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A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

bbc.com

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Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#11

Post by Biologist123 »

mactavish88 wrote: post #5

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and roads we make are made of materials we find on earth, similar to how birds build nests or ants make anthills. (Whether all the things we build are good and healthy for us and our environment is another story.) M…

Well done in getting this up immediately. Pieces like this BBC piece are either implicit or explicit propaganda to define “nature” as a world without humans. Even the word “freakosystem”, as novel as it is, sets up an implicit good/bad dichotomy.

Edit: If you on-board the assumption that all change is bad, you potentially open yourself up to a great deal of anxiety associated with that change.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#12

Post by Biologist123 »

faassen wrote: post #7

A good book about the related topic of novel urban ecosystems is "Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution" by Menno Schilthuizen. For urban ecosystems Schilthuizen argues we should accept it; cities are a new habitat anyway, and we should treasure the novel ecosystem that forms in them. For non-urban places where thriving existing ecosystems get changed completely due to introductions the picture…

If you set up (or more likely inherit) a story that change = loss, you will also onboard a needless eco-anxiety.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#13

Post by Ygg2 »

Biologist123 wrote: post #11
mactavish88 wrote: post #5

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and roads we make are made of materials we find on earth, similar to how birds build nests or ants make anthills. (Whether all the things we build are good and healthy for us and our environment is another story.) M…

Well done in getting this up immediately. Pieces like this BBC piece are either implicit or explicit propaganda to define “nature” as a world without humans. Even the word “freakosystem”, as novel as it is, sets up an implicit good/bad dichotomy. Edit: If you on-board the assumption that all change is bad, you potentially open yourself up to a great deal of anxiety associated with that change.

It goes beyond that. Depending on ecosystem and size of settlements human leaving may actually decrease bio diversity. Think it was Bulgaria or Romania, but with rural places that had their populations die out, also saw decrease in bio diversity.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#14

Post by binarymax »

eloisius wrote: post #10
mactavish88 wrote: post #5

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and roads we make are made of materials we find on earth, similar to how birds build nests or ants make anthills. (Whether all the things we build are good and healthy for us and our environment is another story.) M…

Was it George Carlin that joked something like “maybe the earth conjured up humans in order to put all this plastic in its crust for some purpose we don’t understand”?

He certainly decried the use of “all-natural” labels for products, because “everything comes from nature!”

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#15

Post by PeterStuer »

Over here forests were planted to drain the swamps and provide hunting grounds 300 years ago. Today, self accredited "eco-experts" double and triple dipping in EU "green" subsidies want to cut down all the forests and burn them off in pellet form in Dutch incinerators to selectively and arbitrarily restore the "original" ecosystem.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#16

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

mactavish88 wrote: post #5

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and roads we make are made of materials we find on earth, similar to how birds build nests or ants make anthills. (Whether all the things we build are good and healthy for us and our environment is another story.) M…

I completely agree with disregarding the man/nature dichotomy, it’s complete nonsense. On the other hand, tool use and tool construction aren’t exactly the same as beaver dams, anthills, or bird nests because the particulars of the tool aren’t at all hardwired, which implies that the tool might have unexpected ramifications for the environment that would have otherwise been detected if the behavior had appeared over evolutionary timescales. A wariness towards self-conscious human ecosystem modification isn’t exactly unwarranted.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#17

Post by Ygg2 »

eloisius wrote: post #10
mactavish88 wrote: post #5

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and roads we make are made of materials we find on earth, similar to how birds build nests or ants make anthills. (Whether all the things we build are good and healthy for us and our environment is another story.) M…

Was it George Carlin that joked something like “maybe the earth conjured up humans in order to put all this plastic in its crust for some purpose we don’t understand”?

Maybe that's just the sidequest. The real quest is getting multi planetar.

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#18

Post by gman83 »

mactavish88 wrote: post #5

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and roads we make are made of materials we find on earth, similar to how birds build nests or ants make anthills. (Whether all the things we build are good and healthy for us and our environment is another story.) M…

It reminds me of people who won't eat certain foods because it contains "too many chemicals".

Re: A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

#20

Post by dodslaser »

Biologist123 wrote: post #11
mactavish88 wrote: post #5

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and roads we make are made of materials we find on earth, similar to how birds build nests or ants make anthills. (Whether all the things we build are good and healthy for us and our environment is another story.) M…

Well done in getting this up immediately. Pieces like this BBC piece are either implicit or explicit propaganda to define “nature” as a world without humans. Even the word “freakosystem”, as novel as it is, sets up an implicit good/bad dichotomy. Edit: If you on-board the assumption that all change is bad, you potentially open yourself up to a great deal of anxiety associated with that change.

While this is technically correct, there is an important distinction to be made that we are the only species capable of even understanding the ramifications of our actions on an ecosystem, and choosing to change our behavior to have less (or more) of an impact on the environment we are in.

Any species could drive another species to extinction, or carry them from one location to another, but no other species are actively choosing to do so.

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