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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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May 21, 2018 - 08:22pm PT
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Ah, the resident troll! Do they pay you by the word or do they have better metrics?
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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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May 21, 2018 - 08:24pm PT
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Nope rotting, they're fre! In fact, take one from my last word in the previous sentence; no chaarge!
Comrade Yury, read rincon's comment.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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May 21, 2018 - 08:28pm PT
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Thanks Winemaker...I owe you on-.....
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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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May 21, 2018 - 08:32pm PT
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Hey rotting, I can't find no 'Sands Motel' in Las Vegas. You pulling our leg(s)?
Seriously, this Trump sh#t in America has just gotten too weird. Is this just a dream?
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monolith
climber
state of being
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May 21, 2018 - 08:35pm PT
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Cosmic gets Snoped again.
The former mayor did not write that piece.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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May 21, 2018 - 08:37pm PT
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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.
“I would hope this gives people a perspective on the very dominant role that humanity now plays on Earth,” he said, adding that he now chooses to eat less meat due to the huge environmental impact of livestock.
The transformation of the planet by human activity has led scientists to the brink of declaring a new geological era – the Anthropocene. One suggested marker for this change are the bones of the domestic chicken, now ubiquitous across the globe.
The new work reveals that farmed poultry today makes up 70% of all birds on the planet, with just 30% being wild. The picture is even more stark for mammals – 60% of all mammals on Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals.
“It is pretty staggering,” said Milo. “In wildlife films, we see flocks of birds, of every kind, in vast amounts, and then when we did the analysis we found there are [far] more domesticated birds.”
The destruction of wild habitat for farming, logging and development has resulted in the start of what many scientists consider the sixth mass extinction of life to occur in the Earth’s four billion year history. About half the Earth’s animals are thought to have been lost in the last 50 years.
But comparison of the new estimates with those for the time before humans became farmers and the industrial revolution began reveal the full extent of the huge decline. Just one-sixth of wild mammals, from mice to elephants, remain, surprising even the scientists. In the oceans, three centuries of whaling has left just a fifth of marine mammals in the oceans.
“It is definitely striking, our disproportionate place on Earth,” said Milo. “When I do a puzzle with my daughters, there is usually an elephant next to a giraffe next to a rhino. But if I was trying to give them a more realistic sense of the world, it would be a cow next to a cow next to a cow and then a chicken.”
Despite humanity’s supremacy, in weight terms Homo sapiens is puny. Viruses alone have a combined weight three times that of humans, as do worms. Fish are 12 times greater than people and fungi 200 times as large.
But our impact on the natural world remains immense, said Milo, particularly in what we choose to eat: “Our dietary choices have a vast effect on the habitats of animals, plants and other organisms.”
“I would hope people would take this [work] as part of their world view of how they consume,” he said. ”I have not become vegetarian, but I do take the environmental impact into my decision making, so it helps me think, do I want to choose beef or poultry or use tofu instead?”
The researchers calculated the biomass estimates using data from hundreds of studies, which often used modern techniques, such as satellite remote sensing that can scan great areas, and gene sequencing that can unravel the myriad organisms in the microscopic world.
They started by assessing the biomass of a class of organisms and then they determined which environments such life could live in across the world to create a global total. They used carbon as the key measure and found all life contains 550bn tonnes of the element. The researchers acknowledge that substantial uncertainties remain in particular estimates, especially for bacteria deep underground, but say the work presents a useful overview.
Paul Falkowski, at Rutgers University in the US and not part of the research team, said: “The study is, to my knowledge, the first comprehensive analysis of the biomass distribution of all organisms – including viruses – on Earth.”
“There are two major takeaways from this paper,” he said. “First, humans are extremely efficient in exploiting natural resources. Humans have culled, and in some cases eradicated, wild mammals for food or pleasure in virtually all continents. Second, the biomass of terrestrial plants overwhelmingly dominates on a global scale – and most of that biomass is in the form of wood.”
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Pennsylenvy
Gym climber
A dingy corner in your refrigerator
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May 21, 2018 - 08:46pm PT
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I cringe in a way when I ask this, but Cosmic how old is the planet ?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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May 21, 2018 - 08:49pm PT
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Winemaker...Sands is a fake address...I did that for Locker since he was always posting pics of my large head buried in the sand...rj
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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May 21, 2018 - 08:54pm PT
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Cosmic! As usual, you are posting another right-wing lie, per your post about the mayor of Livermore CA!
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/he-fights-trump/
First off, although Dr. Marshall Kamena (an optometrist) did serve as the mayor of Livermore, California, from November 2001 to November 2011, he does not currently hold that office: that position is now occupied by John Marchand. (It’s also unlikely Dr. Kamena “ran as a Democrat,” as the application process for the office of mayor instructs candidates to submit “nonpartisan qualifying papers.”)
More important, though, is that Dr. Kamena is not the author of the article referenced above. That opinion piece was penned by Evan Sayet and published (under the title “He Fights”) on the Townhall web site on 13 July 2017.
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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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May 21, 2018 - 09:09pm PT
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Hey, I had a six pack of Moosedrool beer a few weeks ago. Any relation? I suspect a story......
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10b4me
Social climber
Lida Junction
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May 21, 2018 - 09:18pm PT
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how do you window wash a snowflake?
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Happiegrrrl2
Trad climber
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May 22, 2018 - 04:00am PT
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I just do not see anything positive.
Spend the $10/mo I do following @TheSpyBrief on Twitter, or at least follow @TeaPain, @Countercheckist and pay attention to some of those they RT.
You may not see sunshine and roses positive, but you will see what reality looks like without the distortion of Fox News and similar. This is a key point which STILL is holding people's thinking process in a vise. People actually believe that the news stories and tweets and opinion pieces and interview statements being made by them are "our reality."
If you hear a damned talking point repeated ad nauseum - ANY talking point - view it as part of a disinformation campaign. It probably is. THINK.FOR.YOURSELF.
They are not. They are the political equivalent to funhouse mirrors.
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Happiegrrrl2
Trad climber
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May 22, 2018 - 04:15am PT
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And Cosmic - WTF?
When one posts an item they are copy/pasting, it's kind of a thing to attribute the source, or at the least somehow indicate the words are not our own.
That's one thing, but more importantly - NOW, can you let the smallest sliver of critical thinking shine on what you are clicking on, or watching and reading on "news outlets," about this political situation? At least even CONSIDER the possibility you are not the only one pulling manips?
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California, now Ireland
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May 22, 2018 - 05:30am PT
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Happiegrrrl2, who has a spare $10/month? And I do not Tweet, I do not Twitter, and I do not follow anything on Twitter. But thanks for the advice.
As for the window cleaner, he may be good at cleaning people's windows, but it seems his own windows are a bit foggy. Perhaps he should look closer to home.
I am having fun, but then I think about the topic(s), and the fun disappears. It is all well and fine to joke about the mess/morass, but then the reality of the Trump/GOP shitstorm hits, and the Dems, the only other viable "opposition", run around like headless chickens.
As for the media, of which I used to be part of, they helped to elect Trump, even the so-called liberal press, of which Trump views as enemies of the State. He should thank them for giving him so much page space and air time and exposure, not that I want to see his exposure, I'll let ladies of the night do that.
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Happiegrrrl2
Trad climber
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May 22, 2018 - 05:43am PT
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Patrick, I doubt that I am in a position with more expendable cash than you are, but I made a choice, when Schindler went to his pay platform, to use $10/mo toward staying with him, since he had been proven to be accurate for months previous. Everything that has come out about Trumpco in the MSM is old news to me, because I followed him. From 3 days to 3 weeks to 3 months old.
We make our choices - two cheap bottles of wine sacrificed each month would cover the cost.
Or, get the lite version for free by following @20Committee
As for "I don't Tweet," - again, your choice. I'm just offering what seems to me a very authorative voice for anyone looking for information.
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7SacredPools
Trad climber
Ontario, Canada
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May 22, 2018 - 05:57am PT
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I'm trying to get my head around that biomass survey synopsis posted by zbrown. It's truly staggering!
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California, now Ireland
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May 22, 2018 - 07:58am PT
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Hey, Happie, who says I buy cheap wine? Inexpensive maybe, but not cheap plonk.
Lighten up.
EDIT
And my earlier attempt at the differences of species (cat and dog, Betty and Aggie) they are best of friends now, frolicking together in the sun (yes, Ireland does get some sun).
Point is, different species, different views, yet can we not all frolick in the sun, on good rock?
Despite our differences?
That said, would I climb with Donald Trump? Are you effing crazy to even think of that?
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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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May 22, 2018 - 08:26am PT
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Climb? He can't even walk 200 yards. Plus belaying that mass would be problematic, you couldn't trust him at the other end, and you'd need at least a 12mm rope.
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10b4me
Social climber
Lida Junction
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May 22, 2018 - 08:35am PT
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Kingtut, trump is a mean SOB. Too mean to die anytime soon.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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May 22, 2018 - 08:51am PT
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SuperTopo on the Web
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