Two new studies quantify key features of human and animal presence on Earth. The first study finds that the movement of human biomass today is 40 times greater than that of all wild land mammals, birds, and arthropods combined. Another study reveals that the combined biomass of wild land and marine mammals has plummeted by about 70 percent since 1850, whereas the biomass of humans has soared by roughly 700 percent and that of domesticated animals by 400 percent; those two categories have a combined biomass approaching about 1.1 billion tons.

The studies are collaborations between the Caltech laboratory of Rob Phillips, the Fred and Nancy Morris Professor of Biophysics, Biology, and Physics, and Ron Milo, professor of systems biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

"Centuries of work by naturalists have made it abundantly clear that living organisms are connected in giant webs of interactions," says Phillips. "But this is not just a vague idea; it is instead an idea that can be rendered quantitatively. These two papers make huge steps toward turning those intuitive ideas into concrete and quantitative time series."

Humanity has become a dominant force in shaping the face of Earth1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. An emerging question is how the overall material output of human activities compares to the overall natural biomass. Here we quantify the human-made mass, referred to as ‘anthropogenic mass’, and compare it to the overall living biomass on Earth, which currently equals approximately 1.1 teratonnes10,11. We find that Earth is exactly at the crossover point; in the year 2020 (± 6), the anthropogenic mass, which has recently doubled roughly every 20 years, will surpass all global living biomass. On average, for each person on the globe, anthropogenic mass equal to more than his or her bodyweight is produced every week. This quantification of the human enterprise gives a mass-based quantitative and symbolic characterization of the human-induced epoch of the Anthropocene.

On the New York Times op-ed page we read that “attempts to punish the fossil fuel industry by limiting leases or permits for export facilities or blocking projects often backfire” so “advocates should support stable oil and gas production.” Matt Yglesias pleads with us to “support America’s oil and gas industry” as they drive planetary warming off the charts.

Anyway, don’t be so worried. The Wall Street Journal op-ed page says there’s no need to “freak out” about the climate crisis, repeating fossil fuel industry falsehoods to paint a rosy picture of the future. When they do acknowledge the crisis, they tell us that we can’t do anything anyway. Global warming is simply “the future we’re heading toward,” because “humanity has shown that it’s unwilling to impose the limits on economic activity that would be necessary to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius,” and therefore all we can do is resign ourselves.

But the most powerful weapon of all is silence: simply not mentioning that any of this is happening. Or burying it in the back of the newspaper, as the New York Times infamously did with the Holocaust and now does with climate news. Or reporting it, but doing so only once it’s too late and the window for action has closed.

Helplessness, confusion, and anger have become the one common reality we all share precisely because we’ve been robbed of any unifying mass media depiction of anything remotely resembling reality. Americans are bombarded with dozens of micro-targeted narratives every day, tailored to their comfortable consumer profile but not their need to know in order to act. And nobody can be expected to navigate this moment without having even one functioning, widely-available, news outlet, a trusted source of information to replace the dozens of “legacy” outlets that have collapsed like a 100-foot-tall ice sculpture of Edward R. Murrow on a 92-degree January day.

The oligarchs aren’t even pretending they want to keep us informed anymore. They view functioning news as a threat—which it is, because if people understood how their futures are being wrecked to keep the rich rich, they’d be furious. The pitchforks might come out.

… When they do acknowledge the crisis, they tell us that we can’t do anything anyway. Global warming is simply “the future we’re heading toward,” because “humanity has shown that it’s unwilling to impose the limits on economic activity that would be necessary to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius,” …

Abstract: Paleoclimate data show that climate sensitivity is ~3°C for doubled CO₂, including only fast feedback processes. Equilibrium sensitivity, including slower surface albedo feedbacks, is ~6°C for doubled CO₂ for the range of climate states between glacial conditions and ice-free Antarctica. Decreasing CO₂ was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, the planet being nearly ice-free until CO₂ fell to 450 ± 100 ppm; barring prompt policy changes, that critical level will be passed, in the opposite direction, within decades. If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that. The largest uncertainty in the target arises from possible changes of non-CO₂ forcings. An initial 350 ppm CO₂ target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO₂ is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO₂ is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.