The ‘balance of nature’ is an enduring concept. But it’s wrong
nationalgeographic.com
nationalgeographic.com
But as pointed out in the article, it is not true. Ecologies change and fall out of equilibrium with or without human intervention. That is not balance.
"Homeostasis means dynamical systems have fixed points in state space" is something that's been taught in american highschool biology since at least the mid-90s. (though they usually take more words to say the "fixed points ..." bit)
Do you not think things which are balanced should remain so unless acted upon by an outside force?
Since "nature" as a concept tends to include everything except human activity, the implication of "balance of nature" is that it will remain in stasis unless acted upon by humans, which, as the article has pointed out, is not accurate.
The net effect is what is important. A complex, interconnected and ever-changing system like nature cannot be evaluated so easily. You can evaluate the 'state' at a particular 'point in time', but there is no way to know if the equilibrium has been disturbed.
tops spin, and are balanced.
a sine wave is constantly changing and is balanced.
dynamic systems whose overall behavior is constant
I interpreted the article as advocating for a more hands-on approach to conservation. There is a feeling among many people that if we just leave nature alone and don't create global warming, it will be great. But that is not true.
Many people make the argument "we need to stop fucking up nature so that our kids can experience it". But the point of the article is that sometimes "not fucking up" is not enough.
Which, of course, is true.
So strange we don't think of ourselves as being part of what created us and would die without.
Humans behavior is not an external force. When we destroy nature that is nature destroying nature, as it always has.
Why does the land contend with the sea?
Is there an avenging power in nature?
Not one force, but two?
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150909-21st-cent...
It came across to me as arguing for stronger conservation efforts, because even if we manage to stop human-led global warming, that doesn’t mean ecologies will just stick around.
My best guess — if one considers that Fox News is quite the poster child of climate change denial/dismissal/minimization, and that they have quite a strong observable record of promoting attacks on just about any mention of human-influenced climate change/warming with snowballs in Congress and other seemingly silly arguments about how the earth has had ice ages and warm periods and everything that's happening now is natural, one might find reason to suspect a piece published by an entity controlled by the same entity that controls Fox News that seems to push a similar narrative—nature isn't static, climate change is natural, systems change over time, it never stays the same, the present state of change is not our fault ... ergo, don't worry about it!
</tinfoil_hat>
Again, that's my best guess at what the parent was attempting to imply. I'd imagine they see it's a bit like how Sinclair Media forces these opinion pieces to be delivered by "trusted" local news anchors/personalities, all obviously engineered to manufacture and spread a certain political POV to a local audience, even though it's not actually local opinion in any way—it's simply a piece forced down on subsidiaries by a controlling parent company.
The current warm period is highly unusual and probably unstable, although AGW may prolong it. Things change.
An atom has a set number of protons, neutrons, and electrons, which will not change unless acted upon by an outside force.
And what exactly are the 'outside forces' when it comes to the closed system which we refer to as 'nature'?
The concept of “balance of nature” is generally associated with the environmental movement, and I too thought so until I watched Curtis’ documentary. Here is a quote from the summary in the Wikipedia article:
> However, this was opposed by many people within the environmental movement, since the model did not allow for people to change their values to stabilise the world, and they argued that the model tried to maintain and enforce the current political hierarchy. Arthur Tansley who had invented the term ecosystem, had once accused Field Marshal Jan Smuts of the "abuse of vegetational concepts". Smuts had invented a philosophy called holism, where everyone had a 'rightful place', which was to be managed by the white race. The 70s protestors claimed that the same conceptual abuse of the supposed natural order was occurring, that it was really being used for political control.
The article subject of this discussion, from National Geographic, has much less substance to it but this is the part I think reflects the point that a blind adherence to that concept will actually damage the enviroment:
> But the most obvious, and pressing, manifestation is the looming climate crisis, says Corinne Zimmerman, a psychologist at Illinois State University. While the vast majority of scientists agree that efforts to address climate change must involve human action, a public misconception about nature being in balance could inhibit progress. “If nature is all robust and fine, she'll take care of herself, we don't have to do anything about our carbon footprint,” she said. “It's a very naive understanding of nature.”
This article in NatGeo is not detailed enough but it’s quick to read, so I would recommend anyone interested in protecting the environment to take a quick look at it, and in any case watch Adam Curtis’ documentary where he gives this idea a better grounding and shows how things end up not as intendend. We can not base the fight against the destruction of our natural environment on misconceptions.
In the words of (fictional) astronaut Mark Watney[1], we are going to have to “science the shit out of this”.
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mark+watney+science+the+shit+out+o...