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b_sharp2/26/2012 8:11:44 pm PST

re: #263 freetoken

I’m not writing off the magnitude of changes that humans have, or can, make.

However, I still stand by my contention that we discount the future sufficiently for all of this to not really force us to change.

Cascading failures in the biosphere are painted for the doomer scenarios, but as I’ve written before I’ve not seen any evidence to show that this will happen. I have no doubt that when one looks at the effects the Milankovitch cycles have wrought all during the Pleistocene that the changes were not due just to physical (atmospheric, water) changes but also due to interactions with the biosphere. Yet trying to tease out the causality of life’s changes during any period in Earth’s past is difficult, and many unknowns remain.

What has been shown, to the best of my knowledge, is that changing precipitation globally changes the flora distribution, and that locally changes to the landscape plants can change local precipitation (see studies done in the Amazon about cloud formation.)

Have you read anything by James Lovelock and homeostasis?