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Who rules Earth? Wild mammals far outweighed by humans and domestic animals

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Re: Who rules Earth? Wild mammals far outweighed by humans and domestic animals

#41

Post by bilsbie »

ajuc wrote: post #27
bilsbie wrote: post #22

I’ve always been curious if earths total biomass is increasing and by how much.

It should, and quite significantly. Since WW2 ended thanks to Haber-Bosch process we burn hydrocarbons stored for millions of years to suck nitrogen from air and turn it into artifical fertilizers that then are used by our farmed plants and animals to make biomass that wouldn't be there otherwise. > Nearly 50% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber–Bosch process.[59] Thus, the Haber process…

I see what you’re saying but is that a significant number compared to all the microscopic sea life, algae and soil microbes?

I have no idea.

Re: Who rules Earth? Wild mammals far outweighed by humans and domestic animals

#42

Post by bilsbie »

willis936 wrote: post #30
bilsbie wrote: post #22

I’ve always been curious if earths total biomass is increasing and by how much.

On what timescale? I think on the correct timescales biomass tracks what the environment supports. I'm not a geologist or biologist, but I have the impression that estimating biomass from fossil records is difficult. We do know that the oxygen boosts of the Proterozoic eon and Cambrian explosion caused an increase in biodiversity. Given the lemma "life will thrive in a comfortable environment" it should thrive more w…

Should evolution play a role? Life evolving to better process available resources over time?

What about a simple cumulative effect.

Re: Who rules Earth? Wild mammals far outweighed by humans and domestic animals

#43

Post by vlovich123 »

chitowneats wrote: post #37
CalRobert wrote: post #26

We live in an empty, denuded world, a faint shadow of its former self. Even "green" Ireland which sells itself as a natural place is an ecological wasteland. From Whittled Away, by Padraic Fogarty https://iwt.ie/product/whittled-away/ """ In 1623 it was reported chat Ireland was exporting 20,000 tons of pilchard annually.4 To pm this figure in perspective, it is over four times the toal landings for all species from…

Ah yes. An empty, denuded world, with unprecedented flourishing for our friends, family, and fellow humans. This type of nostalgia for a wild world full of disease and dangerous predators fails so utterly to motivate me.

I don’t think anyone is claiming that humans haven’t flourished. What is being lamented is that this has clearly been at the expense of other species on Earth and biodiversity and ecology seems to be quite a fair bit worse.

Plastics in every source of water, rapid global warming, acidification of the ocean. There’s not a whole lot of good news about the health of the Earth ecosystem and this is a system that will take millions of years to recover (if it ever does).

Re: Who rules Earth? Wild mammals far outweighed by humans and domestic animals

#45

Post by nealabq »

Amorymeltzer wrote: post #28

In the (excellent) What We Owe the Future , William MacAskill discusses some ways of considering and weighing values on different lives, one of which was counting neurons. I don't have the book in front of me, but from my notes at the time: >There are 8 billion humans and 135 billion farmed animals, but in total humans have 700 million trillion neurons while farmed animals have in total only 20 million trillion. Stil…

Future super-AIs may cite this as justification for their actions.

Re: Who rules Earth? Wild mammals far outweighed by humans and domestic animals

#46

Post by oliveshell »

chitowneats wrote: post #37
CalRobert wrote: post #26

We live in an empty, denuded world, a faint shadow of its former self. Even "green" Ireland which sells itself as a natural place is an ecological wasteland. From Whittled Away, by Padraic Fogarty https://iwt.ie/product/whittled-away/ """ In 1623 it was reported chat Ireland was exporting 20,000 tons of pilchard annually.4 To pm this figure in perspective, it is over four times the toal landings for all species from…

Ah yes. An empty, denuded world, with unprecedented flourishing for our friends, family, and fellow humans. This type of nostalgia for a wild world full of disease and dangerous predators fails so utterly to motivate me.

And with your comment, we now have both unhealthy extremes represented, viewpoint-wise.

We need not spend all day tearfully mourning how Earth once was, yet we also clearly shouldn't tarmac the whole thing and turn it into a Costco.

It is very possible to embrace industrialized existence while acknowledging the importance of, and promoting, biodiversity.

Re: Who rules Earth? Wild mammals far outweighed by humans and domestic animals

#47

Post by yogthos »

For all the intelligence individual humans exhibit, humanity as a whole behaves indistinguishably from a slime mold [1]. If we treat humanity as an organism where individuals humans are cells, then the behavior of the organism is to just spread mindlessly across the planet and extract resources until they're exhausted and it dies off. It seems that there's a phase transition happening at scale where all the internal complexity of human society is reduced to a very simple behavior.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-just-...

Re: Who rules Earth? Wild mammals far outweighed by humans and domestic animals

#48

Post by DangitBobby »

oliveshell wrote: post #46
chitowneats wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes. An empty, denuded world, with unprecedented flourishing for our friends, family, and fellow humans. This type of nostalgia for a wild world full of disease and dangerous predators fails so utterly to motivate me.

And with your comment, we now have both unhealthy extremes represented, viewpoint-wise. We need not spend all day tearfully mourning how Earth once was, yet we also clearly shouldn't tarmac the whole thing and turn it into a Costco. It is very possible to embrace industrialized existence while acknowledging the importance of, and promoting, biodiversity.

There may be two extremes, but that doesn't mean both of them are wrong or "unhealthy".

Re: Who rules Earth? Wild mammals far outweighed by humans and domestic animals

#50

Post by JasonFruit »

delecti wrote: post #36
nwatson wrote: post #15

What I'd really like to know: the approximate total mass of all the COVID-19 viruses/virii that have infected humans since the start of the pandemic; the volume (in a vacuum perhaps) these virii would take up if dumped into a container and given a few shakes. Would they take up a thimble? shot glass? coffee mug? liter bottle? drinks cooler? bathtub? car cabin? back yard swimming pool? olympic pool? Larger? (ChatGPT w…

"Virus" kinda refers more to the phenomenon of the species as a whole (kinda like how "humanity" refers to all of us, plus people who came before, plus all the stuff associated with us). Likewise "COVID-19" refers to the pandemic, rather than the viral species. Meanwhile "virion" is the term to refer to the virus particles, so I suppose the most precise/pedantic way to say it would be "all SARS-CoV-2 Virions"?

Guarantee nobody's going to say that.
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