[HN Gopher] Humans and our livestock account for 96% of all mamm... ___________________________________________________________________ Humans and our livestock account for 96% of all mammal biomass Author : astroalex Score : 119 points Date : 2022-10-27 19:41 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (ourworldindata.org) (TXT) w3m dump (ourworldindata.org) | bell-cot wrote: | From a 2017 breakdown of the world's biomass, it appears that the | "humans and livestock...of mammal biomass" were very carefully | picked, to give the most extreme possible percentage - | | https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115 | baxtr wrote: | From that paper: | | _We find that the kingdoms of life concentrate at different | locations on the planet; plants ([?]450 Gt C, the dominant | kingdom) are primarily terrestrial, whereas animals ([?]2 Gt C) | are mainly marine, and bacteria ([?]70 Gt C) and archaea ([?]7 | Gt C) are predominantly located in deep subsurface | environments._ | teruakohatu wrote: | Here is the paper for which this article is based: | | https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0801918105 | | The paper is about megafauna rather than all mammels. | | This highly cited paper calculates the biomass of every class of | organism, figure 1 is especially fascinating. | | https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115 | | Animals are tiny proportion of the world's biomass, with insects | dominating that class, along with fish and molluscs. | WithinReason wrote: | The weight of all viruses is greater than the weight of all | mammals | freedude wrote: | now add bacteria, fungi, and ants... | warbler73 wrote: | pvaldes wrote: | Lets take in mind that there is a problem to compare two groups | when one group is much easier to measure than the other. The | error interval in the mammal biomass should be much higher. The | actual real values are probably not so extreme. | | ... I see, is just megafauna. The most competitive groups | (rodents and bats) are deliberately excluded. The title is | incorrect then. | deathanatos wrote: | Certainly the article might not be credible, but can you cite | the relevant text from the article, so that the rest of us can | quickly verify your claim? I'm not seeing where in the article | this is stated. | pvaldes wrote: | whales, dolphins and seals are also excluded. | | > "biomass from marine mammals - mainly whales - is not | included" | | They discuss specifically about megafauna and large | terrestrial mammals in most paragraphs and figures. | nightpool wrote: | Is this true? This source | (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115) gives a very | similar percentage (95.8% of all wild mammals) and doesn't | mention anything about excluding rodents or bats from the | categorization of wild mammals. Is it in a footnote somewhere | that I'm missing? | club_tropical wrote: | Also, "biomass" is a strange term. Is that literally an | estimate of mass? Or count of individuals? Many other context | lacking as well. | | This is clearly written for the 96% statistic shock, not to | inform anyone. | aaron695 wrote: | doliveira wrote: | Pretty sure that's the estimate of carbon content, but it's a | proper scientific concept. | jonnycomputer wrote: | Biomass is probably exactly the right measure, when we are | talking ecology. A lot of mice to weigh up to one cow, it is | true, but then, you could feed a lot of mice on the grain | with which you feed your cow. | myshpa wrote: | RTFA. | | "To understand how the richness of the mammal kingdom has | changed we need a metric that captures a range of different | animals and is comparable over time. We could look at their | abundance - the number of individuals we have - but this is | not ideal. We would be counting every species equally, from a | mouse to an elephant and this metric would therefore an | ecosystem taken over by the smallest mammals look much richer | than one in which bigger mammals roam: if the world's mouse | populations multiplied and multiplied - maybe even to the | detriment of other animals - then this abundance metric might | suggest that these ecosystems were thriving. | | Instead, ecologists often use the metric biomass. This means | that each animal is measured in tonnes of carbon, the | fundamental building block of life.1 Biomass gives us a | measure of the total biological productivity of an ecosystem. | It also gives more weight to larger animals at higher levels | of the ecological 'pyramid'" | | https://ourworldindata.org/mammals#the-decline-of-wild- | mamma... | nicoburns wrote: | > Also, "biomass" is a strange term. Is that literally an | estimate of mass? | | It is indeed. The idea being that individuals vary greatly | (it doesn't make sense to compare individual counts of humans | with individual counts of ants for example), and that mass at | least roughly accounts for the size of individuals. | pvaldes wrote: | Biomass is the whole mass of life beings, a standard and | common measure that represents the energy contained in a | particular group. | | Talking in terms of biomass is very common in Ecology. | club_tropical wrote: | I think it is an unclear and bizarre term. "The energy | contained in one group" - what energy? Is a lean cheetah | "less-energy" than an elephant? Why? Or do you literally | mean energy like calories (which, IIRC means "how much heat | if burned"). | | What a bizarre metric, nobody thinks like this, I don't | even think "ecologists" understand why they should think in | terms of mass. I, too, can have a metric: number of | decibels of sound you can produce; maybe humans make up a | SHOCKING 3% on that- doesn't mean it's a sensible metric. | chrishare wrote: | Devastatingly sad. Are plant-based meat replacements and lab- | grown meat going to help fix this? | FredPret wrote: | Devastatingly misleading, they excluded many kinds of mammal | from their measurement. | rcarr wrote: | One day, whilst eating a burger in a pub and thinking about the | food chain, I ran a thought experiment in my head. I imagined | being hungry and someone offering me a choice between a ham | sandwich or a vegan sandwich. I could only select the ham | sandwich if I was willing to shoot a pig in the head. I | wouldn't have to butcher the pig or anything else, just be | responsible for its death. I decided that I would choose the | vegan sandwich. This lead me to believe that by continuing to | eat meat I was shirking responsibility and passing the pain of | killing an animal on to someone else so I decided to go vegan. | The environmental benefits were secondary and I was under no | illusions as regards to health; I believed (and still do) that | it is worse for you than both vegetarian and meat containing | diets. | | It was around 2016-2017 and I lived in a small town in northern | England. Veganism was only just starting to make it into the | mainstream; there weren't any vegan options at any of the fast | food places and there was about one freezer worth of vegan | alternatives if you went to a large supermarket. I found | transitioning over to a meat free diet surprisingly easy. The | hardest thing about it wasn't cravings for foods you couldn't | eat like you might expect. The hardest thing was the social | aspect of it. | | I slowly found myself being pushed out of social circles. | People knew you were vegan so there was no going for a burger | or a KFC or any other bonding activities over food. People | would cook Linda McCartney sausages if you brought them round | to a BBQ but you could tell they didn't appreciate the extra | fuss. | | I tried really hard not to be the loud, shouty, fussy vegan but | as soon as anyone found out the questions would start. People | were curious about why I was vegan and I would tell them. The | vast majority of people admitted to feeling bad about eating | animals. They didn't want to think about where their food was | coming from and I was a living symbol in front of them that | they could stop doing that if they really wanted to. Eating was | celebration after hard work and, just with my presence, I was | ruining that for them. | | At the time I was heavily into fitness and I noticed that | achieving my protein intake was really difficult. It would | require having 3 to 4 protein shakes a day or doing lots of | cooking and prep. All the natural vegan protein sources outside | of protein shakes weren't lean; they also contained lots of | carbs or fats. This made hitting macros hard. Food became a | chore and I didn't feel particularly healthy. If anything I | felt my health declining. | | I went for a walk one day and ran the thought experiment again. | I decided that yes, this time I would take responsibility and | kill the pig. And that was that. At the end of my walk I went | into a Subway, ordered a meatball sub and went home to eat it. | I expected to have gastrointestinal distress having not eaten | meat for so long but there was nothing. My body went right back | to processing it as if I'd never stopped. | | The one thing that this whole experience taught me is that food | is tied deeply into culture and bonding. I very strongly | believe that plant based sources are not going to be the | solution to this problem. There is just too much social | resistance to overcome. | | From my experience, the only way of solving this problem is | petri dish meat. Not plant based, but actual meat tissue, grown | in factories. Why? People will still get the joy of eating meat | and maintain their traditions without the guilt. It also has | the potential to actually be better and cheaper than regular | meat. If scientists can perfect the processes, they can make it | taste like prime beef every time but with a fraction of the | economic and environmental costs. It can be sold as an upgrade | not a downgrade which is what people see veganism as. | dqv wrote: | >There is just too much social resistance to overcome. | | We're really only on the second wave of veganism right now. I | can't say exactly when the first wave "ended", but I'd say | the second wave started to roll in after 2010. But in this | second wave, there is a lot of culture being developed that I | believe will sustain a third wave. Whereas the first wave had | a bunch of early adopters who had very odd food habits (i.e. | eating barely palatable food or eating 50 bananas a day), | this second wave is developing new food culture. There are | large communities like the Vegan Soul Food Group. Groups like | this share recipes and tips for making vegan food and, | frankly, it's damn good. Not everything is the best | nutritionally, but that's not why everyone is adopting | veganism in the first place. There are also high profile | chefs (and burgeoning chefs too) who are coming on the scene. | Gaz Oakley, Yeung Man, Andrew Bernard, Vegan Bunny Chef. | There are all sorts of accounts on tiktok with culturally- | specific vegan foods - Mexican, Indian, Korean, Japanese, | Chinese, Ghanaian. Not to mention all of the "accidentally | vegan" foods that already existed before. | | These people are leading the way to a vibrant vegan food | culture. They're developing new traditions and practices | right before our very eyes. And a lot of people are joining | in as a result. The younger generation is much less obsessed | with this sort of "tradition perfectionism" where _every | element_ has to be there to make it a tradition. They were | much more willing to change and adapt traditions to fit their | own personal and moral beliefs. | | The third wave, I think, is going to come as a result of what | you're talking about. We have some great things like nut- | based cheese, but also on the horizon (beyond meat ;) are | things like vegan casein and whey, which will make it even | easier to be vegan. At that point, the third wave will be as | if people were never vegan in the first place. | rcarr wrote: | I honestly think this is going to have the opposite effect | of what you think it will. People outside of metropolitan | areas are sick to death of "new traditions and practices" | and "high profile" names. They see it as another | bourgeoisie vs proletariat battleground. | | They do not want "new food culture" they want the existing | culture but more environmentally friendly. You aren't going | to pry the burgers out of their hands no matter how good | your beyond burger is. But if you make a petri dish burger | that tastes better than a dead cow you might stand a chance | of them getting behind it. | | You can say the younger generation doesn't care about old | traditions but people have been saying this throughout | time. Young people have a habit of growing old and more | conservative when they gain more life experience and | realise that the traditions they rallied against in the | youth were actually developed for a good reason. | Arnavion wrote: | >It would require having 3 to 4 protein shakes a day or doing | lots of cooking and prep. All the natural vegan protein | sources outside of protein shakes weren't lean; they also | contained lots of carbs or fats. This made hitting macros | hard. | | A large number of Indian people are vegetarian (plants + | poultry eggs + cow/goat milk), and I've never heard of them | having such problems. Why? I certainly didn't have any | dietary or nutritional problems when I grew up as a | vegetarian there. | heavyset_go wrote: | If you're body building or doing serious exercise, it can | be hard to get the protein your body needs to recover and | build muscle on a strictly vegan diet. I've tried it and | it's difficult. | Arnavion wrote: | You've simply restated rcarr's point without answering my | question. | SaddledBounding wrote: | It's because the grandparent comment has misconceptions | about nutrition, including that animal products are | necessary for a healthful diet and how much protein is | required for a healthful diet. | | The first misconception is contradicted by extensive | analysis by health organizations such as [Academy of | Nutrition and Dietetics][1]. Healthful vegan diets are no | less healthful than healthful non-vegan diets. | | The second misconception is about how much protein is | needed in a healthful diet. Many people wildly overestimate | how much protein a person needs, especially when strength | training. It is not difficult to get sufficient protein | within a given calorie budget while on a vegan diet, even | without using protein supplements. For instance, tofu and | seitan have protein to calorie ratios similar to meat, with | seitan often having a _higher_ protein to calorie ratio | than most meats. | | [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/ | rcarr wrote: | Go and have a look at the amino acid profiles of seitan | and tofu and also their bioavailability in comparison to | meat and vegetarian protein sources. And you can talk all | you want about people overestimating protein macro but 1 | to 2 grams per lb of bodyweight has consistently shown to | be optimal. You'll be hard pressed to find any high | performing athlete who isn't aiming for that outside of | endurance sports. | | At the end of the day in my experience, a vegan diet is | both a lot more hard work and less healthy than a non | vegan one. Saying that a vegan diet isn't any less | healthy than a meat eating or vegetarian one is an | absolute joke, especially considering there are no vegan | foods containing vitamin B12 outside of yeast flakes and | artificial supplements. | izzydata wrote: | How is there still an ecosystem? | thrown_22 wrote: | 1). There isn't one for big mammals any more. The majority of | the ecosystem is locked up in plants and bacteria. For example | fungi outweigh all _animals_ by roughly 6 times. Bacteria by 30 | times and plants by 200 times. | | 2). We're the major drivers in the processes that used to limit | biomass on the planet. The nitrogen cycle is dominated by | humans [0] where depending on how you measure it we've done | something between doubling it and increasing it by an order of | magnitude. The same is true for all the other limiting cycles. | By comparison the carbon cycle has been barely touched. | | 3). Mammals are rather big and we don't like big things trying | to eat us/step on us. Mammal global mass has been decreasing | since the last ice age when we figured out how to hunt mammoths | to extinction and 8,000BC when we domesticated goats. | | [0] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_nitrogen_c... | rplst8 wrote: | Plants, reptiles, amphibians, insects, marsupials, fish, | bacteria, algae, fungus, etc. | ElevenLathe wrote: | Unfortunately there barely is. | TOGoS wrote: | I also wonder this. Some thoughts: | | 1) Life is remarkably adaptive. 2) There probably won't be much | longer. | myshpa wrote: | https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity | | Wild mammals: | | 100.000 years ago ... 20 mil. tonnes of carbon | | 10.000 years ago ... 15 mil. tonnes of carbon | | 100 years ago ... 10 mil. tonnes of carbon | | now ... 3 mil. tonnes of carbon | | https://ourworldindata.org/mammals | | "Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of human | civilizations. This was mainly driven by overhunting and habitat | loss." | | "Wild animals only make up 4% of the world's mammals; humans | account for 34%, and our livestock for 62%." | | "More than 178 of the world's largest species went extinct during | the Quaternary Extinction. Overhunting was likely the main | driver." | | "One-quarter of the world's mammal species are threatened with | extinction. Most are in the tropics." | | "It is the largest mammals that are at the greatest risk of | extinction. Most due to overhunting and poaching." | | Cowspiracy [https://www.cowspiracy.com/facts]: | | "Ten thousand years ago, 99% of biomass (i.e. zoomass) was wild | animals. Today, humans and the animals that we raise as food make | up 98% of the zoomass." | | Postgrowth [https://medium.com/postgrowth/the-bomb-is-still- | ticking-2810...]: | | ""Research by Professor Vaclav Smil from the University of | Manitoba in Canada shows that as a percentage of mammalian | zoomass, human beings and our domesticated mammalian animals (for | food, beasts of burden and as pets) have gone from <0.1% 10,000 | years ago, to 10-12% at the start of the industrial revolution to | between 96-98% today." | jonnycomputer wrote: | Has total biomass (not just wild biomass) declined? I would | expect it has, because most modern farming tries very hard to | make sure the only thing growing is the thing that makes the | farmer profit. A lot of farms are ecological wastelands; or | rather, they sustain less biomass than they could. | rplst8 wrote: | Key word... Mammal. | myshpa wrote: | The sad thing is that 100 years ago humans and livestock | accounted for around 5% of the biomass (all zoomass, not land | mammals only), 95% being the wildlife. Now the numbers are | reversed. | | We've stolen the land from the wildlife and dedicated it to a few | species we consider edible (agriland is more than forests now, | and 75% of it for animal agriculture). | | Is anybody surprised that we're living in the anthropocene, | defined by massive die off of wild species? | | We have to (as a species) return the land to wildlife and let it | repopulate the earth, otherwise we'll lose them. We don't even | know what gems we're losing. I'm not talking about some bugs, but | about dna - those are millions of years of (computer) code | generated by nature, code so precious we don't even have an idea | how to simulate it, let alone understand it (at this point in our | evolution). | | If we lose it, goodbye new medicines, new regenerative dna | techniques, new technologies, and who knows what. We simply | cannot know what we're stealing from future humans (this point | was made for the selfish humans we are, better arguments could be | made). | throwawaysleep wrote: | Build more zoos then. That's the only realistic solution. | rvba wrote: | More nature reserves. | thegrimmest wrote: | > _otherwise we 'll lose them_ | | So what? What _value_ are these species? What are they _for_? I | 'm sure we'll be able to advance medicine in other ways. I'm | much more concerned about the longevity of our civilization | than the other organics we happen to have coevolved with. If we | have to pave over the whole planet then so be it. Organic life | is common and therefore expendable. If we all die off, new life | will almost certainly evolve, but a new civilization? That's | much less certain. | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | What the hell, man. | davzie wrote: | This HAS to be trolling! | cmpb wrote: | The article indicates that the bulk of the extinction of large | mammals happened during the Quaternary Extinction[1], between | 52kya and 9kya, so 100 years ago the damage was already done. | It also makes the argument that the extinction events in each | region coincided with the arrival of humans to that region, | which would imply that these extinctions were not due to | climatic changes. | | I don't mean to imply that we're doing enough right now to keep | our planet healthy. I agree with your sentiment and just wanted | to provide a little context and clarification. | | [1] https://ourworldindata.org/mammals#quaternary-megafauna- | exti... | myshpa wrote: | 100.000 years ago ... 20 mil. tonnes of carbon | | 10.000 years ago ... 15 mil. tonnes of carbon | | 100 years ago ... 10 mil. tonnes of carbon | | now ... 3 mil. tonnes of carbon | | https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/04/Decline-of- | wild-m... | | First 5 mil. tonnes took 90.000 year. Next 5 mil. 9.900 | years. Next 7 mil. 100 years. 3 mil. remain, most of the | megafauna is already gone. | | If we continue this trend, in 30 years there'll be only mice, | mosquitos, and medusas. And farm animals, of course. | | We have to switch to plant-based diets. Now. There is no | other way. No time to wait for technological breakthroughs. | docmechanic wrote: | This statistic always takes the top of my head right off: "The | dominance of humans today is clear: us and our livestock account | for 96% of global mammal biomass. Wild land mammals make up just | 2%." | | If you, like me, wondered about poultry ... | | "Here we focus on mammal populations, so neither wild birds or | poultry are included. But for birds the story is similar: our | poultry biomass is more than twice that of wild birds. " | freedude wrote: | Good point about birds. Add them to amphibians, fish and | insects and it would make this look less impressive. | timeon wrote: | Less impressive? Do you think there is no significant loss of | biodiversity? | freedude wrote: | In the cities yes. I live outside the city. Some of the | biodiversity near me is deadly and city dwellers haven't a | clue. | | Regardless, fish outweigh mammals by at least an order of | magnitude. then calculate arthropods, mollusks, bacteria | and plants and you will see this is an overstating of a | complex ecosystem. | gtvwill wrote: | Reminds me of the matrix. Agent smith said it so well. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgS1Lwr8gq8 | deathanatos wrote: | Or perhaps Agent Smith mistook an S-curve that hasn't started | to level off yet for unfettered exponential growth. | | > _Generally, developed nations have seen a decline in their | growth rates in recent decades_ | | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#Population_g | ...) | | Or perhaps he was just evil and had a hatred of humanity that | he was justifying with whatever reason pleased him. | nonrandomstring wrote: | > Or perhaps he was just evil and had a hatred of humanity | that he was justifying with whatever reason pleased him. | | For me. Agent Smith isn't coded as evil. He represents the | cold rationality of the scientific algorithm - "I've been | studying your species...". He's simply curious. It would | never occur to Smith to "justify" anything, even to | simulate pleasure. Smith represents what Kant called the | limits of pure reason - the ability to measure, compute and | model everything, but understand nothing. | AtlasBarfed wrote: | But has their resource consumption per capita leveled off? | | Population numbers aren't the scary thing about our CURRENT | population. | | What's scary is that China and India, which is almost 3 | billion people, want US-levels of resource consumption, and | they are full steam ahead in doing so. | | Oh, so the curve will tail off around 11 or 15 billion? Who | cares. Each billion is 3x the population of the US, and | they all want our standard of living, or BETTER. | eric-hu wrote: | I don't know about India, but China is undergoing major | problems with their population size. | | https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/china-population- | shri... | | > The country's total fertility rate decreased from 2.6 | in the late 1980s - well above the 2.1 needed to replace | deaths - to just 1.15 in 2021. | | China modified their child restriction law to 3 children | in 2021 only to drop the restriction altogether a few | months later. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-child_policy | | > After only two months, in July 2021, all family size | limits as well as penalties for exceeding them were | removed.[8] | hunglee2 wrote: | becoming a sustainable food item is actually a great survival | strategy at the level of the species, something to consider | should earth ever be invaded by hungry aliens | booi wrote: | I for one welcome our new overlords. - booi, CEO Soylent Foods | Inc. | retrac wrote: | Going off on a tangent, but the scale of production is very hard | to grasp. I'm probably not the first person to observe this, but | I once did some napkin math about steel production, and what I | realized kind of blew me away. About 1.9 billion tonnes in 2020. | Like with billions of dollars, I have no intuition for such | numbers. Context is needed. | | Global steel production just before WW I was about 70 million | tonnes. So production has increased about thirty-fold in one | century. That wasn't so shocking to me, at first. But 1910 was | not the beginning of the industrial era; things had been under | way for more than a century then. Railroads. Ocean liners. | Factories. Knives and rivets for fabric owned by hundreds of | millions of people. Dozens of skyscrapers in New York by then; | the Brooklyn Bridge hung on thousands of tonnes of cable. All | made out of steel. | | Then it struck me. A few million tonnes a year in 1850. 70 | million tonnes in 1910. All of it adds up to less than 1900 | million tonnes. Every single tonne of steel manufactured by | humans from prehistory until about a century ago -- the entire | output of the industrial revolution -- amounts to less than one | year at current production. | giantg2 wrote: | "Every single tonne of steel manufactured by humans from | prehistory until about a century ago -- the entire output of | the industrial revolution -- amounts to less than one year at | current production." | | The real questions are: | | Does that include recycling? | | If not, how do we see this being sustainable? | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Two reasons: the earth is made of iron, for | all intents and purposes asteroids are often made | of iron | canadianfella wrote: | himinlomax wrote: | It can be sustainable with electrolytic furnaces powered by | carbon-free energy. | keithnz wrote: | I was looking at what the future of steel might look like | recently, I think this is quite interesting | https://www.hybritdevelopment.se/en/ | akiselev wrote: | Yes, it does. About 40% of steel produced globally is | recycled and the number for some other metals like aluminum | are even higher. IIRC almost 80% of steel production in the | US is from recycled stock. | | Processing ore is _very_ energy intensive. Problem is the | world needs a _lot_ of steel | Retric wrote: | Walk around and pick up a random rock. On average it's 5% | iron which combined with just a little carbon makes steel, so | no we aren't running out. | | This is also why the Iron Age was such a big deal. The bronze | age required both copper and tin which where rare and didn't | generally show up near each other while you could operate a | shitty iron mine just about anywhere. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | Is there a reason the Bronze Age had to precede the Iron | Age? At least in the Mediterranean, the only continuous | civilisation I'm aware of was Egypt. | [deleted] | inawarminister wrote: | AFAIK Africans, that is, the Bantu and related West | African peoples, went directly from Neolithic to Iron | Age, skipping Bronze. | | For Mediterranean, it's mainly because the whole region, | Iraq, and Northwest India/Pakistan were already | integrated together as a trading unit, with factors | coming hp from Sumer and Assyria to trade with Dilmun, | Indus Valley, and Anatolia. Then the Phoenicians traded | tin from Iberia and all the way from Britain as well. | | Funnily enough, Egypt only adopted bronze (and chariot) | at least for their armies after the whole Hyksos invasion | stuffs. That might be the basis for Exodus. | cercatrova wrote: | Bronze is much easier to create than iron which requires | higher smelting temperatures. The only reason we were | able to was likely through advances smelting bronze. | simlevesque wrote: | I can't recommend enough this blog series: | https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did- | they-... | giantg2 wrote: | Not that we would necessarily run out, but would a 5% ore | be financially viable, and how many places would be able to | operate it (geology for underground mines, location/eco | concerns for strip mines)? We also have to question they | typical coke and smelting process. | [deleted] | patrec wrote: | So modern civilization currently requires the average human to | consume roughly 3-4 times his body weight in steel per year. | And given that steel production has roughly doubled in the last | 20 years, this will probably still go up a fair deal. | nly wrote: | "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is man's inability | to understand the exponential function." | grecy wrote: | Yup, I was Justin the town that has the worlds largest shipping | port by tonnage, all of it iron ore. I bet you'll never guess - | you've never heard of it. | | The city and surrounds makes Mordor look nice. | taneq wrote: | Port Hedland? | | Edit: Wow, Hedland is half of that, I was mainly thinking of | the Mordor bit. | ROTMetro wrote: | Is your number all New Metal (not to be confused with the | equally important to the world's economy Nu Metal production) | or is part of the 1.9 billion recycled/reclaimed? It appears | this number includes 450-500 million tons of reclaimed steel? | rcarr wrote: | In my opinion there hasn't been enough nu metal production | since early 00s, I think we should manufacture more black | bowling shirts with flames on them to incentivise uptake. | konfusinomicon wrote: | the Korn market has been in steady downtrend for years, but | with such a decline in quality it's no surprise | eloff wrote: | Wow! Probably similar numbers for concrete. It's exponential | growth. | | The thing about exponential growth is it can't continue for too | long. As observers of Moore's Law will understand, eventually | you run out of resources or into other physical limits. | | However, I'm quite confident that we can keep innovating and | growth will continue in one form or another. I don't think Elon | Musk is correct that human population will collapse. All it | takes is one subgroup to keep reproducing above the replacement | rate, and after enough generations they will come to dominate | and overall growth will continue. It's pretty much the law of | life - expand to consume all available resources, be that food, | space, energy, oxygen, whatever. You see it in bacteria, in | fish, in mammals large and small, and of course in humans. | | There will be lot's of challenges there, and lots of need for | innovation so we can handle growth without destroying our | remaining wild spaces and ecosystems on which we depend. Humans | haven't figured out how to grow sustainably yet. | istjohn wrote: | > All it takes is one subgroup to keep reproducing above the | replacement rate, and after enough generations they will come | to dominate and overall growth will continue. | | Consequently, religion is going to thrive. Everyone else | stops reproducing once they reach a certain standard of | living. | whiddershins wrote: | I think Ray Kurzweil talking about future shock in the late 90s | provides a descriptive, if not satisfying, explanation. | ajsfoux234 wrote: | A comic from xkcd visualizes this fact: https://xkcd.com/1338/ | JoeAltmaier wrote: | You have any prepper ideas about surviving an apocalypse and | living off the land, forget about meat. It'll be crickets or some | such. All the wild meat in the world will be gone in like 4 days | due to massive over-hunting. | beauzero wrote: | If you ever look in old barns that have been there before the | Great Depression (few but there are some) you will see rat | traps with holes drilled in them. They were used to hang on | trees to trap squirrels. Apparently this worked well the first | year...not so good for the decade after that. | klyrs wrote: | In an actual apocalypse, you'll find that people are made of | meat. | nicoburns wrote: | I'd guess that depends greatly upon where you live. Some places | are sparsely populated, and I suspect it's these rural people | who would have the best chance of surviving in an apocalypse. | The earth is a big place. There's a non-trivial chance that | some people wouldn't be affected at all. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | There are a LOT of people. Even a small percentage remaining, | would quickly deplete all available wildlife. | | E.g. 1 deer will feed a family of four for a week. Or | somewhere about that. | | There are approximately 100 deer per square mile in the US | midwest. | | If population were depleted to a tiny fraction of what it is | now, there could still be about one family per section. | | They would deplete the deer population to zero in 2 years. | nicoburns wrote: | There _are_ a lot of people. But not everywhere. What you | say will true for the US. But in more sparsely populated | and less accessible parts of the world it may not be. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | The US is pretty sparsely populated. Don't let the | crowded cities fool you. #161/203 rated by | population/land mass. | | https://worldpopulationreview.com/country- | rankings/countries... | donatj wrote: | I'd always heard growing up that ants were the majority of the | earth's biomass. | OkayPhysicist wrote: | Ants are not mammals | Synaesthesia wrote: | I know they excluded birds, rodents, bats etc. But it's still | pretty staggering, all the wild mammals which used to dominate | the planet, gone. | timbit42 wrote: | Bats are mammals. | adamrezich wrote: | I can't be the only one who is extremely tired of these semi- | frequent utterly nihilistic "I'm sad to be part of the human | species, we're killing the planet" posts and comments, especially | when the posts themselves are possibly misleading (whales aren't | included? come _on_ ). I don't know about you but I'm quite happy | to be alive and reasonably healthy, and I hope to have many | children, I hope mankind doesn't go extinct anytime soon, and I'm | not going to eat any bugs or fake meat or any of that. | | nihilistic platitudes like "how is there still an ecosystem?" are | completely baffling to me--I don't understand what would make | someone think that way. what could have caused this level of | innate shame felt on behalf of one's _species?_ | | the only thing I can think of is that people overestimate the | power of mankind and underestimate the power of nature possibly | due to living in dense urban environments surrounded by nothing | but artificial creations of man all day every day, and this skews | their perspective. | foxtacles wrote: | You're not the only one. | | To anyone who's tired of reading those frequently espoused, | virtually now mainstream, apparently self-hatred fueled | viewpoints, or to those who are interested in positive outlooks | on humanity, I can recommend this book: | | https://www.superabundance.com/ | | and this news aggregator: | | https://www.humanprogress.org/ | seti0Cha wrote: | It's more a factor of dislocated moral feelings. If you decide | humans aren't special, then you can go one of two ways with the | moral feelings you had towards humanity: you can broaden them | to a larger category that you still think is special, such as | mammals, animals, all living things, etc, or you can narrow | them down to some arbitrary set that you happen to be fond of, | like your family, your friends, or yourself. Both are | problematic to those who still think humans are special. | [deleted] | agalunar wrote: | > I don't know about you but I'm quite happy to be alive and | reasonably healthy | | I think the important thing to contemplate is that this might | be at the expense of other people, living or yet to be born. | Not that we've done anything wrong - just that the | circumstances that make this possible for us might preclude it | for others. | | > nihilistic platitudes like "how is there still an ecosystem?" | are completely baffling to me | | For some people, I think, it's jarring to realize that much of | the world, including life for other people and creatures, is | very different from anything they've experienced, and that the | future could look very different from the present - despite it | having not changed much so far in their lives. And the feeling | of that realization might be the reason for platitudes like | that. | adamrezich wrote: | > I think the important thing to contemplate is that [being | happy to be alive and reasonably healthy] might be at the | expense of other people, living or yet to be born. Not that | we've done anything wrong - just that the circumstances that | make this possible for us might preclude it for others | | this is called the natural order of things. nature is | competition. this is all self-evident. all of our ancestors | innately understood this. what exactly has made us forget it? | again, the only thing I can think of is sheer societal | decadence, being so far removed from nature that we only have | an abstract concept of it. | goldenchrome wrote: | I am with you my friend. I will not eat the bugs. | chinchilla2020 wrote: | It isn't a skewed perspective. Our civilization passed the | carrying capacity of the planet half a century ago. Resources | are being consumed at a far greater rate, despite advances in | technology. | | You don't need to be depressed or nihilistic about it. You can | still live a great life and so can your children. The reality | is that we need to start reducing consumption over the long | term to prepare for the inevitable. Being aware is the first | step. | | The wrong path is to close our eyes and assume Elon Musk is | going to transport us to another world, or that some | unrealistic hollywood technology will magically terraform the | planet and bring back the glaciers and mammoths. | Trumpi wrote: | Let me guess... the solution is to eat ze bugs. | msla wrote: | What's wrong with shrimp and lobster? | [deleted] | gregcrv wrote: | In case you are wondering like me, it's only about mammals. Here | is the full biomass picture : | https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-biomass-of-earth-in... | HPsquared wrote: | That sounds impressive. How do we stack up against the fish, | though? | nahuel0x wrote: | In terms of complexity destruction we are not so dissimilar to a | paperclip maximizing AI gone rogue. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-27 23:00 UTC)