3 ms·

Adaptation can happen far faster than that, and even faster if facilitated further by conscious effort of humans - like tree planting but on specialized steroid

by loceng 3y ago

Adaptation can happen far faster than that, and even faster if facilitated further by conscious effort of humans - like tree planting but on specialized steroids; we could technically "seed bomb" areas with seed species that we know thrive in the newer conditions of the area, and even have missionaries on the ground who help cultivate a minimally adequate ecosystem for it to continue to spread on its own.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
I'm not sure we have the knowhow to engineer a minimally adequate ecosystem. It seems like every time we zoom in on an ecosystem we find that it's more complex than we thought. Biodiversity holds secrets which we have a much better shot at discovering than we do at inventing (e.g. novel protein structure and function). Committing to a large scale terraforming project means clobbering the unknown with the known and shutting the door on those secrets forever. It may be one day necessary but it's an outcome that we should avoid at all costs.
- loceng 3y ago
  We have developed some insights at least, for example a certain type of algae fed to cows reduces their methane released by something like 80% - so mass producing that food additive, ideally in non-harmful way to environment like monocrops cause, and getting that distributed to all cows [which will increase the cost of meat, of the highest nutrient-calorie dense food possible] could be one way to immediately reduce CO2 impacts; but at what externalized costs, if you are taking away-reducing too much of a necessary source of nutrients and caloric intake for certain demographics - and maybe that is more harmful in the short and long-term than executing on other strategies? The best solution, most efficient, and most harmless solution appears to be driving for abundance so more and more people have more money to pay for what's minimally necessary for products-services that follow minimally acceptable processes; raise the floor for everyone, but not while opening up major cracks hurting or killing off millions or potentially billions if a societal-economic systems collapse and ensuing chaos/disorder - virtue signalling it's for "the greater good" while killing off those who are out of sight and out of mind of the constituents voting them into power [assuming democratic-fair election process - even if gamed unethically to win, still needing to keep up appearances to their ideological mob voter base].

by loceng 3y ago

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

I'm not sure we have the knowhow to engineer a minimally adequate ecosystem. It seems like every time we zoom in on an ecosystem we find that it's more complex than we thought. Biodiversity holds secrets which we have a much better shot at discovering than we do at inventing (e.g. novel protein structure and function). Committing to a large scale terraforming project means clobbering the unknown with the known and shutting the door on those secrets forever. It may be one day necessary but it's an outcome that we should avoid at all costs.

loceng 3y ago
We have developed some insights at least, for example a certain type of algae fed to cows reduces their methane released by something like 80% - so mass producing that food additive, ideally in non-harmful way to environment like monocrops cause, and getting that distributed to all cows [which will increase the cost of meat, of the highest nutrient-calorie dense food possible] could be one way to immediately reduce CO2 impacts; but at what externalized costs, if you are taking away-reducing too much of a necessary source of nutrients and caloric intake for certain demographics - and maybe that is more harmful in the short and long-term than executing on other strategies? The best solution, most efficient, and most harmless solution appears to be driving for abundance so more and more people have more money to pay for what's minimally necessary for products-services that follow minimally acceptable processes; raise the floor for everyone, but not while opening up major cracks hurting or killing off millions or potentially billions if a societal-economic systems collapse and ensuing chaos/disorder - virtue signalling it's for "the greater good" while killing off those who are out of sight and out of mind of the constituents voting them into power [assuming democratic-fair election process - even if gamed unethically to win, still needing to keep up appearances to their ideological mob voter base].