4 ms·
"This study concludes we better not exceed the 50 per cent mark of wholesale transformation of Earth’s surface or we won’t be able to delay, never mind avert, a
by gdacuna 14y ago
"This study concludes we better not exceed the 50 per cent mark of wholesale transformation of Earth’s surface or we won’t be able to delay, never mind avert, a planetary collapse.
We’ve already reached the 43 per cent mark through our conversion of landscapes into agricultural and urban areas, making Earth increasingly susceptible to an environmental epidemic."
I'm guessing this really means the land surface of the Earth, rather than the Earth's surface as a whole, as ~70% of the Earth's surface is water. Without access to the paper itself, I can't say whether or not this is an issue with the "media release" or the research itself, of course.
- planetguy 14y agoThe study doesn't actually say anything of the sort anyway, what it says is a typically vague: " It is still unknown, however, what percentage of Earth’s ecosystems actually have to be transformed to new states by the direct action of humans for rapid state changes to be triggered in remaining ‘natural’ systems. That percentage may be knowable only in retrospect, but, judging from landscape-scale observations and simulations66, 67, 68, 69, 70, it can reasonably be expected to be as low as 50% (ref. 68), or even lower if the interaction effects of many local ecosystem transformations cause sufficiently large global-scale forcings to emerge." or in other words, "fuck, I dunno, half?"