Biomass
Today it will be the biome and a book review. In many circumstances asking what something weighs is bad form. Today everything gets on the scale.
Good — Learning (and changing your mind) is fun the more you do it. Quite a while go I wrote a post titled “Just Carbon Baby”. I thought I was clever and was flaunting some insight. A recent post and the feedback from readers changed that a bit.
Good Plus — Time for another instance of my Book Club reviews. We recently reviewed “Imperfect Union” by Steve Inskeep. It had EVERYTHING except a likable character — a conundrum for a book.
Quick & Ludicrous Tangent
In last week’s post, I made reference to How to Cook Potatoes — Read the #2 best way to make potatoes. It is the only recipe ever that includes a stack of books as part of the prep. Silliest recipe ever.
It Doesn’t Matter If It’s True, There Are Things We Need To Hear
The units of measure in the chart above are Gt C which is short for Gigatons of Carbon. A Gigaton is a billion tons so 2 trillion pounds. Today, it is only important to see where we lie on this greater planetary scale and at what point our actions represent a tipping point.
Numbers, Numbers, Numbers
If you look at the left box, there are very few animals. — our world is plants and the building blocks of life. To my great friend Jim S, imagine all of those wonderful mushrooms in compareison to humankind! This great world of ours is mostly plants and our building blocks. The virtuous cycle that keeps things going is to nurture the plants and they might do the rest to keep this experiment going. It is not hard, after viewing this to conclude that little 0.06 Gt C is deciding for all of the rest of our planet what lives and what dies and how soon. Hmmmm.
Oh Well, Was I Wrong!
In “Words and Salad”, I simplified the world and put humans in the middle. I heard back about elephants, bacteria, insects, and the like. In particular, I received some deeper analysis from Anne K in Brooklyn who doubted the “in the middle premise” while Jeannine, in bucolic New Hampshire, reminded us all of the sheer volumes of bacteria both inside and outside our bodies. Back to the drawing board. Based on these pesky reader comments the chart at the top changed my tune.
We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Scale
Back in my school days and especially in the part of my job that involved simulation of things, you could always count on mass and energy being in balance. Since I lack the skill and patience, I am going to happily embrace some estimates that describe the affairs of Earth and perhaps our place and role in what’s going on.
While we don’t weigh very much, today I am going to fret about our leverage and how we use it. Full disclosure, I now profess we humans are just SOMEWHERE in the middle. I waded through a few articles and plucked a few numbers out that I thought were interesting. The handy table below (yes Anne a table exists) is chock full of numbers and more importantly, snarky comments from Mark.
The wild fish will largely be gone, having been reduced 65% in the last 150 years. We will ebb to a 90% loss in 20-40 years. Sounds like a doomsayer ala Rachel Carson and Silent Spring1. These are free proteins so 10-mile-long chains on a spool are the order of the day with a hook every 3-4 feet. Roll it out, reel it in, put it on ice, section and sell it, feed the rest to animals. This is the reality of fishing today. While creatures of the sea are amongst the most likely to have survived many of the planetary mass extinctions, they will likely not survive humankind’s desire to be entertained by lots of different proteins to eat.
I saved the MOST ABSURD for last. Keep in mind I have no grasp of what a Gt looks like. However, the last number for Anthropomorphic at 200 Gt C bowled me over. It is estimated we reached this number around 2020. Almost all of this is since the Industrial Revolution and will reach 400 by 2045. I finally have a sense I can grasp about the impact of humans on the planet. I think, forever more, when someone advises there are natural cycles much worse than human impact like volcanoes, this will be the number that leads me to ‘ahhhh, not really tiger’. Anthropomorphic refers to the amount of WASTE carbon we have created mostly since starting to burn stuff. So we are definitely punching above our weight class having generated about 3200 times our body weights in waste as we industrialized! The scale of the challenge and its consequence overwhelms me.
“None of the other creatures on the planet have reshaped this world to serve themselves. In the process we’ve generated 200 Gt C of waste and it is climbing fast. Much more than half of it since Ozzie and Harriet. That is well on its way to half of all the living carbon on the planet. We will be in the middle in no time.” Our waste will exceed living carbon soon enough. It is hard to imagine why this will not tip the balance for a mass extinction. In case you believe this is exaggeration, in the 1940s we were releasing about 5 Gt / year and we are now at about 35 Gt / year and rising FAST.
A Profound Miss
When I started this writing journey I had faith that technology would save us and that innovation in a fast-moving world would fix things. I now believe we are at the dying end of a failed system. This will be the true test of how far we have come on the intelligence journey. Because we are living at an exponential growth period for the planet (the first time ever brought on by the inhabitants), we have much less time than our senses guide us.
None of this means the end for this amazing planet and its Goldilocks atmosphere. We are simply approaching something that has happened AT LEAST five times that we know of, a mass extinction. The natural systems of the planet will reshuffle and provide a new gameboard. The only problem for us, is that over 4.6 billion years, we think this recent 50,000 year period is the only one suitable for us to thrive. The roulette wheel of history is favorable for humans as one green slot and 80000 numbers on the wheel. Our odds are not favorable if we take a chance with the only place we can survive. We will get our chance over the next twenty years to keep it habitable.
There are innovations that will nip at the problems at the edges and create a lot of wealth. The fundamental problem of accumulating waste heat in the upper atmosphere is brought to you by the Laws of Thermodynamics. No venture capitalist can change this they can only speed the demise as they worship growth and consumption, the eventual proximate cause of death. This can be resolved only by setting aside the growth mantra and embracing planetary cooperation. I am rooting for us.
Imperfect Union
My work life is very different nowadays. I work at a private library for a limited number of hours. As our lives change, we all know that other things quickly step forward to absorb the time. When the 2nd Tuesday of the Month arrived in April, 2023, I found myself with four important commitments between 3 pm and 8 pm. Something had to give and my Rosemount History Book Club meeting became a casualty (630p to 800p).
My first commitment is one of my favorites, my writing group. We talk about what we are reading, and what we are writing and generally solve many of the world’s problems. Spring came in without warning and quickly became summer all at once. The thermometer in my car reported 85F with similar temperatures forecast for the rest of the week. All of this, with small, stubborn patches of dirty snow piles interspersed occasionally in the landscape. We met OUTSIDE at a park, soaking in the long-overdue change of seasons. We met from 3-430p. I shared my review and rating for the book with two of my friends who are also book club stalwarts.
While it is hearsay, I understand the turnout for the club was very good and the consensus score for the book was 8+ out of 10. My abbreviated review follows since I cannot share the perspective of the others in the club. The book, including its long subtitle, largely delivers the goods as “Imperfect Union: How Jessie and John Frémont Mapped the West, Invented Celebrity, and Helped Cause the Civil War”. There are a handful of elements some of us in the club share as essential elements starting with our founder John. If a book is excellent in most respects but does not have a good map or two for context, it will be marked down.
This book had the essentials in spades (1) a good map to guide the tale (2) key photographs and illustrations (3) high-quality writing that follows either a consistent chronology or character concentration (4) you learn things you never knew. Having been a resident of California, there are a lot of references to the name Fremont. Before reading the book I didn’t know who he was or his significance. His key role in the Mexican-American War and the incorporation of Texas was also VERY INTERESTING. Sometimes a story fashioned around a couple can struggle with focus. Inskeep IS A GREAT WRITER. He pivoted between Jessie and John and enriched the experience and gave their lives depth.
The only thing, no fault of Inskeep, is that John Frémont seems to have been a real jackass and hard to like. He came very close to being President in 1856 and echoed a vibe that led to the Civil War and the near dissolution of the country. The next time someone tells me how bad our choices were in the elections of 2016 and 2020, I will now remind people of the 1856 election of James Buchanan, who defeated John Fremont with Millard Fillmore (the Do Nothing party — FOR REAL) finishing third. Buchanon was pro-slavery, Fillmore was mostly anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic and Fremont was simply not likable. I would surmise the voters of 1856 had a legitimate beef about their options for President. Preceding our likely greatest President Lincoln in 1860 makes the choice dim by comparison.
The book was FANTASTIC. If learning the important history of the settling of the West and the leadup to the Civil War is interesting to you, this book is for you. If it bothers you that the primary character turns out to be a real jerk, look elsewhere.
The Poll & Music
Sometimes song picking is easy like today.
What’s Next
My next post will be just one topic and is titled “What’s Next”. I have no illusions but if today’s topic was interesting and illuminating, I am going to wrestle with what to do with this sort of information. Forgive me for sounding like a management consultant. How do we make today’s post ACTIONABLE? I think the workplace in the last ten years would have been well-served if it was okay to punch someone in the arm when they said stuff like actionable. The same ridiculous trend in sports coverage and the inane use of the word physicality. WTH are people talking about? I’ll leave with my favorite example of a silly expression that prevails. I have a big ask, please come back and read my next post. I have grand hopes for it and please, if we ever encounter each other IRL, don’t say I have a big ask. Having lost sixty pounds in the last five years, my ask is not that big anymore :)
https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/famous-scientists/biologists/10-things-should-know-about-rachel-carson.htm
Wow I loved this issue it was just mind blowing. That is a LOT of mushrooms! I can’t believe there is more human mass than wild mammal mass that is ridiculous!!
Thank you for a very fun read!
Wow. We humans are pretty insignificant... and pretty dang messy! It's too bad ents aren't real, because it looks like the plants will inherit what's left of the earth someday.
Looking forward to reading about your big ask. 😂