“However, the likely mass extinction of K-strategists and the concomitant increase in r-selection might last for millions of years.”
I like learning about ecology and evolution, so personally I enjoy these kinds of thought experiments. But in the real world, isn’t it pretty unlikely that natural ecosystems will just keep humming along for another million years? I would guess that within just the next few hundred years, human civilization will have grown in power to the point where it can do what it likes with natural ecosystems:
perhaps we bulldoze the earth’s surface in order to cover it with solar panels, fusion power plants, and computronium?
perhaps we rip apart the entire earth for raw material to be used for the construction of a Dyson swarm?
more prosaically, maybe human civilization doesn’t expand to the stars, but still expands enough (and in a chaotic, unsustainable way) such that most natural habitats are destroyed
perhaps we create unaligned superintelligent AI which turns the universe into paperclips
perhaps humanity grows in power but also becomes more responsible and sustainable, and we reverse global warming using abundant clean energy powering technologies like carbon air capture, assorted geoengineering techniques, etc
perhaps humanity attains a semi-utopian civilization, and we decide to extensively intervene in the natural world for the benefit of nonhuman animals
etc
Some of those scenarios might be dismissable as the kind of “silly sci-fi speculation” mentioned by the longtermist-style meme below. But others seem pretty mundane, indeed “to be expected” even by the most conservative visions of the future. To me, the million-year impact of things like climate change only seems relevant in scenarios where human civilization collapses pretty soon, but in a way that leaves Earth’s biosphere largely intact (maybe if humans all died to a pandemic?).
“However, the likely mass extinction of K-strategists and the concomitant increase in r-selection might last for millions of years.”
I like learning about ecology and evolution, so personally I enjoy these kinds of thought experiments. But in the real world, isn’t it pretty unlikely that natural ecosystems will just keep humming along for another million years? I would guess that within just the next few hundred years, human civilization will have grown in power to the point where it can do what it likes with natural ecosystems:
perhaps we bulldoze the earth’s surface in order to cover it with solar panels, fusion power plants, and computronium?
perhaps we rip apart the entire earth for raw material to be used for the construction of a Dyson swarm?
more prosaically, maybe human civilization doesn’t expand to the stars, but still expands enough (and in a chaotic, unsustainable way) such that most natural habitats are destroyed
perhaps there will have been a nuclear war (or some other similarly devastating event, like the creation of mirror life that devastates the biosphere)
perhaps we create unaligned superintelligent AI which turns the universe into paperclips
perhaps humanity grows in power but also becomes more responsible and sustainable, and we reverse global warming using abundant clean energy powering technologies like carbon air capture, assorted geoengineering techniques, etc
perhaps humanity attains a semi-utopian civilization, and we decide to extensively intervene in the natural world for the benefit of nonhuman animals
etc
Some of those scenarios might be dismissable as the kind of “silly sci-fi speculation” mentioned by the longtermist-style meme below. But others seem pretty mundane, indeed “to be expected” even by the most conservative visions of the future. To me, the million-year impact of things like climate change only seems relevant in scenarios where human civilization collapses pretty soon, but in a way that leaves Earth’s biosphere largely intact (maybe if humans all died to a pandemic?).