Best Of MetaFilter

Cold Dawn, Warm World by marktmcn (cc by)

For millennia, people of all different cultures have done things with unintended consequences that changed and sometimes ruined their environment, from over-hunting megafauna in the Americas to salination of ancient Sumerian irrigated fields to deforestation which led to disasters in 19th century northern China ... jb on the the climate crisis, with an historical view of human perception and the externalities leading to disastrous outcomes

Stirring Up a Bloom off Patagonia by NASA Goddard Photo and Video (cc by)

Will it snowball? Arguable. There are plentiful arguments about the mode of evolution and lots of controversy. There's one school that says ecologies are robust within certain limits - past those limits and things fall apart. There are others that argue for a more dynamic view, where is set off-balance the system could rapidly change until it finds a new equilibria.