Comment by troyvit
2 years ago
It might, but the first time I heard it (put differently) it blew my mind. The way I heard it was: There is no such thing as equilibrium in nature. It's more about constant imbalances.
It made me re-think our whole approach to environmentalism. When we attempt to restore something, what are we restoring it to?
That's not true over short-to-medium timeframes though.
There absolutely are equilibria in nature, all over the place. The idea of that "constant imbalance" is always the rule is simply false.
Now, as a rule at some point in time either an external force will interrupt things, or an energy source that was maintaining the equilibrium will run out. So no equilibrium will last indefinitely.
But an equilibrium can be maintained for an awfully long time -- much, much, much longer than you or I will be alive. It's not like populations are always either growing or shrinking. Absent man, they're generally extremely constant (allowing for seasonal oscillations and similar).
And to answer your question: when we seek to restore something, it's generally to as close as we can to the state of equilibirum it would be at without the industrial effects of man -- a level of rich biodiversity. We're almost never completely successful, but we can still do our best.
> The idea of that "constant imbalance" is always the rule is simply false.
Modern ecology would like a word: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4188511/
A natural balance is the actual myth.
None of that paper contradicts anything I said.
That paper is about the often religious belief in a long-term, divinely ordained balance of nature, that is often considered "universal" or some kind of "law". And of course that's a myth.
I went out of my way to point out that equilibria can absolutely exist over the short and medium term. And I never used the term "balance of nature".
And the paper is even very clear that mathematically, equilibria absolutely do exist, obviously:
> ...it is still arbitrary just how much temporal variation can be accommodated within a process or phenomenon for it still to be termed equilibrial. Often the decision on whether to perceive an ecological process as equilibrial seems to be based on whether there is some sort of homeostatic regulation of the numbers, such as density-dependence, which A. J. Nicholson suggested as an argument against Elton's skepticism of the existence of a balance.
It merely points out that there is an "arbitrary" line that must be drawn between statistical fluctuation and the equilibrium. But if a population of a certain species in a certain area is always between, say, 400 and 600, while other species maintain their own ranges, I think we'd all agree that an equilibrium exists. It's a complete strawman to say that it has to be precisely 523 every year just because a range of 500 to 600 is "arbitrary".
The paper is describing that there is no long-term, worldwide, fixed balance of nature, which of course there's not. But nowhere does it suggest that a local ecosystem can't remain in a state of equilibrium over a short- and medium-term.
I think we want to restore it to a random walk with less bias in the "warming" direction.
Agreed - I was going to write more about how the imbalances within nature and the ebb and flow between the current state is always changing, just at scales larger than a single human life's observance.
Its amazing to me that so many ancient civiliaations had an understanding of cycles many thousands of years long, and understood that things change in cycles, as opposed to linear....
Take, for example the Pyramid of Ku at Chichenitza...
I went there in 2001 with a Mayan Elder named Hunbatz Men [0] -- He explained the nature of the Pyramid as the calendar:
The pyramid is broken into a number of architectural elements that define various aspects of the solar calendar: the indentations on the sides of the steps of the pyramid are divided to reflect the year, the levels represent divisional seasons, the steps inside the pyramid leading to the top is 72 and it represents the 72,000 year cycle of the plieades over head - the graduations in the face of the steps of the pyramid are the 28 days of their 13 month year. The top of the pyramid is the correct height that when you look down the groove on the top cube, they align perfectly to the horizon in all directions - and a bunch of of ther aspects of time tracking. Its an amazing celestial clock.
https://www.council-of-world-elders.de/en/members/hunbatz-me...
https://en.everybodywiki.com/Hunbatz_Men
Nice philosophizing, but too simple. There definitely are constants in the universe, and dynamic things can stay pretty constant over looong time scales, think of stars, or something complicated as a solar system.. and then it is about rate of change at all levels.. what's nothing for me is the lifetime for a fruit fly, and I live merely a split seconds of our Earth's age.
And then there are humans, always against change ;) But some is reasonable, e.g. when life threatening conditions change. I step out of my house in freezing temperatures, if I don't do something I'll freeze.. I don't start philosophizing about where to restore it to, just wanna be safe and warm again.
I don't get all the clever insights. Environmentalism is already such a stupid term imo, this is not about saving the environment at all, or trying to keep the world the same. It is just human warranted egoism, about saving us.
It's not philosophizing, it's ecology.[1]
Regarding stars and solar systems, over the lifespan of the universe those things are just blips.[2] In 110 trillion years the Milky Way will be down to about a hundred stars. That's a small fraction of the 10^10^120 years estimated to be the lifespan of the universe. So those aren't constants.
The only constant is decay (and C I guess). So I don't see what was too simple about what I said, or even how it was much different from what you said. There's no equilibrium to return to, and any environmental actions to try to restore that will have a problem.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4188511/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future