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

ourworldindata.org

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

#61

Post by freedude »

WithinReason wrote: post #19
teruakohatu wrote: post #12

Here is the paper for which this article is based: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0801918105 The paper is about megafauna rather than all mammels. This highly cited paper calculates the biomass of every class of organism, figure 1 is especially fascinating. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115 Animals are tiny proportion of the world's biomass, with insects dominating that class, along with fish an…

The weight of all viruses is greater than the weight of all mammals

now add bacteria, fungi, and ants...

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

#63

Post by throwawaysleep »

myshpa wrote: post #59

The sad thing is that 100 years ago humans and livestock accounted for around 5% of the biomass (all zoomass, not land mammals only), 95% being the wildlife. Now the numbers are reversed. We've stolen the land from the wildlife and dedicated it to a few species we consider edible (agriland is more than forests now, and 75% of it for animal agriculture). Is anybody surprised that we're living in the anthropocene, defi…

Build more zoos then. That’s the only realistic solution.

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

#64

Post by cercatrova »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #55
Retric wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walk around and pick up a random rock. On average it’s 5% iron which combined with just a little carbon makes steel, so no we aren’t running out. This is also why the Iron Age was such a big deal. The bronze age required both copper and tin which where rare and didn’t generally show up near each other while you could operate a shitty iron mine just about anywhere.

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.

Bronze is much easier to create than iron which requires higher smelting temperatures. The only reason we were able to was likely through advances smelting bronze.

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

#65

Post by konfusinomicon »

rcarr wrote: post #38
ROTMetro wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your number all New Metal (not to be confused with the equally important to the world's economy Nu Metal production) or is part of the 1.9 billion recycled/reclaimed? It appears this number includes 450-500 million tons of reclaimed steel?

In my opinion there hasn’t been enough nu metal production since early 00s, I think we should manufacture more black bowling shirts with flames on them to incentivise uptake.

the Korn market has been in steady downtrend for years, but with such a decline in quality it's no surprise

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

#66

Post by goldenchrome »

adamrezich wrote: post #29

I can't be the only one who is extremely tired of these semi-frequent utterly nihilistic "I'm sad to be part of the human species, we're killing the planet" posts and comments, especially when the posts themselves are possibly misleading (whales aren't included? come on ). I don't know about you but I'm quite happy to be alive and reasonably healthy, and I hope to have many children, I hope mankind doesn't go extinct…

I am with you my friend. I will not eat the bugs.

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

#67

Post by simlevesque »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #55
Retric wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walk around and pick up a random rock. On average it’s 5% iron which combined with just a little carbon makes steel, so no we aren’t running out. This is also why the Iron Age was such a big deal. The bronze age required both copper and tin which where rare and didn’t generally show up near each other while you could operate a shitty iron mine just about anywhere.

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.

I can't recommend enough this blog series: https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-...

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

#68

Post by eric-hu »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #36
deathanatos wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps Agent Smith mistook an S-curve that hasn't started to level off yet for unfettered exponential growth. > Generally, developed nations have seen a decline in their growth rates in recent decades ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#Population_g... ) Or perhaps he was just evil and had a hatred of humanity that he was justifying with whatever reason pleased him.

But has their resource consumption per capita leveled off? Population numbers aren't the scary thing about our CURRENT population. What's scary is that China and India, which is almost 3 billion people, want US-levels of resource consumption, and they are full steam ahead in doing so. Oh, so the curve will tail off around 11 or 15 billion? Who cares. Each billion is 3x the population of the US, and they all want our…

I don’t know about India, but China is undergoing major problems with their population size.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/china-population-shri...

> The country’s total fertility rate decreased from 2.6 in the late 1980s – well above the 2.1 needed to replace deaths – to just 1.15 in 2021.

China modified their child restriction law to 3 children in 2021 only to drop the restriction altogether a few months later.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-child_policy

> After only two months, in July 2021, all family size limits as well as penalties for exceeding them were removed.[8]

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

#69

Post by rvba »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #63
myshpa wrote: post #59

The sad thing is that 100 years ago humans and livestock accounted for around 5% of the biomass (all zoomass, not land mammals only), 95% being the wildlife. Now the numbers are reversed. We've stolen the land from the wildlife and dedicated it to a few species we consider edible (agriland is more than forests now, and 75% of it for animal agriculture). Is anybody surprised that we're living in the anthropocene, defi…

Build more zoos then. That’s the only realistic solution.

More nature reserves.

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

#70

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

nicoburns wrote: post #60
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a LOT of people. Even a small percentage remaining, would quickly deplete all available wildlife. E.g. 1 deer will feed a family of four for a week. Or somewhere about that. There are approximately 100 deer per square mile in the US midwest. If population were depleted to a tiny fraction of what it is now, there could still be about one family per section. They would deplete the deer population to zero in 2…

There are a lot of people. But not everywhere. What you say will true for the US. But in more sparsely populated and less accessible parts of the world it may not be.

The US is pretty sparsely populated. Don't let the crowded cities fool you. #161/203 rated by population/land mass.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

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