Quote Originally Posted by TurnyBright
There is incontrovertible evidence as to the indestructibility of the "ecosystem."

An ecosystem is nothing more than a stage upon which biotic factors interact with abiotic factors. "Ecosystem" is a word with no direct physical meaning, it is simply a label for a very general sort of natural earthly phenomenon.

The word seems to have come to mean "place where plants and animals can live without being killed by human garbage or human interference," and this is simply not accurate, as the human race is OBVIOUSLY part of the earth's ecosystem just as much as the rocks or the grass or the tapeworms are. This leads me to believe that there is no validity to the claim that human conceptions of "right" or "wrong" or "nice" or "weak" or "strong" or "detrimental." There is only what survives and what does not, and that is an inarguable rule of the natural world.

Human beings, as surviving members of earth's ecosystem, have naturally struggled to our current status as reigning large animal on the planet (in our eyes) through the seemingly impenetrable forces of nature that exist solely to our "detriment." We got here by destroying (replacing) that which could not be adapted into our lifestyle. We have made our ecosystem at the expense of every ecosystem on earth which does (or did) not include us.


It is true that current actions by the human race to increase comfort and allow for population and modern living are irreversibly and drastically altering the ecosystem of which we find ourselves living, and it is this ongoing alteration that you label the "hurt" we're putting on "our" environment.

It is not OUR environment. It is THE environment, and it will stay that way whether human beings are around to grok it or not. As the character Ian Malcolm put it, life will find a way. Whatever a closed-minded scientist will tell you, there are no defining characteristics an environment MUST possess to sustain life. Oxygen, which is indispensable to human life, will stifle and kill obligate anaerobic organisms.

When we've altered the environment so drastically that our species and possibly many others fall into extinction, life will either persevere or die out and redevelop by whatever process it arose in the first place. You can count on that.
What you basically explained is whatever is contained in a defined area is an ecosystem. In the sense of technicality you are correct. Of course you should assume when people refer to ecosystems being destroyed, they refer to the contents and quality of an ecosystem.

In order to have an ecosystem, it must be inhabited by some form of life. To say there is no defining characteristics an environment must possess in order to sustain life. Um dude, outerspace. Have you seen plants growing amongst the matter? Perhaps they're boogey man flying around the milky way. Of course there needs to be an environment that fosters chemical reactions in order for an ecosystem to exist.

As long as that it contains living organisms, an ecosystem will exist. If there is no life, there is no ecosystem. Perhaps you are refering to the flexibility of how an ecosystem adapts to changes in the environment, I very much agree with you with case example Mt. St Helen when various ecosystems were altered by contents within being destroyed. Thanks to the general atmosphere where wind can bring seeds to foster new life, if you take away the atmosphere, there is no life. That's proven dude.