Humanity Has Wiped Out 60% of Animal Populations Since 1970 (theguardian.com)

Artem Tashkinov shares a report: The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else. Many scientists believe the world has begun a sixth mass extinction, the first to be caused by a species -- Homo sapiens. Other recent analyses have revealed that humankind has destroyed 83% of all mammals and half of plants since the dawn of civilisation and that, even if the destruction were to end now, it would take 5-7 million years for the natural world to recover. Tanya Steele, chief executive at WWF, said: "We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it."

Comments

Humans + livestock account for 96% mammal biomass

[fedor]

Humans account for about 36 percent of the biomass of all mammals. Domesticated livestock, mostly cows and pigs, account for 60 percent, and wild mammals for only 4 percent. https://www.ecowatch.com/bioma...

Re:And as usual

[squiggleslash]

Frogs have plenty of alternatives to mosquitoes, and mice have plenty of natural predators.

Re:And as usual

[cascadingstylesheet]

Get rid of mosquitoes, and the frogs starve to death. Get rid of rattlesnakes, and you're overrun by mice.

This gets brought up every time, but I'm pretty sure that respectable authorities have said that mosquitoes aren't a crucial food source for anything. (yes, some things eat them, but nothing will starve if they went away)

Re:First generation?

[Ly4]

Logging companies aren't the ones destroying habitat. That's mostly from farming and ranching, and suburban growth.

Brazil just elected a president who wants to privatize even more of the Amazon, so expect the rate of deforestation there to increase from its current rate of six square miles per day.

Re:5-7 million years to recover is complete bullsh

[SqueakyMouse]

It's referring to biodiversity. You won't see much speciation in 5-10 years.

Fake News

[fleabay]

Vince McMahon is the chief executive at WWF, not some Tanya Steele who may not even be a real person.

There isn't a global solution

[DarkOx]

The first step to protecting a future for our grand kids is to recognize there is NOT a global solution. There are probably already to many people.

Population is the one driving factor. Everything else is a rounding error. Anyone who actually cares about the environment would be in favor of basically ending immigration. Limit agricultural exports and imports.

Here in the US we are essentially at the replacement rate in terms of birth rate. Stop letting new outsiders in. Deal with the not nearly as complex economic problem of having a flat population size as compared to growth beyond sustainability or population decline.

Let the rest of the worlds population 'naturally' adjust to the local carrying capacity of those places.

Re:There isn't a global solution

[Rick Schumann]

You know, it's always really fucking easy for someone who lives in a nice, safe, first-world country, who makes a nice, tidy six-digit income, owns his own home, a couple cars, has nice things, new clothes, and is perfectly safe 24/7/365, as is his wife and kids, to say shit like "Stop letting outsiders in" and "Let the rest of the worlds population 'naturally' adjust to the local carrying capacity of those places". You've never had to struggle like these people have just to have enough to eat or a roof over their heads, you've never had to deal with a government that is so corrupt and/or disregarding of their own citizens human rights that they feel the need to leave for their own safety, or lived anywhere where violent criminal organizations threaten your life on a daily basis, or try to kidnap your children to turn into prostitutes or slaves or suicide bombers. No, you have precisely ZERO perspective on what it's like anywhere else in the world, and treat your willful ignorance like it's some sort of fucked-up virtue instead. You most likely don't even know what it's like for the homeless that exist (not LIVE, but EXIST, BARELY) in your area, and probably think they're just lazy or criminals on the run and should be erradicated "for public safety reasons" or somesuch shit. You need to shut the fuck up about things you know nothing about, you entitled son of a bitch.

Re:There isn't a global solution

[CrimsonAvenger]

Let the rest of the worlds population 'naturally' adjust to the local carrying capacity of those places.

Hmm, so, what's the "carrying capacity" of New York City? Or Los Angeles? Hell, it's not like they grow enough food in either of those places to feed the Police Department, much less the rest of the people!

Or was this just your way of saying, "let them brown people starve, damnit! And pass the mashed potatoes"?

Note that if we were to drop back to the "natural carrying capacity" of the land, we'd have to drop back to the "natural" number of humans. Say, a few tens of thousands living in caves.

Oddly enough, I'm willing to bet that everyone who wants to "drop back to the natural carrying capacity of the land" assumes that they'll be part of the 0.001% who survives the famines/plagues/wars that'll be required to make sure Those Others do the dying.

Re:60% of species

[JoeDuncan]

Bugs are animals, and many of them are thriving on our leftovers...

Nope.

Bugs dying off too:

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

Welcome to the Anthropocene Extinction Event!

[His name cannot be s]

Better get used to it.

It's still a long slide to the bottom.

Re:First generation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately they almost exclusively replant fast growing species like pine. They are planning for the next trip through that area in 20-30 years to cut down mature trees again. They hardly ever plant hardwoods and when they do it's only because they are forced to by state or local regulations. They will come through and cut down trees that take 50 to 70 years to reach maturity. Trees that are worth a ton of money because they take so long to grow. Then they plant cheap, fast growing pine to "replace" the hardwoods they cut. Even if they plant 10 pine trees for every hardwood they cut down it's still not a fair trade.

I'm glad they are planting more trees but don't pat them on the back. They have a financial incentive to plant a ton of evergreen trees. They will need something to cut down and process in the future. It has exactly zero to do with environmental stewardship and everything to do with future profits. The one and only reason companies in the US do anything that seems environmentally responsible is because they are either forced to do so by regulations or because they know if they don't they will go out of business since their won't be any trees left for them to cut down.

Re: the web of life, billions of years in the maki

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Those 99% of the species have gone extinct in the previous billion years. We are now talking about a period of time which is less than 0.000005%. I'm not sure Earth has ever witnessed such a rapid and currently irreversible extinction event.

Re: Unsurprising

[jd]

Mathematicians declare 1+1=2
Objectors declare mathematicians have vested interest

Sometimes, interested parties lie. Yes. Sometimes they tell the truth by accident, not intending to do so. And sometimes they are indeed being honest.

Is it a better use of time to be cynical or skeptical?

Skeptics need evidence, but will be persuaded by what they see (and not by what they don't).

Cynics don't want evidence and will never be persuaded. They don't want to be, and will move the goalposts to infinity to ensure it, if they have to.

Be a skeptic, not a cynic.

You don't have to be schooled, there won't be any significant new species forming between 1970 and now, so the maximum percentage of species must be all the ones we know went extinct divided by all the ones we know about now plus the ones that went extinct, all multiplied by 100.

We don't know about cleared land, loggers aren't known for tracking such things. So we use the biodiversity of rainforests as a guide for estimating unknown species that went extinct and unknown species total. That will give us a second percentage. The tundra has a lower species count and a lower extinction level, so we've a second lot of unknowns there. Add those to the rainforest totals to get a third percentage.

We now have a spread of three possible values. It's unlikely to be below the minimum, it's unlikely to be above the maximum, it's probably close to the figure between those, but it won't be exact.

Doesn't require any schooling. Just requires a skeptical, enquiring mind.

Re:And as usual

[ElizabethGreene]

AC is right. History teaches us, specifically the Four Pests Campaign , that eliminating "pest" species can end very poorly.

Re: 5-7 million years to recover is complete bulls

[jd]

Pigs doubling in number isn't quite the same thing as 90 species of megafauna suddenly coming into existence at 10% the number of pigs.

We both know that.

Therefore we both know that you don't listen to the experts because they don't agree with what you believed beforehand. Has nothing to do with whether they're right.

Re: the web of life, billions of years in the maki

[greythax]

Funny, but not factually accurate. The KT extinction event was just the start, it took thousands of years for the extinction of species to reach its peak. We are outpacing it by a fair clip.

Re:Pure speculation with zero actual facts

[crunchygranola]

The report, written for the general public is documented with 281 references. The Living Planet Index maintained by the WWF is backed with solid research, some of which is also linked to in the references here.

So no, this is not "pure speculation", and yes there are absolutely massive observed decreases.

Ignoring the science doesn't make it go away.

Pfft

[Maury Markowitz]

"the world has begun a sixth mass extinction, the first to be caused by a species -- Homo sapiens"

Cyanobacteria wiped out 90% of life on the planet. They still have us beat by a landslide.