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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

#201

Post by epgui »

nemo44x wrote: post #179
mandmandam wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your perspective, you just made a smart comment that adds wider context on this issue. From mine, it's something of a cosmic horror that people can think like this and be proud of themselves. We are wreaking havoc on the Earth and all life on it; strip mining it to the bone for the shallowest purposes. And some people have this strange glee about it... It's Lovecraftian to me. Like cultists worshipping death and…

I guess we can agree to disagree. Livestock is something only the wealthy could eat daily and today we have discovered methods that allow anyone to enjoy this. This is great progress. You’re free to choose your lifestyle of course and I’m grateful to live in a place and time where that’s possible. But I don’t subscribe to your beliefs. I have access to the same information you do. I possibly have a more critical appr…

No post body was provided.

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

#202

Post by flavius29663 »

inawarminister wrote: post #78
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Did the Africans discover iron on their own, or was the knowledge imported?

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

#204

Post by virgildotcodes »

nemo44x wrote: post #194
virgildotcodes wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are but one species of animal. We may like them better, given that we are them. We may like our families more than strangers as well. That does not mean that a machine that used unfathomable cruelty to concentrate the rest of humanity into a slurry for the pleasure of our family members would not be a horror.

Humans are more important by far. This idea that a cow’s life is as precious as a human’s life is the worst type of misanthropic thought. There is a hierarchy and although we shouldn’t torture living things, giving them “1 bad day” is totally ethical when used to endure and pleasure. I admit we don’t live up to that standard necessarily, but we should strive for it. Ideally everyone that wants to is eating happy anim…

> Humans are more important by far.

From the perspective of which species?

Does might make right? For intra-human relationships as well? Could anything evil happen as a result of embracing this outlook?

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

#205

Post by macintux »

thegrimmest wrote: post #164
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Some would, but I'm sure this is something about which reasonable people can disagree.

Slaves used to be sub-human. Women were property. Eventually, if we as a civilization survive long enough, our current treatment of animals will be universally felt to be immoral.

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

#206

Post by hnuser847 »

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

Honestly, that doesn’t seem like that much. That’s only ~13 large plates at the gym.

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

#207

Post by club_tropical »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #177
club_tropical wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh come on. We do in fact talk about the biomass of human populations, relative to what an ecosystem can sustain. Broadly speaking, different ecosystems can support different total biomasses, as a function of total energy input into the system (mainly from the sun), and a variety of limiting factors (like availability of water). So a desert--which can be a perfectly healthy ecosystem--sustains, both in theory and pra…

Thank you for the thoughtful response. Your explanation makes sense, but it makes me modify my objection two-fold:

1) humans+livestock should not factor into these biomass calculations.

Humans+Livestock are not meaningfully competing against other animals, in desert, in bush, or in the rainforest, because we modify the environment and make it far more calorie-rich: we farm. Even the densest rainforest wouldn't come close in # of mammal-consumable calories per acre to what humans can produce in farms. And the energy to farm is enabled mostly from fossil fuels, ore mining, etc - another thing that only humans do - we are not using solar energy to make or operate tractors, so not really meaningfully taking sunshine resources from other animals.

In other words, you can't lump human+livestock biomass, as if it's a passive consumer of ecological biomass resources, because we increase those resources.

Then, the only meaningful thing to compare is wild natural area displacement (like in miles squared) through settlements and farms. To the extent that other mammal populations shrink or go extinct, it will be simply due to smaller square miles we squeeze them into.

2) for the remaining animals, biomass is still not a good number.

> Sure, you could measure the decline in number of individuals from each of those in percentage terms, and then, maybe, what, average that?

Those intra-species population changes would be far more meaningful, yes. Averaging - no. I still do not accept this idea that if you kill a cougar, then the ecology will support cougars-weight more ants in that area. That is a major unsubstantiated hidden assumption. Only animals that consume the same resources at the same rates are fungible like that. When a cougar dies, no more ant-compatible food sources pop up. Need to show species level individual count. Biomass implies fungibility.

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

#208

Post by myshpa »

rcarr wrote: post #192
rafaelero wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You know animals don't produce B12 as well, right? They come from bacteria in the soil. > The longest living populations are eating diets that are heavy on plants yes, but not vegetarian or vegan. Take a look at the Seven-day Adventist study (the population with the…

> You know animals don't produce B12 as well, right? They come from bacteria in the soil. Good luck with your soil recipes. > Take a look at the Seven-day Adventist study (the population with the highest longevity ever recorded). Between this group, the ones excluding all animal products from the diet actually live longer than the rest. Not true. Pesco-vegetarians had a lower death rate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/…

> Good luck with your soil recipes.

Farm animals eat tons of added B12 in their feed.

Grazing animals get their B12 from dirt, because they don't wash their greens.

If you purchase B12 fortified vegan foods, you don't have to eat supplements.

When you wash your salads and don't eat fortified foods, then you should eat B12 supplements ... there are vegan B12 supplements from algae on the market.

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

#209

Post by eyko »

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/

What gets me is that over a quarter of that (26% as of 2010 by USDA's estimates) is simply thrown away.

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

#210

Post by eyko »

nemo44x wrote: post #179
mandmandam wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your perspective, you just made a smart comment that adds wider context on this issue. From mine, it's something of a cosmic horror that people can think like this and be proud of themselves. We are wreaking havoc on the Earth and all life on it; strip mining it to the bone for the shallowest purposes. And some people have this strange glee about it... It's Lovecraftian to me. Like cultists worshipping death and…

I guess we can agree to disagree. Livestock is something only the wealthy could eat daily and today we have discovered methods that allow anyone to enjoy this. This is great progress. You’re free to choose your lifestyle of course and I’m grateful to live in a place and time where that’s possible. But I don’t subscribe to your beliefs. I have access to the same information you do. I possibly have a more critical appr…

> we have discovered methods that allow anyone to enjoy this. This is great progress.

Just because we can produce (and consume) vast amounts of meant doesn't mean we must. Restraint is a virtue.

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