Carrying Capacity is an ecological concept that has grown in importance over the last century, particularly as it relates to the sustainability of human populations.
Really enjoying your series! One correction, in White Sand's New Mexico the National Park Service found human footprints dated to 22,000 years old. So Human made it to North America before the last Ice age. However, I still believe hunting and ecological cascades such as the use of fire doomed the Megafauna in North America.
These nuanced takes on an old Malthus vs Cornucopian argument are really direly in need of digging up and sorting out. One thing that has got my interest lately is the ecological succession and recolonization that takes place after a large volcanic eruption?
One interesting case comes to mind of Ascension Island, a mid Atlantic ridge stratovolcano, which Darwin visited in his voyages. It was a desolate volcanic island with little life with a lack of colonization of plants and animals, because of its location in the middle of the south Atlantic. Darwin encouraged sailors from all over the British Empire to bring in as many different plants as they could. Now Ascension island boast a high biodiversity cloud forest at its higher elevations, as well as impressive greenery.
I was about to cite the White Sands research, and was happy to see someone already had! Here’s one of the more definitive papers for context as well in science. (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adh5007)
Enjoying this series Neal, it's giving me another much-needed perspective to seeing things.
Glad you're writing here and I hope you keep it up between endeavours. Have always been inspired by the work you've been doing whenever it's popped up on my radar.
Typo in last paragraph where you're talking about typos, "I'll" not i'll". Will be waiting by the postbox for your thank you letter to arrive. Oh shit we don't have one.
Hi Neal, I love that you came at this challenge from the perspective you did. Actually, modern economics supports this kind of result if you take both goods and services into account. The thing is that ingenuity, complexity, interdependence, complementarity, are nearly unlimited. :-) It doesn't give us a free pass, it means that we need to focus on what matters and intensify what can be, not what cannot....
Neal,
Really enjoying your series! One correction, in White Sand's New Mexico the National Park Service found human footprints dated to 22,000 years old. So Human made it to North America before the last Ice age. However, I still believe hunting and ecological cascades such as the use of fire doomed the Megafauna in North America.
These nuanced takes on an old Malthus vs Cornucopian argument are really direly in need of digging up and sorting out. One thing that has got my interest lately is the ecological succession and recolonization that takes place after a large volcanic eruption?
One interesting case comes to mind of Ascension Island, a mid Atlantic ridge stratovolcano, which Darwin visited in his voyages. It was a desolate volcanic island with little life with a lack of colonization of plants and animals, because of its location in the middle of the south Atlantic. Darwin encouraged sailors from all over the British Empire to bring in as many different plants as they could. Now Ascension island boast a high biodiversity cloud forest at its higher elevations, as well as impressive greenery.
I was about to cite the White Sands research, and was happy to see someone already had! Here’s one of the more definitive papers for context as well in science. (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adh5007)
That’s a great example I wonder that birds didn’t populate it with seed tho
Enjoying this series Neal, it's giving me another much-needed perspective to seeing things.
Glad you're writing here and I hope you keep it up between endeavours. Have always been inspired by the work you've been doing whenever it's popped up on my radar.
Typo in last paragraph where you're talking about typos, "I'll" not i'll". Will be waiting by the postbox for your thank you letter to arrive. Oh shit we don't have one.
Hi Neal, I love that you came at this challenge from the perspective you did. Actually, modern economics supports this kind of result if you take both goods and services into account. The thing is that ingenuity, complexity, interdependence, complementarity, are nearly unlimited. :-) It doesn't give us a free pass, it means that we need to focus on what matters and intensify what can be, not what cannot....
Really enjoyed your take on this one Niel. Thanks for bringing important nuance the conversation.
Thanks Matt!