7 ms·

Also, “biomass” is a strange term. Is that literally an estimate of mass? Or count of individuals? Many other context lacking as well. This is clearly written

Also, “biomass” is a strange term. Is that literally an estimate of mass? Or count of individuals? Many other context lacking as well. This is clearly written for the 96% statistic shock, not to inform anyone.

nicoburns 4y ago
> Also, “biomass” is a strange term. Is that literally an estimate of mass? It is indeed. The idea being that individuals vary greatly (it doesn't make sense to compare individual counts of humans with individual counts of ants for example), and that mass at least roughly accounts for the size of individuals.
- club_tropical 4y ago
  But, especially in mammals, it is the individual animal that is the fundamental unit. A cheetah and an elephant are unique individuated specimens; it doesn’t make sense to compare their mass. In ants/bees it’s maybe something like “number of colonies/hives” that is the meaningful unit. Why would anyone compare across species by mass- that is a reductive number, you can’t infer anything meaningful out of it. Also, certainly not by percentage - have to look at absolute numbers of meaningful units over time.
  - pvaldes 4y ago
    > it is the individual animal that is the fundamental unit. Not. This is a very common mistake among people that does not understand ecology.
    - club_tropical 4y ago
      You can call me a heretic for questioning His Majesty The Ecologist, but the emperor wears no clothes and percentage of aggregate biomass is the most meaningless metric I've ever heard to study mammals.
      - pvaldes 4y ago
        Your opinion about monarchs and underpants has been carefully registered by our royal lackey penguins
doliveira 4y ago
Pretty sure that's the estimate of carbon content, but it's a proper scientific concept.
- club_tropical 4y ago
  The number of decibels they can produce is a “proper scientific concept”- metrics can be arbitrary and useless.
pvaldes 4y ago
Biomass is the whole mass of life beings, a standard and common measure that represents the energy contained in a particular group. Talking in terms of biomass is very common in Ecology.
- club_tropical 4y ago
  I think it is an unclear and bizarre term. “The energy contained in one group” - what energy? Is a lean cheetah “less-energy” than an elephant? Why? Or do you literally mean energy like calories (which, IIRC means “how much heat if burned”). What a bizarre metric, nobody thinks like this, I don’t even think “ecologists” understand why they should think in terms of mass. I, too, can have a metric: number of decibels of sound you can produce; maybe humans make up a SHOCKING 3% on that- doesn’t mean it’s a sensible metric.
  - pvaldes 4y ago
    > “The energy contained in one group” - what energy? The chemical energy contained in the links of the molecules > Is a lean cheetah “less-energy” than an elephant? Yes, of course. One cheetah, has less biomass than one elephant. But -the- rats, have more biomass than -the- elephants. Is the beauty of the ecology. > What a bizarre metric, nobody thinks like this, I don’t even think “ecologists” understand why they should think in terms of mass. Well, this sounds a little arrogant. The professionals that use it, obviously, know their job. They aren't stupid. Would be like claiming that programmers don't understand why they use an if loop. Biomass is a measure as widespread in ecology as Megabytes is in computers. And there is not need to use quotes around the word ecologists, in the same way as you wouldn't wrote: the "engineers" or the "programmers". > I, too, can have a metric: number of decibels of sound you can produce; maybe humans make up a SHOCKING 3% on that- doesn’t mean it’s a sensible metric. Well, the difference is that nobody uses your metric.
    - club_tropical 4y ago
      > The professionals that use it, obviously, know their job. They aren't stupid. I will not defer to authority. I want an explanation for why the percentage of aggregate “chemical energy contained in the links of molecules” is considered a meaningful metric for anything other than “how much percentage heat would I produce if i threw them into a fire”, let alone mammal population health or diversity. > Well, the difference is that nobody uses your metric. Correct, because it is not meaningful, and neither is biomass.
aaron695 4y ago
jonnycomputer 4y ago
Biomass is probably exactly the right measure, when we are talking ecology. A lot of mice to weigh up to one cow, it is true, but then, you could feed a lot of mice on the grain with which you feed your cow.
- club_tropical 4y ago
  I understand that each animal group has a different weight range and that, if you reduce animal groups to “total weight” metric, you can compare cows with mice on that metric. I do not agree that this is some kind of meaningful unit, especially in percentage terms, for anything that ecologists might be interested in, like population health, or whatever else. The fact that ecologists think in terms of biomass while putting on a lab coat and getting a PhD does not make this metric make more sense.
  - jonnycomputer 4y ago
    All you've done is asserted it doesn't make sense. You could at least make an argument as to why.
    - club_tropical 4y ago
      What do we talk about when we talk about human populations? Like say, you want to formulate an opinion on Germanic peoples' population in history. Do you EVER talk about percentage aggregate biomass of Germanic peoples? No, meaningful numbers are # of individuals, lifespan, sex/age composition, fertility, height, weight, etc. Percentage of aggregate biomass is not among them, for good reason. Look, I have no problem if scientists are measuring things in an exploratory way. Let's add up the mass, subtract, play around - this fun exploration is good. But if you are doing fun exploration, don't tell me this is to "measure the richness of the mammal kingdom" and throw around a shocking "96%" as if to pretend it is meaningful. It is not. EDIT/PS: Thought of another example - say you are studying dogs and human interaction in history. You would never think of showing historical aggregate [dog biomass / dog+human biomass] as some kind of meaningful metric. You would show dog count, dogs per human, dog speciation, etc. Not dog biomass percentage.
myshpa 4y ago
RTFA. "To understand how the richness of the mammal kingdom has changed we need a metric that captures a range of different animals and is comparable over time. We could look at their abundance – the number of individuals we have – but this is not ideal. We would be counting every species equally, from a mouse to an elephant and this metric would therefore an ecosystem taken over by the smallest mammals look much richer than one in which bigger mammals roam: if the world’s mouse populations multiplied and multiplied – maybe even to the detriment of other animals – then this abundance metric might suggest that these ecosystems were thriving. Instead, ecologists often use the metric biomass. This means that each animal is measured in tonnes of carbon, the fundamental building block of life.1 Biomass gives us a measure of the total biological productivity of an ecosystem. It also gives more weight to larger animals at higher levels of the ecological ‘pyramid’" https://ourworldindata.org/mammals#the-decline-of-wild-mammals-has-a-long-history https://ourworldindata.org/mammals#the-decline-of-wild-mamma...
- club_tropical 4y ago
  PERCENTAGE biomass in NO WAY reflects “the richness of the mammal kingdom”. It is a synthetic metric that scientists can futz around with enough to produce some shocking metric and get funding/press. ABSOLUTE “biomass” is meaningful, simply because mammals have relatively tight weight ranges and you can estimate the individual counts from the biomass- but let’s be real: it is most likely that they start with estimates of number of individuals and multiply that by the average weight to get biomass. So- ditch the biomass and show absolute numbers of individuals over time. That is meaningful.

nicoburns 4y ago

> Also, “biomass” is a strange term. Is that literally an estimate of mass? It is indeed. The idea being that individuals vary greatly (it doesn't make sense to compare individual counts of humans with individual counts of ants for example), and that mass at least roughly accounts for the size of individuals.

club_tropical 4y ago
But, especially in mammals, it is the individual animal that is the fundamental unit. A cheetah and an elephant are unique individuated specimens; it doesn’t make sense to compare their mass. In ants/bees it’s maybe something like “number of colonies/hives” that is the meaningful unit. Why would anyone compare across species by mass- that is a reductive number, you can’t infer anything meaningful out of it. Also, certainly not by percentage - have to look at absolute numbers of meaningful units over time.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  > it is the individual animal that is the fundamental unit. Not. This is a very common mistake among people that does not understand ecology.
  - club_tropical 4y ago
    You can call me a heretic for questioning His Majesty The Ecologist, but the emperor wears no clothes and percentage of aggregate biomass is the most meaningless metric I've ever heard to study mammals.
    - pvaldes 4y ago
      Your opinion about monarchs and underpants has been carefully registered by our royal lackey penguins

doliveira 4y ago

Pretty sure that's the estimate of carbon content, but it's a proper scientific concept.

club_tropical 4y ago
The number of decibels they can produce is a “proper scientific concept”- metrics can be arbitrary and useless.

pvaldes 4y ago

Biomass is the whole mass of life beings, a standard and common measure that represents the energy contained in a particular group. Talking in terms of biomass is very common in Ecology.

club_tropical 4y ago
I think it is an unclear and bizarre term. “The energy contained in one group” - what energy? Is a lean cheetah “less-energy” than an elephant? Why? Or do you literally mean energy like calories (which, IIRC means “how much heat if burned”). What a bizarre metric, nobody thinks like this, I don’t even think “ecologists” understand why they should think in terms of mass. I, too, can have a metric: number of decibels of sound you can produce; maybe humans make up a SHOCKING 3% on that- doesn’t mean it’s a sensible metric.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  > “The energy contained in one group” - what energy? The chemical energy contained in the links of the molecules > Is a lean cheetah “less-energy” than an elephant? Yes, of course. One cheetah, has less biomass than one elephant. But -the- rats, have more biomass than -the- elephants. Is the beauty of the ecology. > What a bizarre metric, nobody thinks like this, I don’t even think “ecologists” understand why they should think in terms of mass. Well, this sounds a little arrogant. The professionals that use it, obviously, know their job. They aren't stupid. Would be like claiming that programmers don't understand why they use an if loop. Biomass is a measure as widespread in ecology as Megabytes is in computers. And there is not need to use quotes around the word ecologists, in the same way as you wouldn't wrote: the "engineers" or the "programmers". > I, too, can have a metric: number of decibels of sound you can produce; maybe humans make up a SHOCKING 3% on that- doesn’t mean it’s a sensible metric. Well, the difference is that nobody uses your metric.
  - club_tropical 4y ago
    > The professionals that use it, obviously, know their job. They aren't stupid. I will not defer to authority. I want an explanation for why the percentage of aggregate “chemical energy contained in the links of molecules” is considered a meaningful metric for anything other than “how much percentage heat would I produce if i threw them into a fire”, let alone mammal population health or diversity. > Well, the difference is that nobody uses your metric. Correct, because it is not meaningful, and neither is biomass.

aaron695 4y ago

jonnycomputer 4y ago

Biomass is probably exactly the right measure, when we are talking ecology. A lot of mice to weigh up to one cow, it is true, but then, you could feed a lot of mice on the grain with which you feed your cow.

club_tropical 4y ago
I understand that each animal group has a different weight range and that, if you reduce animal groups to “total weight” metric, you can compare cows with mice on that metric. I do not agree that this is some kind of meaningful unit, especially in percentage terms, for anything that ecologists might be interested in, like population health, or whatever else. The fact that ecologists think in terms of biomass while putting on a lab coat and getting a PhD does not make this metric make more sense.
- jonnycomputer 4y ago
  All you've done is asserted it doesn't make sense. You could at least make an argument as to why.
  - club_tropical 4y ago
    What do we talk about when we talk about human populations? Like say, you want to formulate an opinion on Germanic peoples' population in history. Do you EVER talk about percentage aggregate biomass of Germanic peoples? No, meaningful numbers are # of individuals, lifespan, sex/age composition, fertility, height, weight, etc. Percentage of aggregate biomass is not among them, for good reason. Look, I have no problem if scientists are measuring things in an exploratory way. Let's add up the mass, subtract, play around - this fun exploration is good. But if you are doing fun exploration, don't tell me this is to "measure the richness of the mammal kingdom" and throw around a shocking "96%" as if to pretend it is meaningful. It is not. EDIT/PS: Thought of another example - say you are studying dogs and human interaction in history. You would never think of showing historical aggregate [dog biomass / dog+human biomass] as some kind of meaningful metric. You would show dog count, dogs per human, dog speciation, etc. Not dog biomass percentage.

myshpa 4y ago

RTFA. "To understand how the richness of the mammal kingdom has changed we need a metric that captures a range of different animals and is comparable over time. We could look at their abundance – the number of individuals we have – but this is not ideal. We would be counting every species equally, from a mouse to an elephant and this metric would therefore an ecosystem taken over by the smallest mammals look much richer than one in which bigger mammals roam: if the world’s mouse populations multiplied and multiplied – maybe even to the detriment of other animals – then this abundance metric might suggest that these ecosystems were thriving. Instead, ecologists often use the metric biomass. This means that each animal is measured in tonnes of carbon, the fundamental building block of life.1 Biomass gives us a measure of the total biological productivity of an ecosystem. It also gives more weight to larger animals at higher levels of the ecological ‘pyramid’" https://ourworldindata.org/mammals#the-decline-of-wild-mammals-has-a-long-history https://ourworldindata.org/mammals#the-decline-of-wild-mamma...

club_tropical 4y ago
PERCENTAGE biomass in NO WAY reflects “the richness of the mammal kingdom”. It is a synthetic metric that scientists can futz around with enough to produce some shocking metric and get funding/press. ABSOLUTE “biomass” is meaningful, simply because mammals have relatively tight weight ranges and you can estimate the individual counts from the biomass- but let’s be real: it is most likely that they start with estimates of number of individuals and multiply that by the average weight to get biomass. So- ditch the biomass and show absolute numbers of individuals over time. That is meaningful.