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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

#151

Post by pvaldes »

club_tropical wrote: post #108
nicoburns wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But, especially in mammals, it is the individual animal that is the fundamental unit. A cheetah and an elephant are unique individuated specimens; it doesn’t make sense to compare their mass. In ants/bees it’s maybe something like “number of colonies/hives” that is the meaningful unit. Why would anyone compare across species by mass - that is a reductive number, you can’t infer anything meaningful out of it. Also, ce…

> it is the individual animal that is the fundamental unit.

Not. This is a very common mistake among people that does not understand ecology.

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

#152

Post by jablala »

rcarr wrote: post #80
SaddledBounding wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 misc…

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 e…

Amino acids - it's suboptimal to eat only one source of protein. I suppose more so on for a vegan. Just as well no one does that. Of they do you're no longer attributing "poor amino acid profiles" to veganism as you are to the person responsible for terrible diet.

B12 - Animal products come from animals filled to the brim with B12 supplements, of which a huge majority of global B12 supplements go towards livestock. Also along with over lovely concoctions of antibiotics and drugs.

There's nothing wrong with cutting out the middle-man! Not least when so many flesh eaters are also deficient in B12 themselves. In need of taking the same B-complex as vegans.

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

#153

Post by BurningFrog »

patrec wrote: post #98
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…

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.

We don't really "consume" the steel. It doesn't disappear.

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

#154

Post by jablala »

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.

I think resentment is the word we're all looking for.

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

#155

Post by chordalkeyboard »

thegrimmest wrote: post #149
abemiller wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your point is somewhat fair, and I agree that advancing medicine is not a great sole reason to keep around our fellow organics. There are a few ways to respond to this, including such notions as having intrinsic respect for nature, and appreciation for what natural selection has wrought. But for one and most simply with regard to your anthropocentric viewpoint, the ecosystems that these species constitute are…

Thank you for your good faith reply. I agree with everything you wrote, but don't see how saving importantly regarded mammals such as polar bears, elephants, whales and dolphins (etc.) fits into the picture. If these animals and others no longer have vast tracts of wilderness to roam on an anthropocentric earth, what's the downside?

Extirpation of keystone species causes the rest of the food chain to become disrupted, resulting in proliferation of some species and extinction of others. The consequences for humans are zoonotic diseases and loss of natural food sources.

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

#156

Post by virgildotcodes »

_-david-_ wrote: post #120
chinchilla2020 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Bein…

>Our civilization passed the carrying capacity of the planet half a century ago. Can you provide some evidence of this?

Not directly answering the half century remark, but this is related - https://www.overshootday.org/

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

#157

Post by chordalkeyboard »

thegrimmest wrote: post #142
mym1990 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Moral equality?

Some would say that non-human animals also have moral value.

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

#158

Post by virgildotcodes »

adamrezich wrote: post #97
agalunar wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 und…

>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.

I feel like this is so ironic in a conversation about how we're utterly destroying the natural world.

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

#159

Post by chordalkeyboard »

thegrimmest wrote: post #147
dragonwriter wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Value is sentiment; you cannot refute a value statement without relying on it.

Value is more than one thing, arguably. You kind of have to go back to first philosophical principles to unpick this. Which I guess is my point - if one's goal is the expansion and longevity of human civilization (which I think is reasonable) then it's not clear at all where the rest of organic life (which we compete with) fits into this picture. If the best reason to preserve it is "it's pretty to look at" and "mayb…

> the rest of organic life (which we compete with)

Here is the issue: it is more than mere competition. We co-exist in a delicate balance with the rest of life, or at least we used to. Now we threaten to destroy them, and the planet on which we depend, exactly because of this implicit belief that we compete with them instead of relying on them.

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

#160

Post by BurningFrog »

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…

A good way to grasp huge numbers on a national or global level is to see what they are per person.

In this case, 1.9 billion tonnes per 7 billion people is about 270kg (600 lb) per human

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