And lo on Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:36:20 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake, saying:

> Phil Cook wrote:
>> Over the long term it has been stable
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "long term."  Is 10,000 years "long term"?

No.

>> (long-term) that we've been wiping out species and domesticating both  
>> fauna and flora and carrying them with us; and look at the consequences.
>
> OK, so you're talking about pre-human evolution, apparently.

200,000 years minimum for the first 'humans'

>> Talk to some of the Australians here about the introduction of  
>> non-native species to their country,
>
> Yes, because the Australians destroyed huge numbers of the native  
> species, but that doesn't count. :-)

I note the smiley, but I didn't say that didn't count; we have no idea  
what alterations the destruction of these species had. We just didn't know  
any better at the time.

>> I'm not saying we can't, and haven't, adapted to short-term alterations  
>> what I'm saying is that logically our best chances of survival is to  
>> maintain a system that we know we can survive in.
>
> I'll grant you this is a possibility, if you can't easily steer the  
> whole system.  I.e., this is true due to our ignorance of what would be  
> better and how to get it there.  If we were in a more-controlled  
> environment, it might not make sense.  Certainly a primitive lunar  
> colony could figure out ways of radically reworking the environment to  
> something more likely to long-term survival.

Agreed, but the original discussion was in relation to JVS "I never could  
understand the logic behind the insistence that ecosystem of the world,  
which has shifted radically in the past, should either globally or locally  
remain in any particular fixed state." I was simply trying to provide the  
logic.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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