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Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

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Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#131

Post by ISL »

SCUSKU wrote: post #109
retrac wrote: post #25

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 p…

I made a website to help visualize American meat consumption in terms of animals slaughtered per second. It’s pretty insane and I think does something to help communicate just how large such industrial operations truly are. https://zach.ws/meat/

It would be helpful to add the total number of meals consumed per unit time as well, and perhaps the number of humans born/dying.

We eat a lot because there are a lot of us.

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#132

Post by nemo44x »

myshpa wrote: post #59

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, defi…

No post body was provided.

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#133

Post by CHB0403085482 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #76
Arnavion wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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.

How does beans, egg, milk compare to animal meat protein?

https://www.mondaycampaigns.org/meatless-monday

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#134

Post by rafaelero »

rcarr wrote: post #110
Arnavion wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Vegetarian is easier than vegan but still more difficult if you want to be lean E.g sub 15% or at the more extreme end 10% body fat. You can separate yolks and white to get lean protein from eggs. And with milk you can get skimmed milk to avoid the fat (but milk is still absolutely loaded with carbohydrates so some people argue that it is actually more beneficial to drink full fat or semi milk to buffer the carb dump…

Most people don't care about being body builders, so I am not sure why you are getting into this topic. Every reputable nutritional organization says vegetarian / vegan diet is ok and on top of that the longest living populations are mostly eating plant-based diet, suggesting they are not only nutritionally appropriate, but also desirable in order to maintain body function over time.

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#135

Post by heavyset_go »

CHB0403085482 wrote: post #133
heavyset_go wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does beans, egg, milk compare to animal meat protein? https://www.mondaycampaigns.org/meatless-monday

Eggs and milk aren't vegan

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#136

Post by worldsayshi »

slashdev wrote: post #30
retrac wrote: post #25

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 p…

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 c…

>the law of life

A pet tinfoil hat theory of mine is that most organisms ought to have some built in fail safe mechanism that causes populations to regulate themselves before a catastrophic overpopulation collapse. Because if it didn't have it it would be more likely to die out, so there should be a strong evolutionary pressure towards getting it.

So maybe the population growth stagnation we're seeing is due to us seeing the writing on the wall and pacing ourselves, more or less voluntary/consciously.

Also, for it to make sense in a game theory sense everyone that shares the niche needs to switch it on more or less simultaneously and it has to be embedded in the genome in a way that makes it very hard to remove by random mutation.

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#137

Post by club_tropical »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #127
club_tropical wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that each animal group has a different weight range and that, if you reduce animal groups to “total weight” metric, you can compare cows with mice on that metric. I do not agree that this is some kind of meaningful unit, especially in percentage terms, for anything that ecologists might be interested in, like population health, or whatever else. The fact that ecologists think in terms of biomass while pu…

All you've done is asserted it doesn't make sense. You could at least make an argument as to why.

What do we talk about when we talk about human populations? Like say, you want to formulate an opinion on Germanic peoples' population in history. Do you EVER talk about percentage aggregate biomass of Germanic peoples?

No, meaningful numbers are # of individuals, lifespan, sex/age composition, fertility, height, weight, etc. Percentage of aggregate biomass is not among them, for good reason.

Look, I have no problem if scientists are measuring things in an exploratory way. Let's add up the mass, subtract, play around - this fun exploration is good. But if you are doing fun exploration, don't tell me this is to "measure the richness of the mammal kingdom" and throw around a shocking "96%" as if to pretend it is meaningful. It is not.

EDIT/PS: Thought of another example - say you are studying dogs and human interaction in history. You would never think of showing historical aggregate [dog biomass / dog+human biomass] as some kind of meaningful metric. You would show dog count, dogs per human, dog speciation, etc. Not dog biomass percentage.

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#138

Post by jablala »

nemo44x wrote: post #132
myshpa wrote: post #59

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, defi…

Quoted post unavailable.

We have the capability to enjoy life like no other generation before us. The difference is previous generations did not have the resources to destroy like we do now. With that being the case we must be sensible in how we enjoy ourselves, by being mindful of our existence and impacts.

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#139

Post by mym1990 »

thegrimmest wrote: post #84
myshpa wrote: post #59

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, defi…

> 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 certainl…

An absolutely crazy point of view. What is to stop this point of view to extending to people who are no longer “useful” to you? Do you just annihilate them?

Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans

#140

Post by rcarr »

rafaelero wrote: post #134
rcarr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegetarian is easier than vegan but still more difficult if you want to be lean E.g sub 15% or at the more extreme end 10% body fat. You can separate yolks and white to get lean protein from eggs. And with milk you can get skimmed milk to avoid the fat (but milk is still absolutely loaded with carbohydrates so some people argue that it is actually more beneficial to drink full fat or semi milk to buffer the carb dump…

Most people don't care about being body builders, so I am not sure why you are getting into this topic. Every reputable nutritional organization says vegetarian / vegan diet is ok and on top of that the longest living populations are mostly eating plant-based diet, suggesting they are not only nutritionally appropriate, but also desirable in order to maintain body function over time.

> Every reputable nutritional organization says vegetarian / vegan diet is ok

Ok yes, optimal no. You cant say a diet (vegan) that requires artificial produced supplementation (vitamin b12) in order for you to survive is the optimal diet for humans. It just doesn’t make any sense. If our ancestors ate vegan diets before we had mastered science we literally would not be alive having this conversation because they would have all perished of anaemia.

> on top of that the longest living populations are mostly eating plant-based diet.

The longest living populations are eating diets that are heavy on plants yes, but not vegetarian or vegan. If anything, the blue zones have a higher proportion of fish intake than elsewhere.

And I went off on the bodybuilder tangent because the original commenter specifically asked about a line in my story which was to do with me hitting my macros and trying to find lean protein sources in order to do that. At the time, I was doing bodybuilding and CrossFit so it was relevant to the question asked.

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