March 17, 2014 - In today's UK Huffington Post the following headline appears - Civilisation Is Doomed Warns Safa Motesharri's Nasa-Funded Study. The author is mathematician, Safa Motesharri, who applies what is described as a "highly simplified model" to predict the future path of modern industrial society. This model, called the Human and Nature DYnamical (HANDY) purportedly looks at population, climate change, freshwater, agriculture, energy and other factors to predict the outcome of our civilization.
Guess what?
We are doomed just like the Roman Empire, the Han of China, the Harappa of the Indus River, the Anasazi of the American southwest, the Mauryan and Gupta Empires and so many more. The conclusions are drawn from current over consumption, limited carrying capacity of the planet, increased socioeconomic stratification and many other factors.
What's very interesting is I have yet to actually find the original paper supposedly published in the journal, Ecological Economics. Yet I have found lots of media outlets like the Huffington Post, and numerous bloggers writing about it.
I haven't found any NASA reference to the HANDY model upon which the study is based. Nor have I found any reference to the author either at the Goddard Space Flight Center, supposedly a sponsor, or at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center associated with the author.
I am certain that there are many mathematical models in existence that produce a Malthusian forecast for our civilization. But what disturbs me about this most recent headline is how quickly information has received widespread coverage. Check the links on all the sites that have reported the story and not one goes to the source document from which the information is supposedly derived.
Now there is enough valid science out there pointing to the human requirement to address climate change without invention. So all I ask is if I'm wrong then set me straight. I've written the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center to confirm if Mr. Motesharri actually exists. A Google search to find him comes up empty. I have also written to Elsevier, publishers of Ecological Economics to see if indeed they have published a paper authored by Mr. Motesharri whose name doesn't come up when you search their site. I'll let you know what I discover but in the meantime if any of you are sleuths and want to do your own digging, please let me know the results.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
12 comments:
Safa Motesharrei's page at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Centre.
The research has been accepted for publication, but it is not published yet. It is funded by NASA, but that's not the same as the research being done by someone at NASA> The story in The Guardian makes these details clear, and indeed, the whole story in The Guardian is much better than the HuffPo piece. The Guardian: Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'?
None of which means that your arguments are invalid! It's just that he *is* a real person, and the article really has been through a valid peer review process.
Thanks, Deborah.
A finding based on so many assumptions it's hard to summarise how flawed it is. It must be a hoax.
RG you give me a glimmer of hope that perhaps you are starting to see through the global AGW/CC hoax as it unravels at the seams.
good to see it isn't a fraud
pity the author let the story out before releasing the entire report as it got extremely good coverage
and the lack of the full copy has eroded the impact
I wonder what assumptions Paranormal has made to reach his conclusions
or is he infallible?
I bet he isn't even capable of constructing a simple model of how things never change no matter how much you modify them - to explain his own position.
Just a feeling maybe?
Anyone with a calcified view would struggle to do that, darkhorse.
Actually Darkhorse I probably have a better understanding of computer models than you do, having been part of a team that built them.
I am merely suggesting the model might be held in the same esteem as Mann's hockey stick model amongst others, and for the same reasons.
It appears the doomsday model is based on a number of assumptions / fallacies, some of the more dire ones are:
- the assumption that the impacts of climate change (that is happening in spite of man, not because of us)is all negative. Way back when Bellamy lost his job through to the latest from Patrick Moore there is significant evidence to the contrary.
- energy availability and technology are improving daily.
- The world is currently struggling to sustain a birth rate that will maintain current population levels.
But hey, never let the facts get in the way of belief systems set in stone...
if energy avaibality is improving daily why isn't the price of energy falling = would love to see some facts on that - and the world's population is doing anything but contract so don't know where you got that "fact" either tends to put everything else you say into the trash can
and where is your better model to disprove?
A couple of quack sources is hardly ovewhemling factual evidence and definitely of a poorer standard than the position you so vehemently decry
"a couple of quack sources"
Killer.
Darkhorse have a look at:
World historical and predicted crude birth rates (1950–2050)
UN, medium variant, 2008 rev.[7]
Years CBR
1950–1955 37.2
1955–1960 35.3
1960–1965 34.9
1965–1970 33.4
1970–1975 30.8
1975–1980 28.4
1980–1985 27.9
1985–1990 27.3
1990–1995 24.7
1995–2000 22.5
2000–2005 21.2
2005–2010 20.3
2010–2015 19.4
2015–2020 18.2
2020–2025 16.9
2025–2030 15.8
2030–2035 15.0
2035–2040 14.5
2040–2045 14.0
2045–2050 13.4
What is the trend you see here (assuming you can see a trend)? I would also recommend you read "The next 100 years" by George Friedman. He explains it in terms even you should be able to understand. With the Aids epidemic in Africa the world population is no longer exploding. Anyone predicting future outcomes based on an increasing population will have suspect results as they are based on a flawed assumption. And thats only one of many in this latest boondoggle.
The reason there are no models predicting the opposite is there is no money in it. Follow the money trail behind this latest doomsday scenario and you will find a leftist trying to justify their position. There's the quackery you are supporting.
yes paranormal - the population growth rate is declining on a birth on the basis of annual live birth per per 1000 but as a proportion of an ever increasing number so the rate per 1000 in 2050 is one third the 1950 rate but there are three times as many people which negates the trend in terms of absolute numbers
regardless of the trend the absolute numbers mean that the planet is going ot be very poor in 2050 with another 50% of us on the planet all wanting to live the good life on a finite set of resources.
Suggest you read a little wider than your doomsday predictions Darkhorse.
Firstly there won't be another 505 of us on the planet. The west is not reproducing at a rate great enough to maintain population. China with it's one child policy and Africa with its Aids epidemic will see a declining world population.
But then again you raise another fallacy. That of the fixed rather than growing world economy and it's ability to feed more people.
Post a Comment