> I always figured the food web will just collapse. I fear this too, but it won't be so dramatic. On geologic and evolutionary timescales, it will be like a fl

> I always figured the food web will just collapse. I fear this too, but it won't be so dramatic. On geologic and evolutionary timescales, it will be like a flash. On human timescales, it might be a decade or a century. From our perspective it will look a lot more like a ratcheting-down of the food web, as loss of biodiversity will lead to pancaking of layers down. There will be booms and busts, as the ecological niche filled by one organism is vacated by its sudden collapse and a temporary resurgence of some aggressive species fills that gap, until that poorly adapted monoculture succumbs to something else. In a sense, the whole thing is going to come down in spasms, and we'll be arguing the whole way into the grave, because it's so complicated that gaslighters and deniers will always be able to point to something that looks like recovery, but really isn't. I am long past accepting this. The question in my mind is really, how big is the crater left by humanity going to be?