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Human Race Just 0.01% of All Life But Has Destroyed 83% of Wild Mammals, Study Finds (theguardian.com)
An assessment of all life on Earth has revealed humanity's surprisingly tiny part in it as well as our disproportionate impact. From a report: The world's 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds. The new work is the first comprehensive estimate of the weight of every class of living creature and overturns some long-held assumptions. Bacteria are indeed a major life form -- 13% of everything -- but plants overshadow everything, representing 82% of all living matter. All other creatures, from insects to fungi, to fish and animals, make up just 5% of the world's biomass.
Another surprise is that the teeming life revealed in the oceans by the recent BBC television series Blue Planet II turns out to represent just 1% of all biomass. The vast majority of life is land-based and a large chunk -- an eighth -- is bacteria buried deep below the surface. "I was shocked to find there wasn't already a comprehensive, holistic estimate of all the different components of biomass," said Prof Ron Milo, at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, who led the work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Another surprise is that the teeming life revealed in the oceans by the recent BBC television series Blue Planet II turns out to represent just 1% of all biomass. The vast majority of life is land-based and a large chunk -- an eighth -- is bacteria buried deep below the surface. "I was shocked to find there wasn't already a comprehensive, holistic estimate of all the different components of biomass," said Prof Ron Milo, at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, who led the work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
are we just quantifying random stuff and telling the world about it?
0.01% of life by weight is currently humans, but we've killed 83% of mammal species... by species count? individuals?
what percentage of mammal species does humanity account for? by weight or by head count?
what about other groups? insects? viruses? reptiles? haven't we hunted any fish into the same category as the dodo?
how many species did t-rex hunt to extinction? what counts as a species?
seriously. get your s*** together, researchers. get it all together in one place.
A fun topic to discuss with militant vegans is what they expect is going to happen to animal populations in their meat free utopia. The realist in me sees that likely animal numbers would reduce and some currently unthreatened species would begin to struggle. Conserving wildlife is important especially while our knowledge of DNA and genomes is so immature. Good husbandry is going to produce better results than vegan idealougues. Cage farming of chickens and pig farrowing pens however are disgusting. For this reason I buy free range and raise my own chickens. On 261 square metres of land I have 3 chickens and about 30 species of plant. When you have limited space you certainly want those things to be edible/productive. I've noticed an increase in other birds, which while mostly common shows that my property supports more life than most inner city plots. It's not like you can just start caring for endangered animals anyway.
The major problem are the religious conservatives who believe they need to destroy as much of the world as possible before the coming apocalypse.
There are no innocents without a concept of morality. They can resume eating each other alive without any concept of innocence or guilt without disturbance by man at some point, until that time we are the apex predator.
We generally treat our cattle nicer than do the lesser predators.
Lies, damnable lies, and Statistics...
Most of this stuff global destruction environmental science PR is pretty contrived anyway. They have a tendency to over do the emotionally fabrication and wording when trying to make their point. It generally ends up with "we are all going to die!" or there abouts...
Problem though is when you do this, eventually you run out of space for the hype or dire consequences and your support wanes. It's sort of like taking drugs, where once a little was enough to get high, it starts taking more and more. Eventually you cannot take more because it will kill you or there simply isn't any more to take. Same with environmental emergency madness. Once you get to "we are all going to die!" there simply isn't much more you can use that's worse....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Real science doesn't come with a political agenda.
Politics is as distinct from science as religion is. People with an agenda are just abusing statistics.
Continue these delusions of yours at your peril.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.