How fast would wilderness return post crash?

[davep]

One thing that is often left out of the human population equation is disease. Without cheap energy, we lose access to cheap food and medicines, both leaving humans in a weaker condition. Disease is soon to follow.

I'm not so sure. We're not going to unlearn germ theory, so basic hygiene should not change too much. Modern medicine's ability to keep us healthy has ridden on the coat-tails of germ theory to a large extent.

[SeaGypsy]

There will be establishment of biomass, but it will be some hodgepodge of transient and opportunistic colonizer species in new latitudes that will support them as climate bands shift north/south. It may someday become wilderness, but I think it is highly unlikely we would recognize it as an ecological community today.

Who is 'we'?
I and anyone familiar with wilderness, know that only an expert can tell the difference between true virginal ecology (almost non existent) and 100 year old regrowth. Given a seedbank 'lifeboat' amazing recovery can be seen in 20, 40 and 100 year regrowth. Often introduced species begin as a pest, establish a nitrogen and phosphorus base then are gradually outgrown, starved of light and replaced by low light understory natives/ all of which aids native animals recolonization. Little native pests, like ticks for instance, can gradually spread among and wipe out feral cats.

[Newfie]

Diamond talks about how rich cultures can save their own resources and uses Japan as an example. The US is another. The forests in the NorthEast have been reestablishing since the advent of large commercial farming. You can see old stone fences in what, to our eye, looks like a mature forest. For one thing we don't really know what 'wilderness' looks like. Dad took me to Cook State Park near Erie once. That is a small patch that missed the loggers saw. Huge trees here on the East Coast, really changes your sense of scale.

Try driving from NYC to Chicago and realize that every single tree over your entire vista was cut, by hand saw.

Now however the US is loosing its wealth, in the sense of PO. Cheap calories have allowed us to develop the temperate zones where heat is a necessity. And we have a large housing investment that was designed for a time of cheap calories, inefficient at heating. While we CAN build houses that are very efficient we CAN NOT replace our existing housing stock.

As PO gains ground I fear we will see a return to natural wood for heating, which will further pollute the air and destroy the forests and the ground there under. Think Haiti on steroids. The only alternative is if something else thins the population first.

In any case the population will thin drastically. But then will it thin enough to allow Nature to recover? Or will we have enough marginal population to keep the ground stripped? Or, perhaps, we will create a Venus atmosphere where both sides are loosers as Hansen fears.

[Keith_McClary]

Columbus blamed for Little Ice Age

By the end of the 15th century, between 40 million and 80 million people are thought to have been living in the Americas. Many of them burned trees to make room for crops, leaving behind charcoal deposits that have been found in the soils of Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries.

About 500 years ago, this charcoal accumulation plummeted as the people themselves disappeared. Smallpox, diphtheria and other diseases from Europe ultimately wiped out as much as 90 percent of the indigenous population.

Trees returned, reforesting an area at least the size of California, Nevle estimated. This new growth could have soaked up between 2 billion and 17 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the air.

Ice cores from Antarctica contain air bubbles that show a drop in carbon dioxide around this time. These bubbles suggest that levels of the greenhouse gas decreased by 6 to 10 parts per million between 1525 and the early 1600s.

“There’s nothing else happening in the rest of the world at this time, in terms of human land use, that could explain this rapid carbon uptake,” says Jed Kaplan, an earth systems scientist at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne in Switzerland.

[Newfie]

Interesting idea.

It would also go a long way to supporting modern AWG by showing how sensitive our climate is.

[SeaGypsy]

...suggesting a rapid end to AGW is very possible also...

[Margarethe]

In medicine, some of the worst wounds a body can sustain is best healed and cured by leaving it alone. And I mean alone - no chemicals, antibiotics, no pills. You'd be surprised. I know I was. Nature seems to have its own secrets when it comes to restoring balance and equilibrium - in a single organism's body or in the biosphere itself. Reports like these give me hope as well as food for thought.

[dolanbaker]

In medicine, some of the worst wounds a body can sustain is best healed and cured by leaving it alone. And I mean alone - no chemicals, antibiotics, no pills. You'd be surprised. I know I was. Nature seems to have its own secrets when it comes to restoring balance and equilibrium - in a single organism's body or in the biosphere itself. Reports like these give me hope as well as food for thought.

Only true if there is no infection!

[Margarethe]

Not in every case. I'm talking injuries sustained in remote places with no equipment or medicine. Some of these do get infected but wrap them up and leave them alone, and miraculously they heal. Again, I repeat, not in every case.
Anyway it's just a metaphor for what I'm saying. Thanks for that piece of thought anyway. =)

[KingM]

If humans disappeared today, the earth would return to a primeval state within a hundred years. Even large predator species would spread across the land within a few decades. Look at how quickly the wolves spread when reintroduced to Yellowstone. Even large predators like the tiger would quickly establish numbers in the hundreds of thousands or even millions.

Of course, in another twenty years most of these apex predators will be extinct in the wild, as will rhinos and possibly elephants. In another hundred years we'll probably manage to eliminate dozens of large species. Once that happens, there will be no return except on the million-year time frame.

Over the next billion years, until the sun boils off the earth's oceans, we'll see countless rises and collapses of ecosystems. It's a safe bet that we won't be the last intelligent life to evolve on this planet. Some future civilization of highly-evolved wombats will get a lot of enjoyment out of excavating the fossilized remains of human civilization.

[Serial_Worrier]

I can see there is a lot of cheerleading for the extinction of kudzu ape in this thread.

[Newfie]

I can see there is a lot of cheerleading for the extinction of kudzu ape in this thread.

Maybe not cheer leading but realistic understanding of the negative consequences of our over population.

When you look at it we have not been kind to the planet or its other occupants.

Remember the old Star Trek episode 'The Trouble with Tribbles?'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ6LC-olw9Q

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_With_Tribbles