Skeptic Project

What were the theories used?

What were the prediction models?

Lastly, how about a link to the actual study?

Without that, that piece reads like a press release and is meaningless, IMO.

Edit: I went and found the article on nature. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html The abstract reads much less hysterically then that press release. I'm not paying $32 to read that one article, but I can't help but have a feeling that the press release exaggerated everything for attention.

How is this stuff any different from what the club of rome has been writing for decades now?

Who's talking about MSNBC? It's been published in Nature and the authors seem fairly scientific to me.

I'll see if I can pick up a copy tomorrow.

Quote from CyborgJesus

Who's talking about MSNBC? It's been published in Nature and the authors seem fairly scientific to me.

I'll see if I can pick up a copy tomorrow.

When an article that costs 32 dollars to read is being pimped by agenda driven media outlets and not the scientific community, I can probably wipe my ass with it. And I probably would wipe my ass with it, but toilet paper is only a dollar.

Quote from CyborgJesus

What? It's been published yesterday and the distribution models of scientific journals have been insane for decades now.

Bad distribution methods?

Which is kinda sad if they want this to be more widely available.

Come now, if we react that way, we are no better than them. That´s why I put this out here, I want to see how factual it is before dismissing it as crap.

That's the point. Due to Nature's subscription requirement I *can't* read the study despite trying to do so repeatedly today. All I found were endless environmentalist and left-leaning media outlets promoting it. Why are they promoting a study they haven't read? It's the same goddamn publicity rap in every article, but I'm supposed to believe the outlets promoting it have read it? Yeah, right.

So it's in Nature. BFD. Andrew Wakefield was in the Lancet.

I'm going to dismiss this hippie bullshit because I have absolutely no reason not to at this point. I put forth the effort to consider it before accepting or condemning it and I can't. Therefore at this point there is no reason to think this isn't yet another media science fail.

Don't you fucking dare sit there and say this is outright condemnation without consideration.

The premise is fucking retarded. The logic in the publicity campaign is shitty. Judgement has been made until evidence requires otherwise.

Got my hands on a copy. As I expected, it's just a primer on applying thresholds to global anthropogenic forcing. I wouldn't call it a study, it's just a review referencing lots of other studies that have made similar points. It's an interesting read for anybody who is curious about environmental science, but there aren't many original claims. The actual threshold used (50%) is pulled from the February 2012 issue of "Conservation Biology" and seems rather blurry to me (and indirectly includes the possibility that we've already crossed it).

Quote from Agent Matt

That's the point. Due to Nature's subscription requirement I *can't* read the study despite trying to do so repeatedly today. All I found were endless environmentalist and left-leaning media outlets promoting it. Why are they promoting a study they haven't read? It's the same goddamn publicity rap in every article, but I'm supposed to believe the outlets promoting it have read it? Yeah, right.

And so what? Some doofus promotes an article he hasn't read. The authors can't control that. Nature can't control that. All they can do is inform people that it's out and that you might want to read it. Considering that it's a review, you'll need access to scientific journals to confirm the dozens of references anyway.

I'm sure it's a vast Sorosian leftist conspiracy and not just a bunch of lazy bloggers/journalists copying each other.

That's bull. One, you haven't even checked the thing, so feel free to ignore it, but you don't get to claim it's bogus. Two, as you'd expect with Nature, the article is hedged pretty carefully. They admit the uncertainty and fuzziness of their claims and ask for more research, as any scientist should.

Sort of. The media release you linked is pretty horrible (or at least its headline), but the paper made some interesting points. There have been lots of papers about positive feedback loops, i.e., you change something within a system and the system reacts by further amplifying the change. This is one of the major concerns behind climate change - we increase global temperatures and by doing that activate or amplify natural processes that act as reinforcing agents.

This one takes a slightly different idea, namely that there are certain points where normal balancing (or negative feedback) processes break down, so that even once you remove the pressure, you can't get the system back to the point where it started, a bit like the breaking point of a rubber band. The paper assumes that such an effect doesn't only apply to local regions but earth as a whole, and compares different papers that have discussed models of when this might happen. The numbers range from 25-70% (we're apparently at 43% now), which is pretty blurry, but it's still better than nothing and might be improved with better data.

It's a bit like a discussing health insurance for the world, with some guys being hypochondriacs, some guys believing they're immortal or god will fix it, and some guys refusing to make a decision until they know the exact chance of getting sick. It's pretty obvious that this decision isn't going to happen, whatever the risk may turn out to be, so unless you're interested in the science itself, just ignore it until there's more data. The Wired article makes a few good points: It could be an accurate warning, it could be a sexy but false hypothesis. The interesting question is how humanity should deal with this and similar problems: "Given incomplete but troubling information, what should people do?"

So there is evidence that rapid change has occurred on the planet in the past, it's causation is pretty much unimportant in the context of my point I am going to make.

My point is this, if the evidence shows this has happened before why is it that people seem unwilling to grasp the likelihood it will happen again ?

The causation is not the issue in my eyes, rather that it can and will happen again whether people want to believe it or not, even if the studies are inaccurate and vague. The study doesn't affect the eventual outcome, the outcome is neither dependent on our discussions, studies or belief in the matter.

To deny that the Earth will eventually have some major climate upheaval is an unusual stance to take, and our interference and actions may well speed the process up. I find it laughable that even in this day and age people can deny something so blatant as climate change and it's eventual effects on the planet.


I don't like to put time frames on future events like these studies do, that part to me is the bullshit area, but I am fairly certain that future events will occur when the circumstances allow it.