Human race just 0.01% of all life but has eradicated most other living things

[Fweethawt]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study

 

Groundbreaking assessment of all life on Earth reveals humanity’s surprisingly tiny part in it as well as our disproportionate impact

[LogicalFallacy]

I don't yet think humanity has realized their full impact on the earth. Time will tell. It's quite possible that history will not be written favorably of us.

[pantheory]

Interesting study but the data could be misleading. For instance they are talking about the biomass of plants and animals. A single cow or steer roughly weighs 10 times more than a human, but there are roughly only 1/5 the cattle than humans. But there combined weight (mass) is roughly 70% greater than humanity.  The same thing for plants. A full-grown tree can average roughly a ton for the smaller ones, and average up to 50 tons for the largest single trees. But even these great masses might be outweighed by all the phytoplankton (microscopic plants) of the oceans, so plants definitely dominate our world by their mass and by their numbers.

 

Of course human population control and its promotion, to whatever extent it exists, slows down the man-made erosion of the natural balance of nature.

[florduh]

Most life came and went long before humans arrived on the scene. They disappeared from the planet through no fault of their own. We shall likely be largely responsible for our own demise, it's just a question of when.

[disillusioned]

The Earth will be fine. It's us I'm concerned about.

[LogicalFallacy]

6 minutes ago, disillusioned said:

The Earth will be fine. It's us I'm concerned about.

 

Yep - have you heard George Carlin's skit concerning the earth?

 

 

[Joshpantera]

3 hours ago, florduh said:

Most life came and went long before humans arrived on the scene. They disappeared from the planet through no fault of their own. We shall likely be largely responsible for our own demise, it's just a question of when.

 

One could then reason (pessimistically) that whether or not we bring about our own demise, demise through natural means is the the most likely outcome regardless. And so will we do ourselves in, or survive long enough to be done in by no fault of our own? Either way, we're done. 

 

Or, just maybe, we'll survive it all. 

 

Curb doing ourselves in and get off this rock to a new home before the Sun consumes the inner planets. There's always an optimistic option on the table. 

[disillusioned]

21 minutes ago, LogicalFallacy said:

 

Yep - have you heard George Carlin's skit concerning the earth?

 

 

 

Yeah, but not in a while. A good one though!