vtsnowedin wrote:Ibon wrote:
It is important to distinguish between normal changes due to bio geography as in the two examples you mentioned and contrast this to the the extinction event happening today due to The Great Biotic Exchange.
Could the woolly mammoths distinguish between a loss of their winter food supply and being hunted by packs of hunters with stone tipped spears that used fires to drive them into traps?
It's been noted that the American mega fauna had survived a dozen or more inter-glacial warm periods as warm as the present one with the only difference of this present one being the addition of humans to the equation.
This might be a bit of a long post as I want to draw some further distinctions here between the extinction events of the past caused by our ancestors and how this contrasts with the Great Biotic Exchange we see happening now. My comments here are focused on the long term transition of where we need to head as a species if we are interested in preserving technology and some of the benefits of the last 200 years of the industrial revolution.
The mega fauna extinctions of the Pleistocene (mammoth, giant sloths and many other species) that you point out emphasizes the role humans played as keystone species once they colonized North America. We can also witness with this example the early signs of technology use giving humans an inordinate power in their environment. On the other hand the structure of the eco systems where not altered, the prairies, wetlands, forests etc. all remained intact. The human landscapes were restricted to small villages and to a limited degree some ecosystems were modified with the use of fire. The biomass of mammoths was not replaced by the biomass of humans or our slave species in this example. The removal of the mega fauna in the Pleistocene caused by humans reconfigured the existing assemblage of native flora and fauna. There were some winners and some losers . What other mammals prospered with the removal of the mega fauna? We don't know.
Not to get too sidetracked but it is interesting that the mega fauna of Africa never went through the extinction rates we found in the New World when humans colonized the western hemisphere. The reason given is that African mega fauna co evolved with our human ancestors and natural selection honed African species into survival strategies that avoided predation by humans to the points of extinction. The co evolution with humans did not exist in the Western Hemisphere so Mammoths and all the other mega fauna did not have the defense strategies to withstand predation and in a short period of time they went extinct.
Today well over 50% of the terrestial land mass of our planet has now been converted to human landscapes and that of our slave crops as part of this Great Biotic Exchange. Just a few examples to illustrate this but the list could be hundreds or thousands of examples:
* Tall grass prairies converted to monoculture corn and soy in the midwest of the USA
* Lowland tropical forest converted to monoculture oil palm plantations in SE Asia
* Amazon forests converted to pasture in Brazil.
* 90 -100% of natural ecosystems removed and replaced with agricultural lands in the Visayan islands of the
Philippines.
We all know it is not just the simple conversion of biodiverse natural ecosystems over to our slave crops and human habitats. In addition we selectively bred and genetically modified our crops to increase yields and blanketed the land with petro chemicals and agro chemicals to boost the global population up to 7.5 billion.
We know this story. What good does it really do to spend pages and pages re hashing over all the plundering we have done. I would like to now give some examples of where we could go to still preserve technology, still have an abundant population on the planet of hundreds of millions and coexist in the community of life on our mother earth. It is really not that hard structurally.
Natural grasslands could be grazed by ruminants like cattle keeping the prairie habitat intact. You could extract meat and plant resources without wholescale conversion of the land over to soy and corn fields. Of course you could still ear mark up to 50% of the prairie for mono cultures and keep the integrity of the ecosystems and biosphere intact by allowing up to 50% to revert back to prairie habitat.
Coffee is a natural shade tree. It should all be grown in the understory of native forests so that the biodiversity is preserved. We do this here at Totumas. Humans took coffee and developed hybrids that could take full sun. These full sun hybrid varieties are forced and pushed to higher yields by the addition of agro chemicals. So where we had an integrated ecosystem and resource extraction with shade grown coffee we went to monoculture coffee cultivation in full sun because of the increase in yields.
Oil Palm plantations could have been restricted to less than 25% of low land forests in SE Asia allowing the remaining biodiversity to thrive. Same with pasturage in the Amazon.
Al of these changes and suggestions are viable If we correct human overshoot back down to say 500 million.
How about consuming fossil fuels at a rate that carbon sequestration is equal to emissions. What is that magic number once we allow the ppm's of CO2 to return to historical averages? There is more than enough land mass, more than enough energy, more than enough fresh water, marine fisheries etc. etc. to support a stable population if we use the resources inherent in natural ecosystems and apply them to wise steward ship. But not at 7 billion let alone 9 or 11 billion forecasted. But what about 300 million, 1 billion. Those are quality numbers to maintain the genetic integrity of any species.
We may dip lower because there are disruptions to the biosphere due to climate change but the point is still relevant.
We have a current economic system and current over population that forces agricultural practices and energy extraction practices that exasperate the Great Biotic Exchange. Make no mistake this will soon reverse and as it does all the structural elements that have allowed this great biotic exchange to occur will change. You cannot grow markets and maintain profit incentives when the global population depopulates. This will challenge our economic systems. This will create an enormous strain on the existing cultural and economic paradigm that drives globalization. As we dive over the peak of overshoot and contract this will be a highly volative time.
I cannot predict events beyond a broad outline but I can point with the above examples how humans at a certain sustainable number can have their cake and eat it too. Can design and dominate their landscapes with a balanced approach preserving natural ecosystems.
We can do all of this and still have several hundred million strong with fairly generous consumption per capita.
I do not advocate a full scale return to a pristine planet of regenerating natural ecosystems with humans marginalized back down to HG tribes. That is a utopic fantasy of some die hard environmentalists.
There is a balance between exploitation and sustainability.
We need to collectively get burned seriously to find that balance. I can guarantee you the fire has been started and things are heating up,
Humanity has the opportunity the pull the rabbit out of the hat again and not defy Malthus but to acknowledge Malthus moderating the correction avoiding the worst of the die-off scenarios many predict.
I for one remain inherently optimistic.
I look around me and see the evidence right out the window right now. As Baha does. As others do. But make no mistake....this wont be painless. And the reconfigured cultural orientation that can allow this to happen requires brutal external consequences. Brutal.
Patiently awaiting the pathogens. Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
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website: http://www.mounttotumas.com