it's incredible to me that just less than 100 years ago, we did not even know that there were other galaxies.
That's what bit us in Iraq to the tune of 5T, no thanks to DR for ignoring it.
> The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background rates.
Another thing that's interesting and worrying is the fact that wild animals take up only 4% of the biomass of mammals, 60% being livestock and 36% being humans.
Even if there was no wild animal extinctions, you would expect humans and livestock to have dominated the percentages simply from growth alone.
> A 2018 study published in PNAS found that since the dawn of human civilization, 83% of wild mammals, 80% of marine mammals, 50% of plants and 15% of fish have vanished.
As for the biomass distribution percentages, you might as well be right! Fig. 1. in the linked study really puts things into perspective, though, animal life being pretty miniscule in the grand scale of things, when compared to plants, bacteria and other types of biomass, which is quite interesting! Growing up, i never saw estimates such as these, which really make me conscious of just how big of an impact humans (and their lifestyle choices, such as the demand for meat) could have on other species and the ecosystems as a whole, hence me mentioning it as something interesting.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6016768/
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...
Only that part is fair to say. But that it:
> makes that a somewhat misleading statistic
Isn't "fair" at all. There the "misleading" claim, I guess, presumes that the cost of human and livestock population exploding is nothing to the rest of nature, whereas it's completely the opposite: that's one visible point, and the cause of all imbalances that follow.
The problem is, of course, that the change of the environment by humans has the consequences will impact the humans more than they are able to cope.
This isn't "humans and livestock rising, wildlife constant". It's "humans and livestock exploding, wildlife vanishing".
Unlikely, but not that unprobable. We're one of the most easily wiped out species... Cockroaches and tardigrades will be doing fine in many circumstances where we'll be toast...