Monday, March 16, 2009

Fear, but not despair

I enjoy John Schellnhuber's deadpan style as much as anyone, and his warning should be taken seriously.

It's also good to see Yadvinder Malhi arguing against a counsel of despair regarding the Amazon:
I must say I find it frustrating that the gloomiest take on news gets such a big profile. This is based on one model, and that model has flaws (especially its temperature sensitivity that seems too great..., and its rainfall that seems too low... The danger is that that such apparent bad news makes all the efforts to conserve the Amazon forests worthless (why bother saving them if they are already doomed?), and encourages disengagement and hopelessness rather than action. If that conclusion was based on solid empirical science then so be it, but when such a story goes out on a pure model study (not yet peer-reviewed) with significant imperfections, it may do a lot of damage in the real world.

No comments: