[sambal]

I’d love to read more on this humid forest climax narrative from any credible sources, it sounds interesting and I don’t know anything about this sort of thing really, but at the same time it’s tripping my “just-so” sensors something heavy!

[pvaldes]

I bet that you will find plenty of credible sources if you study biology and learn some basic ecology (ecology as science, not as ideology). None of what I'm saying is a secret and is also easily verifiable empirically.

There are also parts of this science that deal with the study of stress in ecosystems. A low or medium source of stress can increase the biodiversity. A mix of healed and degraded ecosystems can provide habitats for different types of life beings. A big source of stress otherwise will distroy all the job done by time and simplify the ecosystem. Moreover, the damage can be so deep that the new state of organisation enters in a loop. The remain is just too flammable to advance and the only species surviving benefit from fire so they need fire to keep competitors at bay, germinate and survive. And they make fire creating flammable structures. Fire triggers water quiting the area and will distroy soil organic structure. Without water the future of the area enters in a reverse path, to savanna, then arid, finally desert. Is happening in California for example.

For climate change figthing purposes, the closer to the ecological climax, the better chance for long-term human survivorship.

Climate change will actively distroy climactic ecosystems also (more hurricans, etc), so the problem is more complicated that "just stop chopping trees and damaging coral reefs with tourist cruises". We can expect a lot of problems and extinction cascades in the future.

[FiatLuxDave]

A good book that talks about this effect, along with lots of interesting connections between thermodynamics and ecology, is "Into the cool" by Sagan and Schneider