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Ecological Doom Loops: Why Ecosystem Collapses May Occur Sooner Than Expected (phys.org) 150

Posted by EditorDavid from the games-of-doom dept.
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: An article in Nature Sustainability suggests that models may have underestimated the impact of warming on ecosystems. Two main reasons for this are the difficulty in accounting for variability and combining climate change with other pressure factors: for instance, pollution, excessive exploitation of species, deforestation due to increased demographics growth and meat consumption, ecosystem fragmentation, also harm wildlife.
After using software to simulate over 70,000 ecosystem scenarios, the two professors and a postdoctoral researcher issued this warning in The Conversation: Around the world, rainforests are becoming savanna or farmland, savanna is drying out and turning into desert, and icy tundra is thawing. Indeed, scientific studies have now recorded "regime shifts" like these in more than 20 different types of ecosystem where tipping points have been passed. Around the world, more than 20% of ecosystems are in danger of shifting or collapsing into something different.

These collapses might happen sooner than you'd think. Humans are already putting ecosystems under pressure in many different ways — what we refer to as stresses. And when you combine these stresses with an increase in climate-driven extreme weather, the date these tipping points are crossed could be brought forward by as much as 80%. This means an ecosystem collapse that we might previously have expected to avoid until late this century could happen as soon as in the next few decades. That's the gloomy conclusion of our latest research, published in Nature Sustainability.

Human population growth, increased economic demands, and greenhouse gas concentrations put pressures on ecosystems and landscapes to supply food and maintain key services such as clean water. The number of extreme climate events is also increasing and will only get worse. What really worries us is that climate extremes could hit already stressed ecosystems, which in turn transfer new or heightened stresses to some other ecosystem, and so on. This means one collapsing ecosystem could have a knock-on effect on neighbouring ecosystems through successive feedback loops: an "ecological doom-loop" scenario, with catastrophic consequences...

There is no way to restore collapsed ecosystems within any reasonable timeframe. There are no ecological bailouts. In the financial vernacular, we will just have to take the hit.
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Ecological Doom Loops: Why Ecosystem Collapses May Occur Sooner Than Expected More

Ecological Doom Loops: Why Ecosystem Collapses May Occur Sooner Than Expected

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  • Do you mean... (Score:4, Informative)

    by JoeDuncan ( 874519 ) on Saturday July 01, 2023 @04:02PM (#63649344)
    ... a cascade failure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    • Ah, yes. I suppose "doom loop" is the latest way of redefining what we already knew about and had a perfectly good name for.
      • The cool thing about doom loops is they drive the economy and the population down to levels that terminate the loop before it self-terminates. Very Tao.

  • what me worry (Score:5, Funny)

    by cstacy ( 534252 ) on Saturday July 01, 2023 @04:11PM (#63649364)

    Why worry? A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!

    Oh, wait, the AIs will Kill All Humans before Musk makes it happen....Oh, well!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 )
      Musk hasn't really made anything :"happen". He's an overrated oligarch and a parasite. He didn't "invent" Tesla, he was an an investor that sucks so much wealth off the company it made him the words richest asshole. Just think what those billions would do if they were not sucked off the company in R&D, wages and infrastructure. His promise of a self driving vehicle has been "next year" for a decade, and it's still not even close. Twitter is a smoldering dumpster fire and his fanboyz are stall wait

      • > Just think what those billions would do if they were not sucked off the company in R&D, wages and infrastructure

        They could have been used to return massive dividends to shareholders!

      • What he did do is ask three questions that the answer was "no" to and used his considerable money to overcome the naysaying. Another guy did that recently to different results. But in these cases, there was essentially, no solid or sustainable reasoning that said, electric cars must be "golf carts" and rockets must be thrown into the ocean and internet access must be an exclusive club (that's my opinion, use your ISP argument here). He used his money to show this was simply not the case. Now that's great. B

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      Yes, we need swarms of little autonomous, solar-powered planet remediation bots that do things like turn non-native plants into mulch and plant native species in their place.

    • We will evolve into beings of light and energy before Musk makes that happen. They guy can't run a micro-blog website [usatoday.com], much less a space colony.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Oh, wait, the AIs will Kill All Humans

      Four year life span.*

      *About the same as the Windows update life cycle.

  • There is no way to restore collapsed ecosystems within any reasonable timeframe

    I assume that's not from the paper, because we have literally restored collapsed ecosystems before.

    • Um, yeah, we've done that in the garden after we bought the house. Using resources from OUTSIDE the garden.
      But when the environment is the whole planet... well, where do you get extra resources from?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        As far as the Evangelicals are concerned, it isn't a problem. They figure if they fuck up the planet hard enough and quickly enough, they'll get Jesus to return. However, it might not go as expected:

        Trumpets blare, the clouds part, Jesus descends majestically waving to greet the people all prepared for the Rapture, He lands...

        JC: JC here, how are ya (greets and meets)

        The faithful are all a'twitter.

        JC looks at his iWatch: Well folks, it's been real, gotta run, I'm a busy guy.

        Trumpets blare, the clouds part,

      • The entire earth isn't going to collapse. Turn your brain on.

        • Not 100%, but enough to make human life a miserable struggle for millions of years.
          There were quite a few major extinctions throughout Earth's history, not to mention countless smaller ones (either localized or global, but not as sharp).
          There is evidence that 1.2 million years ago there were under 20K humans on Earth.
          https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]

          The point is, there comes a time (or maybe we're already past it) where reversing the process becomes impossible.

          • What disaster are you thinking of that will make life a miserable struggle for millions of years? Be specific.

            • Pick one.
              Ocean acidification; oceanic current breakdown (e.g. Gulf Stream); water level increase; excessively strong weather events (storms, tornadoes, monsoons, floods); ozone layer depletion; carbon dioxide level increases; bee die-off; biodiversity reduction; and so on.

              Before mass famine, there will be wars, and they have a good chance of fucking up the planet way faster, especially if nukes are involved, and before you say "nobody will be crazy enough to use them", just remember 4 out of 5 (or 5 out of

              • Yes, pick one, and let's examine it. You think the ozone layer depletion is going to make life a miserable struggle for millions of years? Why do you think that? The ozone layer is showing signs of healing: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/t... [europa.eu]

                • It was just a non-exhaustive list of things that have a good chance of happening. You cherry-picked one, linked an article and proved me wrong. Congrats?
                  But if you dig deeper (in the same article, no less), you'll find that there are other ozone depletion causes, such as large forest wildfires. Interestingly, the ozone hole size started slowly increasing year-over-year since 2017-2018.

                  • ok, choose one that you think actually has a good chance of happening, and provide some evidence to support your thoughts. We can investigate it. Make firm points, not weak ones.

                    You cherry-picked one, linked an article and proved me wrong.

                    Yeah, you shouldn't have included it in your list. Fact check your own stuff before other people do. That's how you avoid talking nonsense.

                    • Um... you had to keep reading that article. You had proven yourself wrong. Appreciate the attempt, though.
                      And I don't have to prove anything to you (anymore), given that you compromised yourself. Good luck with the future of the human race!

                    • Cognitive biases on full reveal. Stop it or stop posting. Preferably stop your cognitive biases, because your posts are kind of interesting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Oh? Not that I am aware of. Got any examples where that actually worked long-term?

    • https://www.amazon.com/After-I... [amazon.com]

      Rapid climate change has occurred before. In fact, it also happened 130,000 years ago, and then went the other way about 100,000 years ago.

      You might also look up Green Sahara. Oh heck, I'll do it for you.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      In fact if you look here

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      You can see the climate has been psychotic for the last two million years.

      If the kids live on the coast tell them to move uphill. Or get a houseboat.

      • Firstly - not so rapid...

        Secondly - the sea levels rised then a lot. 30m rise was not a problem then. Imagine it now with bilions of people impacted.

        Thirdly - most likely there were catastrophic events triggering it like major volcanoes eruptions etc. do we see any such events now? Now. The best match we have
        is CO2 level in the atmosphere and this seems to be our work.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        You might also look up Green Sahara.

        You might want to look up what happened to the people who lived in the Green Sahara after the African Humid Period ended.

  • That becomes clearer and clearer. A pity really. Things could have worked well on this planet, but apparently not with the current mix of people we get here.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Maybe. It seems to me as if these interactions should already be a part of the climate models. If they aren't, someone's just building an overly simple model because it's easier.

    • It's OK. ChatGPT will soon replace us all anyway.

    • I shit you not, aliens pull the puppet strings of the Russian mafia, who pulls the puppet strings of a giant cabal of Satanists, who pull the puppet strings of everyone else influential. This is really happening, but humans left to their own devices would not have caused it on their own. Maybe they'll mod me up funny in irony, or maybe they'll mod me down, or maybe they'll just ignore this post to try to play it cool since I called them out directly, but this is really happening and we need to get better at

      • Seems like if a species can travel halfway across the galaxy that they would have more direct means of destroying our planet. We can't even visit a nearby star yet we can nuke the shit out of this planet anytime we want to. We could even nuke Mars or Venus if we were so motivated.

  • Sh*t in a 10kg bag? I once listed to a peak prosperity podcast (before the host went off the deep end) by an ecologists by the name of Dr William Rees who explained it simply. For every human on earth, you basically displace an equivalent (or more) bio mass.

  • I'd love to be wrong, but I'm afraid that even if we hit 'net zero' tomorrow our climate and ecosystem would still be in a death spiral. And I'm nigh on certain that we have no chance of reaching net zero for a minimum of 10 years, and probably more like 20 or 30. If civilization even lasts that long...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

      We'll hit net zero when there's no fossil fuels to burn anymore - because we've burned them all.

  • Tick-tock, time whispers its plea,
    No longer can we rely on renewables solely.
    Let's broaden our horizons, embrace the diverse,
    Nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, a low-carbon universe.

    With urgency we must act, the clock won't wait,
    Diversify our options, before it's too late.
    For time is running out, a truth we must face,
    Embrace all clean energies, in this urgent race.

  • Please stop studying how bad the climate crisis is and study:
    Are current efforts to address it working? If so when will temperatures stop rising? If not, do we need to double efforts or triple efforts?
    And most of all tell us if we need to step out of the capitalist paradigm and spend money even if it means not making a profit. [genolve.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Please stop studying how bad the climate crisis is and study:

      Are current efforts to address it working?

      No. [noaa.gov]

      If so when will temperatures stop rising?

      That's like digging a hole and asking, "When will this thing stop getting deeper?" It depends on how fast we are digging and when we stop. The short answer is anything from 20 years from now to centuries in the future, it depends on us.

      If not, do we need to double efforts or triple efforts?

      Getting started would be a start.

      And most of all tell us if we need to step out of the capitalist paradigm and spend money even if it means not making a profit.

      The problem isn't economics, it's politics. Market economies would prevent pollution if the producers had to pay for the consequences of polluting, but they don't. It's an "externality". So I can maximize the profits of my factory by

  • Who are positive their wealth will insulate them from the troubles.

    And for a while it surely will.

    So we let them continue to destroy the planet, socializing the losses and privatizing the profits.

    Meanwhile everyone on slashdot, as far as I can tell, is mad because Biden wants to forgive student loans.

    Forgiving loans : bad! moral hazard ! it's the end of society !
    Companies and billionaires destroying the planet : don't regulate them ! capitalism ! Freedom !

  • The greening of the Earth (Score:3)

    by ishmaelflood ( 643277 ) on Saturday July 01, 2023 @07:23PM (#63649754)

    Rather than relying on flaky models, NASA actually measures this stuff using satellites.

    https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g... [nasa.gov]

  • In the year 2030 there will be no plants growing in earth

    • Well, the good news is, if that happens, people will stop emitting greenhouse gases!

    • More realistically, in the year 700,002,023 CE there will be no complex life left on the planet at all. By the year 4,000,000,000 CE the whole place is likely to be a whiff of plasma in the Sun's outer atmosphere.

      I would like to keep things from now until 700,002,023 as pleasant as possible for my descendants, though. We really ought to be aiming for that. An artificially static environment, fighting off entropy for as long as possible, isn't a crazy idea, it's the only way to optimize a long term future

  • studying panetary-scale climate engineering and geoengineering. We're going to need it.

    Not anytime soon, though. We're not going to actually do ANYTHING about this until things are bad. Really, really, REALLY bad. Large regions becoming uninhabitable. Large migrations toward the poles. Entire breadbasket regions collapsing. Millions of people cooking to death. Until that sort of stuff happens, we won't lift a finger. A third of our species has been programmed to deny any sort of climate change whatsoeve

    • Not anytime soon, though. We're not going to actually do ANYTHING about this until things are bad. Really, really, REALLY bad. Large regions becoming uninhabitable. Large migrations toward the poles. Entire breadbasket regions collapsing. Millions of people cooking to death. Until that sort of stuff happens, we won't lift a finger.

      All that stuff is happening now except for millions dying all at once due to heat. There are already climate migrations away from the equator.

  • It's just amazing all the ways you can die. Surely, we can find more of them before you finish reading this post.

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