the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 05 Aug 2022
ESD Ideas: planetary antifragility: a new dimension in the definition of the safe operating space for humanity
Oliver López-Corona
Melanie Kolb
Elvia Ramírez-Carrillo
Jon Lovett
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- Final revised paper (published on 05 Aug 2022)
- Preprint (discussion started on 12 May 2021)
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
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RC1: 'Comment on esd-2021-26', Karo Michaelian, 28 May 2021
This is an interesting article using planetary albedo as a proxy for photon dissipation (or entropy production) to make an analysis of the time variability of the biosphere response due to, ostensibly, changing of planetary habitats by humans. I want to encourage the authors in their work since the manuscript provides a unique and more global way at looking at the whole question of ecosystem stability, fragility, resilience, etc. by considering all its interconnections in a global measure of entropy production, giving rise to, for example, homeostasis. However, the manuscript must be written much more carefully, respecting all the etiquette of good writing. The manuscript is difficult to read in parts as a result of poor attention to detail and because the English is lacking.
The Abstract must be improved in order to give the reader a clear understanding of what is being proposed. Any definitions, or new or novel phrases, for example, “Antifragility” should be left to the Introduction where they can be carefully defined.
The English should be improved by a native English speaker. Here are just some examples on only the first page, but similar dedication to improving the redaction should be made throughout the manuscript;
Line
12; … humanity would operate safely…” to “humanity could operate safely…”.
14; “Despite PB has been widely accepted,…” change to “Despite the concept of PB being widely accepted,…”
14; “Although the authors recognize…” change to “Although Rockstrom et al. recognize…”
16; “Then it would be necessarily to have …” to “Then it would be necessary to have …”
16; “Planetary Limits (LP)” to “Planetary Limits (PL)”
18; “the authors say” to “Rockstrom et al. say”
21; “Rockström and co-workers does recognise” to “Rockström and co-workers recognize”
The concept of “antifragility” should be more carefully defined and its relation to “Fisher Information” better explained.
62; All symbols in Eqs. (3) and (4) should be defined.
71; The paragraph beginning on line 71 should be re-written as it is difficult to make sense out of.
82; Include a reference in figure 1. The wavelength region used to determine the albedo should also be listed.
90; The variable “\tau” does not appear in the equation. More information should be given as to how the Fisher Information for albedo was determined.
165; The References lack a consistent format and should be cleaned up.
Some questions I was left with concerning the analysis, whose answers would increase the value of the manuscript, are;
1) Is ocean surface albedo included in the data? If so, could this be dependent on periodic global events such as El Niño?
2) It would be nice to see the results for both the northern and southern hemispheres, alone and together, could this be done?
3) What are some of the problems that could arise by using visible albedo as a proxy for global entropy production?
4) Is there an explanation as to why the Fisher Information appears to go down and then up and down over time?
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-RC1 -
AC4: 'Reply on RC1', Oliver López-Corona, 12 Jun 2021
Dear Professor Karo Michaelian (KM),
Thank you very much for the encouraging, critical and insightful review comments, your recommendations and questions will considerably improve the quality and clarity of the manuscript. In order to do this, we have invited Professor Jon Lovett to enrich the interpretation, ecological background and general writing quality. Please find below the detailed answers to each of the questions and concerns.
KM: This is an interesting article using planetary albedo as a proxy for photon dissipation (or entropy production) to make an analysis of the time variability of the biosphere response due to, ostensibly, changing of planetary habitats by humans. I want to encourage the authors in their work since the manuscript provides a unique and more global way at looking at the whole question of ecosystem stability, fragility, resilience, etc. by considering all its interconnections in a global measure of entropy production, giving rise to, for example, homeostasis.
Response: We are glad that the spirit of the article, main purpose and contribution is clear enough and thank you for the encouraging words.
KM: However, the manuscript must be written much more carefully, respecting all the etiquette of good writing. The manuscript is difficult to read in parts as a result of poor attention to detail and because the English is lacking.
Response: We acknowledge that to communicate efficiently what we consider a novel and potentially unifying idea for establishing a measure for x, y and z, the revised manuscript will undergo a detailed writing revision. Manuscript revision will consider all the concerns, which you have pointed out, such as improving the abstract; consider all the particular comments; an extension on the relation between antifragility and Fisher Information; definition of all symbols in equations; re writing of paragraph on line 71 among others; Reference consistency and style.
In general, we emphasized the possibility of measuring global antifragility using systemic planetary variables and the difficulty of identifying them and their availability for time series analysis. By explaining the restrictions about suitable and available data sets to explore the theoretically proposed thermodynamic function of ecosystems, we made clear why our proposal could be considered as a unique proposal and why it could be seen as an advancement of the existing theoretical framework.
KM: Line 12; … humanity would operate safely…” to “humanity could operate safely…”.
Response: Done
14; “Despite PB has been widely accepted,…” change to “Despite the concept of PB being widely accepted,…”
Response: Done
14; “Although the authors recognize…” change to “Although Rockstrom et al. recognize…”
Response: Done
16; “Then it would be necessarily to have …” to “Then it would be necessary to have …”
Response: Done
16; “Planetary Limits (LP)” to “Planetary Limits (PL)”
Response: Done
18; “the authors say” to “Rockstrom et al. say”
Response: Done
21; “Rockström and co-workers does recognise” to “Rockström and co-workers recognize”
Response: Done
The concept of “antifragility” should be more carefully defined and its relation to “Fisher Information” better explained.
Response: Done
62; All symbols in Eqs. (3) and (4) should be defined.
Response: Done
71; The paragraph beginning on line 71 should be re-written as it is difficult to make sense out of.
Response: Done
82; Include a reference in figure 1. The wavelength region used to determine the albedo should also be listed.
Response: Done
90; The variable “\tau” does not appear in the equation. More information should be given as to how the Fisher Information for albedo was determined.
Response: Done
165; The References lack a consistent format and should be cleaned up.
Response: Done
KM: Some questions I was left with concerning the analysis, whose answers would increase the value of the manuscript, are;
1) Is ocean surface albedo included in the data? If so, could this be dependent on periodic global events such as El Niño?
Response:
The different albedo products derived from satellite imagery in general are processed only for terrestrial surfaces because ocean albedo is rather stable and low which may produce that higher fluctuations get masked/averaged by ocean albedo, and thus the original input does not include ocean surface albedo. So, the influence of periodic phenomena like El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) could not affect the results because of change in ocean surface albedo. But it must be considered that land cover, which influences terrestrial albedo to a large extent, is heavily influenced by the teleconnections caused by “spatially and temporally large-scale anomalies that influence the variability of the atmospheric circulation” (ENSO, Arctic Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Pacific-North America Index (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/teleconnections/). This leads to climate anomalies linked across geographically separated regions. This leads to bigger or smaller changes in land cover type (e.g. arid environments with abrupt growth of annual plants after anormal precipitation or drought related phenotypical changes in normally humid areas).
Another interpretation related to this cyclical pattern could be based on critical slowing down: Strogatz 1994 proposed critical slowing down as representing the major contribution from the authors. Critical slowing down “implies that recovery upon small perturbations becomes slower as a system approaches a tipping point” (Scheffer et al. 2015). This could explain why the recovery after the first cycle of loss of Fisher information does not reach the original value, as a slowing down means less recovery in the same amount of time. If the time of recovery and loss of Fisher information is determined by oscillating climate phenomena, a slowing down of recovery would mean less recovery between cycles.
2) It would be nice to see the results for both the northern and southern hemispheres, alone and together, could this be done?
Response: As far as we understand it would be possible but we do not think that it is necessary for making a proof of concept analysis as the one we present here in the context of the type of paper, so we consider it is a clear next step analysis for a following paper
3) What are some of the problems that could arise by using visible albedo as a proxy for global entropy production?
Response:
In human health assessment the first order approximation has been identified with the previously known reference range of value of some key physiological variables such as heart rate and systolic blood pressure. So one problem with using visible albedo as a proxy for global entropy production is we do not have the equivalent of those reference values, which in this case should be determined for each ecosystem type. In that sense, visible albedo should be applied in a spatially explicit way, not averaging mean values over large regions, but using local values because the values need to be evaluated in reference to the correct reference values.
Another problem would be considering visible albedo values without their dynamics, as can be illustrated with an analogy to human health: Consider a person with a broken arm (unhealthy state) but healthy heart (healthy dynamics) versus an olympic athlete (healthy state) but with a condition prone to sudden cardiac syndrome (unhealthy dynamics)
Given these two considerations, we decided not to rely on the direct value of albedo but rather its Fisher information, which encodes the system’s dynamics in terms of its capacity to respond to perturbations.
Other problems could be that the real extent of the ecosystem considered in the measurement depends on the height of the remote sensor because of the relation with the solid angle of the detector.
Finally, an albedo value is an “instant” measurement and it could be necessary to integrate measurements across a 24h cycle (don’t know if that is even possible) or other longer cycles; but perhaps this is not important for a long term analysis, as presented in this work. Nevertheless, it does point to the fact that this work does not present a fully developed framework for Planetary Antifragility, we still need to resolve if remote sensing measurements of Albedo really can capture sufficiently well entropy production or if other signals should be needed which most likely would be the case in a more detailed scale, for example a particular ecosystem in a concrete region.
As the type of publication indicates, this is a first illustration of the general idea of using antifragility as a new dimension in the definition of the Safe Operating Space for Humanity and after discussing some aspects of the advantages and problems with using albedo measurements derived from satellite imagery in this manuscript, we would very much like to further explore other variables that could be used to construct indicators for planetary antifragility. In addition to albedo, we think it would be very interesting to incorporate the biocustic signal and maybe also the ecosystem respiration. Every sound emitted by a living agent in an ecosystem somehow is coding part of the ecosystem metabolism into de signal. Also important bioccustic are produced by members of the Animalia kingdom and would prevent the problem posed by defaunated ecosystems which from a plant perspective could seem to be healthy (in the short run) . For its part, ecosystem respiration include soil respiration and soil is a complex system that incorporates all spheres (biosphere, geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere), several biogeochemical processes, many spatial and time scales, so it conjugate many sources of information about the ecosystem. These other signals were not considered for a Planetary scale because data are non-existent.
4) Is there an explanation as to why the Fisher Information appears to go down and then up and down over time?
Response:
Considering response 1), we propose that the observed results could be interpreted as a cyclical decrease in Fisher information, as the increase after the completion of one cycle does not rebound to the original value but stays below. This decrease would be associated with a loss of stability (degradation?) overlapped with oscillations caused by changes in terrestrial albedo as a response to teleconnected climate oscillations.
If we consider that human activities affect land cover on most of the earth's surface directly by land use and indirectly by climate change related differences in the teleconnected phenomena, we could suspect that the cyclical degradation of the observed system could be anthropogenic and related to several planetary boundaries (see explanation of teleconnections and land cover land use complex to infer major ecosystem services that are influenced).
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-AC4 -
AC5: 'Reply on AC4', Oliver López-Corona, 15 Jun 2021
Additionally, it may be useful to clarify some concerns about the focus of the paper in the context of how an albedo measurement may or may not say something about PB.
We are not using albedo measurements per se, we are using fisher information which is a measure of the system stability and its capacity to respond to perturbation (Frieden et.al. 2007; Equihua et.al 2020) of the Albedo time series as a proxy of entropy production (Michaelian 2015). So we are not interested in specific mechanisms of interaction between albedo and any other Earth major biogeochemical process (including PB) but in a systemic measurement of the earth system antifragility.
Why are we using this approach?
Because it has proven to work on human systems.
One way of conceptualizing human health is a reductionist mechanistic approach in which the complexity of the organisms is reduced firstly into major systems: cardiovascular; digestive; excretory; endocrine; exocrine; immune and lymphatic; muscular; nervous; renal and Urinary; reproductive; respiratory; and skeletal system. Then track one by one all the mechanisms involved in each one of those systems. As in Physics, this method has had tremendous success, but can not explain for example some auto-immune diseases.
In recent years we have learned that some systemic signals encode health beyond a single mechanism or system. In that category, we found the fractal physiology approach to human health (Bassingthwaighte et al. 2013), especially the analysis of heart R-R fluctuation time series analysis (see complementary references already given in other commentaries).
References
Frieden, B. R. (2007). Exploratory data analysis using Fisher information (p. 363). R. A. Gatenby (Ed.). London:: Springer.
Equihua M, Espinosa Aldama M, Gershenson C, López-Corona O, Munguía M, Pérez-Maqueo O, Ramírez-Carrillo E. 2020. Ecosystem antifragility: beyond integrity and resilience. PeerJ 8:e8533 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8533
Michaelian, K. (2015). Photon Dissipation Rates as an Indicator of Ecosystem Health. In Environmental Indicators (pp. 15-36). Springer, Dordrecht.
Bassingthwaighte, J. B., Liebovitch, L. S., & West, B. J. (2013). Fractal physiology. Springer.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-AC5 -
AC6: 'Reply on AC4', Oliver López-Corona, 15 Jun 2021
References missing in response.
Strogatz SH. 1994. Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Applications to Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Engineering.Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley
Scheffer, M., Carpenter, S. R., Dakos, V., & Nes, E. H. van. (2015). Generic Indicators of Ecological Resilience: Inferring the Chance of a Critical Transition. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 46(1), 145–167. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-112414-054242
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-AC6
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AC5: 'Reply on AC4', Oliver López-Corona, 15 Jun 2021
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AC4: 'Reply on RC1', Oliver López-Corona, 12 Jun 2021
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CC1: 'Comment on esd-2021-26', Richard Rosen, 06 Jun 2021
Clearly it would nice if scientists could develop an indicator of how the separate planetary boundaries interact so that the impact of phenomenon such as climate change could be measured in a more aggregate way, particularly the impact on the fragility of the planet. The huge problem is that no one knows how the interactions work in detail in each region of the world, and no one knows how to define a useful indicator of the total impact. Unfortunately, this includes the authors of this paper. As far as I can tell, they have no clear physical theory at all of how to move conceptually from "fragility" to "antifragility" to thermodynamics to entropy to solar flux to albedo, etc. The key theoretical scientific section of this paper seems to range only from lines 55-65 in section 2.1. But the authors need to flesh out the connections between all these basic concepts, which is what the paper should be about, before one gets to the need to actually measure various parameters for the earth system. This would take a long paper to accomplish.
For example, the authors state under the sub-section "Entropy production as Payoff function" ---
"As noticed in previous work by Michaelian (2005) and Michaelian (2015), Ecosystems arise and evolve, as any other physical system, under the laws of thermodynamics; in particular under the imperative of dissipating the solar photon flux into heat. In his work, Michaelian as Ulanowicz and Hannon (1987) before, proposes that healthy ecosystems have greater entropy production than unhealthy or stressed ones and entropy production should then be a reliable indicator of its health." Well, yes, ecosystems arise and evolve according to the laws of thermodynamics, as does every physical system. But the rest of the sentence represents a huge leap conceptually, and there is no "imperative" the solar photon flux into heat. (poor English) And the reflected solar radiation has no simple relationship to the entropy of the ecosystem from which it is being reflected. In fact, there is no simple or even complex way of measuring the entropy of a complex system like the earth's ecosystem. Where did the authors get the idea that this could be done even theoretically, and that the reflected radiation was a good indicator of the entropy of the system. And what does any of this got to do with the various planetary boundaries? If the authors know the answers to these extremely difficult questions they certainly do not sufficiently describe the theoretical bases for their paper in those 10 lines, 55-65. Frankly, I think no scientist has a clue as to how all the concepts relate to each other. It is certainly clear physically that reflected radiation from a system/complex surface does not relate in some simple way to the entropy of the system. The entropy of a complex system is not even well defined, and is not measurable. And there is no simple relationship of entropy to climate change. We need to see the authors' arguments in response to these questions and issues spelled out in detail, if they have any, for this to be a publishable paper. This paper needs to reflect science not speculation. The issues raised are extremely difficult to address, and may never be.Finally, why I sympathize with foreign language speakers in terms of how difficult it is to write good English, the quality of the English in this paper is so poor that even if good scientific arguments were presented, the poor English alone would be sufficient grounds for rejection.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-CC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on CC1', Oliver López-Corona, 06 Jun 2021
Dear Richard Rosen,
Although we understand the points you pose, consider that as an “IDEAS” type of paper the manuscript should comply with some restrictions such as length and is intended to present innovative and well-founded scientific ideas in a concise way that have not been comprehensively explored. So this kind of paper, as far as we understand, is not intended to present well established consensual evidence but rather to open the discussion to a novel and potentially useful idea in the frontier of science.
As you clearly identified, the work covers some open unresolved issues and we have already tried to cover as in detail as possible without extending too much the manuscript, which is already long for an IDEAS paper. So we have put on the table the main arguments related with the central idea about Planetary Antifragility and point the reader to key literature to fill the gaps.
Of particular interest for you, as we can identify in the rest of the comment and that we consider resolve much of the questions:
Fragility-Antifragility: https://peerj.com/articles/8533/ and in there -> https://www.hindawi.com/journals/complexity/2019/3728621/
Complexity measures: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-53734-9_2
Thermodynamics, Entropy and Albedo: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-9499-2_2
As we are about to respond to Karo Michaelian: We acknowledge that to communicate efficiently what we consider a novel and potential unifying idea the manuscript should go for a detailed writing revision, we have already started.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-AC1 -
CC2: 'Reply on AC1', Richard Rosen, 07 Jun 2021
Sorry, but I do not accept the validity of your response. You can not just put up vague ideas and connections between them for which there is no scientific basis. You have to show via theories of physics that the argument and connections you hypothesize has some basis in theory. For example, you can't just speculate that scientists can measure the entropy of complex systems like the earth system or the climate system, which they can not. How would you even define what the entropy is of such a complex system? Entropy can only be measured in theory for very simple systems. And you don't even connect the type of reflected radiation you measure and analyze to climate change in theory. What is the connection? And how does entropy relate to resiliance? You do not say. So you cannot claim to write about promising research ideas like these without showing that theories of physics are well enough developed to show that they are promising.
Furthermore, you seem to get the sign wrong when discussing entropy. You speak of entropy production or increases as being good on lines 58-59. Entropy "production" (increases?) is not a sign of the health of a system. The reverse is true -- reductions of entropy for small sub-systems are "good", because that means that such sub-systems can be more organized and, perhaps, resilient. But none of this can be measured. And the end of line 57 makes no sense at all. The word "imperative" is not the correct English word to use here. Some radiation falling on any surface produces some heat (how do you define heat - which wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation?). How does this fact relate to resiliance to climate change and other issues raised by the planetory boundaries literature?
Please listen -- you MUST at least demonstrate that you understand physics, including thermodynamics, before you can claim that you are proposing interesting new ideas to the ESD community. Right now your paper shows great confusion.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-CC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on CC2', Oliver López-Corona, 07 Jun 2021
Dear Richard Rosen (RR),
We appreciate all your comments and the clear amount of time and effort you have invested in.
What is a complex system is an open question? Yes, please read (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260868740) where Carlos Gershenson has compiled dozens and dozens of definitions. As happens with other important concepts everywhere in Science, take “Forest” or “Life”, nevertheless we can and have done a lot of things in turn of those concepts.
In that sense you may like this work: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2017.00010/full
Or other references:
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783642040832 or the following https://www.hindawi.com/journals/complexity/2019/1403829/ where a lot of applications are cited, so it is not only possible to measure complexity (in a specific context) but people have done it extensively, take for example all the work done in network theory (i.e. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378437119306429)
Talking specifically about Ecosystems, including the Earth system:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1470160X10000567
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1890/ES13-00182.1
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/12/3/613
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2005GL025373
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2010.0018
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsta.2009.0188
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rstb.2009.0310
And even on this Journal: https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/2/179/2011/
RR:How would you even define what the entropy is of such a complex system? Entropy can only be measured in theory for very simple systems.
Response: First part of the comment is responded to in the references above. I hope you are not suggesting the only scientifically valid results are those that can be derived analytically.
RR: And how does entropy relate to resiliance?
Response: please read our previous work: https://peerj.com/articles/8533/ In short, one way to measure complexity under information theory is as a quadratic form of perturbation (the product of emergence and self organization). Once you construct complexity it may be used as a payoff function to assess system’s Fragility-Antifragility (see reference of Pineda and co-workers inside our work). Resilience is merely a particular case of Fragility-Antifragility.
RR: And you don't even connect the type of reflected radiation you measure and analyze to climate change in theory.
Response: we are not making any claim about Climate Change per se, we are not interested (in this work) about specific prediction of temperature or similar but in terms of changes in the type of dynamics Earth systems have been going through because of anthropic perturbations. Please see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5180148/
RR: The reverse is true -- reductions of entropy for small sub-systems are "good", because that means that such sub-systems can be more organized and, perhaps, resilient.
Response: No, this is not the case, nor too much entropy or too less is “good” for ecosystems (or any system under an evolutionary type of process). Please read: https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/28/10095.full.pdf where authors make very clear why ecosystems tend to criticalit. We recommend also read about so called “Criticality Hypothesis” maybe in our own previous work: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0200382
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-AC2 -
RC2: 'Reply on CC2', Karo Michaelian, 08 Jun 2021
I think that the community commentator Richard Rosen is confusing the entropy of a system with its entropy production. With respect to the author’s proposition, there is no need to measure the entropy of the biosphere or of individual living systems. By measuring the spectrum of the incident light on Earth’s biosphere and measuring the spectrum of the outgoing light from the biosphere using satellites, a good measure of the global entropy production can be obtained. Wavelength dependent albedo can be used as a proxy for this, although there remains the question of just how good a proxy it is and I believe that the authors of the article could do more to convince the reader of its utility (see references below).
However, the link between entropy production and ecosystem or biosphere function has been studied by Prigogine et al. (1972), Ulanowicz and Hannon (1987), Schneider and Kay (1994), Kleidon (2005) and some of my own work (Michaelian 2005, 2011, 2012, 2015) and later works. If Richard Rosen has problems with the theory, he should first read these works and then, if still left with doubts, he should contact these authors rather than criticize the authors of the present article for applying theory which has already been generally accepted by the community. (The authors of the present article could also do more here to indicate to the reader the work that has already been performed and generally accepted by the community by citing more of the relevant published works.)
It is also important to emphasize that the authors of the present article are applying measurement to the biosphere, not individual living systems. There are all kinds of non-linear couplings between living systems and abiotic systems such as the water cycle. The point is that the global (biosphere) entropy production (or more accurately said, “photon dissipation”) is greater when living systems are present and healthy.
References:
Kleidon A, Lorenz RD (2005) Entropy production by earth system processes. In: Kleidon A, Lorenz RD (eds) Non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the production of entropy: life, earth, and beyond. Springer, Heidelberg. ISBN 3-540-22495-5
Michaelian K (2005) Thermodynamic stability of ecosystems. J Theor Biol 237:323–335
Michaelian K (2011) Thermodynamic dissipation theory for the origin of life. Earth Syst Dyn 2:37–51.
Michaelian K (2012) Biological catalysis of the hydrological cycle: life’s thermodynamic function. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 16:2629–2645.
Michaelian, K., "Photon Dissipation Rates as an Indicator of Ecosystem Health", Chpt.2, pp 15-36, en Environmental Indicators, Eds. Robert Armon, Osmo Hänninen, Springer-Verlag, 2015, ISBN: 978-94-017-9498-5 (Print) 978-94-017-9499-2 (Online).
Prigogine I, Nicolis G, Babloyantz A (1972) Thermodynamics of evolution (I). Phys Today 25:23–28; Thermodynamics of evolution (II). Phys Today 25:38–44 (1972).
Schneider ED, Kay JJ (1994) Life as a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics. Math Comput Model 19(6–8):25–48.
Ulanowicz RE, Hannon BM (1987) Life and the production of entropy. Proc R Soc Lond B 232:181–192
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-RC2 -
AC3: 'Reply on RC2', Oliver López-Corona, 08 Jun 2021
Dear Professor Michaelian, Thank you for pointing out the seminal work in the topic. We were trying to not make evident that RR has refused to try to understand and failed to do what we kindly suggested in the first response to his comment. That most relevant work was already cited in the manuscript including several of the papers you shared and that he should read them first. We will include more references to help other readers to find proper foundations and materials for deep in.
We refused to establish a higher level discussion with RR because we do consider that even when this might be a non standard topic that comprehensively may rise to questioning, this should be done in good faith and under scientific argumentation not only disqualifying. We apologise if this may have been seen as neglation on our part.
As you insightfully point, it is not entropy but entropy production that we need to measure as done in the very statement of the second law and in all the Prigogine’s out of equilibrium formulation of thermodynamics, in which the central concept is entropy production defined as the product of generalized forces en fluxes.
Almost all concerns RR has about the link Thermodynamics and albedo as a proxy are covered in great detail on your ouen paper about Photon dissipation we recommended RR to read (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9499-2_2) and that is, as you mention in your paper, built upon the most rigorous work by Ulanowicz and Hannon (1987), Prigogine (1967), Prigogine and co-workers (1972) and could be even tracked down to Boltzman ideas about how life was surviving off entropy production.
Of course Albedo is not entropy production but a proxy among other candidates such as Red-edge, and therefore it has some advantages and limitations as we will discuss with much more detail on the response we are preparing for your first comment.
As you highlight correctly we are not trying to assess entropy production of all and every single living system and biogeochemical processes involved, but rather to take a systemic signal that encapsulates the way the Earth system (not its components) respond to perturbations. Maybe it is important to mention that it is an approach that has shown to be very useful in human health for example using hearth R-R interval fluctuations time series as a systemic indicator of health (which we also recomended RR to read on our PLoS one paper).
In than sense, the readers could be interested in:
Heymans, O., et al. "Is fractal geometry useful in medicine and biomedical sciences?." Medical hypotheses 54.3 (2000): 360-366.
Kiyono K, Struzik ZR, Aoyagi N, Togo F, Yamamoto Y. Phase transition in a healthy human heart rate. Physical review letters. 2005;95(5):58101.
Rivera AL, Estañol B, Sentíes-Madrid H, Fossion R, Toledo-Roy JC, Mendoza-Temis J, et al. Heart rate and systolic blood pressure variability in the time domain in patients with recent and long-standing diabetes mellitus. PloS one. 2016;11(2):e0148378. pmid:26849653
Goldberger AL, Peng CK, Lipsitz LA. What is physiologic complexity and how does it change with aging and disease?; 2002.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-AC3 -
CC3: 'Reply on RC2', Richard Rosen, 08 Jun 2021
I agree that by measuring the albedo of the earth one can get a measure of how what you call entropy "production" (what I would call "negative entropy production") is evolving on the earth, in particular plant life. But the albedo also provides information about any part of the earth's surface which reflects sunlight such as the growth of cities, the shrinkage of ice fields, the growth of desserts, subtle changes in the surface of the oceans, etc. So, for example, one could argue that the expansion of cities might be an indicator of bigger governments that might help mitigate climate change and help communities become more resilient to it. Furthermore, climate change itself changes the albedo of the earth in complex ways in addition to the incremental ways that humanity is changing the albedo, such as by building cities. Some areas of the globe become more desert-like as the earth warms, and some areas of vegetation and other light absorbing ecosystems might expand. Since this article seems to be attempting to provide a fairly aggregate measure of changes in albedo (let's assume they succeed at that), then the results of the article seem to say little about the changing ability of civilization as a whole to response to or be resilient with respect to climate change. Thus I am not challenging the research relied on by the authors regarding a theorodynamic "theory" of the evolution of the biosphere. But since the changes observed in the albedo of the earth due to climate change cause many more kinds of changes than just changes in the biosphere, measuring changes in the albedo does not seem to me to be a good indicator at all of the general ability of humanity to respond to climate change, or, therefore, to measure where the world stands with respect to the complex set of indicators cited in the planetary boundaries literature.
Another example: to mitigate climate change the world needs to cover a significant but small area of the earth's surface with solar farms. While they absorb solar radiation to make electricity, they also might reflect more sunlight than rthe plant matter might have previously existed in the areas the solar farms were built upon. Thus, while the albedo of those land areas might increase, the ability of humanity to keep within the planetary boundaries might also increase. The authors methodology would claim that this result would be a decrease in resilience because the albedo increased. So a proper analysis of even just the single planetary boundary dealing with climate change, not to speak of the other planetary boundaries, would require a much more disaggregated analysis of how the albedo of the earth's surface is changing, and what this implies for resilience.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-CC3
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AC3: 'Reply on RC2', Oliver López-Corona, 08 Jun 2021
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AC2: 'Reply on CC2', Oliver López-Corona, 07 Jun 2021
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CC2: 'Reply on AC1', Richard Rosen, 07 Jun 2021
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AC1: 'Reply on CC1', Oliver López-Corona, 06 Jun 2021
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CC4: 'Comment on esd-2021-26', Richard Rosen, 12 Jun 2021
Dear Authors,
You still need to explain in detail how measurements of albedo over time relate to the basic issues you first raised about resilience to the complete set of planetary boundaries. Clearly, measurements of albedo cannot say something about all the planetary boundaries, but it is still not clear if the albedo really says anything interesting about any of them, especially climate change.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-CC4 -
RC3: 'Comment on esd-2021-26', Anonymous Referee #2, 06 Jul 2021
Does the paper address relevant scientific questions within the scope of ESD?
This paper addresses relevant scientific questions within the scope of ESD, and it is a vanguard study that aims to explore new scientific perspectives more than presents finish results. With an interdisciplinary approach, this article integrates knowledge and methods from different disciplines to create a unity of intellectual frameworks beyond the disciplinary perspectives. More than analysing technical content, this approach is highly pertinent because it uses photon dissipation as a proxy to understand how Safe Operating Space for Humanity is being modelled, and why these models need to evolve. Through planetary albedo, it understands and critically identifies several problems in state values of Planetary Boundaries. More than physics and geosciences, it is possible to understand how socio-natural systems are connected and how the current epistemological approach globally affects ecosystem stability, fragility, and resilience.
Does the paper present novel concepts, ideas, tools, or data?
The paper presents new data about changes of shortwave global albedo anomalies to introduce planetary antifragility as a fundamental concept in the time variability of the biosphere response due to human action. It uses the dynamic interpretation of Fisher Information Theory as a tool to support new interpretations and conclusions about the necessity of updated ideas from old paradigms. The title clearly reflects the components of the paper and abstract, which is concise and complete.
Are substantial conclusions reached?
Substantial conclusions are reached. With the Cybernetic Revolution and anticipating the current crisis of truth, Information Theory rescues (from the Greco-Roman) the importance of entropy in science as well as the organised development of the complexity sciences, absent from the epistemological discussions and philosophy of the sciences, by centuries. With scientific methods and assumption valid and clearly outlined, this paper shows that Planetary Boundaries are not interdependent. Individual Planetary Limits do not establish proper threshold configuration. That is why it is necessary to have a metric of the interaction.
There is no such thing as the certainty of transgressing a defined tipping point and an incompatible human survival certainty. Ideas are conveyed and substantiated, as in the philosophical, conceptual, and organisational issues. In addition to the technical part, there is a whole part of fundamental science - the structure of thought and credibility. Authors analyse with new data and scientific methods that the concept of resilience is a particular and limited case of Antifragility.
Concluding that Safe Operating Space for Humanity should also include planetary Antifragility is a tremendous act of bravery of the authors. Ironically, living in a society where entropy measures are omitted in the communication of changes and modelling of systems is equivalent to construction where there is also no freedom - in scientific, social and political structures. Since grounding scientific certainty is an age-old failure, logic points to the disruption and collapse of its own civilisational system as inevitable.
More than representing a physical phenomenon, it is crucial to see in the exact and physical sciences the possibility of representing social models and applying exact and physical science methodologies to objects formerly exclusive to the social sciences. Avoiding the moralisation of science, true or false are just qualities of language and not things. Without language, there is neither truth nor lies (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651). This paper presents a unique way of understanding the whole question of ecosystems and society by considering all its interconnections (stability, fragility, resilience, etc.) in a global measure of entropy production, giving rise to, for example, homeostasis. Like António Damasio or Edgar Mourin say, cell biology shows us that the cell dies due to incapacity for homeostasis when this happens.
Are the scientific methods and assumptions are valid and clearly outlined?
To analyse if scientific methods and assumptions are valid and clearly outlined is essential to understand that developing something unknown in the borderline between the known and the unknown has consequences. Frontier investigations address issues about which there is intense controversy in the scientific community in the field in which they are developed. They work with difficult questions, at least with mainstream methodological approaches, and they use methodologies and concepts atypical in their area. This kind of research implies starting from unexpected results that question the dominant paradigm and highlight issues whose solution is fundamental to confirm (or refute) the current paradigm. Investigations have a very high level of uncertainty about their success, but they nurture a high potential for transformation and renewal of knowledge.
Are the results sufficient to support the interpretations and conclusions?
This paper concludes that components of planetary boundaries are not interdependent, and the interaction among them matters. There is a perturbation response in the capacity dimension, and it is necessary to underly the Antifragility framework in systems dynamics measure of this perturbation response capacity. The net reduction of 47.63% loss in Antifragility is a satisfactory result to support interpretations and conclusions of this compounding problem (human perturbations vs planet capacity to respond to them) about core biogeochemical processes with Planetary Boundaries.
Humanity has become an active agent in shaping physical climates worldwide through cultural, social, political and ethical practices that reinterpret what "climate change" or other "geophysical processes changing" means. Modernity has always kept the discussion of entropy and complexity absent from epistemological discussions and science philosophy. The dream of turning scientific theories into axioms and giving them an absolute rationale was lived.
The discussion of certainty/entropy in science and the demarcation between science and non-science considered philosophy an empty discourse (Hilbert, Popper, Kuhn, Feyrabend or Lakanos). However, after years of research, Popper concluded that the concept of science is no longer synonymous with certainty. Actually, it becomes synonymous with uncertainty, or rather, reliability (a measure of entropy). Regarding the discussions on the classification criteria of what science is, Popper (1963) concluded that a theory that is not refutable by any event, whatever it may be, is devoid of a scientific character. Nine years later, he said that science is a method of bold conjectures and ingenious and severe attempts to refute them. This paper is a precious example of science in his terms.
Is the description of experiments and calculations sufficiently complete and precise to allow their reproduction by fellow scientists (traceability of results)?
Regarding traceability of results, this manuscript's most important contribution is not about allowing the reproduction by fellow scientists about absolute, precisely and sufficiently complete descriptions of experiments and calculations. Within the scope of ESD, experiments and calculations of this paper contribute to the traceability of ideas. The most important result is the "ideas" and not precise quantitative numbers. The authors guarantee the traceability of results: 1) representing natural, technical and social phenomena as complex coevolutionary systems, using mathematical formulation to systematise their interdisciplinary and dynamic structure, as well as spatiotemporal interaction; 2) promote and understanding of the dynamics of emerging, transitional and extreme regimes, together with the associated entropy and evolutionary predictability - frame the changing core biogeochemical processes with Planetary Boundaries and Safe Operating Space for Humanity. 3) Develop learning techniques for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for interdisciplinary analysis and model design beyond the mechanistic paradigm, 4) Using mathematical methods to improve dynamic decision support structures, incorporating natural, social and technical risks.
Do the authors give proper credit to related work and clearly indicate their own new/original contribution? Are the number and quality of references appropriate? Is the amount and quality of supplementary material appropriate?
Frontier Science has difficulties in penetrating the scientific community, whether through dissemination in the form of publications or communications, and, for the same reasons, has challenges in finding funding. As exciting and attractive as IDEAS are, creative and innovative potential researchers have, life in frontier science is not a path that most scientists can choose. The authors give proper credit to related work and clearly indicate their own new/original contribution. The number and quality of references and quality of supplementary material are appropriate.
A precise consequence of the current paradigm, science promotion systems severely penalise the risk of failure, which adds to the intrinsic difficulty that accompanies frontier investigations. The intensity of this type's investigation is low compared to the mainstream (Kuhn's normal science). However, frontier science emerges in moments of crisis – Thomas Kuhn says. This paper is the perfect example. Suppose we want an authentic transformation of knowledge. In that case, it is necessary to promote cutting-edge research and recognise and foster the curious and critical spirit in academia and research centres. In addition to the excellent technical training provided by conventional science, new ideas and methodological and conceptual approaches must emerge from the academic world. Frontier Science can bring a future to the present, even when even those who practice it cannot anticipate it. An answer to the next question, the following unexpected result, the next innovative challenge, the knowledge that R&D systems and financing mechanisms can imagine.
That is why the scope of ESD is so essential, and papers like these are so crucial in academia and scientific society. This manuscript has interdisciplinarity, scientific merits, technical quality and suitability.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-RC3 -
CC5: 'Reply on RC3', Richard Rosen, 06 Jul 2021
Reply to Reviewer #2:
I have copied Reviewer #2’s comments, and added my responses in bold. ----
Does the paper address relevant scientific questions within the scope of ESD?
This paper addresses relevant scientific questions within the scope of ESD, and it is a vanguard study that aims to explore new scientific perspectives more than presents finish results. With an interdisciplinary approach, this article integrates knowledge and methods from different disciplines to create a unity of intellectual frameworks beyond the disciplinary perspectives. More than analysing technical content, this approach is highly pertinent because it uses photon dissipation as a proxy to understand how Safe Operating Space for Humanity is being modelled, and why these models need to evolve. Through planetary albedo, it understands and critically identifies several problems in state values of Planetary Boundaries. More than physics and geosciences, it is possible to understand how socio-natural systems are connected and how the current epistemological approach globally affects ecosystem stability, fragility, and resilience.
Of course this paper addresses relevant scientific questions within the scope of ESD, but that says nothing about the validity of the analysis. Unfortunately, not a single sentence in the above paragraph makes sense in terms of physics and the actual content of the Planetary Boundaries, especially climate change. The English is also terrible.
Does the paper present novel concepts, ideas, tools, or data?
The paper presents new data about changes of shortwave global albedo anomalies to introduce planetary antifragility as a fundamental concept in the time variability of the biosphere response due to human action. It uses the dynamic interpretation of Fisher Information Theory as a tool to support new interpretations and conclusions about the necessity of updated ideas from old paradigms. The title clearly reflects the components of the paper and abstract, which is concise and complete.
Unfortunately, looking at Figure 2 in the original paper, we see that the authors are distorting their own results. They emphasize the 47% reduction in albedo at certain wavelengths from 1988 to 2010, but don’t make clear that the entire drop was in the two year period from 1988-1990, with basically no further drop from 1990-2010. This fact from their own results undermines their entire argument that these kinds of changes in albedo somehow tell us something about the fragility of the planet, because climate change for one impact on the planet has been increasing fairly steadily from 1988-2010. Thus, their Figure #2 does not track climate change at all over this time period, and the authors do not say what it tracks. It certainly does not track the time variability of the biosphere as Reviewer #2 claims.
Are substantial conclusions reached?
Substantial conclusions are reached. With the Cybernetic Revolution and anticipating the current crisis of truth, Information Theory rescues (from the Greco-Roman) the importance of entropy in science as well as the organised development of the complexity sciences, absent from the epistemological discussions and philosophy of the sciences, by centuries. With scientific methods and assumption valid and clearly outlined, this paper shows that Planetary Boundaries are not interdependent. Individual Planetary Limits do not establish proper threshold configuration. That is why it is necessary to have a metric of the interaction.
The above paragraph makes no sense at all.
There is no such thing as the certainty of transgressing a defined tipping point and an incompatible human survival certainty. Ideas are conveyed and substantiated, as in the philosophical, conceptual, and organisational issues. In addition to the technical part, there is a whole part of fundamental science - the structure of thought and credibility. Authors analyse with new data and scientific methods that the concept of resilience is a particular and limited case of Antifragility.
The above paragraph makes no sense at all.
Concluding that Safe Operating Space for Humanity should also include planetary Antifragility is a tremendous act of bravery of the authors. Ironically, living in a society where entropy measures are omitted in the communication of changes and modelling of systems is equivalent to construction where there is also no freedom - in scientific, social and political structures. Since grounding scientific certainty is an age-old failure, logic points to the disruption and collapse of its own civilisational system as inevitable.
More than representing a physical phenomenon, it is crucial to see in the exact and physical sciences the possibility of representing social models and applying exact and physical science methodologies to objects formerly exclusive to the social sciences. Avoiding the moralisation of science, true or false are just qualities of language and not things. Without language, there is neither truth nor lies (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651). This paper presents a unique way of understanding the whole question of ecosystems and society by considering all its interconnections (stability, fragility, resilience, etc.) in a global measure of entropy production, giving rise to, for example, homeostasis. Like António Damasio or Edgar Mourin say, cell biology shows us that the cell dies due to incapacity for homeostasis when this happens.
Again, the above two paragraphs seem to be discussing the culture of science, but have nothing to do with the article under review. This reviewer is not performing their job properly to review the article under consideration by ESD.
Are the scientific methods and assumptions are valid and clearly outlined?
To analyse if scientific methods and assumptions are valid and clearly outlined is essential to understand that developing something unknown in the borderline between the known and the unknown has consequences. Basically agree, but this sentence is not well written. Frontier investigations address issues about which there is intense controversy in the scientific community in the field in which they are developed. They work with difficult questions, at least with mainstream methodological approaches, and they use methodologies and concepts atypical in their area. This kind of research implies starting from unexpected results that question the dominant paradigm and highlight issues whose solution is fundamental to confirm (or refute) the current paradigm. Investigations have a very high level of uncertainty about their success, but they nurture a high potential for transformation and renewal of knowledge.
Yes, but the paper under review does not achieve these lofty goals.
Are the results sufficient to support the interpretations and conclusions?
This paper concludes that components of planetary boundaries are not interdependent, and the interaction among them matters. There is a perturbation response in the capacity dimension, and it is necessary to underly the Antifragility framework in systems dynamics measure of this perturbation response capacity. The net reduction of 47.63% loss in Antifragility is a satisfactory result [again this reviewer must not have studied Figure #2] to support interpretations and conclusions of this compounding problem (human perturbations vs planet capacity to respond to them) about core biogeochemical processes with Planetary Boundaries.
Humanity has become an active agent in shaping physical climates worldwide through cultural, social, political and ethical practices that reinterpret what "climate change" or other "geophysical processes changing" means. Modernity has always kept the discussion of entropy and complexity absent from epistemological discussions and science philosophy. The dream of turning scientific theories into axioms and giving them an absolute rationale was lived.
The discussion of certainty/entropy in science and the demarcation between science and non-science considered philosophy an empty discourse (Hilbert, Popper, Kuhn, Feyrabend or Lakanos). However, after years of research, Popper concluded that the concept of science is no longer synonymous with certainty. Actually, it becomes synonymous with uncertainty, or rather, reliability (a measure of entropy). Regarding the discussions on the classification criteria of what science is, Popper (1963) concluded that a theory that is not refutable by any event, whatever it may be, is devoid of a scientific character. Nine years later, he said that science is a method of bold conjectures and ingenious and severe attempts to refute them. This paper is a precious example of science in his terms.
The above two paragraphs are not relevant to this article, and they belong in a philosophy of science article.
Is the description of experiments and calculations sufficiently complete and precise to allow their reproduction by fellow scientists (traceability of results)?
Regarding traceability of results, this manuscript's most important contribution is not about allowing the reproduction by fellow scientists about absolute, precisely and sufficiently complete descriptions of experiments and calculations. Within the scope of ESD, experiments and calculations of this paper contribute to the traceability of ideas. The most important result is the "ideas" and not precise quantitative numbers. The authors guarantee the traceability of results: 1) representing natural, technical and social phenomena as complex coevolutionary systems, using mathematical formulation to systematise their interdisciplinary and dynamic structure, as well as spatiotemporal interaction; 2) promote and understanding of the dynamics of emerging, transitional and extreme regimes, together with the associated entropy and evolutionary predictability - frame the changing core biogeochemical processes with Planetary Boundaries and Safe Operating Space for Humanity. 3) Develop learning techniques for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for interdisciplinary analysis and model design beyond the mechanistic paradigm, 4) Using mathematical methods to improve dynamic decision support structures, incorporating natural, social and technical risks.
Do the authors give proper credit to related work and clearly indicate their own new/original contribution? Are the number and quality of references appropriate? Is the amount and quality of supplementary material appropriate?
Frontier Science has difficulties in penetrating the scientific community, whether through dissemination in the form of publications or communications, and, for the same reasons, has challenges in finding funding. As exciting and attractive as IDEAS are, creative and innovative potential researchers have, life in frontier science is not a path that most scientists can choose. The authors give proper credit to related work and clearly indicate their own new/original contribution. The number and quality of references and quality of supplementary material are appropriate.
A precise consequence of the current paradigm, science promotion systems severely penalise the risk of failure, which adds to the intrinsic difficulty that accompanies frontier investigations. The intensity of this type's investigation is low compared to the mainstream (Kuhn's normal science). However, frontier science emerges in moments of crisis – Thomas Kuhn says. This paper is the perfect example. Suppose we want an authentic transformation of knowledge. In that case, it is necessary to promote cutting-edge research and recognise and foster the curious and critical spirit in academia and research centres. In addition to the excellent technical training provided by conventional science, new ideas and methodological and conceptual approaches must emerge from the academic world. Frontier Science can bring a future to the present, even when even those who practice it cannot anticipate it. An answer to the next question, the following unexpected result, the next innovative challenge, the knowledge that R&D systems and financing mechanisms can imagine.
That is why the scope of ESD is so essential, and papers like these are so crucial in academia and scientific society. This manuscript has interdisciplinarity, scientific merits, technical quality and suitability.
The remainder of this review is both incoherent, and not an appropriate scientific review of this paper. Reviewer #2 is not an appropriate reviewer for papers submitted to ESD!
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-CC5 -
AC7: 'Reply on RC3', Oliver López-Corona, 07 Jul 2021
Dear reviewer,
thank you for your deep and thoughtful comments.
Novel work is always problematic and risky because it faces both genuine questions for which there may be no clear and consensus answers; but also faces cultural and field biases especially in interdisciplinary problems.
This is why we think your observation about what is the main result of the work is key. We are not by no means providing the ultimate, complete and undisputable data analysis. We are presenting a new Idea and some supporting preliminary analysis for showing it is scientifically sound and more important, to point the path that could be followed to subsequent development.
So it is important to remark for the community that ESD Ideas article type "presents innovative and well-founded scientific ideas in a concise way that have not been comprehensively explored. We are convinced that under these definitions our work does comply".
Also, an anecdote from Professor Enrique Hernández Lemus may help. Some years ago Prof. Lemus asked Professor Leopoldo García-Colín about publication types and how to know when an idea is ready to be published. García-Colín told him that When formal scientific publication began, with scientific societies such as the Royal Society and others like it, there were two kinds of "scientific articles": the 'proceedings' or 'transactions' and the 'letters'. Both were very relevant, he continues, but they served different purposes: "proceedings" were published every year or perhaps every two years (that is why the volumes that contained them were sometimes called "Annals", that is, they were yearbooks) to report the status of the research one was doing on a given topic or project. They were work reports, progress reports, and state-of-the-art updates. After a time, generally indefinite, one ended up discovering or finding something very relevant that should be made known to the scientific community. To communicate this discovery, one wrote a letter, usually brief (since the details of the daily work were already published in the previous proceedings).
The problem is that the modern academy has somehow lost this tradition, that we consider code what in modern terms we recognize as the optimal search strategy in a complex environment (in this case the space of scientific ideas). As we know from ecological research, Lévy flights have been recognized as the optimal searching strategy to find scarce, randomly distributed resources (Viswanathan et al. 1999; Bartumeus et al. 2005, Boyer et.al. 2006). Levy flights consist of a regular random walk (local search) and from time to time very big displacements (the flights) that allow the agent to search in new regions of the resource space. Of course in the scientific context, most of the times papers need and naturally fall into this local exploration of scientific ideas. But if we take nature and its evolutionary processes as a role model for search resource space, we also need to accept "IDEAS" papers that put a new set of lenses on a particular field. After a flight, there is a clear necessity for local exploration and much work has to be done.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-AC7
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CC5: 'Reply on RC3', Richard Rosen, 06 Jul 2021
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CC6: 'Comment on esd-2021-26', Mahesh Lal Maskey, 06 Jul 2021
The manuscript is very interesting and very new aspects of research on antifragility. The work is very impressive. However, due to the novelty of the work, it needs implicit pros and cons of the notion as well as previous studies. The objective of this study is not clear and the mathematical treatment lacks proper definitions. Moreover, it is not implicitly explained how Fisher Information is related to human operating space. For this, the authors shall demonstrate the physical meaning of such qualifiers and also align with the scope of ESD.
- There are some jargon need to be defined properly and hence hard to understand. For instance, the authors introduced "TOA" on line 80 for the first time. What it stands for? Give its full form. Likewise, the reviewer asks to define Lrad, Lin, and λ implicitly in Equation 3 and other variables in Equation 4.
- On line 20, "of" is missing between work and Equihua et al.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-CC6 -
AC8: 'Reply on CC6', Oliver López-Corona, 07 Jul 2021
Dear Dr. Maskey,
We thank your comments and we will address them fully in the revised version of the manuscript.
Maskey: "...Moreover, it is not implicitly explained how Fisher Information is related to human operating space. For this, the authors shall demonstrate the physical meaning of such qualifiers and also align with the scope of ESD."
The main idea in this context is that a safe human operating space should consider not only a "safe" range of important state variables in terms of tipping point, but also the dynamics of the systems, see for example unpublished work by Toledo-Roy and co-workers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzfdnoC3Kik), especially its capacity to respond to perturbations. The dynamic interpretation of Fisher information could be understood as a measure of the system stability or as we have proposed elsewhere (https://researchers.one/articles/19.11.00005) as a universal payoff function for antifragility measurement.
Cumulative evidence presented on our previous work on Ecosystem Antifragility (https://peerj.com/articles/8533/) and commented on the latter paper, points to the conjecture that ecosystem including Earth System tends to be not only under limited range values for key biogeochemical variables but also in a special dynamical regime of maximum complexity, maximum Fisher Information and balance between emergence (flexibility/randomness) and self-organization called Criticality. In these conditions, the ecosystems (including Earth systems) exhibit the greatest computational and inferential capacities related to the system capacity to respond and adapt to perturbations.
Maskey: "There are some jargon need to be defined properly and hence hard to understand. For instance, the authors introduced "TOA" on line 80 for the first time. What does it stands for? Give its full form. Likewise, the reviewer asks to define Lrad, Lin, and λ implicitly in Equation 3 and other variables in Equation 4.
On line 20, "of" is missing between work and Equihua et al."
We have already fixed this in the revised manuscript, Thank you.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-AC8
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RC4: 'Comment on esd-2021-26', Anonymous Referee #3, 06 Jul 2021
The manuscript is very interesting and very new aspects of research on antifragility. The work is very impressive. However, due to the novelty of the work, it needs implicit pros and cons of the notion as well as previous studies. The objective of this study is not clear and the mathematical treatment lacks proper definitions. Moreover, it is not implicitly explained how Fisher Information is related to human operating space. For this, the authors shall demonstrate the physical meaning of such qualifiers and also align with the scope of ESD.
- There are some jargon need to be defined properly and hence hard to understand. For instance, the authors introduced "TOA" on line 80 for the first time. What it stands for? Give its full form. Likewise, the reviewer asks to define Lrad, Lin, and λ implicitly in Equation 3 and other variables in Equation 4.
- On line 20, "of" is missing between work and Equihua et al.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-RC4 -
AC9: 'Reply on RC4', Oliver López-Corona, 07 Jul 2021
Dear Reviewer,
thank you again for all your comments, we will consider them on the revised version of the manuscript to improve its quality, please see comments on your first post.We now would like to kindly ask you to consider the following:
We know that the present work does not provide the ultimate, complete, and undisputable data analysis, nor a complete mathematical formulation; but this is this way because the main "result" as identified by Reviewer 1 is the new "Idea" presented. We include some supporting preliminary analysis was added to show it is scientifically sound and more important, to point the path that could be followed to subsequent development.
So it is important to remark that an ESD Ideas paper is intended to present innovative and well-founded scientific ideas in a concise way that have not been comprehensively explored.
We are convinced that under this definition our work does comply.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2021-26-AC9
Peer review completion
