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Measuring Changes in Earth's Ecosystems Over Time

"Data Sets / Shifting Baselines"

In the 1990s, the fisheries biologist Daniel Pauly popularized the term “shifting baselines” to describe the impossibility of accurately appraising the present without a clear sense of the past. A baseline is the stable point from which you measure change in a system before it was damaged or dramatically altered — the usual date on which the spring thaw used to arrive before climate change began, for example, or the total population of a given species before it became endangered. The scientist and filmmaker Randy Olson put it this way:

If we know the baseline for a degraded ecosystem, we can work to restore it. But if the baseline shifted before we really had a chance to chart it, then we can end up accepting a degraded state as normal — or even as an improvement.

H/t to Rebecca Solnit, Harper's Magazine, September 2017

https://harpers.org/archive/2017/09/now-and-then-2/2/

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Shifting Baseline

Scientific Observation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline

Earth Science Research from Space

The Science and Policy of Climate Action

• https://eos.org/agu-news/the-science-and-policy-of-climate-action

• https://fromtheprow.agu.org/agu-revises-climate-and-data-position-statements-declares-world-in-climate-crisis-and-reaffirms-data-as-a-world-heritage/

• https://www.agu.org/Share-and-Advocate/Share/Policymakers/Position-Statements/Position_Climate

Former California Governor Jerry Brown: “Scientists have to get the word to the politicians that the lifeblood of the future is new knowledge.”

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