Cows, Pigs, and Chickens Dominate Our Planet // Published on Jun 6, 2018

New jaw-dropping peer-reviewed science paper: farmed poultry makes up 70% of all birds on Earth, with just 30% being wild. Even worse: 60% of all mammals are livestock, like cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals.

Humans have decimated life everywhere on Earth, including remote regions like the poles and deep oceans.  Lots of the extra carbon in the atmosphere/oceans used to be safely stored in plants/animals.  Restoring a healthy biosphere would do wonders for restoring a healthy climate.
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Human Decimation of Earth’s Creatures // Published on May 29, 2018

Earth’s 7.6 billion people represent an eeny-weeny-itsy-bitsy proportion of all living things; in fact only 0.01% or 100 ppm of total biomass. Yet, since the dawn of civilization, humanity has reduced global biomass (weight of all life) by half, and have destroyed a stunning, pants dropping 83% of all wild mammals [1].

And we are just warming up (pun intended). I discuss findings from a new peer-reviewed study on the biomass distribution on Earth [dk, see link below], and how we have changed it over time. Not good.

‘Humans Just 0.01% of All Life but have Destroyed 83% of Wild Mammals –Study.  Damian Carrington, Guardian Environment editor, Mon 21 May 2018 15.00 EDT.

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

‘Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet.

The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds.’

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[1] ‘The biomass distribution on Earth, Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo
PNAS May 21, 2018. 201711842; published ahead of print May 21, 2018, Edited by Paul G. Falkowski, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, and approved April 13, 2018 (received for review July 3, 2017).

Significance
‘The composition of the biosphere is a fundamental question in biology, yet a global quantitative account of the biomass of each taxon is still lacking. We assemble a census of the biomass of all kingdoms of life. This analysis provides a holistic view of the composition of the biosphere and allows us to observe broad patterns over taxonomic categories, geographic locations, and trophic modes.

Abstract
‘A census of the biomass on Earth is key for understanding the structure and dynamics of the biosphere. However, a global, quantitative view of how the biomass of different taxa compare with one another is still lacking. Here, we assemble the overall biomass composition of the biosphere, establishing a census of the ≈550 gigatons of carbon (Gt C) of biomass distributed among all of the kingdoms of life. 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’.   Continues at link.
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