51–60 of 113 posts
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…
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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.
So we use 1/3 * 0.38 * 0.29 = 3.6% of Earth's surface for farming crops and 7% for cattle. Most of that is fertilized every year, and then the surplus fertilizer is flushed to rivers and seas and ends up in the oceans fertilizing algae there. [3]
Basically we're all in the food chain, it doesn't matter where you add the new nitrogen - it goes everywhere.
[1] https://www.fao.org/sustainability/news/detail/en/c/1274219/ [2] https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/earth.htm [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/climate/nitrogen-fertiliz...
EDIT: there are also negative effects, so it's not so simple. I'd still estimate that the global biomass should increase over time.
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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".
I think extremism is obviously very clearly unhealthy by definition.
I have yet to encounter a single scenario in my entire existence wherein the fully-to-one-side-of-any-spectrum-you-might-imagine "extreme" point of view on how to solve any particular problem has been the best, most useful one (to my problem-solving brain, at least).
We humans tend to do this thing where, when we're presented with evidence that a previously-held position might be wrong or harmful, our opinions massively pendulum-swing the other way and we have a hard time finding clear, nuanced middle ground.
"Turns out sunlight gives you cancer, so stay indoors all the time! Avoid all sun exposure at all costs!," we say for a time. But no, it turns out that even though it is technically always doing harm to your DNA, sunlight is inescapably necessary for life and healthy immunological function.
Life is complicated, and extremes are simply shit for problem-solving.
The best survival strategy for any species is to be useful to humans
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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 tak…
Like Carlin said, Earth will be fine, it's been through worse before. It's the people who are fucked.
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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.
I love that humans rule Earth. It's awesome.
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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 tak…
>and this is a system that will take millions of years to recover (if it ever does) Like Carlin said, Earth will be fine, it's been through worse before. It's the people who are fucked.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVgBjRFSMYs - All the World's Coronavirus fits in a Coke Can - Numberphile I was able to pull this up quickly because I remembered they used a Coke can specifically, which helped zoom in quickly despite the noise in the search results.
Wonder what it'd taste like!
> What if every virus in the world were collected into one area? How much volume would they take up and what would they look like?
And remember that the images have mouse over text.