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Manmade mess now outweighs life on Earth
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Manmade mess now outweighs life on Earth
Ok, the original title is manmade mass not mess but...

"For the first time in history manmade materials now likely outweigh all life on Earth, scientists said Wednesday in research detailing the "crossover point" at which humanity's footprint is heavier than that of the natural world.

The weight of roads, buildings and other constructed or manufactured materials is doubling roughly every 20 years, and authors of the research said it currently weighed 1.1 teratonnes (1.1 trillion tonnes).

As mankind has ramped up its insatiable consumption of natural resources, the weight of living biomass—trees, plants and animals—has halved since the agricultural revolution to stand at just 1 teratonne currently, the study found.

Estimating changes in global biomass and manmade mass since 1990, the research showed that the mass of human-produced objects stood at just three percent of the weight of biomass at the start of the 20th century.

But since the post-World War II global production boom, manufacturing has surged to the extent that humans now produce the equivalent of the weight of every person on Earth every week on average.

[...]

At the current growth rate, manmade material is likely to weigh as much as three teratonnes by 2040.

At the same time, overall biomass is decreasing, mainly because of deforestation and land use changes making way for intensive agriculture.

Buildings and roads account for most of the manmade mass, and a number of construction trends—including shifting from bricks to concrete in construction in the mid-1950s—contributed to the accelerated weight accumulation."


Facebook comments on scientific articles make me really root for Covid. Deadpan Coffee Drinker
“We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?” 
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