Saturday, May 19, 2012
Fragile
Fine example of the idiocy that results when you don't think in terms of feedback and cycles, when your mind can only imagine linear extrapolations and rigid couplings.
Nonsense. Seeds get transported between islands all the time by those same birds, and by wind and water and bugs. Different trees try to grow in different places all the time. Despite those disruptions, which have been happening for millions of years, the manta rays and the birds are still around. Why are they still around? Because they are able to "cruise" a different coastline when the pickings get slim on one island. Because animals can explore new territory directly, and plants can send out seeds to explore new territory in the next generation. Because they're ALIVE, goddammit.
If nature worked in the rigid and dead way these "researchers" think it does, all of these animals and plants would have died millions of years ago, and there wouldn't be any humans to "research" anything. Nature would in fact be rigid and dead. In other words: The existence of "scientists" proves that the "scientists" are wrong. If they were right, they wouldn't exist.
One of the longest ecological interaction chains ever documented sheds light on how human disturbance of the natural world may lead to widespread, yet largely invisible, disruption of ecosystems.
Through analysis ...... the researchers showed that replacing native trees with non-native palms led to about five times fewer roosting seabirds (they seemed to dislike palms' simple and easily wind-swayed canopies), which led to fewer bird droppings to fertilize the soil below, fewer nutrients washing into surrounding waters, smaller and fewer plankton in the water and fewer hungry manta rays cruising the coastline.
Such a complex ecosystem cascade prompted the researchers to warn of the fragility of nature's unrecognized interplays.
Nonsense. Seeds get transported between islands all the time by those same birds, and by wind and water and bugs. Different trees try to grow in different places all the time. Despite those disruptions, which have been happening for millions of years, the manta rays and the birds are still around. Why are they still around? Because they are able to "cruise" a different coastline when the pickings get slim on one island. Because animals can explore new territory directly, and plants can send out seeds to explore new territory in the next generation. Because they're ALIVE, goddammit.
If nature worked in the rigid and dead way these "researchers" think it does, all of these animals and plants would have died millions of years ago, and there wouldn't be any humans to "research" anything. Nature would in fact be rigid and dead. In other words: The existence of "scientists" proves that the "scientists" are wrong. If they were right, they wouldn't exist.
Labels: the broken circle
¶ 4:39 AM
