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Humans Use 83 Percent of Earth's Surface
belloc writes "CNN is reporting on a Wildlife Conservation Society report that states that humans take up 83 percent of the Earth's land surface to live on, farm, mine or fish. The article rerers to a WCS human footprint map, but the WCS site seems to have been CNN'd. Funny: I just got back from a little road trip across the southwest, and from all the nothing you see out there, you would think that 83% is a bit high. I guess Arizona farmlands must look a lot like wild, untouched desert."
"Antarctica and a few Arctic land patches were not included in the study because of the lack of data and near absence of human influences"
isn't that the point..there's a whole continent that's basically uninhabited..but since that would lower their numbers, they threw it out.
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CNN is reporting on a Wildlife Conservation Society report that states that humans take up 83 percent of the Earth's land surface
This is not a good summary of what the rWCN report states. 83% of the earth's surface is "directly influenced by human agency" (their words). This does not mean humans occupy or farm in 83%; this measure could be anything as simple as "takes water from an aquifer that flows though land x".
To me, the more shocking claim is that humans appropriate directly or indirectly 40% of the NPP of world as a whole. That's a hell of a lot of caloric consumption by any standard.
I hate to bring this up, but we are all still subject to laws of conservation of mass and matter, which roughly translate into an equilibrium.
I really have a tough time stomaching environmentalist arguments about "overuse" and "overpopulation", because those arguments invariably ignore any idea of equilibrium. There will be an equilibrium to everything humans do. If we eat too much food, one of two things will happen: we figure out how to make more food, or we die. Period.
So I have a serious problem with this being an issue. Also, if you look at the map, a good percentage of the land surface was left out of the equation because of "no data". So what, no data. Just because it's inhospitable doesn't mean you leave it out of your equation. Add Antarctica (artica? arctica? I can never remember...) and I'll bet that number drops a good bit. No one can really live easily in Death Valley or the Sahara, but people still do it.
Hell, looking at the green area of the map really tells me that only about 50% of the land on Earth is really being used or exploited.
This article is just more of the same sensationalist crap that we have come to know and love from our environmentalist whacko friends.
Most of that empty space is BLM land which either is currently or has been historically grazed by cattle and (to a lesser degree nowadays) sheep.
Have you ever wondered why towns like Winnemucca have annual Basque festivals? Basque sheepherders were imported into the northwest corner of the Great Basin to herd vast numbers of sheep.
As I said above, nowadays it's mostly cattle. It requires a large number of acres to support a single cow in the Great Basin. Many of the valleys that are too dry to graze cattle support large herds of feral horses. "feral" means "escaped from captivity". The modern horse is not native to North America and their presence is indeed a human impact.
Does the fact that I know far, far more about the historical and modern use of the land in Nevada make me a whacko? Or does your willingness to spew nonsense make you an ideologue?
You can't irrigate deserts without water, BTW. The Imperial Valley is the largest desert irrigation project in the world. Because of it and various other water demands in many years the mouth of the Colorado is dried up. In other words, the river is overallocated. Where will all the extra water to irrigate those parts of the Mojave desert that aren't currently irrigated come from? Not from the only major river system in that desert
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
That statistic usually comes from anti-abortion activists in response to the claim that the world needs no more people on it. It is of course true (barely) but extremely misleading.
Texas comprises 262,000 square miles. Putting (circa) 6 billion people in that space gives 1184 square feet per person. Not entirely comfortable considering your house would butt up against someone else's on all sides but certainly livable.
Unfortunately, this is just LIVING space. Where are you going to get food? Growing enough crops for one person to sustainably survive requires at between one and six acres of land -- one acre is over 43,000 square feet! Cattle ranching and other "meat farming" requires far more space, because you have to feed the cattle. Then you need a water source. Power generation. Transportation systems. Buildings in which to work/create things. Modern conveniences.
Pretty soon you're up to 20-30 acres per person required in the US to keep things moving. America comprises 2.3 billion acres... do the math and you'll see we don't even have room in the US for the measly 250,000,000 residents we already have, much less the entire world!
Just a thought... it bugs me when people (and I don't blame you) overgeneralize how much space one person REALLY takes up.
Besides, I like to stretch out.
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Every time there's a slashdot article regarding the World Wildlife Fund, I have to make a post like this.
;p
Looks like it's that time again.
They're an alarmist group that really doesn't know what they're talking about. Let's take your first paragraph:
The statistics regarding the World Wildlife Fund's footprint are accurate for TODAY the 'ecological footprint' is defined as the 'area of productive land and water that people need to support their consumption and to dispose of waste'. London's footprint is 120 times as big as the land it covers, and as extrapolated by the WWF, Earth's ecological footprint is in danger of growing larger than the entire planet.
Great, that's very informative. The problem is, it's entirely misleading. So, okay. London has a footprint 120 times as big as the land it covers, but so what? The problem lies here: they're assuming that if an acre of land is used to support human (farming/fishing/living/whatever) that it's completely used. As in, that land marked used is somehow fully used.
If it's used for farming, odds are it's not being used to it's full potential. If it's used for trash, you can just keep putting more trash on top of it... or use it to create *more* land. (Tip: It's called landfill.) What the WWF is neglecting is that there's no reason, aside from a preserve, to *not* use land. Just like a house seems to take up the same 'footprint' as an apartment building doesn't mean that if we want to double the number of people, we need two houses.
It's just flawed, lousy logic. But that's okay. They're cruising for donations.
Actually the Club of Rome used entirely different methods and the folks being quoted aren't making any predictions whatsoever.
Since it appears that you didn't RTFA, here's what they say:
"As such they [the relatively unimpacted areas they've identified] provide a promising opportunity to conserve wildlife and wild places while minimizing conflicts with existing human structures and demands."
All they're doing is trying to identify areas in which conservation efforts might have the biggest bang for the bucks. No doomsday, sky-is-falling scenarios. No political manifesto.
As for the Economist, I read it regularly and I'd have to say that "slipshod" applies to a bunch of their efforts to shoehorn the world into their narrowly conservative world view.
Ah yes, but these are no ordinary statistics! Taken from their site,
Although just estimates, these few statistics are testament to the unprecedented escalations in both human population and consumption during the twentieth century
These are estimated statistics! What we have here is an alarmist group making up statistics and drawing radical conclusions based on them. And what am I supposed to do about it? Oh, I'd guess that they're looking for donations so they can publish more insightful reports just like this, to keep me informed of all of these possible catastrophic consequences that are just around the corner.
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One post stating that environmentalists are "wackos" gets a 5:Insightful, one saying Earth can support "hundreds of billions of people" gets a 4:Interesting, while a carefully written post pointing out grazing patterns and water supply issues is labeled a "Troll". Go figure.
This is a fine forum to talk about tech, but a tough audience to talk about the non-artificial world. I suppose that too many are born, live, and die in cities where a lawn qualifies as "nature". Use /. for its strengths, and don't sweat the rest.
There are two kinds of societies: sustainable and doomed.