Terrestrial zoomass: 10,000 BCE to 2050 AD

[GliderGuider]

Last edited Wed Sep 24, 2014, 06:44 PM - Edit history (1)

In case anyone is wondering why the world's wildlife seems to be in bad shape these days, this is the story.

The dotted red line shows approximately how much vertebrate biomass the planet can support without the use of human technology or fossil fuels. The data for 2050 is based on the UN's Medium Fertility population estimate of 9 billion humans.

It looks like we've been in global overshoot since about 1800 or so, and overshoot the planet's carrying capacity almost sevenfold by 2050.



One last point. We have sustained our overshoot since 1800 by strip-mining the soil and fouling the air and water. In other words, that nice horizontal line marked "Global Carrying Capacity" actually slopes down as time goes on, by how much is anyone's guess.

Have a nice day.

[MisterP]

1. but how can this be? we're beyond any limits--gods made flesh, robed in the constellations

changing physical laws as though we were crooking a finger! if we made angels they wouldn't do anything so crass as *rebel*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_at_the_Crossroads

[GliderGuider]

2. Why did the human cross the road?

To raise more chickens...

[MisterP]

3. to get to the apotheosis on the other side?

but intriguingly I've noted that the people most into this conception of us hominins making God look puny, of rearranging and disposing of the planet and then the cosmos as we see fit, are often the hardest-bitten misanthropes: I guess if you worship humankind nothing actual humans do could ever shape up ...

[GliderGuider]

4. Good observation!

I've given up being a humanist in favour of becoming a human being.