Topic: Ecosystems (edge effects and related environmental issues) (Read 5098 times)

I think you should read the article again, without thinking about Carlin's quote. You might want to supplement it with Edward O. Wilson's The Future of Life.

In a nutshell, species must migrate towards the poles to live within the temperature range they're adapted to. This migration must occur at rates typically in the range of 0.08 km per year to 1.26 km per year due to the current average annual changes in climate. However, they run into barriers, such as suburbia, urban developments, water, no more water, and mountain ranges (which are impassable not due to topology, but due to climate barriers). As a result, the species then go extinct. This rate of extinction occurs at a rate much greater than the rate of new species coming into being. The net effect is less biodiversity, which results in less ecosystem services.

Carlin's quote is essentially drivel. Humans are in no less or more of a predicament than any other species. In many senses, they are in a better predicament, as they have the ability to migrate, and animals do not. However, everything is interdependent on everything else, so it affects everything in a negative way. The net effect is less. Less, as in:

- Less ecosystem services
- Less biodiversity
- Less undiscovered knowledge

Some boneheads will argue that there are benefits, such as increased usable land in the Arctic tundra, and so on. Such individuals are scientifically challenged and have allowed their thinking to be swayed by individuals and groups who study economics and political science within a vacuum that is absent the study of ecology and the environment, which is the foundation society it is built upon. A warmer Canada and arctic is not a net gain, nor even a gain at all, but a loss. That future world does not include an equivalent amount of biodiversity. That world is a less rich world to live in.

Read the article. I don't know if we read the same article, but what I took from it was that climate change affects animal migration, behavior etc. Some animails will become extinct, others will thrive. The ecosystem could come in disarray and that would be bad for everyone. Especially humans. I think we're back to Carlin's quote. Probably not an ELE, but nobody really knows.

It'll tell you the opposite of that, to some degree.

What I'm saying is, to paraphrase the great George Carlin: The planet will be fine. Life will continue. Humans however, are fucked.
I'll go read the article, but I doubt it'll tell me much more than that.

You do know that Peter D. Ward also wrote The Call of Distant Mammoths, which explores the overkill hypothesis, an idea originally proposed by Paul S. Martin in Twilight of the Mammoths, and the idea is summarized eloquently in Edward O. Wilson's The Future of Life. The one thing megafauna can't tolerate is the advance of human civilization.

Please, don't make statements like this. You really don't understand the full cascade of effects. Edge effects actually play a major role in this. And ecosystem services will be affected. Yes, life will adapt, but at the cost of vast extinction and serious ecosystem service loss.

Read the full article, as it summarizes issues I'm sure you're 100 percent unaware of: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/341435/title/Animals_on_the_Move

Heh. Good point. Life will survive just about anything we do to it, but we may not survive it's adaptations.

Anyone who has kept fish will know that humans and "mega" anything can tolerate huge temperature differences compared to bacteria, and that tipping the scales on the precise mix of ocean bacteria that supports the entire ecosystem will kill us all deader than anything.



http://www.amazon.com/Under-Green-Sky-Warming-Extinctions/dp/006113791X

Yeah, you want to worry about megafauna preservation, worry about that species, first.

Will life adapt with regard to the CO2 (and other pollutants) we're releasing? Yes, it will.
Will humans? Uncertain. We live within a very narrow temperature interval and have other rather specific requirements as we are rather complex organisms.

Assuming your goal is to prevent immigration, then using the knowledge about edge effects and fences, you can then focus your policy and research efforts into devising a solution that does not use a fence, but some other method. It's not necessarily a tradeoff. Instead, it's about effective use of knowledge to guide your search for a solution into an area that will let you achieve what you want to achieve without wasting your efforts seeking solutions that are demonstrated to have damaging effects.

Not sure I understand your joke.

Is that, 10m People + fascist wall as compared to 10m people without the wall?   

Do you want me to include in my calculations the staggering cost in time of bothering millions of people with totally useless and solely motivated by mental illness wastes of time and money? 

Or are you implying that this kind of general welfare for evil and proof of stupidity is a good thing because it reduces the population?       

Oh, in a few years, it won't be keeping Mexicans out that will be the problem.

Which do you think causes more ecosystem destruction, 10 million extra Mexicans, or a fence?

How can I do that, if you don't say anything?

You started this thread to educate people. Go on, I'm not stopping you. In fact, I'm asking you to continue!

Let me give you a clue. I don't wish to educate you anymore in this thread currently because you seem to like to argue with scenarios and analogies that are absurd, and I find it unproductive to spend my time disputing such material unnecessarily. If you were generally interested in the material and wished to learn it, you would take some combination of the following actions:

1. Read books on the subject. I have recommended some.
2. Listen to what I have to say and ask questions.
3. Evaluate the absurdity of your objections with greater depth before committing to them.
4. Try wholeheartedly to disconnect the science from your ideology. Remember, the science does not have to agree with your ideology.
5. Or, of you disagree with (2), then stop requesting my time to educate you.

I guess you don't want to continue?

Tsk... So many of our conversations end this way. Clue-by-four: Flipping the table and running off is not "winning".

Very well, then I withdraw from this debate, that you may continue your education. Do you need reminded of where you were when you stopped?

Most all your thoughts with regard to this subject are sloppy, and thus casual, at best. But whatever.

I've made my point unless you demonstrate that the event you're sloppily referring to happened within the time span of a human lifetime, and is an event that a human could live through. Once again, this immediate discussion is non productive due to the obvious flaws in your analogy. I'll be happy to engage in intelligent and meaningful debate with you if you so choose. Otherwise, feel free to start another thread to promote your silly analogies.

First, English lessons:
allude: to refer casually or indirectly

I'm not alluding to it, I'm referring to it directly.

But still, I fail to see how I've made your point. Oxygen was toxic to early life. Yet, it adapted and changed, and eventually flourished. Any changes humanity introduces will be similarly adapted to.