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I would never use the phrase "ideal state", but rather "natural state". Though, even that is not quite accurate as humans are naturally-occurring too, but the

I would never use the phrase "ideal state", but rather "natural state". Though, even that is not quite accurate as humans are naturally-occurring too, but the things we do (and do to the planet) are not quite so "natural". While thinking that "the planet is worse off because of humans" is a judgement, I think it's not unreasonable to assert that innocent life forms all over the world suffer by our actions (more than they probably would have if we weren't here), and they are powerless to prevent that. I think this is what people are intuitively feeling a sense of when they say things like "or we die out and the planet recovers on its own".

rdiddly 7y ago
In my ponderings on this, I tend to think of a "post-human state." If the influence of homo sapiens on a place or ecosystem were to decrease dramatically, and insofar as any place or ecosystem would tend toward anything resembling equilibrium rather than constant/continued change, most of them will probably stabilize around a discernibly post-human state, rather than the pre-human one that prevailed throughout most of our history until the industrial era. It's just the lowest-energy and most likely outcome. So like, all the kudzu, rats and other wacky species we've introduced here and there, would have a go. Though they might not all make it. Pretty much impossible to predict, because it's a chaotic system, but also because the effects of the heat we've introduced have only started to play out.
tgarv 7y ago
I was actually wondering recently if there has ever been a huge spike in, say, a new species of algae or something, that caused a large change in the atmosphere. I know that what we're doing as a species isn't "natural", and we know better and could avoid it if we really wanted to, but it still had me thinking about what kinds of things the planet has gone through before that would have been alarming at the time if someone had been around to monitor it.
- Donald 7y ago
  Species are created on geologic timescales. Human activity is, in comparison, instantaneously destroying biological diversity. Evolution simply doesn't have enough time to adapt species to the sort of exponential changes we're seeing in their environments.
  - frutiger 7y ago
    Evolution is like gravity. It doesn’t have to adapt to anything on any timescale that is important to our anthropological ideas of “change” or “environment”.
- Scarblac 7y ago
  The Great Oxidation Event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event) was exactly that. Oxygen-producing organisms caused the extinction of almost all life, over two billion years ago.
- AprilArcus 7y ago
  The Azolla Event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event) was a cyclical bloom of duckweed-like ferns in the Arctic Ocean about 49 million years ago which drew down atmospheric CO2 by an order of magnitude, from 3500 ppm (responsible for the warm, verdant climate you think about when you imagine the Mesozoic era) to 650 ppm (responsible for the cold, cyclical glaciations you think about when you imagine the modern world), and in which vicinity it has remained ever since.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    (FWIW, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels pre-Industrial Revolution were about 280 ppm, and today are just over 400 ppm.)
refurb 7y ago
A beaver dams a river, flooding the shores and killing off the ecosystem. That’s natural. A group of humans do it and it’s unnatural?
- amatecha 7y ago
  Beaver dams don't kill off the ecosystem. Tons of other life forms make use of the newly-flooded area. I've personally watched herons perch upon the dam to catch the fish that are now swimming through the now-deeper waterway, for example.
  - refurb 7y ago
    Same thing when humans build dams, right? We're creating new ecosystems.
    - amatecha 7y ago
      Is that a rhetorical question? There's quite some difference between a 200m tall concrete dam that holds 1m+ cubic decameters of water[0][1], and a bunch of twigs and logs jumbled in a creek that might be 2 meters high on average and actually house life like beavers, frogs, birds etc.[2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Bullards_Bar_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Bullards_Bar_Dam [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_reservoirs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_reserv... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_dam#Benefits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_dam#Benefits
      - refurb 7y ago
        So whether something is natural is a matter of scale? If we cut down 1,000 acres of trees for wood, is that natural? What about if a beetle infestation destroys a million acres? Still natural?
        arbitrary_name 7y ago
        1) Was the beetle introduced to the area by humans (which is the case for a number of pests) 2) Were the trees killed made susceptible to the beetle because of heat stress, possibly caused by human driven climate change? (this is the case for some large scale infestations) Overall, the point is; yes, where imbalances in nature are triggered by natural causes, there is no issue with that (earthquake, hurricane, long term climate oscillation). Where imbalances in nature are triggered by humans, (IMHO) we should quite naturally regard that as a negative since a) we are intelligent enough to find ways of avoiding environmental degradation and b) Environmental degradation has both consequences to other forms of life as well as other humans. I guess you're playing devils advocate here, but you're hardly adding to the conversation.
mdavidn 7y ago
I loathe to point out that birds which never existed cannot suffer more than birds that do exist. Perhaps a better measure would be genetic diversity? A more diverse gene pool is more likely to survive the unexpected.

rdiddly 7y ago

In my ponderings on this, I tend to think of a "post-human state." If the influence of homo sapiens on a place or ecosystem were to decrease dramatically, and insofar as any place or ecosystem would tend toward anything resembling equilibrium rather than constant/continued change, most of them will probably stabilize around a discernibly post-human state, rather than the pre-human one that prevailed throughout most of our history until the industrial era. It's just the lowest-energy and most likely outcome. So like, all the kudzu, rats and other wacky species we've introduced here and there, would have a go. Though they might not all make it. Pretty much impossible to predict, because it's a chaotic system, but also because the effects of the heat we've introduced have only started to play out.

tgarv 7y ago

I was actually wondering recently if there has ever been a huge spike in, say, a new species of algae or something, that caused a large change in the atmosphere. I know that what we're doing as a species isn't "natural", and we know better and could avoid it if we really wanted to, but it still had me thinking about what kinds of things the planet has gone through before that would have been alarming at the time if someone had been around to monitor it.

Donald 7y ago
Species are created on geologic timescales. Human activity is, in comparison, instantaneously destroying biological diversity. Evolution simply doesn't have enough time to adapt species to the sort of exponential changes we're seeing in their environments.
- frutiger 7y ago
  Evolution is like gravity. It doesn’t have to adapt to anything on any timescale that is important to our anthropological ideas of “change” or “environment”.
Scarblac 7y ago
The Great Oxidation Event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event) was exactly that. Oxygen-producing organisms caused the extinction of almost all life, over two billion years ago.
AprilArcus 7y ago
The Azolla Event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event) was a cyclical bloom of duckweed-like ferns in the Arctic Ocean about 49 million years ago which drew down atmospheric CO2 by an order of magnitude, from 3500 ppm (responsible for the warm, verdant climate you think about when you imagine the Mesozoic era) to 650 ppm (responsible for the cold, cyclical glaciations you think about when you imagine the modern world), and in which vicinity it has remained ever since.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  (FWIW, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels pre-Industrial Revolution were about 280 ppm, and today are just over 400 ppm.)

refurb 7y ago

A beaver dams a river, flooding the shores and killing off the ecosystem. That’s natural. A group of humans do it and it’s unnatural?

amatecha 7y ago
Beaver dams don't kill off the ecosystem. Tons of other life forms make use of the newly-flooded area. I've personally watched herons perch upon the dam to catch the fish that are now swimming through the now-deeper waterway, for example.
- refurb 7y ago
  Same thing when humans build dams, right? We're creating new ecosystems.
  - amatecha 7y ago
    Is that a rhetorical question? There's quite some difference between a 200m tall concrete dam that holds 1m+ cubic decameters of water[0][1], and a bunch of twigs and logs jumbled in a creek that might be 2 meters high on average and actually house life like beavers, frogs, birds etc.[2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Bullards_Bar_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Bullards_Bar_Dam [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_reservoirs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_reserv... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_dam#Benefits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_dam#Benefits
    - refurb 7y ago
      So whether something is natural is a matter of scale? If we cut down 1,000 acres of trees for wood, is that natural? What about if a beetle infestation destroys a million acres? Still natural?
      - arbitrary_name 7y ago
        1) Was the beetle introduced to the area by humans (which is the case for a number of pests) 2) Were the trees killed made susceptible to the beetle because of heat stress, possibly caused by human driven climate change? (this is the case for some large scale infestations) Overall, the point is; yes, where imbalances in nature are triggered by natural causes, there is no issue with that (earthquake, hurricane, long term climate oscillation). Where imbalances in nature are triggered by humans, (IMHO) we should quite naturally regard that as a negative since a) we are intelligent enough to find ways of avoiding environmental degradation and b) Environmental degradation has both consequences to other forms of life as well as other humans. I guess you're playing devils advocate here, but you're hardly adding to the conversation.

mdavidn 7y ago

I loathe to point out that birds which never existed cannot suffer more than birds that do exist. Perhaps a better measure would be genetic diversity? A more diverse gene pool is more likely to survive the unexpected.