Re:Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
by Ma8ee on Thursday August 06, 2020 @12:49PM
(#24072750)
Ecosystems are delicate and fragile. But if you destroy one, there’s a good chance it very soon will be replaced with a new one, where the new niches are occupied by different species. At first it will be species that that aren’t very specialised, like rats and cockroaches. But after just a few million years you might have something as diverse and rich as the system you destroyed.
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Re:Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
by hinkley on Thursday August 06, 2020 @02:19PM
(#24073854)
I don't want highly specialized pigeons and rats, thank you.
And at any rate, specialization only works if the problems stay relatively stable, or temporary. If we aren't stopped/don't stop ourselves we will keep inventing new insults every ten years and nothing can adapt to anywhere near that rate of change.
You're also forgetting the Carboniferous period. It took 50 million years for anything to puzzle out how to benefit from surplus lignin. In 50 million years are we going to be around? In 50 million years is anyone going to remember that Alpha Centauri is a system humans used to live in (before we used it up)?