The End Of The World?

[Jccarlton]

I think not.
This story from the guardian has been making the rounds lately:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/14/n ... -collapse/
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas ... ?cmpid=htx
NASA says industrial civilization headed for collapse. Must be true, right. After all NASA is the world's leading scientific and engineering institution. Well, not so fast. First of all this came from the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, which has mad quite a name for itself as being the home of people like James Hansen, who drift a long way away from actually studying space and a lot closer to social policy of the leftist kind. So you have to take what they pronounce with a certain degree of skepticism. Not having seen the actual paper I just ignored the story as the usual BS from the religious left. Then a friend of mine on facebook linked to a thread where a man named Carlos Yu said this:
Hey all, before you start panicking about this study? it's not NASA. it's written by a grad student in public policy at the University of Maryland. Dude uses a mathematical model called HANDY, a cunning way to get some cheap PR. HANDY claims to be the "first model that shows not only Ecological Strain, but also Economic Stratification can lead to a societal collapse."
What is HANDY really? Basically, it's a mathematical model rather less complicated than a game of Settlers of Catan. All the drafts of the paper have been pulled off the Internet, but I know the power of Google cache. (The one for publication is under some sort of embargo, making this even more obviously a PR move.) I've read the preliminary draft. I am not impressed.
The basic model uses a "predator-prey" cycle from the 1920s, which Motesharrei and his colleagues repurpose into an Elite vs. Commoners model. Where I come from, that's called assuming your conclusion. It's well-known what sort of behavior this class of models show. And as a reflection of the human condition expressed in mathematics, it's the sort of thing I came up with when I was twelve.
Anything associated with NASA has a direct line to science journalists everywhere. Sometimes this leads to amazing news. Sometimes it leads to bogus news -- the classic recent case was the arseno-life debacle, in which a young biologist's career destroyed to promote a bad result about life based on arsenic, all so NASA could get a little bit more PR.
This story, unfortunately, appeals to people's sense of doom about the modern world. I wish I could convey to you exactly how bogus this paper really is. It's like Jeanne Dixon and Larry Kudlow had a baby and the baby started hissing like a snake."
That piqued my interest. This whole chicken little scream couldn't be based on something as simple as "rabbits and wolves." That would be like using toy tools to build an airplane. The "rabbits and wolves" algorithm is the simplest and crudest way of modeling anything. I can't imagine for one minute that somebody would use a computer program that can be written in minutes to predict the end of the world and be taken seriously. So I searched for the paper. Up until yesterday the online copies had seemingly disappeared, but google cache doesn't let things disappear that easily and I read it. Then this morning I found that the paper was back online so here it is:
http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~ekalnay/pubs/ ... kalnay.pdf
They had, in fact, used the "rabbits and wolves" predator prey model. Unbelievable!!! You can write a simple computer program with this algorithm in about half an hour if you work slowly. It's a toy and a simple one at that. It's not something that you take seriously. This is the biggest piece of BS I have ever seen since the limits to growth model that was just slightly more sophisticated. Yet all the media seemed to eat it up because the paper pandered to the Progressive prejudice. Appeals to authority and other logical fallacies have replaced good judgment, at least for a while. fortunately it appears as if smarter heads are backing off from this POS.
http://www.space.com/25160-nasa-stateme ... study.html
Hopefully this dies quickly and the report gets dumped into the obscurity it deserves. I'm tired of the chicken little crap.

[choff]

Another Carrington event might do us in, apparently there's evidence of an even bigger solar magnetic storm hitting the earth in the bronze age, gigavolts to the Carringtons megavolts. Problem is the nuclear reactors rely on the power grid even when offline, and that could be down for decades after. Problematic even transporting diesel to keep the backup generators running, if they even can.

[hanelyp]

I can see industrial society collapsing... under weight of theft under color of law, and general prohibition of certain industrial activities "for our own good".

This nasa paper is rubbish supporting more of what really imperials society.

[paperburn1]

I think the paper is referencing to a "Clockwork orange" type of collapse
The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence."

[TDPerk]

Can you please find a link to the Bronze age storm evidence?

[Aero]

NASA release:

March 20, 2014The following is a statement from NASA regarding erroneous media reports crediting the agency with an academic paper on population and societal impacts.

"A soon-to-be published research paper 'Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability
NASA Statement on Sustainability Study

of Societies' by University of Maryland researchers Safa Motesharrei and Eugenia Kalnay, and University of Minnesota’s Jorge Rivas was not solicited, directed or reviewed by NASA. It is an independent study by the university researchers utilizing research tools developed for a separate NASA activity.

"As is the case with all independent research, the views and conclusions in the paper are those of the authors alone. NASA does not endorse the paper or its conclusions."

-end-

Allard Beutel
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
allard.beutel@nasa.gov

Ed Campion
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-0697
edward.s.campion@nasa.gov

[choff]

Enjoy

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleD ... er=1265340

http://www.robertschoch.com/plasma.html

http://www.apanarcheo.nl/aurora%20jadei ... lobaal.pdf

[williatw]

Enjoy

http://www.robertschoch.com/plasma.html

The plasma event of 9700 B.C. eradicated advanced civilizations and high cultures of the time, and the radiation emanating from the plasma may have affected mental and psychical abilities. This could be the basis for the nearly universal myth of a Golden Age, a time when beings on Earth had mental abilities far surpassing those of later times. The 9700 B.C. event may be the original basis for the Atlantis legends; the timeframe fits well with Plato's account.

I prefer my pseudoscience after maybe a few beers...oh wait I have that covered.

[choff]

More pseudoscience from the IEEE.

http://www.plasmauniverse.info/download ... quityZ.pdf

[choff]

Even more end of the world fun. Carrington times 1000, 775 A.D. Should note the scientist behind this takes a throw the bums out attitude towards creationists.

http://phys.org/news/2012-11-sun-source ... event.html