If humans went extinct the planet would find balance.
Not for a while
When the COVID shutdown happened nature started returning to industrialized and commerce stained areas in a matter of weeks.
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‘Balance’ is a human concept. The planet will get by fine. The only relevant question is whether humans will.
Balance is absolutely not a human concept.
‘Balance’ in the meaning you intend is absolutely a human concept. Life doesn’t give a F about ‘balance’, it just adjusts to the current situation. Conditions change? A few species here and there go extinct, and new ones appear to fill the space. It’s humans who have come up with the concept of ‘balance’. And we’re not wrong! If we want to avoid going extinct, we need to not throw the environment totally out of whack like it’s going right now. But if we mess it up? ‘Balance’ goes out the window, humanity goes extinct, and life on Earth goes on without us. ‘Balance’ matters to nobody but humans.
Life doesn’t give an F about balance
you speak with the confident wrongness of someone who has no scientific understanding of natural cycles, equilibriiums, self-limiting reproductive rates, ecology, or biology. have you heard of chemistry? equilibriums?
you are confusing a linguistic object , the word “balance” (like from an Oxford dictionary) with empirically observable, falsifiable hypotheses which are well established in environmental science. humans are late arrivals to the millennia of life systems on earth, and the first thing they did was begin destroying balanced ecosystems to grow surplus foods, exert population pressures on other species, reshape rivers and lakes, clearcut forests, and general terraform the shit out of everything, other creatures be damned.
your comment suggests a stunningly anthropocentric hubris and a total ignorance to eons of geological time preceding homo sapiens which humans came along and completely fucked by rapidly terra forming the planet. go tell a black rhino or a dodo that only humans care about balance.
humans cause imbalance in nature, it’s literally our whole thing we do. transform the environment by whatever means possible, dominate other life forms to extinction if we feel like it, overcome natural limits or push others to extreme boundaries.
You’re both using different definitions of that word. But also, you’re anthropomorphizing the biosphere, which seems to be what the other person is mainly talking about. Yeah, it obviously is affected by human activity, but to say that it “cares” doesn’t make sense for an idea like the entire biosphere.
Great, you missed my entire point.
me missing your point doesn’t make your arguments correct. you are factually mistaken in your framing.
Yeah, no. Fuck off with your condescending bullshit. I’m not getting into a discussion with somebody who opens with insults and can’t remain civil.
I call BS on at least some of those claims. Citation or GTFO
The mosquito one is absolutely BS, there’s 6k+ species of mosquitoes but only like a couple bite humans
The bats and shit will be fine, it’s time to eradicate mosquitoes!
Agreed. There is a method that is simple, cheap, and non-toxic (to everything else).
BTI? checks link. Yeahh bti.
Also fucks up fungus gnats
I was gonna comment for anyone who didn’t want to read the schpeel that it was just mosquito dunks (or BTI) and any plant parent knows about them.
In all honesty, the article said mosquitos in general, not just the ones that bite humans.
There are many types of mosquitoes, but only a few suck blood. It’s the bloodsuckers they’re talking about when they say no one would miss them.
I can tolerate most pests, even cockroaches, but I draw the line at bedbugs. Don’t care if they have any purpose, just fuck them
What about ticks?
I’m sure they somehow contribute to the stability, but I try so hard to ignore it.
It’s spring (your hemisphere may vary) and time to set out tick tubes!
Tick tubes are cardboard tubes stuffed with cotton fluff soaked in permethrin. Mice use the cotton to make nests. The permethrin kills ticks on the mice, reducing the tick load of the area. It doesn’t hurt the mice, and is much more targeted than just spraying the whole yard for insects.
…and if humans went extinct all species would benefit.
That’s usually the case, but it’s just not true for mosquitos. Entomologist quoted in this Nature article:
“If we eradicated them tomorrow, the ecosystems where they are active will hiccup and then get on with life. Something better or worse would take over.”
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I probably don’t care about those plants or anything they depend on.
At least not enough to think mosquitoes are worth it.
I couldn’t give less of a fuck about roaches, they ain’t bother me, I ain’t bother them. But mosquitoes? Purpose of no purpose, fuck them right to hell.
We are the only species out of the ecologic system, we need the nature, but the nature don’t need us.
I thought some of the specific mosquitoes that prey on humans can be killed with little side effects. Or is that just my cognitive bias dreaming of a better world
Nothing evolves to have a purpose, something just mutated by chance that happens to serve a beneficial function to the environment and other organisms
Also I’m pretty sure birds, bats and plants can eat other bugs
What’s the statistics on bug food for birds and plants ?
Statistics on bug food??? For birds and plants??? Do you want the whole thing dumped here in the comments? Or do you mean “do birds eat insects”? Yes. A lot.
Diets are highly species specific, but mosquitos are generally less than 3% of the diet for most birds and bats. Too small, don’t fly around at the correct time of day/night, and pretty agile, so they aren’t supper important for most birds and bats.
Also, usually they hatch in the billions all at once and die within a few weeks so there’s a very limited amount of time that they even can be preyed on as food. Their strategy (many of them, not all species) is to overwhelm any predators with numbers.
If screworms went extinct there wouldn’t be any animals starving… same with a lot of pests. guinea worm for example.
Species do not exist for a purpose. They are important in their ecosystem, that’s all.
And even if they don’t have a role, that doesn’t make their existence any less valuable.
We’ve successfully extinctified hundreds of species through our very excellent human-centric activities. I’ve yet to see any environmental fallout from it. Where are the secondary and tertiary extinctions of the animals that depended on the first lot we rubbed out? Where are the corpses left in the wake of the dodo’s disappearance? Big Environmental Science™ won’t tell you, because they can’t. They’re shills and liars, all of 'em. Rich elites who make bank on selling textbooks at a 1,200% markup.
Who’s up for starting a truthseeker podcast with me?
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