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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

#281

Post by fnimick »

version_five wrote: post #273
fnimick wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because your meat consumption and demand for increasing land and water use to satiate your meat consumption is ruining the planet for the rest of us? If I could trap all the "unrepentant meat eaters" in a dome and let you ruin your own environment without broiling the rest of us, I wouldn't have a problem with your choices.

Consider that you may be in a doomsday cult.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/climate-...

Our lifestyle is unsustainable. Take your head out of the sand.

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

#282

Post by throwawaylinux »

nemo44x wrote: post #126
SCUSKU wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Ha that’s great! Hopefully we continue to see these numbers as increase as a leading indicator of a wealthy and well fed society.

Strange this is getting downvotes. Protein consumption was traditionally one of the fundamental measures of social health, wealth, and quality of life, and it is on track to massively expand as population grows and huge parts of Asia and Africa (and others) continue to catch up in wealth.

Apparently now we're in upside-down world were the richest and most highly consuming people on the planet believe that the production that supports their lifestyles is now immoral, and the idea that poorer people might increase their wealth and consumption a bit is so horrible to contemplate.

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

#283

Post by fnimick »

nemo44x wrote: post #280
fnimick wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Future generations don’t need us to thrive. Plus, what’s your obsession with future generations?" Have you considered asking those "future generations", i.e. YOUR KIDS, whether they'd like to live on a planet with a self-sustaining ecosystem or suffer through a climate catastrophe? You can't possibly think that we don't owe it to future generations to try to leave them a better planet. Would you support setting off…

Quoted post unavailable.

Or, you know, the climate is in crisis already: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/climate-...

And meat eating has an enormous effect on climate change: https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-59232599

But sure, I'm the one with the fantasy future here. I wouldn't care except YOUR consumption is directly ruining the world for everyone else.

And I notice you didn't address your own comment asking why we should bother caring about future generations. How heartless are you?

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

#284

Post by pfdietz »

bilsbie wrote: post #224

I’ve always wondered if earths total biomass is still increasing or has it reached a steady state? And what’s the main limiting factor?

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/08/total-biomass-weight-...

"plants make up 82.4% and surprisingly, bacteria make up 12.8%. Animals make up just 0.47%."

So, your question is basically "is the biomass in plants increasing or decreasing"? It appears to be increasing:

https://www.fs.usda.gov/nrs/pubs/jrnl/2021/nrs_2021_xu_001.p...

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

#285

Post by Dylan16807 »

fnimick wrote: post #249
version_five wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Happy to see more people celebrating human achievement amidst all the usual doom and gloom that people like to leverage to push their political beliefs. The GP should be commended. Seriously, it's a bit tiring that [vegetarians] people that want to control what I eat get a pass for posting the same tired stuff every time it came up. If any other fanatic jumped in with their own agenda at every conceivable junctu…

Maybe because your meat consumption and demand for increasing land and water use to satiate your meat consumption is ruining the planet for the rest of us? If I could trap all the "unrepentant meat eaters" in a dome and let you ruin your own environment without broiling the rest of us, I wouldn't have a problem with your choices.

Can my dome be people that want to eat meat but also have a big carbon tax?

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

#286

Post by notch656a »

arcticbull wrote: post #269
prvc wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Almost 40% of all food in the US is wasted each year and that's enough to feed every hungry person on earth. You have a feasible plan to distribute all the wasted food in the U.S. to all the world's hungry people that you'd like to share?

Nope, but we can reduce waste by raising prices for instance by ending farm subsidies. We can mandate the removal of (or at minimum the regulation of) expiration dates on food. Also, educating people about food. People assume that milk goes bad the second the clock rolls over on the unregulated 'best-by' date, so there's incentive to goose the numbers to raise sales. Further, slightly sour milk can be used as a subst…

I fail to see the connection between raising prices and better affordability/access of food for the poor. Certainly you could make food as valuable as, say gold, and most would be loath to waste a single gram of it.

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

#287

Post by [deleted] »

dvzk wrote: post #193
version_five wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Happy to see more people celebrating human achievement amidst all the usual doom and gloom that people like to leverage to push their political beliefs. The GP should be commended. Seriously, it's a bit tiring that [vegetarians] people that want to control what I eat get a pass for posting the same tired stuff every time it came up. If any other fanatic jumped in with their own agenda at every conceivable junctu…

As a cyclist, online cyclists are among the most annoying people in the world. What’s worse is most of them aren’t even athletes.

[deleted]

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

#289

Post by arcticbull »

notch656a wrote: post #286
arcticbull wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, but we can reduce waste by raising prices for instance by ending farm subsidies. We can mandate the removal of (or at minimum the regulation of) expiration dates on food. Also, educating people about food. People assume that milk goes bad the second the clock rolls over on the unregulated 'best-by' date, so there's incentive to goose the numbers to raise sales. Further, slightly sour milk can be used as a subst…

I fail to see the connection between raising prices and better affordability/access of food for the poor. Certainly you could make food as valuable as, say gold, and most would be loath to waste a single gram of it.

If they're throwing out 40% of the food they buy, then raising prices slightly and not throwing out 40% of the food should be accessibility-neutral no? Instead of buying 2 milks and throwing 1 milk out, you buy 1 milk for 2X the price and throw out 0 milk. At the end of the day you still drank 1 milk for the same effective price.

They already have significantly more than they need. Americans already pay less as a percentage of their paychecks for food than any other nation on earth.

What they're running out of though, is fresh water. Having two extra Colorado rivers' worth would be pretty nice in the southwest! [1] And that's just from beef. Don't get me started on the gallon of water it takes to grow a single almond in the California desert while asking people to skip showers [2]. [edit] While the Utah governor literally prays for rain. [3]

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/colorado-river-water-level-60-m...

[2] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-29/californ...

[3] https://governor.utah.gov/2021/06/02/gov-cox-invites-utahns-...

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

#290

Post by Spivak »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #255
Spivak wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course people are going to be proud, the horrors of capitalism aside, we’ve completely eliminated hunger in the US (not implying we’re the only place). Not one single person is starving because we are unable to feed them. And we’re able to feed everyone with the absolute top tier of food desired by humans. It used to be an event only for special occasions to slaughter your lifestock. The only people who got a stea…

Where do you live? The greater cruelty is that we can feed everyone, but choose to throw it away instead if they can't pay. My mother worked at inner city schools in Ohio, let me tell you if the schools didn't have a free lunch and breakfast program (something a lot of politicians hate) a lot of kids wouldn't be eating at all. Saying hunger is solved in America is absurd. Maybe it is in a technical sense but it's far…

We're agreeing. This is exactly my point. Hunger is not solved in the US because of capitalism, not because we're unable to produce enough food to feed everyone which is a horror unto itself.
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