Human 'Stuff' Now Outweighs All Life on Earth (sciencemag.org) 98
sciencehabit writes: It's not just your storage unit that's packed to the gills. According to a new study, the mass of all our stuff -- buildings, roads, cars, and everything else we manufacture -- now exceeds the weight of all living things on the planet. And the amount of new material added every week equals the total weight of Earth's nearly 8 billion people. "If you weren't convinced before that humans are dominating the planet, then you should be convinced now," says Timon McPhearson, an urban ecologist at the New School who was not involved with the research. "This is an eye-catching comparison," adds Fridolin Krausmann, a social ecologist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, who also was not involved in the work. There are many measures of humanity's impact on the planet. Fossil fuels have sent greenhouse gases soaring to levels not seen in at least 800,000 years. Agriculture and dwellings have altered 70% of land. And humans have wiped out untold numbers of species in an emerging great extinction. The transformations are so great that researchers have declared we're living in a new human-dominated age: the Anthropocene.
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So, you're morbidly obese, and have 10 kids, right? That's why we don't like you.
Re: Environmentalists: Double speak for "Human Hat (Score:4, Insightful)
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"headlines, which make for high lick rates"
Eeewww
But I agree, its impossible to weigh all life on earth.
However it is possible to get a good approximation of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and that is increasing...
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Mmmm, bring on them high lick rates
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Why do you hate SARS-CoV-2? It's just a simple coronavirus, trying to make it's way in the world. It has a right to live, just like every other of God's creations. I'm all for vaccinating a person here or there, but all this hate on SARS-CoV-2 needs to stop.
THANK YOU.
Re: Environmentalists: Double speak for "Human Hat (Score:3, Interesting)
You think you can literally *extinct* *many* species each year, literally killing almost *all* life as we speak, and not be hated?
Sorry, but there have literally been studies researching what species *get* the concept of repercussions for one's anti-social behavior, and even *squirrels* get it! ... Can't even sue me for slander, as it is the statement of a fact.
So you are literally provably dumber than a squirrel.
Re: Environmentalists: Double speak for "Human Ha (Score:2)
""Noah" had the foresight and fortitude to build a giant boat where he preserved many of the best species that we now have here on Earth today thanks to his great achievement"
Nevermind all of the plot holes in that story, and the logistical nightmare of building a WOODEN boat that can hold 2 of every species on Earth, if anything like this did happen, it was a very localized event. We had 'great floods' just as big, and much bigger scince then, including in 2020, with no "Noah" around to save all the animal
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Re: Environmentalists: Double speak for "Human H (Score:2)
No it didn't. The vast majority of life died i past mass extinction events. And extrapolating from those, the current projected value for the extinction even *we currently cause* is ... 90%!!
In any case, the higher up the food chain, the less likely to survive a species is. In any case, even if "life goes on"... we're not gonna survive it. And looking at certain people, I'm starting to be glad for it.
Re: Environmentalists: Double speak for "Human Ha (Score:2)
And you KNOW a *lot* more species go extinct than normal, in a geological blink of an eye, and in direct, statistically relianble correlation to our behaivor!
Seriously, how can somebody be such an asshole??
You will probably be the first to be slayn, when the last days come.
I know because we had massive never seen before droughts in 2018 here in Germany, and as soon as everybody could se all the nature dyig around them and became scared as fuck, the first thing they thought of what the biggest protest marche
Re: Environmentalists: Double speak for "Human Ha (Score:2)
Re:Environmentalists: Double speak for "Human Hate (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nuclear power was done poorly in the past, so there's NO POSSIBLE WAY it could ever be done better in the future!
Like I said: MYOPIC.
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I think that all new human "stuff" should be in the outer space. Let's colonize space and leave Earth alone.
And? (Score:1)
I'm sure there's a profound truth buried in there somewhere. But for some reason it seems to escape me.
Re: And? (Score:3)
All the crap we are building is an imbalance on the scales of nature. Plague, famine, and other disasters follow now as natural population checks. Just like an increase in forest fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes will knock down all none meat popsicle shit.
The reason it escapes you is you don't want to consider the bitter obvious, as if you are look at a picture of Earth squinting your eyes and saying "I see some colors and some lines but it could just be artwork".
Btw, have you heard the Earth isn't flat
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Most of the weight of "the crap we are building" comes from paved roads though. They're a minuscule source of pollution compared to everything else we do. Even the cars that drive on the roads produce more pollution than the road itself.
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I find it funny you use this word that doesn't exist anywhere in the summary of the article, "pollution" as if that's the only problem to what we are doing? If we take a philosophical approach we could look at things from a sense of Dao/Tao which is to say "the way". Nature has a way, a way that has evolved and is the pretext of all life on earth. This is why people have started using Gaia as a term to refer to Earth as a self-regulating system instead of just a "lifeless rock". Earth is full of life and th
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If you were more enlightened, perhaps you'd realize that we are part of the cycle of creation and destruction. Paving over "paradise" as you call it is as much creating a new habitat as destroying the old one. The more adaptable species have already occupied these new habitats and are thriving in them. Just like how the Chicxulub meteor wiped out the dinosaurs and brought about most life as we know it today, humans will do the same and usher in a new era of prosperity.
The Sun is growing hotter and hotter, e
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You seem to believe that there is some sort of "scales" to nature, and that nature "should" be in equilibrium in some way.
Why would you believe that? I can't think of any geological reason to think that way, and I've been studying and thinking about the last 4 billion years of Earth history for most of my life. This "scales of nature" concept needs some evidential base before it is worth considering.
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I can't think of any geological reason to think that way
Maybe because it's not a geological perspective, it's a biological perspective. See there is the geosphere and built on top of that the biosphere and on top of that the noosphere. This is the evolution of things in terms of evolution as an expansion of dimensionality and complexity.
https://biologydictionary.net/... [biologydictionary.net]
This source can be a start on coevolution but the gist is things are not evolving in isolation. Ecosystems have evolved through longer periods of time to as relatively consistent systems compared
Metrics (Score:5, Funny)
How many Olympic sized swimming pools, or libraries of congress, is that? We need to use the standardized units, people.
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Well, we're used to measuring things against our preconceptions, so what seems profound to you really depends on how shallow you are.
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Most of my human stuff came from earth stuff. Earth animals, earth plants, earth minerals. All the plastics is processed earth trees. I do have some alleged space rocks.
It is humbling how the earth takes over stuff after only a couple decades. We are poisoning ourselves, and some other things, but the earth will be ok
I find this difficult to believe (Score:3)
With as obese as most Americans are, surely their weight offsets a large portion of this.
Mostly Cement, Sand and Gravel (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article and, as I suspected, the overwhelming majority of the mass of human manufactured (or processed, more precisely) material is cement, and sand and gravel used in construction.
Re:Mostly Cement, Sand and Gravel (Score:4, Insightful)
If I am mistaken on this, I'm sure I'll be informed, but isn't that stuff simply *moved* rather than "manufactured"? The raw materials aren't created, they already exist. I'm not sure if the idea is that the density or weight is greater after processing or that there is some sort of imbalance, but the sand, gravel and rock already exist and are simply mined or processed and moved elsewhere.
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That is why I stated "processed" as a more precise explanation. It is dug up and incorporated into a human structure. Wood employed in construction is counted too though trees make the stuff - humans turn it into a product.
Re: Mostly Cement, Sand and Gravel (Score:2)
The semantics here can be a heavy arguing point. At the most fundamental level, nothing is created - energy is conserved and this everything is transformation after the BB.
The question then becomes the impact of each transformation. Making cement into sand has some chemical changes that release co2 and ultimately make a less porous ground. As such it has an impact that is clear on atmosphere, water dispersal, and wind flow. Do you think these are important factors in the geo sphere? If so, then the t
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On a macro level, it's fascinating and thought-provoking how we're pretty much in the perfect spot right now to witness the likely technological and societal peak of humanity and have a glimpse of it's potential (and possibly inevitable) destruction.
Every time I go to the grocery store, I think of how many grocery stores there are in my city, in my state, in the country, and how we all have come to take for granted that they're all always stocked (normally) and about the finite nature of the materials neede
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On a macro level, it's fascinating and thought-provoking how we're pretty much in the perfect spot right now to witness the likely technological and societal peak of humanity and have a glimpse of it's potential (and possibly inevitable) destruction.
Malthus thought the same. I see no reason to believe we're anywhere near the peak, nor that destruction is in any way inevitable. We have challenges, of course, but we've always had challenges. Some of our modern threats have been threats for our entire existence, but we actually far more capability to prevent them than ever before (e.g. meteor strike). Of course we've also created some new threats, including nuclear and biological warfare and it seems likely that within the next century, possibly much less
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a cushioned, front-row seat to our own demise
"This species has amused itself to death." --Roger Waters
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Making cement into sand has some chemical changes that release co2 and ultimately make a less porous ground.
Who's making cement into sand? Is that even possible?
And for the record, concrete actually absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere [cembureau.eu] after it's been poured.
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And for the record, concrete actually absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere [cembureau.eu] after it's been poured.
Yep, it absorbs up to 25% of the CO2 emitted during its production. It's still a significant net contributor.
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The reason it emits CO2 during production is because the it uses fossil fuels as an energy source, but that's no different from any other activity. There's no need to specifically demonize the use of concrete, especially when the infrastructure we build with it increases industrial efficiency and allows us to generate less CO2 per person for an equivalent standard of living.
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The reason it emits CO2 during production is because the it uses fossil fuels as an energy source, but that's no different from any other activity.
Half of CO2 emissions from concrete manufacture are from the chemical process. So while the combination of switching to renewable energy sources and accounting for reabsorption could reduce the emissions to 25% of what they are now, they'll still be significant.
the infrastructure we build with it increases industrial efficiency and allows us to generate less CO2 per person for an equivalent standard of living.
Cite?
Note that I'm not opposed to cement. I'm just opposed to inaccurate information about cement (and anything else).
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Half of CO2 emissions from concrete manufacture are from the chemical process.
Source?
Based on my understanding of cement chemistry, the CO2 generated to turn calcium carbonate into Portland cement is the same CO2 that will be absorbed after the cement is turned into concrete [wikipedia.org]. If conversion of the CaCO3 into cement is done via renewable energy, it would be a carbon neutral process over its lifetime.
the infrastructure we build with it increases industrial efficiency and allows us to generate less CO2 per person for an equivalent standard of living.
Cite?
Just use your brain. If there are no roads, bridges or tunnels, how are people and goods going to get from place to place? Boat? Airplane? Alaska, with very little infrastructure, creates w [wikipedia.org]
To be fair (Score:2)
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So... how was life, 800,000 years ago? (Score:2)
Maybe it would be better to compare the past to where we will end up when we keep going as we do now...
Like this, it sounds like it's not all that bad, because most species are probably older than 800,000 years and happily survived, so that's clearly not what's our current problem.
And Humans have wiped out untold.... (Score:1)
Hey, you know what wipes out untold number of species? Life. Turns out if you can't cut it on the evolutionary chain, you get wiped out.
You know what else will wipe out untold number of species? 800,000 years.
One last thing. Do you really think it's only humans changing this planet? Is it just maybe possible, this globe that is flying through the solar system has many different forces on it out of our control?
Not that humans don 't have an impact...
Don't blame me (Score:2)
I'm a minimalist.
Mars, here we come! (Score:2)
Musk was right.
The Earth Weighs more today than before... (Score:1)
...because of humans?
I mean, the article is kind of a fun read and is set up to attract clicks, however, I'm having a tough time understanding how the "Human stuff" that is on Earth, which was derived from other stuff found on Earth, is heavier than Earth. Again, does human action mean Earth weighs more today than before the industrial revolution?
If anything, I would have guessed that burning stuff meant more mass was sent into the Earth's atmosphere, which keeps the Earth's mass equivalent even if the pla
Re: The Earth Weighs more today than before... (Score:2)
""Human stuff" that is on Earth, which was derived from other stuff found on Earth, is heavier than Earth"
It was obvious to me that they ment there is more artificial stuff made from matter found on Earth than natural stuff.
But this research is very questionable, and at the moment seems more like click-bait than anything.
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The article is comparing human-produced stuff to the mass of all other living things, aka. biomass.
The Earth itself on the other hand has definitely lost weight, almost entirely due to Solar Wind blowing away the highest parts of the atmosphere. Global warming might actually increase the rate. And then there's the few probes we sent into deep space.
bogus estimate... and useless comparison (Score:2, Informative)
That guy doing study used old-school knowledge and has 1.1 terraton of biomass. Utter bullshit, off by at least 2 orders of magnitude, with the discovery of bacteria in deep rock, up to 40 miles in atmosphere, hot springs and other "uninhabitable zones" that are actually quite livable for our little gooey friends, he's off by orders of magnitude. Soil and underground alone now estimated at 5E14 TONS of biomass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So weight of all things compared to rock and minerals we mov
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hmm, he might be using "dry biomass" vs "wet", but I think my water counts
Clearly, we need to get off this planet (Score:3)
Re: Clearly, we need to get off this planet (Score:1)
"hateful comments proclaiming that we'll 'never' leave Earth"
And never say never. Who would have thought prior to the late 19th century that there was a type of light that would allow doctors to see inside of a human body without cutting it open?
Also, we barely scratched the surface of science, and events such as ghost sightings may actually be temporal anomalies that science has yet to explain.
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Sadly though the 'flatlanders' who would be left behind are likely also the ones who do the most to wreck the place.
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Someone coming up with faster-than-light travel would be nice, too.
Faster than light travel is equivalent to traveling back in time. That means being able to plan a trip to some far off planet then looking into a telescope to see yourself looking back from the destination planet. If someone travels faster than light then the light bouncing off their forehead in looking back at Earth had to already be in transit before they left Earth. To make the physics work means parallel universes are possible or something.
I like to watch science fiction. Even time travel stories li
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Theorizing about faster than light travel makes for some interesting stories but it's not possible with any physics we know about.
(emphasis mine)
Not yet. Who knows what we'll discover? Quantum physics might come up with something.
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Okay, fine, whatever. Perhaps we can discover faster than light travel. Perhaps we will find the Easter Bunny. Perhaps Santa Clause will leave a Red Rider BB gun for me this Christmas.
FTL travel opens up a lot of questions on how the universe works. Such as if I see a clock on the wall from a light year away and I travel towards it at superluminal speeds then from my perspective that clock is going to appear to run backwards. That sounds like time travel to me. Time travel then creates paradoxes like
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it costs you NOTHING to say 'yeah well maybe who knows'.
There is a cost to saying faster than light travel is possible. It's explaining how FTL works when it creates the paradoxes I gave earlier. The cost is working out the contradictions in physics.
Good thing you didn't know the Wright brothers.
Well, maybe if we get FTL travel then I'll get to meet them.
Interesting, but so what? (Score:2)
Let's assume something really crazy...that human beings are biological things that are related to all other life on the planet, having evolved over time from some common ancestor that emerged from primordial ooze somewhere.... I know.... this is a real stretch here on this web site...
Why then, is anything humans do any worse, or any more dangerous, or any less "natural" than anything done by any other evolved species on planet Earth?
Because we're "intelligent" and "self aware"? Who says those concepts even
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Well, some life forms are so parasitic that they kill the host and have to find another. That can be a real pain in the ass. We have to nurture the host so it keeps providing indefinitely.
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Of course there's no objective right or wrong. But as a human, I would prefer if the world continues to grow in complexity in a fairly unique manner compared to other lifeless worlds, ideally with us humans being part of that.
Somewhere George Carlin Is Smiling (Score:3)
Relax! (Score:1)
As long as our stuff doesn't outweigh the planet, we're okay. When it outweighs the solar system, then we oughta think about cutting back a little.
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I think the more pressing matter is that we're going to completely screw up the Earth's orbit if we keep adding so much material to it every week!
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Earth gains about 100 tons a day, that's metric tons
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Then Earth should go on a freakin' diet!
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But the Sun converts around 4 million tonnes of mass into energy which it radiates away. That's going to lead to an expansion of the Earth's orbit (any body's orbit, within the Local Group of galaxies) faster than the contraction due to accreting interplanetary dust (and occasional lumps).
It's still unlikely to prevent the oceans from boiling in one to two gigayears.
How Rude (Score:2)
the mass of all our stuff -- buildings, roads, cars, and everything else we manufacture -- now exceeds the weight of all living things on the planet.
Hey man, don't fat-shame our civilization. We are just big-stuffed.
Natural stuff (Score:1)
So what? (Score:2)
The first law of thermodynamics means that the Earth isn't getting heavier. This also means that for every human that goes on a diet and loses weight, there's another one who mysteriously gains weight. Quit dieting, people.
The second law of thermodynamics says that all of that stuff will eventually turn into random stuff so why worry?
how would they know (Score:2)
there is no way to verify that theory. There are many creatures of the deep and in the jungles that are unknown. I think the following fake theory would be closer to the truth. the more materials sent to space, the lighter the earth gets, and the closer it gets to the sun.
So what? (Score:2)
And the animals ... (Score:2)
Artificial perspective, and hey what about soil? (Score:2)
Last I heard soil is prepared by living organisms. Like worms. That alone probably outweighs the roads buildings and battleships. Also tldr but this appears to be an artificially homocentric concept. Human stuff is built by humans, but humans are built by non-human stuff like all the other organisms, plants and animals in the world. And the air. So our stuff is really their stuff anyway. That's what the worms would say.
We were doing fine until... (Score:1)