I think this is the beginnings of an economy based on perpetual growth and fossil fuel energy running headlong into geological energy constraints. Basically I see an undulatory downward path for the rest of my life. From here out, I think any rallies in our economic condition are going to be met with spiking commodity prices that knock us right back down.
Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 2:40 am Post subject: Re: Biodiversity - why should we care?
mermaid wrote:
We manipulate plants and animals by breeding or dna manipulation, it is also loss of diversity and maybe it can cause disease or other weaknesses and for sure our manipulation with "life" will have it's price.
Getting new varieties of plants and animals by selective breeding or genetic engineering doesn't cause loss of diversity (rather the opposite!) But if the new varieties are used exclusively and the old ones are eliminated, that's when diversity suffers.
Joined: Dec 03, 2004 Posts: 1172 Location: Seattle, Wa.
Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 3:43 pm Post subject: Re: Biodiversity - why should we care?
Dezakin wrote:
So, many arguments for in-situ biodiversity, but how about some arguments for how biodiversity loss is actually a threat to civilization? I just don't see it.
Dezakin, I will engage in your question mainly for the benefit of those who follow this thread, not from any real interest to influence your opinions since I get the impression that you often post questions more to bait and incite rather that from a sincere inquiry into topics. Please feel free to comment.
So let's take your line of reason that maintaining civilization trumps all other considerations. The more the merrier. Qty over quality of existence. You surely recognize that if you impose no limits to this position than we therefore channel all the planets resources toward maximizing human civilization and numbers. To do this requires a strategy of uniformity. In other words the human species becomes one giant monoculture with a massive population supported by an efficient strategy of growing food also in vast monocultures spreading across the planet at the expense of natural systems. I invite you to ask a plant pathologist or a research pathologist say at the Center of Diseases Control what the vulnerabilities would be to such a design.
Let's name a few examples. Shall we start with mad cow disease? Dutch elm disease. Or the hundreds of plant pathogens that race through monocultures that our agro-chemical industry has to dedicate huge resources toward controlling. Aids come to mind. Avian bird flu blooming into a pandemic racing through massive poultry farms. Since your vision would cram billions of humans into smaller spaces this represents the ultimate form of mono-culture and vulnerability to the spread of disease. And having achieved this we would have exploited natural systems and lost the biodiversity where the genetic pool exists to keep species resilient from diseases. You mention In-situ biodiversity. I guess you mean saving all the genetic material before creatures go extinct? Do you realize that this is a dead end since the genetic material you harvest represents the end of each of those species natural evolution. So what your holding in-situ is a dead end collection of genes that will no longer interact and continue to evolve except in the genetic engineering labs that is more a fiction in your head than some kind of probable reality.
And we haven't even addressed the question of why design such an absurd system that would certainly not enhance the quality of life for human beings that you believe deserve this elevated status in the first place. What is this perverse dogma of quantity over quality that you promote? When would limiting growth be justified in your world view? I'm curious.
Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 6:17 pm Post subject: Re: Biodiversity - why should we care?
Quote:
Dezakin, I will engage in your question mainly for the benefit of those who follow this thread, not from any real interest to influence your opinions since I get the impression that you often post questions more to bait and incite rather that from a sincere inquiry into topics. Please feel free to comment.
Its a fair caracature of me I suppose, but still a bit of an exageration. I'm genuinely curious as to the arguments supporting threats to civilization due to loss of biodiversity. I'm responding to this thread because I asked the question originally of Ludi in another thread.
There certainly are reasons to support biodiversity at least ex-situ, but I still take the position that we must weigh the costs of such efforts.
Quote:
In other words the human species becomes one giant monoculture with a massive population supported by an efficient strategy of growing food also in vast monocultures spreading across the planet at the expense of natural systems. I invite you to ask a plant pathologist or a research pathologist say at the Center of Diseases Control what the vulnerabilities would be to such a design.
How does having excess biodiversity in species that we don't use help us with this? Having more domestic biodiversity certainly would, so in that I support more GM food efforts and more variety in the market.
Quote:
Aids come to mind.
How does biodiversity help us with this, except having more ape populations with either natural antibodies to study (or to breed yet more strains that people will catch from the bushmeat trade. Perhaps we should exterminate all non-human primates)
Quote:
When would limiting growth be justified in your world view? I'm curious.
My worldview is a more specific question than the value of biodiversity to civilization, and of little consequence to the argument. Given that I assume that machines and artificial intelligence dominates all natural systems in a century or two, and everyone else on this board thinks thats the most ridiculous of science fiction, I generally avoid discussing my world view. I suppose the answer of 'when limiting growth would be justified in my worldview' would be never. We slowly spread through the universe untill its death.
Joined: Dec 08, 2004 Posts: 921 Location: 145'2"E 37'46"S
Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 7:28 pm Post subject: Re: Biodiversity - why should we care?
And this vision is more beautiful to you than any of the life you see around you? Even ignoring our functional dependence, you have less use for all else that lives than for machine intelligence, being able to pick channels without need of a remote? I have heard self loathing admitted by some who are fascinated by escape via machine.
If desiring a practical demonstration of your dependance upon biodiversity, simple take a course of oral antibiotics. They'll wipe out a chunk of the bacterial diversity in your gut and give you diarhea until nature comes to your rescue and repopulates your gut with suitable bacteria.
Another? Plant snow peas/any other tasty easy veg. in your yard. Spray the whole yard with pesticides, make sure you kill every little beastie that moves.
I guarantee that aphids, or white fly, or some bug, will appear, explode in population and devour your tasty veg quicker than you can get the teratogenic toxin out again. Why? Because there are no predatory insects (ladybirds, spiders etc) around the control the numbers of the pest.
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 13065 Location: naive idiot fantasy world
Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 7:59 pm Post subject: Re: Biodiversity - why should we care?
Dezakin wrote:
How does having excess biodiversity in species that we don't use help us with this? Having more domestic biodiversity certainly would, so in that I support more GM food efforts and more variety in the market.
New uses for heretofor "useless weeds" continue to be found. We can't know ahead of time which plants might prove useful, nor which plants fulfill some vital function within an ecosystem.
The importance of specific animal species also can't be known ahead of time, before research into those animals has been done. Do you know many animals and plants have not even been named yet, let alone studied? Many of these may fulfill some important building block in the total system.
The preservation of all parts of an ecosystem is vital to the functioning of that ecosystem, because we can't know which ones are the key which sustains the whole system. Pull out one vital piece and the whole thing may crumble. This is the case with many bat species which pollinate key plants in tropical systems, plants which in many cases are of economic importance also. _________________ "...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow." - jboogy
Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 1839 Location: East of Eden
Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2006 11:59 pm Post subject: Re: Biodiversity - why should we care?
As I understand it, biodiversity plays a huge role in the productivity and stability of natural systems: the less biodiverse, the less stable and productive. Important to us? Oh yes, if you believe these guys:
Quote:
Why is biodiversity so important?
Our natural environment provides us with food, medicine, fuel, clothes, timber, climate regulation, water purification, soil regeneration, nutrient cycling, waste recirculation and crop pollination, for free. Ecologists and economists estimate the monetary value of nature’s services to society is at least $33 trillion each year. (Emphasis mine.)
Why is biodiversity important? For one thing it has significant economic value. The annual market value for products (such as pharmaceuticals, botanical medicines, agricultural seeds, cosmetics, ornamental plants, etc.) derived from genetic resources is on the order of US$500-800 billion. That is a lot of money -- somewhere between the petrochemical and the computer industries.
The services performed by naturally functioning ecosystems, including regulating the climate, forming soils, cycling nutrients, controlling erosion, pollination, and so on, are even more valuable. A 1997 study in Nature estimated the economic value of the services at $33.3 trillion per year. That is a serious amount of money, more than the annual GNP of our planet. You could say that those numbers are exaggerated, that they are too high by an order of magnitude. But even if the "correct" figure is only $3 trillion, the services that are provided by naturally functioning ecosystems are worth a lot of money and are very important to people all around the world. (Emphasis mine.)
McNeely also talks about the biodiversity of a system being dependent upon that system's size, so that the little pockets of protected areas necessarily undergo species loss.
Kerry Bruce Clark wrote:
Every organism, whether or not it has direct practical use to humans, has a functional role (or 'niche') in its habitat or ecosystem... Each species also represents a unique genetic library. Our genetic technology is only beginning to tap the vast potential benefits of these libraries, and seemingly 'minor' species are typically the most specialized organisms...
Additionally, minor species often have functions that we may not understand but that may be ecologically or evolutionarily important, often involving complex interactions of many other species, some of which may in turn be ecologically or commercially important. The dodo and the Carolina parakeet were important dispersers of seeds, and their loss has permanently affected forest structure in their habitats; rare insects are often highly specific pollinators whose loss affects the reproduction and survival of other plants. On evolutionary time scales, we know far less about the effects of extinction of rare species, but we do know that evolution can amplify the effect of a species over time through its interactions on survival of other species. In most cases, we simply do not know enough about the biology of a rare species to predict the effects of its extinction. But once the species is lost, we can never provide a perfect substitute.
This is a great article about how vital biodiversity is in the Brazilian rainforest:
Quote:
But how do the nuts get free from their rock-solid pods in the wild? No Amazon creature, it seemed, had jaws powerful enough to crack open the cannonballs.
One answer, it turns out, is the agouti -- a small mammal that looks a bit like a large guinea pig. Agoutis have small, chisel-like teeth that can penetrate the Brazil nut's seed case. They eat some of the nuts. But, just as important, they carry away and bury others for future meals. If forgotten, these seeds can stay dormant in the soil for years, waiting for the perfect conditions to germinate and grow into a new Brazil nut tree.
The agouti isn't the only animal that Brazil nut trees need to survive. It appears that they also rely on certain bees, and even other plants, to reproduce. Orchid bees visit flowering Brazil nut trees to collect nectar; as they buzz about feeding, the bees inadvertently carry pollen from tree to tree, fertilizing the flowers and helping the trees produce nuts. For the bees to survive, however, the males must attract mates, and to do that, the male bees need fragrance from a particular orchid to attract female bees. If the forest is damaged and the orchids disappear, so will the bees -- and the Brazil nuts.
Of course, if the Brazil nut trees go, there goes the rainforest and "one of the great lungs of the planet." Possibly we are all dependent on that little orchid.
Vandana Shiva, 'Stolen Harvest' wrote:
- Crop byproducts feed cattle
- Cattle waste feeds the soil that nourish the crops
- Crops, as well as yielding grain also yield straw
- Straw provides organic matter and fodder
- Crops are therefore food sources for humans and animals
- Soil organisms also benefit from crops
- Bacteria feed on the cellulose fibers of straw that farmers return to the soil
- Amoebas feed on bacteria making lignite fibers available for uptake by plants
- Algae provide organic matter and serve as natural nitrogen fixers
- Rodents that bore under the fields aerate the soil and improve its water-holding capacity
- Spiders, centipedes and insects grind organic matter from the surface soil and leave behind enriched droppings.
- Earthworms contribute to soil fertility
- They provide aerage, drainage and maintain soil structure.
- According to Charles Darwin, “It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of creatures.”
- The earthworm is like a natural tractor, fertilizer factory and dam, combined!
- Industrial-farming techniques would deprive these diverse species of food sources and instead assault them with chemicals, destroying the rich biodiversity in the soil and with it the basis for the renewal of the soil fertility.
So: biodiversity is not just a nice-sounding thing. We depend on it for our livelihood and possibly our survival. We are at the beginning of the sixth Great Extinction. We have absolutely no idea how bad it's going to get. _________________ "If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst." — Thomas Hardy
Joined: Jan 28, 2006 Posts: 89 Location: Moorhead, MN, USA
Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 12:19 pm Post subject: Re: Biodiversity - why should we care?
High biodiversity encourages stability since it greatly buffers the ecosystem from the boom-crash cycles (like the eternally famous lynx and hare example).
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