431–440 of 447 posts
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Brazil? Australia? Where?
LMGTFY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_container_port... Surprise, it's Shanghai.
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>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/
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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 c…
In terrestrial ecosystems, the sun's energy is captured by primary producers (plants). That energy is used for plant metabolism, reproduction, and growth (building tissues, storing energy, etc.). Net primary productivity (NPP) of an ecosystem is the the difference between what energy primary producers capture from the sun and onvert into sugars during photosynthesis, and the energy loss to maintenance and metabolism. It is principally measured as the accumulated biomass. Importantly, NPP is an upper bound, since the primary, if not only way, for all other organisms to obtain their energy is to consume plants (herbivores), or consume those who consume plants (carnivores).
NPP is different between terrestrial ecosystems. Deserts have the lowest. Tropical rainforests the highest (excluding marshes, etc.). Temperate forests are quite high, and much higher than grasslands or farmlands.
e.g. 9000 kilocalories/square meter/year for rain forests, 6000 for temperate forests, about 2000 for farmland.
Now what most modern farming does do, is bring in energy from elsehwere. For example, cattle might be fed corn brought it from elsewhere. Not to mention the energy inputs from fossil fuels (fertilizers, tractors, etc.)
(2) You are right that comparisons in terms of biomass imply fungibility and it is not always appropriate. But it is also true that individual species often simply fill niches that arise as a property of the system (the system of energy inputs and limiting factors). How else would you compare, say, a forest in Washington with a forest in northern Europe? different species, and all that. But the niches are largely the same.
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Could we use this to justify factory farming humans, in that the agony and terror they experience is eclipsed by the good of them being bred into being rather than not existing at all? We would certainly have more humans being born in that case than now, is it a negative thing that we are not doing this?
I was going to say - I know where the parent comes down on abortion laws. Given that they obviously think an unwanted child being born into an impoverished family unable to support them is still a net positive.
I think bringing children into this world is a sin and parents atone for it to some degree by providing for children the best way they can.
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You might consider the other side that equal amount of animals get to be born every minute and live some lives. We usually don't consider a person being born a tragedy almost regardless of what life this person had.
Could we use this to justify factory farming humans, in that the agony and terror they experience is eclipsed by the good of them being bred into being rather than not existing at all? We would certainly have more humans being born in that case than now, is it a negative thing that we are not doing this?
We have religions that contain or contained at some point rules on how to be moral and have slaves. Some of those religions are not only still active today but are still huge.
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You might consider the other side that equal amount of animals get to be born every minute and live some lives. We usually don't consider a person being born a tragedy almost regardless of what life this person had.
Well humans aren't generally born into farrowing crates in factory farms and jammed together a few inches apart until killed. We did a whole Matrix thing about how that kind of life might be sub-optimal. I'm pro meat btw, just opposed to factory farming and waste.
And we still have it in the pockets of the world where it still makes economic sense.
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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 c…
re (1) In terrestrial ecosystems, the sun's energy is captured by primary producers (plants). That energy is used for plant metabolism, reproduction, and growth (building tissues, storing energy, etc.). Net primary productivity (NPP) of an ecosystem is the the difference between what energy primary producers capture from the sun and onvert into sugars during photosynthesis, and the energy loss to maintenance and meta…
Yes! Minus the corn, which is another farmland, fossil fuels, Haber Bosch fertilizers are things that only humans do.
Are you saying that with all the technologies of modern farming, it still produces less than 0.25x mammal-consumable calories per square mile (9000 for rainforest vs 2000 for farmland)?
That is unbelievable on its face, frankly, but also of couse farmland is not generally replacing lucious rainforests, but other bushland or something. So, humans and their farmland has to be enormously increasing the mammal-consumable calories per plot of farmland compared to wildland, otherwise farming wouldn’t make sense.
The point is, there is only 1 animal (human) that drastically increases calories per square meter wherever it goes, so we (and livestock we choose to feed with farming) can not be lumped into any biomass calculations.
2) I would compare the species within themselves, and the “niches” between forests. Ultimately, I think biomass confuses more than it elucidates. Talk about ant colonies of Antium Washingtonicum to Antium Europium, don’t plop them into the same metric as Cougarium Washingtonium, in my opinion this is will lead to maybe nice-looking graphs with “findings” that are nonsensical.
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> Weren't we talking about most important animal? You’re right. I slipped into talking about species on the whole, my bad. That said, I think it’s really important to clarify what we mean by important. Do we mean powerful, impactful? Or do we mean the lives of the individuals of that species are more valuable? Back to powerful/impactful, if we’re talking about purely animals, then I’d look to pollinators. Would you a…
> If we were to rely purely on humanity’s ability to produce oxygen and decay organic matter But again this is about a single species. If you remove one random type of algae or plant it's not going to make a huge difference. > 1) What exactly do we mean by important? The impact they have, the breadth of skills, the monuments and constructs and art, the potential for what they can do in the future. Including spreading…
Prochlorococcus single-handedly produces 20% of all oxygen on Earth.[1]
> The impact they have, the breadth of skills, the monuments and constructs and art, the potential for what they can do in the future. Including spreading life through the solar system eventually, or things like that. I might be missing some parts, it's late.
No, I mean what do you mean by important, fundamentally. Is this a judgement of the objective value of the lives of the individuals of that species? Is it just an assessment of their power? Is it putting arbitrary characteristics that species happens to posses on a pedestal while simultaneously and just as arbitrarily devaluing the unique characteristics of all other species?
Are we starting from the bias that humans are more "important" (again, still unclear what that actually means) than all others, then working backwards and highlighting all the human characteristics as being evidence of that importance after the fact?
If a species with giant claws ruled the world, do you think they might wax poetic about the great importance of giant claws, and how this is the one true metric by which the value of a life can be measured?
Are giant claws, ability to produce art, or any other specific characteristic or capability in any way relevant to the question of whether or not a life has value?
> I don't want to double down on this too hard. I just think most humans are in a pretty narrow band and this band is pretty far away from any other species.
Well we're going to have to define the boundaries of this band, otherwise it doesn't seem to be based on anything concrete and seems more like circular reasoning that the boundaries of this band are those that exist within humans and therefore those humans are important because they exist within the boundaries of that band.
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…
Let's forget for a moment about other energy sources, and also pretend we use all that oil just for energy. That would mean that every day, the 8 billion humans on Earth are using the same energy that it would take 365 billion humans to provide by hand.