

The Earth Strikes Back: Why we underestimate Earth and overestimate ourselves - rblion
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-04-16-planet-strikes-back-underestimate-earth-overestimate-ourselves

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masklinn
Of course the earth itself does not care, it's a giant clump of mostly molten
rock, we're occupying but an irrelevant fraction of its volume.

When people talk about "the earth", they mean the biosphere, the sum of all
ecosystems, and when people talk "harming the earth", it's about ecology,
about annihilating ecosystems and about drastically reducing biodiversity.

And feedback loops we're setting in motion will only further that.

Will the earth itself survive? It's not living in the first place.

Will life survive? You bet it will, it's not the first mass annihilation it'll
go through.

On the other hand, will the Golden Bamboo Lemur, the Dhole, the Axolotl, the
Saiga, the Kakapo or the Hawaiian Crow live through it?

That's pretty damn unlikely.

Oh, and the earth does not "defend itself", we're just setting in motion
reactive feedback loops we can't control. Essentially, we're shooting
ourselves in the head and describing the bullet going through our collective
skull as the gun defending itself.

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demallien
Every time I read about prediction of where climate change is going, I can't
help but feel that people are just hopelessly naive about our ability to
predict.

The greatest problem with current models is that they have simply no idea how
the biosphere is going to react, and the biosphere has the capacity to undo
every perturbation introduced by humans without raising a sweat.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there is no global warming, or that
humans aren't responsible - they are, the evidence for that seems pretty clear
these days. But what we don't know is how that is going to change our world.

Recent studies in evolution, are starting to indicate that species can (and
_do_ ) evolve very rapidly in response to changes in climate. We are used to
thinking of evolution as being something that happens over tens to hundreds of
thousands of years, but we have now documented so many evolutionary changes
that happened rapidly, from the iconic peppered moths to Galapagos finches,
that current thinking is more that rapid evolution in response to a changed
environment is the norm, not the exception.

We predict, for example, that a whole swath of calcium-based lifeforms are
going to go instinct if the Earth's oceans continue to rise in acidity. I
would think that it is much more likely that some (if not most) are very
rapidly going to develop mutations that allow them to fix calcium even in an
acidic environment. If we start having more bush fires, then forests are going
to rapidly evolve to rebound quickly from such disasters, or to reduce the
likelihood of a bush fire getting out of control.

Or what about on a more global scale. Who would like to bet that there won't
be an algae that evolves that efficiently sucks out the heightened amount of
carbon in the atmosphere introduced by humans, making the whole climate change
debate null and void.

Until we can't start modelling these times of changes in the biosphere,
predictions based on models are pretty much useless, certainly once we get out
beyond about 10-20 years.

None of which is to say that we shouldn't be fighting against climate change -
we should, if nothing else than because, for the reasons listed above, we
can't predict the ways that climate change is going to impact us.
Unpredictability is generally bad for economic development, which is pretty
much the equivalent of saying that it is bad for human sustainability. But I
really am sick of reading predictions for our global future that just can not
be based on anything like a realistic understanding of how the biosphere is
going to react to our continued forcing of the climate...

~~~
lobster_johnson
> ... very rapidly going to develop mutations that allow them to fix calcium
> even in an acidic environment

You don't seem to understand the nature of mutations. Mutations aren't
"developed", they occur randomly and spontaneously as a consequence of errors
in DNA replication. It happens all the time, to be sure, but it's not like
entire populations are convulsing in a bombardment of mutations that produce
lots of weird new features. Also, each mutation is random, and whether the
mutated gene has a positive effect or indeed passed on to offspring is also
completely random. In short, mutations aren't some kind of magic that happens
at opportune times.

So let's consider the corals. Perhaps a single coral will be hit by a mutation
at some point that lets it survive in higher acid levels. Perhaps a few more.
So the coral is able to survive and reproduce, and its offspring will also
survive. Meanwhile, the surrounding coral reef is dying quickly. How will
those monster corals survive? It will have to reproduce very quickly and
expand in size dramatically in order to compensate for the diminishing reef,
otherwise it will go down with the ship, so to speak; coral reefs are
ecosystems where corals live in symbiosis with the organisms around them, and
one part of the symbiosis dying would impact everyone else. Unfortunately, the
amount that most corals grow in a year is measured in millimeters. The idea
that a single coral would save an entire reef from dying is probably
optimistic. And meanwhile, every coral in the world without this mutation
would eventually die. Corals reproduce locally and don't move around much.

For your idea to work, the mutation would have to hit a lot of coral reefs
during the same time frame, and it would have to hit a lot of corals at the
same time.

~~~
demallien
_You don't seem to understand the nature of mutations._

It's not really a question of understanding mutations, that's just where the
research seems to be leading us. Phenomena such as the rapid changes in fossil
morphology puzzled biologists for much of the second half of the 20th century,
but the latest research is suggesting that this is indeed a real effect, and
not due to the spotty nature of the fossil record. In the lab, in simulations,
and in the real world, we see populations change rapidly in the face of a
rapidly changing environment. Don't believe me? Think how quickly the common
cold has to mutate to remain viable when faced with the highly adaptive human
immune system. Or how about how quickly MRSA has developed. Or how quickly we
can change the appearance of a dog breed with selective breeding.

Going back to the reefs, if you have a population with millions of individual
organisms of each species spread over a large area, it is not unreasonable,
due to genetic drift, to expect some of those organisms to already have a few
tricks up their sleeve to handle increased acidity. Some will have trick 1,
some will have trick 2 etc etc. As the acidity starts to rise, these organisms
will have the better success at passing the genes onto their offspring. Those
offspring have a good chance of inheriting different tricks from their other
parent, making them even better at surviving in the acidified environment. So
it goes, the greatest show on earth.

The tl;dr version is that the mutations don't have to all hit at once - there
will be many mutations already latent in the population due to genetic drift
that will help make adapting much faster and easier.

Still want to tell me that I don't understand the nature of mutations?

~~~
lobster_johnson
However, viruses and corals are vastly different things, and comparing them
does not necessarily make sense.

Viruses like the common cold seem particularly predisposed to rapid mutation
as a survival tactic, and this works particularly well because of the sheer
scale at which microbes work: There are billions of billions of virus
particles around. There are billions of billions of virus particles constantly
replicating and often doing it badly.

Have we looked at how quickly corals, anemone, nudibranches etc. mutate in the
face of extinction? There are vast areas of the oceans (eg., along the Mexican
coastline) where the deoxygenation of the water has killed off virtually all
life during the last half-century; where is the mutated flora and fauna that
learned to adapt to the lower oxygen levels?

Sure, I agree that science doesn't necessarily understand all about how stuff
evolves or adapts. Nature _might_ find a way to survive. But the way you threw
out that (I paraphrase) "I'm not worried, they'll just mutate" is too cavalier
a response to this problem.

~~~
demallien
Yes, I can see how "None of which is to say that we shouldn't be fighting
against climate change - we should, if nothing else than because, for the
reasons listed above, we can't predict the ways that climate change is going
to impact us. Unpredictability is generally bad for economic development,
which is pretty much the equivalent of saying that it is bad for human
sustainability." could be interpreted as "I'm not worried, they'll just
mutate"...

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mycroftiv
Articles like this do no favors for the viewpoints they espouse. The author
has no scientific credentials, and the piece is a mishmash of broad
generalizations from cultural history and questionable interpretations of
scientific theories. This is not a rational, evidence-based argument on behalf
of sane ecological priorities; it is a woolly, narrative-based claim that
humans are naughty and will be punished by mother Earth.

What frustrates me is that I am a strong supporter of making mitigation of
negative human impacts on the planet a top priority for civilization. I don't
believe the best way to accomplish that goal is with the claim that we should
go back to animist thinking about angry sea-gods.

~~~
cema
I am concerned with the request for credentials. An argument should stand on
its own, whether proposed by a credentialed person or not.

~~~
masklinn
Credentials are still an indicator. Not of the intrinsic validity of the piece
and its arguments, but of the author's standing and history.

Can Joe Blow put forward a good argument on any subject? Absolutely. On the
other hand, is it more likely you'll get a coherent (or even slightly
relevant) argument on ecology from Joe Blow or from a trained biogeographer
who's been working in the field for decades?

It should not be used to dismiss the argument itself (if any was put forward),
but if the article looks like a long rambling of generalizations, new-age
insanity and groundless anthropomorphization... well in the second case you'll
probably take a closer look to check if you've missed something (or if the
author has gone completely off his rocker), whereas in the former you'll
likely just drop the text and put the author on your blacklist.

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prodigal_erik
> another perspective on his (and our) Eaarth: as a powerful actor in its own
> right and as an avenger, rather than simply victim.

This seems to be baseless anthropomorphization of an assortment of phenomena,
many of which are already understood as inevitable results of feedback
cycles—no intelligent design required.

