We have built a shocking amount of stuff (most of it recently)
January 3, 2025 11:37 AM Subscribe
Biocubes.net is an interactive visualization of the world's biomass and humanity's "technomass" (i.e. everything we've ever built) (via kottke)
That last slide. Oof.
I really loved this method of presentation, especially the progression over the last 125 years, and how everything just started speeding up exponentially around 1955 or so.
posted by mochapickle at 11:48 AM on January 3 [3 favorites]
I really loved this method of presentation, especially the progression over the last 125 years, and how everything just started speeding up exponentially around 1955 or so.
posted by mochapickle at 11:48 AM on January 3 [3 favorites]
If our livestock get wiped out by bird flu it looks like there's still lots of bugs, worms and crabs to eat (for now).
posted by brachiopod at 12:06 PM on January 3
posted by brachiopod at 12:06 PM on January 3
What a great interface, and genuinely educational. I'd like to see something similar for the animal kingdom alone, with all the classes and orders and species.
posted by zardoz at 12:48 PM on January 3 [3 favorites]
posted by zardoz at 12:48 PM on January 3 [3 favorites]
Interesting. A couple of questions about how we view overlap in these types of approximations:
Are bacteria and other microorganisms separate from the weight of their hosts organisms? Or is that only counting bacteria that is unhosted? Or maybe bacteria within organisms is so small relative to bacteria not in organisms that it is a rounding error?
Where is something like plywood in the biomass vs technomass divide?
posted by jacquilynne at 1:02 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
Are bacteria and other microorganisms separate from the weight of their hosts organisms? Or is that only counting bacteria that is unhosted? Or maybe bacteria within organisms is so small relative to bacteria not in organisms that it is a rounding error?
Where is something like plywood in the biomass vs technomass divide?
posted by jacquilynne at 1:02 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
This makes it look humans somehow added a bunch of new mass to a world that had no abiological mass whatsoever. Very misleading. Concrete, metals, bricks - all that mass was already around for millennia, humans just reorganized it.
posted by scrowdid at 1:05 PM on January 3 [6 favorites]
posted by scrowdid at 1:05 PM on January 3 [6 favorites]
It used to be said that bacteria made up 1% to 3% of human body mass, but that has been revised downward to about 0.3%.
The majority of bacteria— 67 Gt— live in the "deep subsurface." (But the same source says that these estimates are provisional.)
posted by zompist at 1:17 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
The majority of bacteria— 67 Gt— live in the "deep subsurface." (But the same source says that these estimates are provisional.)
posted by zompist at 1:17 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
Great phrase to think through: "Animals are mainly marine"
posted by doctornemo at 1:19 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 1:19 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
Confused by mass vs volume in this presentation. A meter cube of Concrete is a lot heavier than a meter cube of Plants. Is it mass they are comparing in a volumetric paradigm? That’s fucked.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:36 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:36 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
Would be interesting to see a cube of known crude oil, limestone, and human-accessible metals to see if we've even made a dent in Earth's riches.
I'd also like to know if the biomass cubes have changed significantly over history or if Earth reaches a balance over time, fluctuating based on atmospheric oxygen and CO2 levels.
posted by erpava at 1:39 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
I'd also like to know if the biomass cubes have changed significantly over history or if Earth reaches a balance over time, fluctuating based on atmospheric oxygen and CO2 levels.
posted by erpava at 1:39 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
> Concrete, metals, bricks - all that mass was already around for millennia, humans just reorganized it.
True, but all those organisms are mostly just reorganized from pre-existing water and carbon dioxide.
posted by drdanger at 1:54 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
True, but all those organisms are mostly just reorganized from pre-existing water and carbon dioxide.
posted by drdanger at 1:54 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
Trees mostly build themselves out of air, which is kind of amazing.
posted by mbrubeck at 1:59 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
posted by mbrubeck at 1:59 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
Surprised plastics were the smallest part, that's good at least.
posted by Liquidwolf at 2:14 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
posted by Liquidwolf at 2:14 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
Excellent visualization.
posted by doctornemo at 2:15 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
posted by doctornemo at 2:15 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
That was excellent. The representation of life as biomass is useful and easy to understand at any age.
posted by blendor at 3:06 PM on January 3
posted by blendor at 3:06 PM on January 3
Great phrase to think through: "Animals are mainly marine”
“You may be a land animal, but it’s a water planet.”
posted by Lemkin at 3:37 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
“You may be a land animal, but it’s a water planet.”
posted by Lemkin at 3:37 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
There is a bigger pile of bacteria than there is of bricks? We should look into doing something about that.
posted by mittens at 3:44 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 3:44 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
I’ll get some ointment.
posted by Lemkin at 4:13 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
posted by Lemkin at 4:13 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
My name is LUCA
I live on the first floor
I live downstairs from you
Yes, I think you've been me before
posted by chavenet at 4:46 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
I live on the first floor
I live downstairs from you
Yes, I think you've been me before
posted by chavenet at 4:46 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
Direct link to last slide if you want to avoid clicking through it all.
The factory must grow.
posted by Nelson at 5:00 PM on January 3
The factory must grow.
posted by Nelson at 5:00 PM on January 3
Re:overtime, we've dropped wild biomass by about half, we've dropped its diversity too, and we have added quite a bit of poison to what remains.
The rocks and metal would be fine if we weren't leaving such poison disasters at the mines and their surface and ground water. plus the energy
Re: we could eat the other stuff. If you take various world pop estimates 4 billion, 8 billion, 12 billion and play the game of how many days worth of starvation rations can you get from eating the entire rest of the natural world, you will not make it to the next harvest.
You can't meaningfully wildharvest bacteria, and farming them simply burns through plant food you could eat or use as fertilizer.
Your wild insect haul is also limited by the expenditure it takes to harvest them, you get a small bang for buck and likewise farming them is just a way to waste food and fetilizer.
Eating all the seaweed, shellfish, fish and sea mammals gets you the most time. All the wild 4 leggers on land gets you like 6 days. Pets are actually better.
If ag fails, we strip the earth and still also starve. And then we leave the earth in no condition to sustain any survivors. its, uh, not great.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 6:22 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
The rocks and metal would be fine if we weren't leaving such poison disasters at the mines and their surface and ground water. plus the energy
Re: we could eat the other stuff. If you take various world pop estimates 4 billion, 8 billion, 12 billion and play the game of how many days worth of starvation rations can you get from eating the entire rest of the natural world, you will not make it to the next harvest.
You can't meaningfully wildharvest bacteria, and farming them simply burns through plant food you could eat or use as fertilizer.
Your wild insect haul is also limited by the expenditure it takes to harvest them, you get a small bang for buck and likewise farming them is just a way to waste food and fetilizer.
Eating all the seaweed, shellfish, fish and sea mammals gets you the most time. All the wild 4 leggers on land gets you like 6 days. Pets are actually better.
If ag fails, we strip the earth and still also starve. And then we leave the earth in no condition to sustain any survivors. its, uh, not great.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 6:22 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
Also yes, mass js being visually represented as volume... not great but not terrible. Its a visual medium and people don't have a good density intuition. dense stuff is usually about 3× denser than water, not dense stuff about 3/4 thst of water. water is notoriously almost as dense as real water, which typically has salts in it.
Of all the publication crimes, showing mass as volumes is not the worst.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 6:26 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
Of all the publication crimes, showing mass as volumes is not the worst.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 6:26 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
"well that was depressing"
Yes, but am i the only one who also feels just a teeny teeny bit proud?
posted by storybored at 8:08 PM on January 3
Yes, but am i the only one who also feels just a teeny teeny bit proud?
posted by storybored at 8:08 PM on January 3
If ag fails, we strip the earth and still also starve.
Sounds like someone has never heard of cannibalism!
posted by mittens at 5:29 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]
Sounds like someone has never heard of cannibalism!
posted by mittens at 5:29 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]
Wow that's lots of rock based biomass. Fascinating presentation.
posted by travertina at 6:55 AM on January 4
posted by travertina at 6:55 AM on January 4
The idea that more than 95% of land mammal biomass is humans and livestock is just boggling.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:20 PM on January 5
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:20 PM on January 5
Mittens ...cannibalism!
You jest, but it is a popular topic.
Regarding Cannabalism for famine trap dynamics. Its main effect on per capita nutritional access isn't in providing food but in reducing competition for food, i.e. less capitas.
The hang-weight useable fats from semi-starved and starved people is low and carbs basically zero and many of the organs become unsafe to eat in any great quantity. in famine conditions the foods of last resort (tree cambium, grass tips, rodents, other humans) lack sufficient fats and protein mal-absorbtion becomes a serious problem. See for instance Rabbit madness among polar explorers.
Historically, by the time populations engage in cannibalism, the population is already decling from disease and malnutrition and exodus, so an additional factor reducingpopulation numbers doesnt change the topgraphy of the resource curves. Its impacts are modest.
Now, if you depart from historical norms and model an early widespread adoption of cannibalism, when other factors haven't started dropping pop size and when useable fat levels remain to avoid the fat bottle-neck it does have a significant effect on outcomes - but again, the main effect is because it removes people and not because people becomes a source of food (i.e. people consume more than they accumulate). By prematurely starting the population decline (in models - we don't see this in historical case studies because cannibalism's onset is late) early cannibalism is a "flatten the curve" But also a prune-the-culdesac effect. i.e. All the people prematurely removed by cannibalism (or warfare or exodus) don't spend weeks eating down and metabolisinf away food before they succumb to hunger or disease.
You joke, but cannibalism doesn't do much more than murder. It is indeed depresing.
Good thing the growing seasons are stable, our crops hardy and diverse, our stockpiles large, we have institutionalized generousity and cooperation and our culture and public discourse prepared us the possibility of hard times and emergency measures.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 3:52 AM on January 6 [1 favorite]
You jest, but it is a popular topic.
Regarding Cannabalism for famine trap dynamics. Its main effect on per capita nutritional access isn't in providing food but in reducing competition for food, i.e. less capitas.
The hang-weight useable fats from semi-starved and starved people is low and carbs basically zero and many of the organs become unsafe to eat in any great quantity. in famine conditions the foods of last resort (tree cambium, grass tips, rodents, other humans) lack sufficient fats and protein mal-absorbtion becomes a serious problem. See for instance Rabbit madness among polar explorers.
Historically, by the time populations engage in cannibalism, the population is already decling from disease and malnutrition and exodus, so an additional factor reducingpopulation numbers doesnt change the topgraphy of the resource curves. Its impacts are modest.
Now, if you depart from historical norms and model an early widespread adoption of cannibalism, when other factors haven't started dropping pop size and when useable fat levels remain to avoid the fat bottle-neck it does have a significant effect on outcomes - but again, the main effect is because it removes people and not because people becomes a source of food (i.e. people consume more than they accumulate). By prematurely starting the population decline (in models - we don't see this in historical case studies because cannibalism's onset is late) early cannibalism is a "flatten the curve" But also a prune-the-culdesac effect. i.e. All the people prematurely removed by cannibalism (or warfare or exodus) don't spend weeks eating down and metabolisinf away food before they succumb to hunger or disease.
You joke, but cannibalism doesn't do much more than murder. It is indeed depresing.
Good thing the growing seasons are stable, our crops hardy and diverse, our stockpiles large, we have institutionalized generousity and cooperation and our culture and public discourse prepared us the possibility of hard times and emergency measures.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 3:52 AM on January 6 [1 favorite]
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nice presentation though
posted by kokaku at 11:39 AM on January 3 [2 favorites]