themselves off the face of the Earth? Make some Solyent Green? Global pandemic? Maybe more people would take them seriously (and really take them seriously, not just run around scared) if they gave us more choices than "maybe die" and "definitely die".

droithomme 14y ago
That specific phrase "drastically lower our population very quickly" is very interesting because it appeared as exactly those words in the last article about this paper that appeared here yesterday: http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media-releases/2012/study-predicts-imminent-irreversible-planetary-collapse.html http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media-releases/2012/study-predicts-im... I made some comments about that exact wording and was criticized because that phrase as it is is not in the original paper, but was in the press release about the paper, a press release apparently written by the paper's authors since it gives them as contacts. And here the phrase, not from the actual paper, appears in yet another alarmist article claiming that total irreversible planetary doom is certain if purges do not begin.
- mkramlich 14y ago
  > And here the phrase, not from the actual paper, appears in yet another ALARMIST article claiming that total irreversible planetary doom is CERTAIN if PURGES do not begin. I put three key words in bold above. But I want to focus on this: "doom is certain if purges do not begin." Please point me to where that was said, either in the paper itself or in the co-author's summary. You don't be able to because it doesn't exist. They didn't say that. You said that. I just grepped for "purge" in the paper and in the summary and article you linked to above, and they both yielded 0 results. The paper: http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012... ? I would argue that your comment -- where you falsely accused them of claiming that doom is certain if purges do not begin --- is the one being alarmist. I am certain of that. :P Also, strictly speaking, one possible explanation for why you might be seeing a seemingly growing number of recent "alarmist" articles about the climate & population impact, etc., is because, perhaps, the folks who are studying these areas are actually becoming increasingly alarmed. If that's happening, and they're sharing that with us, that's a good thing. "I wish that darn burglar alarm would stop going off every few weeks!" Well, are you more concerned about the inconvenience of repeatedly hearing the alarm, or that your house keeps getting robbed? :) Let's err on the side of the latter case, if any.

caffeineninja 14y ago

I'm having trouble deciding whether or not this is sensationalist journalism or the truth. looks up denial in the dictionary

sdm 14y ago

Interesting to see this coming from such a staunchly conservative university as SFU.

Morg 14y ago

Well, there goes another shock headline. The human species very much behaves like an individual in that it will always take a burnt finger to stop touching the hot plate. What that tells us is that we're indeed going to break the ecosystem/climate at some point. What history tells us is that we're going to fix it much faster than we broke it We have broken hunting/gathering and we had the fix before it became critical. (agriculture) We have broken fossile fuels and we had the fix before it became critical. (nuclear,elec,batteries,fuel cells) We have broken nuclear fission energy and we had the fix before it became critical. (fusion, hydro, geotherm) We may have almost broken the climate and we will fix it before it becomes critical. (There is no problem so far so I can't guess the fix, but we already have the capability to design any animal or plant and mass produce it to solve any ecosystem riddle)

paulsutter 14y ago

This article would be a lot more credible if it mentioned timescales. Do we have 1 year to make a change or 100? At current rates of progress, when do we reach this tipping point? Without at least that number, it's just a useless alarmist rant.

scarmig 14y ago
"Looking towards the year 2100, models forecast that pressures on biota will continue to increase. The co-opting of resources and energy use by humans will continue to increase as the global population reaches 9,500,000,000 people (by 2050), and effects will be greatly exacerbated if per capita resource use also increases. Projections for 2100 range from apopulation low of 6,200,000,000 (requiring a substantial decline in fertility rates) to 10,100,000,000 (requiring continued decline of fertility in countries that still have fertility above replacement level) to 27,000,000,000 (if fertility remains at 2005–2010 levels; this population size is not thought to be supportable; ref. 31). Rapid climate change shows no signs of slowing. Modelling suggests that for ,30% of Earth, the speed at which plant species will have to migrate to keep pace with projected climate change is greater than their dispersal rate when Earth last shifted from a glacial to an interglacial climate, and that dispersal will be thwartedby highly fragmented landscapes. Climates found at present on 10–48% of the planet are projected to disappear within a century, and climates that contemporary organisms have never experienced are likely to cover 12–39% of Earth. The mean global temperature by 2070 (or possibly a few decades earlier) will be higher than it has been since the human species evolved."

Randgalt 14y ago

Ludicrous. Idiocy.

astrofinch 14y ago

If radical climate change really is imminent, we should look in to geoengineering. Technology has already saved us from a few catastrophic predictions like this one.

alphasierra 14y ago

Need to read the article -- my library doesn't have access yet but this seems way too sensationalized. I have no doubt the world will change. I don't think that we could prevent it even if we turned off the figurative taps but there's no way that the article advocates that the planet will not support life after this change. Does it go into the probable losses and the mechanisms for those losses (heat/acidification/etc)? From that we could identify probable impacts to the nutrient cycle.

alphasierra 14y ago
Ok was able to read (thanks scarmig). Their claim is that we alter approximately 2.27 acres worth of environment to support each person (mainly nutrients). This comes out to 40%?? of the land of Earth being transformed and showing state change. Through this transformation of land and our consumption of primary nutrients we currently consume between 20-40% of the biota production and also degrade the whole production chain. Their claim is that at current human growth levels we will exceed 50% transformation of the land mass and this will cause rapid, unpredictable changes (state change) and we will reach this in 2025. Interestingly, they claim that through greenhouse gas emissions we have delayed this massive state change (by putting more energy into the environment).

perfunctory 14y ago

A pseudo-science article is at the top of the home page. hm.

rcthompson 14y ago

The article is a hodgepodge of mixed metaphors, and reading it leaves me with the impression that the theory itself is as well.

goblin89 14y ago
What about the original paper? Edit: Removed paywalled link (there's a better one somewhere in the thread). My point is that the article seems inaccurate, so it may be a mistake to judge the matter by the impression you get from the it. I'm yet to read the paper myself.
- droithomme 14y ago
  I highly recommend everyone do as I have done: read the paper and track down the references they state support their claims such as "43%!" and "50%!" and determine whether or not the references cited support the claims as made. It's an entertaining exercise. Then, based on one's findings having done this, decide for oneself whether the paper should be withdrawn and all 22 of the authors fired from their positions.
  - deleted 14y ago
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  - Devilboy 14y ago
    To save everyone time, what did you find?
    - droithomme 14y ago
      Like all the advocates are saying, read the paper. To that I add follow up on the citations. The advocates don't go into detail about their amazing findings, they just wax poetic about the brilliance of the paper without offering details. Since that's clearly the accepted standard, that's exactly where I'm standing on it as well. Does "Critical thresholds associated with habitat loss" refer to planetary scale changes or microenvironments? Does it support a tipping point of 50% altered planet? Read the paper to find out. That's just one reference. There's 100 to follow through on for the most fun. That's also the only way this can be seriously discussed. Otherwise every single damn thing I will point out here will be nitpicked to death by the population purge advocates. If everybody loads up on the facts then that can't happen. So reading the paper and following all the citations is the only way to decide for yourself. Anything advocates or critics say could be bullshit here. People won't know unless they go see for themselves. In this and the other thread discussing this paper, a number of people pointed out that they did not actually have proven models that really showed planetary doom, and it was also questioned whether 43% of the land mass on the planet is really either farm or city. To these responses, advocates attacked them, accused them of not reading the paper, and insisted the paper, and its citations, did support that. None of these advocates were willing to provide details about that. So at this point the only way to know is to read the paper and all the citations and decide if the advocates are right about this or not. I didn't have to read all 100 citations fortunately to find out since the claims are specifically footnoted.

scarmig 14y ago

Links to the actual paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature1... http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/pdfs/Barnoskyetal2012...

mkramlich 14y ago

Here's where all the right-wing programmers on HN, with no relevant training or expertise in climate science, geology, physics, etc., all chime in with their own right-wing consensus view that, "Thems evil liberal hippie scientists have an agenda to raise our taxes and fund their labs! I say it's just mystic mumbo jumbo and bah humbug!" Meanwhile, serious mature accomplished people with relevant expertise and years of experience in the field, who study real data, and done lots of model tuning & analysis, and overall have a much deeper knowledge of the physical and biological systems involved are worried, very worried, and calling for action, and their numbers are growing. Given that humans can mistakes. And given that it's hard to know for sure who exactly is right. And given the magnitude of the stakes involved, the magnitude of the downside risk in the "bad" scenario variants, which kind of people do you think it would be wiser to believe and follow their advice? On climate, I'm going to bet on the climate scientists, and I hope enough of the rest of you join me, for all our sakes.

Devilboy 14y ago
OK so here's a question: Let's assume for the moment that this paper is 100% accurate in its assessment of the future of our climate, and let's further assume that the general public will continue to be apathetic for the time being. What's going to happen? Are we doomed because we won't be able to act on a large enough scale in time? Or will things change (quickly enough) once the average Joe starts 'feeling the heat'?
InclinedPlane 14y ago
The scientific method is not "right wing". You can pretend that politically motivated pseudoscience is science, it does not make it so, and at the end of the day it hurts the cause of science. We live in a world (world, not just country) where strong support for science and reason is very much in the minority. We are so very close to the tipping point of falling into a new dark age of superstition. And by far the easiest way to end up in that state is to pervert and twist the scientific establishment into supporting a specific set of ideals a priori, independent of evidence and reason, and destroying the credibility of the scientific establishment and indeed in the very concept of science in the process. If you want to argue a point, argue from the evidence. Not with politics. Not with vitriol. Not with hatred. You make an ad hominem attack with your first sentence. Then you make good use of the fallacy of the excluded middle, the straw man argument, argument from authority, and then an appeal to popularity. You can do better. And when it comes to topics such as scientific integrity and ethics as well as the future of human civilization we must do better.