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

Post by rafaelero » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 12:00 AM UTC

rcarr wrote: post #140

rafaelero wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 woul…

Post by thegrimmest » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 12:03 AM UTC

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #155

thegrimmest wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by myshpa » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 12:04 AM UTC

glitcher wrote: post #122

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…

Reminds me of George Carlin, "The earth will be fine..."

Post by edflsafoiewq » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 12:05 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #160

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

Post by chordalkeyboard » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 12:07 AM UTC

thegrimmest wrote: post #166

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think we need to engineer this balance. The ones we need we keep; the ones we don't, we don't. This is basically bioforming.