Slashdot Mirror
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.
If AI ever gets as powerful and unchecked as some visionaries predict then this little tidbit may be our undoing. It needs to be fully researched and documented and not just tossed out there as fact. I sure wish Asimov were still alive to enforce the 3 (4?) laws.
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
Is a bit like lumping all vertebrates and invertebrates together. Bacteria is a pretty broad category.
As a human I would like to suggest that we spread the blame to our cousins: the jawed fish, cephalopods, and the mammal order of Rodentia (Rodents). We could possibly include all Eukaryotes because I think mushrooms and trees had a hand in this situation as well.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Humans are cause of most extinctions of the modern times. I get that. But comparing our biomass as a percentage to the percent of Mammals and Plants (with a much bigger percentage number) isn't really telling us anything, because the units are off. But the problem when we exaggerate our problems, it doesn't make people who are not likely to do anything change their minds. They will disbelieve it, because they are (intentionally) being confused by the numbers so they just won't trust the source. Or just express the fact that we have gone too far anyways and give up.
We don't like being told that we are bad people. Because in our mind, we are not. We may not like the things we do, but it out of necessity not because we are trying to be evil.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So that means that I can eat and/or kill 99.98% of the non-humans around me? Cool.
overachievers.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
I'm sure one is in there, I'm just not funny enough to say it.
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.
How much of that Moose do you use to feed your family. What do you do with the rest? I think the biggest problem isn't that we hunt and eat animals, but the fact we let so much food go to waste. Often just because of cultural norms.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
I guess that means we are all 1%ers, so much for Occupy!
We evolved this way naturally. We didn't force ourselves to evolve to become the dominant creature, by far. But, it was BOUND to happen at some point over billions of years.
I feel zero guilt about this. I'm not SUPPOSED to!
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Except the plague learned on how to keep itself functioning.
a couple Hundred years ago, a City couldn't support itself with over a million people. There will be a some incident that will kill them off back to a safe number. But now we know what kills us, and the City of million people can now distribute support from hundreds or thousands of miles a away. And ship away the stuff that would kill us to some isolated area.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Even if it doesn't come from AI, surely humans themselves will soon realise that there are too many of us around. Cue reversal of the whole "love one another thing" to the exact opposite - exterminate one another to survive.
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.
Oh hey there's millions of {insert tasty game animal here}, we can just hunt them forever!
..and:
This {plant name here} is just some shitty weed, we'll burn it all and turn this into {farm land || a factory || a housing tract || cattle grazing land}
(then 50 years later they find out that 'weed' has/had near-magical medicinal properties)
..and, of course:
Why the fuck should I care about {animal name} or {plant name}, I can't make assloads of money from that! Get rid of it and build the {capitalist venture} there!
So, to summarize:
o Short-sightedness induced ignorance
o Base greed
Any questions? Or have I adequately covered it?
If it's like with deer around here, almost all of it. Steaks, burger and sausage. Bones and offal for the dogs. Hide sold for leather and antlers have various uses. Not much left.
Don't project your cultural norms onto others.
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
Indeed! Here's to A1 Steak Sauce!
Table-ized A.I.
He may be a nihilistic Malthusian, but Thanos had a valid point. If one could eliminate 50% of sentient life from a world, the long term benefits would outweigh the immediate negatives. This is already based on historical precedence. After the Black Plague wiped out over 1/3 of Europe's population, the continent experienced a rebirth that became the Renaissance, the church lost much of its power, the continent's economic power strength improved, and the age of the Enlightenment came about which brought new artistic, scientific, and political thinking. One has to wonder what the long term impact would be from reducing the Earth's current human population from 7.6 billion to 3.8 billion (approximately 1970's world population).
Well, some where, maybe most I've tried are however.... I've had a few that where not.... I can do without octopus, venison and green beans my self..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If you don't clean the guts out of a kill, pretty much immediately, much of the meat will be ruined and go to waste. Dropped in the woods the guts are scavenger food, not wasted.
You don't hunt, do you?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There's a video about wealth distribution in the US that bounces around between talking about accumulated assets and income when describing "wealth", with no mention of any of this. Because of this, each argument is about one of 16 different comparisons.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Most of this stuff global destruction environmental science PR is pretty contrived anyway... Once you get to "we are all going to die!" there simply isn't much more you can use that's worse...
Yeah, there's some truth to this, but I don't think you can lay it all at any one group's feet. Some scientist does a study on earthquakes, and finds that the worst case scenario of one model is that the world will have a short period of high seismic activity sometime in the next 100 years. When he publishes his study, he makes a special note of that result just to make it a little more sensationalistic. Then some reporter becomes aware of the study, and writes a news story about how the world is definitely going to be overrun with earthquakes for the next 100 years. That story gets onto news aggregation sites (like this one), and people don't even read the article, and then you have a bunch of people arguing about the ironclad proof that the world will explode within the next 10 years.
The science of the original study may have been solid. It may even be that the conclusions and predictions of the study were pretty good. Or not. We'll probably never find out, since the world won't explode in 10 years, and then everyone will say that the study was bunk.
This just confirms my belief that human beings are essentially parasites. Am I an asshole? Yes, I am.
I was watching The Magic Pill last week and in it they interview a former vegan. She explained the reason she is no longer vegan was the fact that when she began growing her own food she wanted the best nutrition for her growing garden. What she found was the best food for her plants was...animals. All of the best growing fertilizers utilized some part of an animal (usually blood) to enrich the soil. This led to her epiphany that whether we eat them or the plants eat them they are going to get eaten. Just as plants process carbon to make the air we breath they process deceased animals to be eaten by living animals.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
0.01% of life by weight is currently humans, but we've killed 83% of mammal species... by species count? individuals?
Individuals. RTFA.
what percentage of mammal species does humanity account for? by weight or by head count?
36%, by head count. RTFA.
what about other groups? insects? viruses? reptiles?
They 'measured' marine mammals (80%), plants (50%), fish (15%). RTFA.
Get your shit together, AC. Get it all together and put it in a backpack.
Earth's Land Mammals by Weight: https://xkcd.com/1338/
Explained: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wi...
It references a 2002 book: "The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change".
So, while this topic is very important, I'm not sure what in the study is actually "news"? Maybe the low percentage of ocean biomass (which I feel is hard to believe)?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
You just haven't had them cooked right.
Smoked spicy baby octopus taste almost baconey if done right.
The other two are excellent when cooked with bacon. Venison and green beans both need fat.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
True.. But I think some organizations use this effect to advance their causes. Commissioning "studies" which are thinly veiled ways to take some real science, slap on a veneer of alarmist inventions and include a couple of alarming looking extrapolated graphs by carefully massaging the data, sign the "study" with lots of letters after the author's name. Then Circulate amongst the media and volia... A Slashdot story is born.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You might be right.. But I'll suffer though all sorts of stuff to get to bacon, so I'm not sure it's a good test.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If we put our mind (and stomach) to it, we can eat anything into extinction.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I am opposed to wildlife conservation. I arrived at this opinion for three reasons.
First was I watched a pro-conservation video on TED called "Life lessons from big cats" which had some of the most miserably fucked up wildlife footage I had ever seen. I realized how sanitized all the nature videos I'd watched growing up were, and that the horror I was seeing probably happened all the time in nature.
Second, I used to be very opposed to hunting, but in a forum thread a hunter basically asked me "Do you think there's such a thing as a good death in nature?" In other words, wildlife can expect to die by being torn apart by predators, starving to death over weeks, or from disease. How is a shotgun worse than that? I agreed, and extended this thinking to all wildlife. Animals don't exactly go to "sleep" one day surrounded by loved ones. Wild animals are terrified of every little noise because every little noise really can be their oncoming death. If one cares about animals, is preserving a species to experience ten million years more of fear and horrible death really a compassionate outcome? Humans at least have hope from the advancement of medicine and technology.
Third, yes biodiversity is shrinking, but all that stuff I got taught about the "web of life" is pretty apparently not coming true. So long as we have photosynthesis going on, it looks to me like it makes no difference how many species of shrew or stick bug there are.
Main thing that makes me sad is my opinion puts me in direct opposition to almost everyone I admire. Most people who agree with me on this are the same kind of people who should go drink bleach.
Yes, but this could be considered self-defense, since otherwise, the moose might have bit your sister.
And many animals feast off my land, including the carrots I plant along with 32 other vegetables.
Yeah, but you don't eat the carrots and other vegetables into extinction . . . nor the moose. Because you want to plant the vegetables next year, and you need another moose to hunt next year.
FTFS:
while livestock kept by humans abounds.
We clearly tweeted to all animals: "Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated (domesticated)!" Chickens and cows got the message and are doing fine. We still try to sustain animals that tastes good, but refuse to be domesticated, like tuna and moose.
Something that doesn't taste good and doesn't let itself be domesticated, like penguins and dolphins, don't have a bright future. We just keep them around, because they are cute. But if things get tough in the world, they will be seen as competition for the fish humans need.
Oh, and as a side note . . . the Russians DID try to domesticate moose. They even wanted to form a "Moose Cavalry". But, alas, without much success.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Humans are 0.01% of all life (by weight?) but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals. So, what do wild mammals represent as a portion of mammals? Or of life in total. And how many cows, pigs, goats and other domesticated animals did we replace those wild ones with?
Have gnu, will travel.
https://xkcd.com/1338/
Assuming Randall Munroe did his research well (and he generally does), it shows that humans represent a significant portion of all land mammals by mass, and that humans plus our domestic animals constitute nearly all land mammal mass. Wild mammals represent a tiny percentage.
Of course the tooltip reminds us that bacteria still outweigh us by thousands to one, so there's still work to be done.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Those numbers put together like that are inane, and smack of a sensationalist, agenda-driven goal, not meaningful science.
Bones and offal for the dogs.
Well, if you were really brave, daring and unafraid . . . and very, very, very hungry . . . you could try to make chitlins from the offal.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Once you get to "we are all going to die!" there simply isn't much more you can use that's worse....
This just in - we're all going to die painfully. Slowly and painfully in the worst possible way unless we follow their advice exactly.
I'm sure there are poorly designed or executed studies that come to incorrect conclusions. I'm sure there are occasional scientists that fudge their results and hype their conclusions for recognition. I know that there's some straight-up unscientific "studies" that are just misleading propaganda.
I would just argue that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. We shouldn't dismiss science wholesale, nor should we ignore warnings of potential environmental disasters, just because some people are sensationalizing things.
Destroy the LEFT now.
And birds
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
LOL.. Reminds me of the sign I saw once...
WARNING!
You WILL die you if you touch it!
AND it will hurt like hell while it's killing you!
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If you found out that HUMAN blood was being used in fertilizer...let me guess, you'd have a problem with that, right?
And why not, exactly? Medical blood has a limited lifetime and then has to be thrown out.
If it's making sensational claims about a controversial subject, red flags should go up. IF it's trying to make dire predictions of bad consequences on a complex issue, or relies on making over simplifications of broadly complex scientific fields of study, more red flags go up. IF they are making nonsensical associations between unrelated scientific disciplines or comparing apples with oranges without blinking an eye, forget it. IF they don't discuss the possibly ways they could be wrong or what the limits of their observations and data are, just don't bother.
It's pretty much a safe bet that if you are reading something "scientific" on a news site, it's only there as click bait. Nearly all that stuff is garbage.
HOWEVER, if you are reading a peer reviewed study or an article from a well known, well respected publication, you might want to read carefully, review the foot notes fully, then decide what you think..
Take EVERYTHING with a grain of salt...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I am surprised majority of biomass isn't in the ocean, but only 1%? That number has to be wrong. All the bacteria in the abyssal sludge alone is more than 1% of the worldwide total I'd bet. How did they get such a low number for the ocean?
The world's 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study.
There may well be something to see here, but when they count a human as one for one equal with a cockroach and a head louse I have no interest in anything these disgusting vermin have to say.
The one thing I agree with the poster on is they are equal to a cockroach.
Destroyed is a morality play, designed to make humans even more central and important.
Displaced is scientific language for what evolution has always done.
New improved patriotic fleshlight: now comes in red, white, and blue (PETA approved). Because while you may be a perv, at least you're a loyal perv. No dispassionate white gloves for you, no siree, dudly death canon.
Quite appropriate.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You have discovered the Pig's, Chicken's and Cow's secret plans for world domination:
Be Tasty!!!
By being so delicious they made that wastefully big brained omnivore, humans, ensure the survival of the 'livestock' who are really the world overlords!
We suck... We're way behind the great Permian-Triassic extinction event, and there wasn't anything around back that as smart and technologically advanced as we are!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Sounds like a successful predator.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
0.01% of life by weight is currently humans, but we've killed 83% of mammal species... by species count? individuals?
Individuals. RTFA.
Says a guy who didn't read the actual paper and is guessing?
That percentage was calculated from this line in the actual (not made-up) report:
The Report:
"Human activity contributed to the Quaternary Megafauna Extinction between 50,000 and 3,000 y ago, which claimed around half of the large (>40 kg) land mammal species (30). The biomass of wild land mammals before this period of extinction was estimated by Barnosky (30) at 0.02 Gt C. The present-day biomass of wild land mammals is approximately sevenfold lower, at 0.003 Gt C."
100*(1 - 0.003/0.02) = 85%, not exactly the 83% quoted but within the accuracy of the estimate.
what percentage of mammal species does humanity account for? by weight or by head count?
36%, by head count. RTFA.
The paper is entirely done with biomass estimates. Why are you BSing everyone?
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Evolution is simply which animal is better at killing the other animals. Looks like humans win.
The extinction alarmist thing is bullshit. Extinction is part of the ecological-evolutionary process, like the Permian mass extinction of 250 million years ago, where 90% of all species were lost. Besides, scientists are working on a fix. Until then, don't ask us to change our ways when there's a buck to be made. And don't expect us to go against the best part of human nature, greed. It's a John Smith 'Invisible Hand', 'The Marketplace Is Smarter', 'All For Self, Forgetting Everything Else' sort of thing.
Banal milquetoast platitudinous retort:
Since God told us to in Genesis 1:28, we have subdued the earth and have dominion over almost every living thing. And in our efforts to do good for ourselves, we may have brought about the eve of our own extinction, not to mention the extinction every other living thing. Unless we're smart enough to somehow transmute 'domination over every living thing' into 'stewardship of the biosphere', we are in danger of succumbing to our own devices, and turning the planet into a cinder.
If we weren't meant to kill the animals why are they made out of super tasty meat?
I'm guessing the K/T asteroid has humanity beat by a long shot.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Get your shit together, AC. Get it all together and put it in a backpack.
Reminds me of a comedian line: Take your filing cabinet, put it in the toilet, and sort your shit out.
If it wasn't humans it would have been something else. Whatever is at the top of the food chain will do this provided it can proliferate itself via reproduction. That is life and biology. We are made to do this. Get over it.
We'll make great pets
We're Number 1!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Tip 4: Always take an overweight, slow running, friend into bear country with you.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Not all of them, as you can see. Some are tasty, that's what we call "livestock". Some are fun to hunt. That's what we call "extinct".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Are we not men?
About half of us are not.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think in newspeak that's called "collateral damage".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Aka "You needn't run faster than the lion, only faster than one of your teammates".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
https://overpopulationisamyth....
http://www.juliansimon.com/wri...
http://www.businessinsider.com... (see: "Part Two: Advanced Economies That Will Shrivel And Die")
While the Earth may have its limits for any specific combination of human culture and technology, there is room for quadrillions of humans in self-replicating space habitats throughout the solar system. Jeff Bezos' take on that:
https://www.space.com/37572-je...
And on current USA human culture and politics and economics:
https://www.westernwatersheds....
"By far the greatest impact on the American landscape comes not from urbanization but rather from agriculture. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farming and ranching are responsible for 68 percent of all species endangerment in the United States. Agriculture is the largest consumer of water, particularly in the West. Most water developments would not exist were it not for the demand created by irrigated agriculture. If ultimate causes and not proximate causes for species extinction are considered, agricultural impacts would even be higher. Yet scant attention is paid by academicians, environmentalists, recreationists and the general public to agriculture's role in habitat fragmentation, species endangerment and declining water quality. The ironic aspect of this head-in-the sand approach to land use is that most agriculture is completely unnecessary to feed the nation. The great bulk of agricultural production goes toward forage production used primarily by livestock. A small shift in our diet away from meat could have a tremendous impact on the ground in terms of freeing up lands for restoration and wildlife habitat. It would also reduce the poisoning of our streams and groundwater with pesticides and other residue of modern agricultural practices."
Consider, "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?"
https://healthesolutions.com/s...
"Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac? In a classic case of contradictory government policy the pyramids in this graphic clearly show the inverse relationship between federal government agriculture subsidies and federal nutrition recommendations. The chart was put together by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, but its figures still, alas, look quite relevant. Thanks to lobbying, Congress chooses to subsidize foods that weâ(TM)re supposed to eat less of."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I would like to know how they count the missing life also. If we didn't kill anything off, which we all know is not really true, but let's say for argument that it is. When we start raising the livestock it will take over a larger portion of the total as we grow the population of said livestock. Killing things off isn't necessary for us to take over the mammal population, we just need to grow our part of it.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
You're wrong, three is the perfect number. I can't believe we still have to educate people on the importance of making backups on site like Slashdot!
What is best in life? Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.
You are correct.
I did only RTFA and not the paper, but upon reinspection of TFA there are (multiple!) mentions of the results concerning biomass. I'm not sure whether they edited it or I just completely misread. In any case: Thanks for the correction!
Women, it counts.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
And all the masses nod their heads with a sad show of sagacity... burping quietly in front of their tellies... and watching the penguin explode.