[HN Gopher] Humans and our livestock account for 96% of all mamm...
___________________________________________________________________
Humans and our livestock account for 96% of all mammal biomass
Author : astroalex
Score : 119 points
Date : 2022-10-27 19:41 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ourworldindata.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (ourworldindata.org)
| bell-cot wrote:
| From a 2017 breakdown of the world's biomass, it appears that the
| "humans and livestock...of mammal biomass" were very carefully
| picked, to give the most extreme possible percentage -
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115
| baxtr wrote:
| From that paper:
|
| _We find that the kingdoms of life concentrate at different
| locations on the planet; plants ([?]450 Gt C, the dominant
| kingdom) are primarily terrestrial, whereas animals ([?]2 Gt C)
| are mainly marine, and bacteria ([?]70 Gt C) and archaea ([?]7
| Gt C) are predominantly located in deep subsurface
| environments._
| teruakohatu wrote:
| 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 and molluscs.
| WithinReason wrote:
| The weight of all viruses is greater than the weight of all
| mammals
| freedude wrote:
| now add bacteria, fungi, and ants...
| warbler73 wrote:
| pvaldes wrote:
| Lets take in mind that there is a problem to compare two groups
| when one group is much easier to measure than the other. The
| error interval in the mammal biomass should be much higher. The
| actual real values are probably not so extreme.
|
| ... I see, is just megafauna. The most competitive groups
| (rodents and bats) are deliberately excluded. The title is
| incorrect then.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Certainly the article might not be credible, but can you cite
| the relevant text from the article, so that the rest of us can
| quickly verify your claim? I'm not seeing where in the article
| this is stated.
| pvaldes wrote:
| whales, dolphins and seals are also excluded.
|
| > "biomass from marine mammals - mainly whales - is not
| included"
|
| They discuss specifically about megafauna and large
| terrestrial mammals in most paragraphs and figures.
| nightpool wrote:
| Is this true? This source
| (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115) gives a very
| similar percentage (95.8% of all wild mammals) and doesn't
| mention anything about excluding rodents or bats from the
| categorization of wild mammals. Is it in a footnote somewhere
| that I'm missing?
| club_tropical wrote:
| Also, "biomass" is a strange term. Is that literally an
| estimate of mass? Or count of individuals? Many other context
| lacking as well.
|
| This is clearly written for the 96% statistic shock, not to
| inform anyone.
| aaron695 wrote:
| doliveira wrote:
| Pretty sure that's the estimate of carbon content, but it's a
| proper scientific concept.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Biomass is probably exactly the right measure, when we are
| talking ecology. A lot of mice to weigh up to one cow, it is
| true, but then, you could feed a lot of mice on the grain
| with which you feed your cow.
| myshpa wrote:
| RTFA.
|
| "To understand how the richness of the mammal kingdom has
| changed we need a metric that captures a range of different
| animals and is comparable over time. We could look at their
| abundance - the number of individuals we have - but this is
| not ideal. We would be counting every species equally, from a
| mouse to an elephant and this metric would therefore an
| ecosystem taken over by the smallest mammals look much richer
| than one in which bigger mammals roam: if the world's mouse
| populations multiplied and multiplied - maybe even to the
| detriment of other animals - then this abundance metric might
| suggest that these ecosystems were thriving.
|
| Instead, ecologists often use the metric biomass. This means
| that each animal is measured in tonnes of carbon, the
| fundamental building block of life.1 Biomass gives us a
| measure of the total biological productivity of an ecosystem.
| It also gives more weight to larger animals at higher levels
| of the ecological 'pyramid'"
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/mammals#the-decline-of-wild-
| mamma...
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Also, "biomass" is a strange term. Is that literally an
| estimate of mass?
|
| It is indeed. The idea being that individuals vary greatly
| (it doesn't make sense to compare individual counts of humans
| with individual counts of ants for example), and that mass at
| least roughly accounts for the size of individuals.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Biomass is the whole mass of life beings, a standard and
| common measure that represents the energy contained in a
| particular group.
|
| Talking in terms of biomass is very common in Ecology.
| club_tropical wrote:
| I think it is an unclear and bizarre term. "The energy
| contained in one group" - what energy? Is a lean cheetah
| "less-energy" than an elephant? Why? Or do you literally
| mean energy like calories (which, IIRC means "how much heat
| if burned").
|
| What a bizarre metric, nobody thinks like this, I don't
| even think "ecologists" understand why they should think in
| terms of mass. I, too, can have a metric: number of
| decibels of sound you can produce; maybe humans make up a
| SHOCKING 3% on that- doesn't mean it's a sensible metric.
| chrishare wrote:
| Devastatingly sad. Are plant-based meat replacements and lab-
| grown meat going to help fix this?
| FredPret wrote:
| Devastatingly misleading, they excluded many kinds of mammal
| from their measurement.
| rcarr wrote:
| One day, whilst eating a burger in a pub and thinking about the
| food chain, I ran a thought experiment in my head. I imagined
| being hungry and someone offering me a choice between a ham
| sandwich or a vegan sandwich. I could only select the ham
| sandwich if I was willing to shoot a pig in the head. I
| wouldn't have to butcher the pig or anything else, just be
| responsible for its death. I decided that I would choose the
| vegan sandwich. This lead me to believe that by continuing to
| eat meat I was shirking responsibility and passing the pain of
| killing an animal on to someone else so I decided to go vegan.
| The environmental benefits were secondary and I was under no
| illusions as regards to health; I believed (and still do) that
| it is worse for you than both vegetarian and meat containing
| diets.
|
| It was around 2016-2017 and I lived in a small town in northern
| England. Veganism was only just starting to make it into the
| mainstream; there weren't any vegan options at any of the fast
| food places and there was about one freezer worth of vegan
| alternatives if you went to a large supermarket. I found
| transitioning over to a meat free diet surprisingly easy. The
| hardest thing about it wasn't cravings for foods you couldn't
| eat like you might expect. The hardest thing was the social
| aspect of it.
|
| I slowly found myself being pushed out of social circles.
| People knew you were vegan so there was no going for a burger
| or a KFC or any other bonding activities over food. People
| would cook Linda McCartney sausages if you brought them round
| to a BBQ but you could tell they didn't appreciate the extra
| fuss.
|
| I tried really hard not to be the loud, shouty, fussy vegan but
| as soon as anyone found out the questions would start. People
| were curious about why I was vegan and I would tell them. The
| vast majority of people admitted to feeling bad about eating
| animals. They didn't want to think about where their food was
| coming from and I was a living symbol in front of them that
| they could stop doing that if they really wanted to. Eating was
| celebration after hard work and, just with my presence, I was
| ruining that for them.
|
| At the time I was heavily into fitness and I noticed that
| achieving my protein intake was really difficult. It would
| require having 3 to 4 protein shakes a day or doing lots of
| cooking and prep. All the natural vegan protein sources outside
| of protein shakes weren't lean; they also contained lots of
| carbs or fats. This made hitting macros hard. Food became a
| chore and I didn't feel particularly healthy. If anything I
| felt my health declining.
|
| I went for a walk one day and ran the thought experiment again.
| I decided that yes, this time I would take responsibility and
| kill the pig. And that was that. At the end of my walk I went
| into a Subway, ordered a meatball sub and went home to eat it.
| I expected to have gastrointestinal distress having not eaten
| meat for so long but there was nothing. My body went right back
| to processing it as if I'd never stopped.
|
| The one thing that this whole experience taught me is that food
| is tied deeply into culture and bonding. I very strongly
| believe that plant based sources are not going to be the
| solution to this problem. There is just too much social
| resistance to overcome.
|
| From my experience, the only way of solving this problem is
| petri dish meat. Not plant based, but actual meat tissue, grown
| in factories. Why? People will still get the joy of eating meat
| and maintain their traditions without the guilt. It also has
| the potential to actually be better and cheaper than regular
| meat. If scientists can perfect the processes, they can make it
| taste like prime beef every time but with a fraction of the
| economic and environmental costs. It can be sold as an upgrade
| not a downgrade which is what people see veganism as.
| dqv wrote:
| >There is just too much social resistance to overcome.
|
| We're really only on the second wave of veganism right now. I
| can't say exactly when the first wave "ended", but I'd say
| the second wave started to roll in after 2010. But in this
| second wave, there is a lot of culture being developed that I
| believe will sustain a third wave. Whereas the first wave had
| a bunch of early adopters who had very odd food habits (i.e.
| eating barely palatable food or eating 50 bananas a day),
| this second wave is developing new food culture. There are
| large communities like the Vegan Soul Food Group. Groups like
| this share recipes and tips for making vegan food and,
| frankly, it's damn good. Not everything is the best
| nutritionally, but that's not why everyone is adopting
| veganism in the first place. There are also high profile
| chefs (and burgeoning chefs too) who are coming on the scene.
| Gaz Oakley, Yeung Man, Andrew Bernard, Vegan Bunny Chef.
| There are all sorts of accounts on tiktok with culturally-
| specific vegan foods - Mexican, Indian, Korean, Japanese,
| Chinese, Ghanaian. Not to mention all of the "accidentally
| vegan" foods that already existed before.
|
| These people are leading the way to a vibrant vegan food
| culture. They're developing new traditions and practices
| right before our very eyes. And a lot of people are joining
| in as a result. The younger generation is much less obsessed
| with this sort of "tradition perfectionism" where _every
| element_ has to be there to make it a tradition. They were
| much more willing to change and adapt traditions to fit their
| own personal and moral beliefs.
|
| The third wave, I think, is going to come as a result of what
| you're talking about. We have some great things like nut-
| based cheese, but also on the horizon (beyond meat ;) are
| things like vegan casein and whey, which will make it even
| easier to be vegan. At that point, the third wave will be as
| if people were never vegan in the first place.
| rcarr wrote:
| I honestly think this is going to have the opposite effect
| of what you think it will. People outside of metropolitan
| areas are sick to death of "new traditions and practices"
| and "high profile" names. They see it as another
| bourgeoisie vs proletariat battleground.
|
| They do not want "new food culture" they want the existing
| culture but more environmentally friendly. You aren't going
| to pry the burgers out of their hands no matter how good
| your beyond burger is. But if you make a petri dish burger
| that tastes better than a dead cow you might stand a chance
| of them getting behind it.
|
| You can say the younger generation doesn't care about old
| traditions but people have been saying this throughout
| time. Young people have a habit of growing old and more
| conservative when they gain more life experience and
| realise that the traditions they rallied against in the
| youth were actually developed for a good reason.
| Arnavion wrote:
| >It would require having 3 to 4 protein shakes a day or doing
| lots of cooking and prep. All the natural vegan protein
| sources outside of protein shakes weren't lean; they also
| contained lots of carbs or fats. This made hitting macros
| hard.
|
| A large number of Indian people are vegetarian (plants +
| poultry eggs + cow/goat milk), and I've never heard of them
| having such problems. Why? I certainly didn't have any
| dietary or nutritional problems when I grew up as a
| vegetarian there.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| If you're body building or doing serious exercise, it can
| be hard to get the protein your body needs to recover and
| build muscle on a strictly vegan diet. I've tried it and
| it's difficult.
| Arnavion wrote:
| You've simply restated rcarr's point without answering my
| question.
| SaddledBounding wrote:
| It's because the grandparent comment has misconceptions
| about nutrition, including that animal products are
| necessary for a healthful diet and how much protein is
| required for a healthful diet.
|
| The first misconception is contradicted by extensive
| analysis by health organizations such as [Academy of
| Nutrition and Dietetics][1]. Healthful vegan diets are no
| less healthful than healthful non-vegan diets.
|
| The second misconception is about how much protein is
| needed in a healthful diet. Many people wildly overestimate
| how much protein a person needs, especially when strength
| training. It is not difficult to get sufficient protein
| within a given calorie budget while on a vegan diet, even
| without using protein supplements. For instance, tofu and
| seitan have protein to calorie ratios similar to meat, with
| seitan often having a _higher_ protein to calorie ratio
| than most meats.
|
| [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/
| rcarr wrote:
| Go and have a look at the amino acid profiles of seitan
| and tofu and also their bioavailability in comparison to
| meat and vegetarian protein sources. And you can talk all
| you want about people overestimating protein macro but 1
| to 2 grams per lb of bodyweight has consistently shown to
| be optimal. You'll be hard pressed to find any high
| performing athlete who isn't aiming for that outside of
| endurance sports.
|
| At the end of the day in my experience, a vegan diet is
| both a lot more hard work and less healthy than a non
| vegan one. Saying that a vegan diet isn't any less
| healthy than a meat eating or vegetarian one is an
| absolute joke, especially considering there are no vegan
| foods containing vitamin B12 outside of yeast flakes and
| artificial supplements.
| izzydata wrote:
| How is there still an ecosystem?
| thrown_22 wrote:
| 1). There isn't one for big mammals any more. The majority of
| the ecosystem is locked up in plants and bacteria. For example
| fungi outweigh all _animals_ by roughly 6 times. Bacteria by 30
| times and plants by 200 times.
|
| 2). We're the major drivers in the processes that used to limit
| biomass on the planet. The nitrogen cycle is dominated by
| humans [0] where depending on how you measure it we've done
| something between doubling it and increasing it by an order of
| magnitude. The same is true for all the other limiting cycles.
| By comparison the carbon cycle has been barely touched.
|
| 3). Mammals are rather big and we don't like big things trying
| to eat us/step on us. Mammal global mass has been decreasing
| since the last ice age when we figured out how to hunt mammoths
| to extinction and 8,000BC when we domesticated goats.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_nitrogen_c...
| rplst8 wrote:
| Plants, reptiles, amphibians, insects, marsupials, fish,
| bacteria, algae, fungus, etc.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Unfortunately there barely is.
| TOGoS wrote:
| I also wonder this. Some thoughts:
|
| 1) Life is remarkably adaptive. 2) There probably won't be much
| longer.
| myshpa wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/biodiversity
|
| Wild mammals:
|
| 100.000 years ago ... 20 mil. tonnes of carbon
|
| 10.000 years ago ... 15 mil. tonnes of carbon
|
| 100 years ago ... 10 mil. tonnes of carbon
|
| now ... 3 mil. tonnes of carbon
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/mammals
|
| "Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of human
| civilizations. This was mainly driven by overhunting and habitat
| loss."
|
| "Wild animals only make up 4% of the world's mammals; humans
| account for 34%, and our livestock for 62%."
|
| "More than 178 of the world's largest species went extinct during
| the Quaternary Extinction. Overhunting was likely the main
| driver."
|
| "One-quarter of the world's mammal species are threatened with
| extinction. Most are in the tropics."
|
| "It is the largest mammals that are at the greatest risk of
| extinction. Most due to overhunting and poaching."
|
| Cowspiracy [https://www.cowspiracy.com/facts]:
|
| "Ten thousand years ago, 99% of biomass (i.e. zoomass) was wild
| animals. Today, humans and the animals that we raise as food make
| up 98% of the zoomass."
|
| Postgrowth [https://medium.com/postgrowth/the-bomb-is-still-
| ticking-2810...]:
|
| ""Research by Professor Vaclav Smil from the University of
| Manitoba in Canada shows that as a percentage of mammalian
| zoomass, human beings and our domesticated mammalian animals (for
| food, beasts of burden and as pets) have gone from <0.1% 10,000
| years ago, to 10-12% at the start of the industrial revolution to
| between 96-98% today."
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Has total biomass (not just wild biomass) declined? I would
| expect it has, because most modern farming tries very hard to
| make sure the only thing growing is the thing that makes the
| farmer profit. A lot of farms are ecological wastelands; or
| rather, they sustain less biomass than they could.
| rplst8 wrote:
| Key word... Mammal.
| myshpa wrote:
| 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,
| defined by massive die off of wild species?
|
| We have to (as a species) return the land to wildlife and let it
| repopulate the earth, otherwise we'll lose them. We don't even
| know what gems we're losing. I'm not talking about some bugs, but
| about dna - those are millions of years of (computer) code
| generated by nature, code so precious we don't even have an idea
| how to simulate it, let alone understand it (at this point in our
| evolution).
|
| If we lose it, goodbye new medicines, new regenerative dna
| techniques, new technologies, and who knows what. We simply
| cannot know what we're stealing from future humans (this point
| was made for the selfish humans we are, better arguments could be
| made).
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Build more zoos then. That's the only realistic solution.
| rvba wrote:
| More nature reserves.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _otherwise we 'll lose them_
|
| So what? What _value_ are these species? What are they _for_? I
| 'm sure we'll be able to advance medicine in other ways. I'm
| much more concerned about the longevity of our civilization
| than the other organics we happen to have coevolved with. If we
| have to pave over the whole planet then so be it. Organic life
| is common and therefore expendable. If we all die off, new life
| will almost certainly evolve, but a new civilization? That's
| much less certain.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| What the hell, man.
| davzie wrote:
| This HAS to be trolling!
| cmpb wrote:
| The article indicates that the bulk of the extinction of large
| mammals happened during the Quaternary Extinction[1], between
| 52kya and 9kya, so 100 years ago the damage was already done.
| It also makes the argument that the extinction events in each
| region coincided with the arrival of humans to that region,
| which would imply that these extinctions were not due to
| climatic changes.
|
| I don't mean to imply that we're doing enough right now to keep
| our planet healthy. I agree with your sentiment and just wanted
| to provide a little context and clarification.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/mammals#quaternary-megafauna-
| exti...
| myshpa wrote:
| 100.000 years ago ... 20 mil. tonnes of carbon
|
| 10.000 years ago ... 15 mil. tonnes of carbon
|
| 100 years ago ... 10 mil. tonnes of carbon
|
| now ... 3 mil. tonnes of carbon
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/04/Decline-of-
| wild-m...
|
| First 5 mil. tonnes took 90.000 year. Next 5 mil. 9.900
| years. Next 7 mil. 100 years. 3 mil. remain, most of the
| megafauna is already gone.
|
| If we continue this trend, in 30 years there'll be only mice,
| mosquitos, and medusas. And farm animals, of course.
|
| We have to switch to plant-based diets. Now. There is no
| other way. No time to wait for technological breakthroughs.
| docmechanic wrote:
| This statistic always takes the top of my head right off: "The
| dominance of humans today is clear: us and our livestock account
| for 96% of global mammal biomass. Wild land mammals make up just
| 2%."
|
| If you, like me, wondered about poultry ...
|
| "Here we focus on mammal populations, so neither wild birds or
| poultry are included. But for birds the story is similar: our
| poultry biomass is more than twice that of wild birds. "
| freedude wrote:
| Good point about birds. Add them to amphibians, fish and
| insects and it would make this look less impressive.
| timeon wrote:
| Less impressive? Do you think there is no significant loss of
| biodiversity?
| freedude wrote:
| In the cities yes. I live outside the city. Some of the
| biodiversity near me is deadly and city dwellers haven't a
| clue.
|
| Regardless, fish outweigh mammals by at least an order of
| magnitude. then calculate arthropods, mollusks, bacteria
| and plants and you will see this is an overstating of a
| complex ecosystem.
| gtvwill wrote:
| Reminds me of the matrix. Agent smith said it so well.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgS1Lwr8gq8
| deathanatos wrote:
| 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.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Or perhaps he was just evil and had a hatred of humanity
| that he was justifying with whatever reason pleased him.
|
| For me. Agent Smith isn't coded as evil. He represents the
| cold rationality of the scientific algorithm - "I've been
| studying your species...". He's simply curious. It would
| never occur to Smith to "justify" anything, even to
| simulate pleasure. Smith represents what Kant called the
| limits of pure reason - the ability to measure, compute and
| model everything, but understand nothing.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| 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 standard of living, or BETTER.
| eric-hu wrote:
| 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]
| hunglee2 wrote:
| becoming a sustainable food item is actually a great survival
| strategy at the level of the species, something to consider
| should earth ever be invaded by hungry aliens
| booi wrote:
| I for one welcome our new overlords. - booi, CEO Soylent Foods
| Inc.
| retrac wrote:
| Going off on a tangent, but the scale of production is very hard
| to grasp. I'm probably not the first person to observe this, but
| I once did some napkin math about steel production, and what I
| realized kind of blew me away. About 1.9 billion tonnes in 2020.
| Like with billions of dollars, I have no intuition for such
| numbers. Context is needed.
|
| Global steel production just before WW I was about 70 million
| tonnes. So production has increased about thirty-fold in one
| century. That wasn't so shocking to me, at first. But 1910 was
| not the beginning of the industrial era; things had been under
| way for more than a century then. Railroads. Ocean liners.
| Factories. Knives and rivets for fabric owned by hundreds of
| millions of people. Dozens of skyscrapers in New York by then;
| the Brooklyn Bridge hung on thousands of tonnes of cable. All
| made out of steel.
|
| Then it struck me. A few million tonnes a year in 1850. 70
| million tonnes in 1910. All of it adds up to less than 1900
| million tonnes. Every single tonne of steel manufactured by
| humans from prehistory until about a century ago -- the entire
| output of the industrial revolution -- amounts to less than one
| year at current production.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Every single tonne of steel manufactured by humans from
| prehistory until about a century ago -- the entire output of
| the industrial revolution -- amounts to less than one year at
| current production."
|
| The real questions are:
|
| Does that include recycling?
|
| If not, how do we see this being sustainable?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Two reasons: the earth is made of iron, for
| all intents and purposes asteroids are often made
| of iron
| canadianfella wrote:
| himinlomax wrote:
| It can be sustainable with electrolytic furnaces powered by
| carbon-free energy.
| keithnz wrote:
| I was looking at what the future of steel might look like
| recently, I think this is quite interesting
| https://www.hybritdevelopment.se/en/
| akiselev wrote:
| Yes, it does. About 40% of steel produced globally is
| recycled and the number for some other metals like aluminum
| are even higher. IIRC almost 80% of steel production in the
| US is from recycled stock.
|
| Processing ore is _very_ energy intensive. Problem is the
| world needs a _lot_ of steel
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| inawarminister wrote:
| AFAIK Africans, that is, the Bantu and related West
| African peoples, went directly from Neolithic to Iron
| Age, skipping Bronze.
|
| For Mediterranean, it's mainly because the whole region,
| Iraq, and Northwest India/Pakistan were already
| integrated together as a trading unit, with factors
| coming hp from Sumer and Assyria to trade with Dilmun,
| Indus Valley, and Anatolia. Then the Phoenicians traded
| tin from Iberia and all the way from Britain as well.
|
| Funnily enough, Egypt only adopted bronze (and chariot)
| at least for their armies after the whole Hyksos invasion
| stuffs. That might be the basis for Exodus.
| cercatrova wrote:
| 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.
| simlevesque wrote:
| I can't recommend enough this blog series:
| https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-
| they-...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not that we would necessarily run out, but would a 5% ore
| be financially viable, and how many places would be able to
| operate it (geology for underground mines, location/eco
| concerns for strip mines)? We also have to question they
| typical coke and smelting process.
| [deleted]
| patrec wrote:
| So modern civilization currently requires the average human to
| consume roughly 3-4 times his body weight in steel per year.
| And given that steel production has roughly doubled in the last
| 20 years, this will probably still go up a fair deal.
| nly wrote:
| "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is man's inability
| to understand the exponential function."
| grecy wrote:
| Yup, I was Justin the town that has the worlds largest shipping
| port by tonnage, all of it iron ore. I bet you'll never guess -
| you've never heard of it.
|
| The city and surrounds makes Mordor look nice.
| taneq wrote:
| Port Hedland?
|
| Edit: Wow, Hedland is half of that, I was mainly thinking of
| the Mordor bit.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| 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?
| rcarr wrote:
| 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.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| the Korn market has been in steady downtrend for years, but
| with such a decline in quality it's no surprise
| eloff wrote:
| Wow! Probably similar numbers for concrete. It's exponential
| growth.
|
| The thing about exponential growth is it can't continue for too
| long. As observers of Moore's Law will understand, eventually
| you run out of resources or into other physical limits.
|
| However, I'm quite confident that we can keep innovating and
| growth will continue in one form or another. I don't think Elon
| Musk is correct that human population will collapse. All it
| takes is one subgroup to keep reproducing above the replacement
| rate, and after enough generations they will come to dominate
| and overall growth will continue. It's pretty much the law of
| life - expand to consume all available resources, be that food,
| space, energy, oxygen, whatever. You see it in bacteria, in
| fish, in mammals large and small, and of course in humans.
|
| There will be lot's of challenges there, and lots of need for
| innovation so we can handle growth without destroying our
| remaining wild spaces and ecosystems on which we depend. Humans
| haven't figured out how to grow sustainably yet.
| istjohn wrote:
| > All it takes is one subgroup to keep reproducing above the
| replacement rate, and after enough generations they will come
| to dominate and overall growth will continue.
|
| Consequently, religion is going to thrive. Everyone else
| stops reproducing once they reach a certain standard of
| living.
| whiddershins wrote:
| I think Ray Kurzweil talking about future shock in the late 90s
| provides a descriptive, if not satisfying, explanation.
| ajsfoux234 wrote:
| A comic from xkcd visualizes this fact: https://xkcd.com/1338/
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| You have any prepper ideas about surviving an apocalypse and
| living off the land, forget about meat. It'll be crickets or some
| such. All the wild meat in the world will be gone in like 4 days
| due to massive over-hunting.
| beauzero wrote:
| If you ever look in old barns that have been there before the
| Great Depression (few but there are some) you will see rat
| traps with holes drilled in them. They were used to hang on
| trees to trap squirrels. Apparently this worked well the first
| year...not so good for the decade after that.
| klyrs wrote:
| In an actual apocalypse, you'll find that people are made of
| meat.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I'd guess that depends greatly upon where you live. Some places
| are sparsely populated, and I suspect it's these rural people
| who would have the best chance of surviving in an apocalypse.
| The earth is a big place. There's a non-trivial chance that
| some people wouldn't be affected at all.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| 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 years.
| nicoburns wrote:
| 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.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| 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...
| donatj wrote:
| I'd always heard growing up that ants were the majority of the
| earth's biomass.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Ants are not mammals
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| I know they excluded birds, rodents, bats etc. But it's still
| pretty staggering, all the wild mammals which used to dominate
| the planet, gone.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Bats are mammals.
| adamrezich wrote:
| 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 anytime soon, and I'm
| not going to eat any bugs or fake meat or any of that.
|
| nihilistic platitudes like "how is there still an ecosystem?" are
| completely baffling to me--I don't understand what would make
| someone think that way. what could have caused this level of
| innate shame felt on behalf of one's _species?_
|
| the only thing I can think of is that people overestimate the
| power of mankind and underestimate the power of nature possibly
| due to living in dense urban environments surrounded by nothing
| but artificial creations of man all day every day, and this skews
| their perspective.
| foxtacles wrote:
| You're not the only one.
|
| To anyone who's tired of reading those frequently espoused,
| virtually now mainstream, apparently self-hatred fueled
| viewpoints, or to those who are interested in positive outlooks
| on humanity, I can recommend this book:
|
| https://www.superabundance.com/
|
| and this news aggregator:
|
| https://www.humanprogress.org/
| seti0Cha wrote:
| It's more a factor of dislocated moral feelings. If you decide
| humans aren't special, then you can go one of two ways with the
| moral feelings you had towards humanity: you can broaden them
| to a larger category that you still think is special, such as
| mammals, animals, all living things, etc, or you can narrow
| them down to some arbitrary set that you happen to be fond of,
| like your family, your friends, or yourself. Both are
| problematic to those who still think humans are special.
| [deleted]
| agalunar wrote:
| > I don't know about you but I'm quite happy to be alive and
| reasonably healthy
|
| I think the important thing to contemplate is that this might
| be at the expense of other people, living or yet to be born.
| Not that we've done anything wrong - just that the
| circumstances that make this possible for us might preclude it
| for others.
|
| > nihilistic platitudes like "how is there still an ecosystem?"
| are completely baffling to me
|
| For some people, I think, it's jarring to realize that much of
| the world, including life for other people and creatures, is
| very different from anything they've experienced, and that the
| future could look very different from the present - despite it
| having not changed much so far in their lives. And the feeling
| of that realization might be the reason for platitudes like
| that.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > I think the important thing to contemplate is that [being
| happy to be alive and reasonably healthy] might be at the
| expense of other people, living or yet to be born. Not that
| we've done anything wrong - just that the circumstances that
| make this possible for us might preclude it for others
|
| this is called the natural order of things. nature is
| competition. this is all self-evident. all of our ancestors
| innately understood this. what exactly has made us forget it?
| again, the only thing I can think of is sheer societal
| decadence, being so far removed from nature that we only have
| an abstract concept of it.
| goldenchrome wrote:
| I am with you my friend. I will not eat the bugs.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| It isn't a skewed perspective. Our civilization passed the
| carrying capacity of the planet half a century ago. Resources
| are being consumed at a far greater rate, despite advances in
| technology.
|
| You don't need to be depressed or nihilistic about it. You can
| still live a great life and so can your children. The reality
| is that we need to start reducing consumption over the long
| term to prepare for the inevitable. Being aware is the first
| step.
|
| The wrong path is to close our eyes and assume Elon Musk is
| going to transport us to another world, or that some
| unrealistic hollywood technology will magically terraform the
| planet and bring back the glaciers and mammoths.
| Trumpi wrote:
| Let me guess... the solution is to eat ze bugs.
| msla wrote:
| What's wrong with shrimp and lobster?
| [deleted]
| gregcrv wrote:
| In case you are wondering like me, it's only about mammals. Here
| is the full biomass picture :
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-biomass-of-earth-in...
| HPsquared wrote:
| That sounds impressive. How do we stack up against the fish,
| though?
| nahuel0x wrote:
| In terms of complexity destruction we are not so dissimilar to a
| paperclip maximizing AI gone rogue.
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