Earth May Have Breached Seven of Nine Planetary Boundaries, Health Check Shows (theguardian.com) 74
Industrial civilisation is close to breaching a seventh planetary boundary, and may already have crossed it, according to scientists who have compiled the latest report on the state of the world's life-support systems. From a report: "Ocean acidification is approaching a critical threshold," particularly in higher-latitude regions, says the latest report on planetary boundaries. "The growing acidification poses an increasing threat to marine ecosystems." The report, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), builds on years of research showing there are nine systems and processes -- the planetary boundaries -- that contribute to the stability of the planet's life-support functions.
Thresholds beyond which they can no longer properly function have already been breached in six. Climate change, the introduction of novel entities, change in biosphere integrity and modification of biogeochemical flows are judged to be in high-risk zones, while planetary boundaries are also transgressed in land system change and freshwater change but to a lesser extent. All have worsened, according to the data. Stratospheric ozone depletion has remained stable, however, and there has been a slight improvement in atmospheric aerosol loading, the research says. At a briefing outlining the findings, Levke Caesar, a climate physicist at PIK and co-author of the report, said there were two reasons the levels of ocean acidification were concerning.
Thresholds beyond which they can no longer properly function have already been breached in six. Climate change, the introduction of novel entities, change in biosphere integrity and modification of biogeochemical flows are judged to be in high-risk zones, while planetary boundaries are also transgressed in land system change and freshwater change but to a lesser extent. All have worsened, according to the data. Stratospheric ozone depletion has remained stable, however, and there has been a slight improvement in atmospheric aerosol loading, the research says. At a briefing outlining the findings, Levke Caesar, a climate physicist at PIK and co-author of the report, said there were two reasons the levels of ocean acidification were concerning.
Missed the better research (Score:2, Informative)
https://www.science.org/doi/10... [science.org]
A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature - published in Science September 20, 2024
The first graphic shows that for the entire time man has been on the Earth, the temperature has been cooling from 35 C to 10 C.
Not left, right or center here, but is this credible, and if credible (Science journal) how does it affect the recent 50 years of climate research?
Re:Missed the better research (Score:4, Interesting)
It's entirely credible (as is the last 50 years of climate research) and really throws into sharp relief just how significant the massively rapid period of warming after industrialisation is.
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But he's only asking questions, right?
Welcome to the latest extreme-right media tactic.
You invoked Godwin's Law (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You've invoked Godwin's Law and have failed to win the discussion.
By the 'the other person did not agree with me and my mentioning 'alt-right / far-right' makes me win' cliche you used.
You mus have missed the suggestion, amongst other suggestions, of using US trade policies to help 'encourage' the major Pacific rim countries (China, Indonesia, Philippines, Viet Name, ...) to stop dumping millions of tons of plastic into rivers which dump that plastic in the Pacific Ocean.
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And, just questioning science is not a troll (Score:2)
Science is based on questioning existing science and past science research.
Just because some science research does not reinforce a person's political opinions does not make that science invalid by default.
We can have a reasoned discussion, though not if labeling people as far-left, far-right, reactionary, extremists, alt-right, ... is the go to claim used by those who only want to shut down any discussion not agreeing with their political opinions.
Question for example, "Is all science research equally impor
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This is such an olde fashioned statement. Oh how wonderfully retro it is as seen by todays eyes.
The mere idea that science is supposed to be debated and tested and blind to bias etc, the mere idea.
Lofty ideals of a bygone age, an age of innocence where scientists were actually capable of being respectable because you know they followed the scientific method and were for the most part seeking the truth and should (although not all were I’m sure) be incorruptible.
I knew something was fishy all along an
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> The first graphic shows that for the entire time man has been on the Earth, the temperature has been cooling from 35 C to 10 C
They'll claim that it's due to instrumentation issues and "correct" the problem just like the University of East Anglia was doing as well as what the IPCC do all the time as they can’t explain heat islands so they just fudge the numbers so they disappear and make everything look way worse.
Einstein once did the same, fudged the numbers etc so that his conclusions met his hy
worm sign (Score:1)
the spice must flow
Fifth Seal Angel To Be Upstaged Twice (Score:4, Interesting)
"The report, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), builds on years of research showing there are nine systems and processes – the planetary boundaries – that contribute to the stability of the planet’s life-support functions.
"Thresholds beyond which they can no longer properly function have already been breached in six. Climate change, the introduction of novel entities, change in biosphere integrity and modification of biogeochemical flows are judged to be in high-risk zones, while planetary boundaries are also transgressed in land system change and freshwater change but to a lesser extent. All have worsened, according to the data."
Are these conditions ANDed together, or ORed together, to determine whether we're irreversibly screwed? And if it's ORed, does this mean we should have given up twenty years ago?
Actually, now that I think about it, I guess we DID kind of give up twenty years ago. At least.
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No thanks...I prefer to remain independent.....
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"...complete MY time left on this planet..."
That could be arranged, and we'd all be better off.
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as long as it last LONG ENOUGH for me to complete MY time left on this planet, ...I'm good.
Precisely the attitude that got us here in the first place
Re:Fifth Seal Angel To Be Upstaged Twice (Score:4, Insightful)
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Congratulations! (Score:2, Insightful)
Congratulations, you just got modded down to "0, Troll" for promoting science on Slashdot! What a proud day for the website!
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Nope. Not a religion. It is actually science. This means it is based on evidence, and it evolves the predictions based on new evidence as it become available. Science it pretty cool, you should look into it; it's good for more than just making bombs n bigger TVs n stuff. Brondo! it's got 'lectolytes n stuff that plants need!
See, here's the thing. It is science, absolutely. But humans need something to believe in, sadly. We're still spiritually starved. As we wise up enough to lose religion, we don't seem to have anything to replace it with, so people set up religious mentalities around whatever issue they feel is the most important of their age. Climate Change has become one of those tentpoles they latch onto. And those who aren't interested in the science behind it, just the feeling of "being a part of something" see it very
I'm motivated to live healthy now (Score:2)
Just to live long enough to witness humanity topple over the edge.
Would be quite the finisher to a lifetime during several world changing events.
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It's sad for my kids that so many are complacent, and even celebrate this.
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Things will clearly not work out. Some people can see a trend when it stares them in the face. You are not among them.
Sure. Or maybe you thought something was implied that wasn't? Maybe?
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In some sense, I feel like tourist. I was just old enough to understand what was going on when climate change science became soling in the 1980s. Now I might get to witness the great collapse. I also have a dark suspicion this timing is not an accident.
Re: I'm motivated to live healthy now (Score:1)
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What you mean 'not accident'?
I grew up around the same time period he's talking about. We were flooded with messaging promise the end of days. Ronald Reagan's personal beliefs played a big part in that, I'm certain. He said the world would end "In Our Lifetimes." The Republican party worships that man as if he were God himself. They dedicated themselves to bringing his prophecy to life. Gotta keep that promise to the kids of that age, you know.
Gotta say, it's super happy fun-times to grow up in such a world. Celebrating everything with
Re: I'm motivated to live healthy now (Score:1)
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The count of all the people who have ever lived on this planet totals approximately 110 billion. That means that if you were randomly born between the first human (a fuzzy range, but the populations then were so small it doesn't really matter) and the most recent one, you'd have a roughly 93% chance of not being alive now. You'd have already lived out your allotted time.
It is for some reason very psychologically compelling to want to believe in your own specialness and one of the things that leads to is k
That didn't take long (Score:1)
It's sad that it took such a short amount of time from industrialization until crossing these thresholds, and the amount of resources and time to fight back will be significant. Of course there will be a lot of bickering amongst ourselves before we even become effective.
Had to look it up (Score:5, Informative)
I had to look up Planetary Boundaries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries
Seems 2 are left assuming we breached Ocean acidification: Ozone depletion and Atmospheric aerosols.
Nice to see the US is the only Country not in the "Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants". Not that it seems to matter too much. I believe nothing will stop us from reaching 3C.
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I think that definition of Planetary Boundaries is wrong. There's nothing in there about the Gini Coefficient [wikipedia.org].
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Nice to see the US is the only Country not in the "Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants". Not that it seems to matter too much. I believe nothing will stop us from reaching 3C.
The US is kind of a bitch like that- we refuse to join all kinds of international conventions.
However- don't let that lead you to think we don't set similar, or in most cases- more stringent regulations.
POPs are highly regulated in the US, with most effectively banned now.
Click-bait headline (Score:1)
Should have been closer to "Ocean acidification may be close to tipping point". K.I.S.S.
They overcomplexitized it. -G.W.Bush
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Well, if we all die in a climactic cataclysm then the whinging stops and the cockroaches get a turn.
(Shrug)
Boundaries between Midgard and Asgard (Score:2)
muor varsuuilhit sih, suilizot lougiu der himil,
mano uallit, prinnit mittilagart
Sea is swallowed, flaming burn the heavens,
Moon falls, Midgard burns
Oblig. (Score:2)
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How far does a fart diffuse? (Score:3)
When I read the title, but not yet read the text, I wondered what that meant - "Earth May Have Breached Seven of Nine Planetary Boundaries".
If you still accept Pluto as the 9th planet, then I thought the title referred to the solar system.
What I imagined the title meant was that man-made volatile industrial chemicals, synthetic organics that do not occur naturally, have diffused outward far enough to cross the orbit of Uranus. For Uranians and Neptunians, detecting them would be an indicator of life elsewhere.
Admittedly, I completely misunderstood the title, but that is now an intriguing question. Since we first started making synthetic chemicals in the latter half of the 19th century, are there any that could have diffused that far at detectable levels? Keep in mind that other than nuclear and the most powerful of conventional explosives, none would have had the high impulse of rockets and spaceships, so Voyager and New Horizons exhaust don't count.
Any thoughts?
Seven of Nine (Score:5, Funny)
Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One
It's infuriating. (Score:4, Interesting)
We have all the warnings in the universe pointed at us, every day for decades now, and still, we barely move the needle on trying to stop ourselves. Being down here in the low-middle of the economy, while being told we're all gonna die, constantly, gets a tiny bit depressing at times. It's important. It's an existential threat. It's a political and corporate football that gets tossed around for profit and bullying, but it doesn't seem like anybody with the power to affect real change actually believes any of it. Because if they did, they wouldn't be meh'ing out on the bit where they, ya know, affect change.
I'm wondering if anything about climate change really registers to the big movers and shakers. Will they ever notice? Or will they just keep moving themselves away from the worst impacted areas and then preaching at us that *we* all have to change, but they're not gonna because there's more profit to wring from the system before it all shuts down? We truly have prioritized greed over everything, even life itself.
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You've answered all your questions yourself. You just don't believe you, yet.
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Oh, the people in charge do believe in climate change. It's just that solutions feature personal cost for global benefit. Participating puts you at a disadvantage vs other politicians, businesses, nations. If people even care, you can instead do much cheaper greenwashing (also good for milking hippies).
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It's a political and corporate football that gets tossed around for profit and bullying, but it doesn't seem like anybody with the power to affect real change actually believes any of it.
You do have to wonder.
Wealthy elites who talk most about global warming live on the coasts, in their, er, energy efficient mansions ... do they really believe that their properties are going to be underwater soon, with sea level rise?
Maybe they do, and just use cognitive dissonance ... but you can see why us great unwashed might just have a few doubts about whether they really do believe it, as opposed to just using their supposed belief as a weapon. .
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I see this a lot as an argument about why climate change can't be real. It's compelling, but it doesn't hold up to some thought.
Firstly, sea level rise is happening at different rates in different places (for well-understood physical reasons). So a lot of coastline is perfectly safe. Even for the bits that aren't, the timescale is usually many decades.
Secondly, they are 'wealthy elites' - why would losing a mansion on the coast bother them? You just get a new one elsewhere. If you are really elite you've ev
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I see this a lot as an argument about why climate change can't be real. It's compelling, but it doesn't hold up to some thought.
Firstly, sea level rise is happening at different rates in different places (for well-understood physical reasons). So a lot of coastline is perfectly safe. Even for the bits that aren't, the timescale is usually many decades.
Secondly, they are 'wealthy elites' - why would losing a mansion on the coast bother them? You just get a new one elsewhere. If you are really elite you've even managed to arrange your tax affairs and ownership of the mansion that you get to write off the cost of the loss.
Someone is throwing the 'great unwashed' a plausible but flimsy lie to try and manipulate their thinking - don't fall for it.
The truly wealthy elites already have several different homes. I only know a few people that register that high on the pay scale, but all of them own three or more large-scale houses, plus a few smaller properties they use for vacation/get away from the fast-pace spots.
When the water comes, I expect most of them will be handsomely compensated. Hell, most of them will probably get a government bailout along with a formal apology from the president at the time.
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Maybe they do, and just use cognitive dissonance ... but you can see why us great unwashed might just have a few doubts about whether they really do believe it, as opposed to just using their supposed belief as a weapon. .
If you dig into the science with an open mind, you can't really deny the truth of it happening. It's just happening slowly enough that the big power players can literally believe that it's happening, yet disconnect when they look at their homes near the water because, "Hey, it ain't washing us away yet." People do that. Even us little people. We just hurt ourselves. They have power, so their ignorance/cognitive dissonance hurts more than just them, but it's the same principal.
Bye bye cruel world (Score:2)
My BS meter is flashing (Score:5, Insightful)
Admitting up front that I don't know anything about the actual theory of "planetary boundaries", nevertheless my BS meter is triggered by claims such as this one: "[Planetary boundaries are] thresholds beyond which [planets] can no longer properly function...".
Indeed? And how, precisely, would they know this? Are there other planets whose "functions" we can assess to determine what is "proper" and what is not? And why are you using words like "threshold" in reference to dynamic, chaotic systems such as whole planets? Feedback-driven systems are characterized by thresholds, they undergo periodic cycles.
And don't get me started on the limits of our knowledge about even our own planet.
Bah. I hate this kind of pseudo-science. Why oh why is slashdot in particular infested with this nonsense? Don't we have enough actual facts to discuss?
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Seventh Seal (Score:2)
Seventh Seal / Ninth Boundary - Michael Creighton was right about this being a new religion.
It's amazing how close it's getting to the Unibomber Manifesto.
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The article reads like one of the later Evangelion episodes and is just as confusing.
Starfleet gonna be pissed (Score:2)
The only reason you got away breaching Seven of Nine so far was because she's no longer part of the collective. But she's captain of the Enterprise now so you are probably in trouble.
Fun fact.. (Score:2)
"Ocean acidification is mainly caused by carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere dissolving into the ocean."
So this isn't going to stop.
And there are groups pushing for pumping even more CO2 into the oceans as 'carbon capture'. *facepalm*
That is all.
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Depends on the form that the captured CO2 is going into the ocean in. Your argument is that no food with carbon and nitrogen in is safe to eat as CN- isn't.
Another abuse of science (Score:2, Insightful)
This is another political argument pretending to be science.
A group of left-leaning scientists create a set of sciencey-sounding thresholds based on no actual science, then put out a bunch of hype about the violation of those thresholds. Ho Hum. Move along. Nothing new here.
What filled-with-life planet was observed and studied as it crashed into uninhabitability, providing our Earthly scientists with hard data on what environmental changes mattered (and which ones did not) and the degree to which they matte
Doomsday clockers are just as wrong as AGW deniers (Score:1)
Those who deny the existence of AGW are wrong. But those who wave doomsday clocks around, write articles about the Earth's ability to sustain lives, and make movies about rivers of lava and Kaiju rising from pollution are even farther away from the scientific consensus than the AGW deniers.
I wish the people expecting Gaia's revenge had the same amount of articles published in the Guardian, the same amount of movies made, the same amount of classroom time, and the same amount of policymaking power, as the fr
Bullshit check (Score:3)
The main indicator of "oh noes, acidifaction is killing the planet" was the state of Great Barrier Reef. You may remember same scientists claiming that it getting bleached was a good litmus test of just how lethal oceanic acidification was for life in the oceans.
I bring good news. Great Barrier Reef has never been better. Latest report showed coral cover numbers higher than ever since they began measuring it. It is doing so well, the report had to focus on "but there are many potential risks" and pointedly ignore the current state and the developments of last half a decade to continue the narrative.
This is likely why we're now getting these sorts of propaganda articles now, as the report on its condition was released recently, and so reinforcement of narrative of ocean acidification just utterly murdering life in oceans needs to be reinforced in public's mind to maintain grants.
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I cut down an old growth forest and replaced it with weeds. All good "the coverage" is the same. The "number of plants" actually increased !
Pity about the biodiversity and all the animals that used to live there...
You anti-science types aren't the least bit clever. Maybe if you actually understood the lies you've been told. You wouldn't parrot them so ignorantly?
Earth ? (Score:2)
Earth did nothing.
Humans did.
Remove humans, and Earth will do fine by itself.
Mr Smith was so right about humans [youtube.com].
Anti-science (Score:2)
Anti-science from the Grauniad again I see.
All made up stuff that nobody heard of before. Planetary boundaries? Who thunk that up? "life support functions"? This isnt a machine, or Gia or whatever, but a planet. Life adapts TO the planet and life always finds a way.