2020 Marks the Point When Human-Made Materials Outweigh All the Living Things on Earth, a New Study Finds

In a startling sign of the impact that humans are having on our planet, a study published Dec. 9 estimates that 2020 marks the point when human-made materials outweigh the total mass of Earth’s living biomass. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science found that the total mass of human-made materials—such as concrete, steel and asphalt—has increased rapidly since 1900, when it made up the equivalent of just 3% of the mass of living biomass—plants, animals and microorganisms. As humans have constructed more buildings, roads, structures and objects over the last 120 years, the mass of human-produced materials has grown from less than 0.1 teratonnes to roughly 1 teratonne (1 trillion tonnes), the study, published in the journal Nature estimates. Meanwhile, humans have been steadily reducing the amount of plant biomass on Earth through thousands of years of land-use, like cutting down trees to plant fields and raise livestock. Today, according to the study, all the living plants on Earth weigh roughly 1 teratonne, half of what they did when the agricultural revolution began 12,000 years ago. Plants account for 90% of the Earth’s living biomass, per the study. To produce their estimates, scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science integrated a vast number of existing datasets. For the biomass side of the calculation they used data from a 2018 study, in which some of the same researchers collated data to find the mass o...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized embargoed study Environment Londontime Source Type: news